Author: Ryan Legge

So you want to know how to use Simple 301 Redirects plugin? WordPress has many plugins available and today I thought I would write a short article about using the Simple 301 Redirects plugin for WordPress. The plugin’s name could not be better. It really is simple to do 301 redirects.

What is the Simple 301 Redirects Plugin for WordPress?

The Simple 301 Redirects Plugin is a helpful plugin for redirecting one URL on your site to another. For example, if you modify the URL of one of your pages, then you can take the old URL and redirect it to the new one. Not only can this keep some SEO value, but it’s good for user experience as well.

If there are any links set up to go to your old page, users would encounter a 404 Error. However, with this plugin, you can redirect the user from the old link to the new one without them realising. It keeps their journey on your website going without any interruptions. Would you stay on a website if it couldn’t find the page you want to go to?

How to Add Simple 301 Redirects to your Website?

This article presumes you have the plugin installed on your website already, but if you don’t, you can download the plugin from WordPress or you can install it from your back office.

Let’s Use Simple 301 Redirects Plugin

To use the plugin, you need to look in your back office and find its page. You can find its page by hovering over settings (left-hand side menu), then clicking on “301 Redirects” from the menu. It should take you to a page like the image below.

The left column is for your old url, please remember to replace “/old-url-this-side/” with the URL you want to redirect from. The right column is the URL you want your old URL to redirect to. Again, please remember to change the URL to your new URL and not my example! The old URL can be written from the forward slash onwards, i.e “/contact/”, but the one it redirect to should use your domain as well, i.e. “https://example.com/contact-us/”.

The only negative with this plugin is you can only do ONE 301 Redirect at a time. After you’ve filled in the boxes, click on “Save Changes” button, then add your next redirect in the new empty boxes below your previous redirect.

Conclusion

That’s all there is to it. You should be able to use Simple 301 Redirects Plugin now. There are other functions such as importing/exporting your redirects, but if you’re creating redirects for the first time, then you won’t need to do that.

Also, if you need to do a lot of redirects, I highly advise looking at Simple 301 Redirects Addon – Bulk Uploader. This has been a very helpful plugin especially when I have had to do hundreds, if not, thousands of redirects for a website.

If you have any questions, please do contact us as we’ll be happy to help.

Contact Form 7 (CF7) is one of the most popular contact form plugins for WordPress. However, like many contact forms, users want to cut down the amount of spam passing through their forms. One of the most popular ways to do so is by using a captcha. I am going to highlight TWO different captcha styles you can use plus I’ll let you know which CF7 Captcha I recommend.

Hold On…What’s A Captcha?

A captcha, as described by Dictionary.com, is…

An online test designed so that humans but not computers are able to pass it, used as a security measure and usually involving a visual-perception task.

The most common captcha is typing in a series of letters that you see in an image, but the letters have been distorted. I’m not a fan of these because sometimes they can be hard to read them even with good eyesight! Spoiler Alert: I will not be recommending distorted letters as a captcha!

1. “I’m Not A Robot” (reCAPTCHA)

The first captcha style is reCAPTCHA, but you might now it as “I’m Not A Robot”.  What you have to do is click the box, so it ticks it, to confirm you’re not a robot. Yes, it really is that simple!

This is likely to be the more user-friendly, but it can be more complicated to integrate. Also, this is the one Contact Form 7 recommends by default, so it does make it easier to do. If you want to use this as your Contact Form 7 Captcha, then you will need to get an API key from Google. I’ve not had difficulties with it, but be careful when you change your website’s domain or hosting as it may stop working.

The ETA for setting up this captcha with Contact Form 7 is no longer than 5 minutes.

2. Math Captcha

Yes, there is a math captcha, who does not love a bit of math? Although math captcha might not be as popular, they are still quite good. Over the last few months, I have opted for math captchas over “I’m Not A Robot”. I am not entirely sure why, but I have.

I find the Math Captcha is not as user-friendly, but it’s really easy to integrate it into your Contact Form. All you have to do is install the Math Captcha plugin, then copy and paste the shortcode into your Contact Form 7 contact form.

It might be easy to set up, but it does have a few problems. The first problem is the math might be a bit too complicated for a user who wants to quickly fill in a form and send it. For example, the question might be “72 + 64”. Although it’s not complicated, it’s not as simple as “2 + 3”, which would be a lot easier to do. My opinion is if it requires more than a few seconds of thinking time, then don’t add it. All we have to do is look at page loading statistics to show people want things done quickly. From this Kissmetrics article, we can see even “a 1 second page delay could potentially cost you $2.5 million in lost sales every year” (if you’re an e-commerce site).

Additionally, I encountered an issue with captchas when your site is cached. If you do use a CF7 Captcha, disable cache on any pages with it.

Conclusion and My Recommended CF7 Captcha

In conclusion, using a CF7 captcha is okay, but it does add an additional step for users. It’s a well-known fact that shorter contact forms generate more leads than longer ones because the user doesn’t have much to do. The quicker and easier it is for the user, then the more likely they will convert into a sale, enquiry or lead.

My recommendation, if possible, is to not even have a captcha. Yes, it does help cut down the amount of spam, but it does add an extra step for users when filling in the form. What’s more important? Spending 2 seconds per spam email deleting it or potentially getting more leads using a shorter contact form?

If you have any questions regarding contact forms or require any other help regarding to websites, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to help you.

Most versions of WordPress come with important security updates and WordPress 4.8.3 is no different. You should keep the WordPress core up to date, so stop reading this and go update it!

The latest version of WordPress (Version 4.8.3) was available as of the 31st of October, 2017. You can read all about it from WordPress’ website here. You will see from WordPress’ post there was a vulnerability related to WP-DB. As such, you need to update to version 4.8.3 to be safe from it.

In addition, please keep plugins and themes up to date as well. Keep an eye out for any new updates to plugins or themes over the next few days as they are likely to be important.

If you require any assistance with updating WordPress, plugins or themes, please drop us an email to support@peakplex.com and we’ll be happy to help.

Most websites and businesses have times where enquiries are quieter, but sometimes it could be a bigger issue than you’re aware of. My post today will look at cacheing plugins and captcha plugins for contact forms and how this combination could lead to no enquiries! The three plugins in particular are Contact Form 7 (for making the contact form), Math Captcha (a suitable captcha plugin for Contact Form 7), and WP Fastest Cache (for handling the cacheing). All of these plugins are for WordPress.

Background Information

I came to write this post because of a personal experience I had with a client’s website. The client’s website had been set up with a cacheing plugin (WP Fastest Cache) with a Contact Form (CF7) and captcha (Math Captcha). Initially, it was all working fine, but after a while, the contact form was not working correctly.

However, it’s not as simple as that because it was working for logged-in users, but not for logged-out users. It wasn’t until I tested it as a logged-out users that I realised it was an issue. I tend to login to websites to test them as I didn’t think it would be any different, but it is.

1. Check the plugins installed on your WordPress Site

Firstly, you should login and check what plugins you have installed on your site and see if you have a cacheing plugin, a contact form plugin, and a captcha plugin (or maybe this is included in your contact form plugin). If you have all of these; then you should continue reading to potentially avoid issues with your contact form.

2. Regularly test your Contact Form

Secondly, I would recommend that you regularly test your Contact Form, so you know it’s working. I would suggest monthly at the least, however, weekly or fortnightly would be better. Even if you got a contact form the other day, please do check it again to make sure it’s working. Additionally, make sure you test the site when you’re logged-in and logged-out of WordPress as the result can be different.

3. Error: Captcha time expired

If you get the error message, “Error: Captcha time expired”, then what you’re about to read next will most likely apply to you. When I experienced this error, it was because my contact page was cacheing, therefore, cacheing my captcha. As my captcha was cacheing, it was not working correctly, which led to the Captcha time expired error.

4. How do you solve this?

The easiest way to solve this is to go into your cacheing plugin settings and EXCLUDE your Contact page from the cacheing. You will need the slug (the bit after the forward slash e.g. “contact-us”), so you can exclude the page correctly. Afterwards, you will need to clear the cache of your site, so that the new rule can take affect.

Conclusion

And that’s it! If you are experiencing any issues with your contact form or any other site issues, please get in touch as we would love to help you.

I’m sure everyone has their “go to plugins” and so do I. In this article I am revealing my Top 7 SEO WordPress plugins. I am sure there are others that deserve to be on the list, but this is my view and opinion from my own experience. Also, these plugins are in no particular order as they all do different things, but they can all help with either your site’s speed or SEO in one way or another.

#1 Yoast SEO

This is by far one of the most popular plugins for SEO on WordPress. It is a great plugin to help specifically for on-page optimisation as you can easily edit the SEO Title and Meta Description. In addition, you can fill in your “Focus Keyword” to see how well optimised your page is for that keyword.

From experience, I wouldn’t worry too much about getting a green light. For those who don’t know, SEO Yoast have a traffic light system to indicate how well optimised your page is for your focus keyword. Green means it is well optimised, amber is okay, and red is not so good. Again, don’t worry too much about turning the light to green.

Check out this plugin >>

#2 WP Fastest Cache

This plugin is a great solution to improve website speed as it has numerous functions to help improve your website’s site speed. Firstly, as you can tell by its name, you can enable cacheing. In addition, the plugin allows you to minify HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but please check over your website when minifying because it can mess up the design or functionality on your site.

Site Speed is not necessarily an SEO factor, but it does improve user experience. Let’s face it, your users don’t want to wait 5-10 seconds for a page to load. In this day and age, people expect a fast and simple service with no errors.

Check out this plugin >>

#3 Scripts-To-Footer

This plugin is probably not as known as the ones mentioned so far. This plugin is very simple to set up and use. All you need to do is install the plugin and that’s pretty much it. The plugin moves all the scripts on your site and puts them in the footer. However, this can ruin the design or functionality on your website, so use this with caution.

If some functionality does break, simply disable the plugin to make them work again. If it doesn’t fix the problem, then you may need to contact your web hosting provider or web designer for help. Alternatively, if you took a backup of your site, you could restore your backup.

Check out this plugin >>

#4 Goolytics

Again, this plugin is nothing complicated and is very simple to use. There are many plugins that do pretty much the same thing, so there are alternatives, but this is a great plugin to make it easy to add Google Analytics to your website. There’s only one box you’ll need to touch and that’s the one where you paste your UA number from Analytics.

Check out this plugin >>

#5 EWWW Image Optimizer

This plugin is not necessarily for SEO, but again, it helps speed up your website when users are loading it. This image optimiser compresses your images to help load them faster. Now, you will lose some image quality, but I don’t normally see anything different, so in most cases, it will will be fine.

Make sure you use the Bulk Optimize as this will save you time. It will do all the images for you instead of making your way through them one by one.

Check out this plugin >>

#6 Wordfence

Okay, so this one is not really for SEO or even site speed, but it is still important. Wordfence is a great solution for improving the security on your website. Although it looks complicated to set up, it can protect your site from malicious hacks. If you experience a hack, then Google may highlight that in the search results. In addition, your site will start dropping in the search results.

Therefore, this plugin can be beneficial for your SEO. It should identify and remove any malicious file or highlight any potential issues immediately via email alerts. I hope you can see why I’ve included it in my Top 7 as it can help you avoid a Google penalty.

Check out this plugin >>

#7 Simple 301 Redirects

Finally, but not least, we have the Simple 301 Redirects plugin. This plugin is easy to use and is especially helpful if you change the URL of a page or remove one. It has two columns; the left one is the old URL and the right one is the new one. Simply put in the old URL then the new one you want it to redirect to. This is also a great way to solve any 404 errors on your site.

Note: There are plugins that will redirect all 404 errors to the home page, but this is not necessarily a good solution. Sometimes it is better to redirect the 404 error to the most appropriate page on your website, which may not be the home page.

Check out this plugin >>

Conclusion

So, that’s my Top 7 SEO WordPress Plugins. I will most likely write another article in the near future specifically about my top plugins for Site Speed, which I partly covered in this one. If you have any questions about WordPress or SEO, please feel free to contact our support team via email (support@peakplex.com).

You can register dot scot domains (.scot) through us. As a Scottish website hosting and domain registration company it was important that we could offer this domain.

Hang on, What if I’m not Scottish?

Don’t worry, you can still register this domain ending through us. You can also register any domain ending including ones the other countries of the United Kingdom use like .wales or .cymru. Nowadays, you can even register .ninja, if you really wanted to. Fortunately, we’ve not had a request for that yet, but if you want it we can register it for you!

How to Register dot Scot Domains?

There are two ways you can register a dot scot domain. Firstly, you could use a domain registrar and search for .scot domains on their site. Please remember that not all registrars will offer .scot domains. The other option is to get in contact with us and we can register it for you. It’s only £40 per year.

This is a new top-level domain (TLD), so it is pricer than other endings. However, having a .scot at the end of your domain, instead of .co.uk or .com, can help you stand out from your competition. Also, if your target market is mainly Scotland, then it lets users know that your a Scottish individual or company.

Should you Register a .scot Domain?

This is a question that only you can answer as it can be a preference. If your main business is dealing with people or businesses in Scotland, then I would say it was fine. If you trade internationally, then maybe go for .com or even the new .shop! There are some cases where .scot is fine like a Scottish bed and breakfast may want a .scot. As their bed and breakfast is in Scotland it would make sense to have one.

If you have any questions or problems, you can ask our support team who are ready to help you. You can also use our new live chat system. This is available between 9am and 5pm between Monday and Saturday.

Have you seen people with a .scot email address and wondered how to get one? Do you want a .scot email account? Drop us an email (support@peakplex.com) today, so we can register your .scot domain. As this is a new and popular domain ending, it costs £40/year.

The History of .scot Domains

On the 15th of July 2014, .scot domains became a publicly available domain ending. This top-level domain is for Scotland and Scottish cultures including the Gaelic and Scots languages. With the growing interest in the .scot domain, many people have been choosing to use it .scot as part of their email address, for example, name@example.scot.

We’re a business in the Scottish Highlands, so the .scot domain is relevant for local businesses and individuals.

.scot Email Account

Once you’ve registered your .scot domain, you will require hosting services as well. If you don’t have hosting, you can’t send or receive emails. That’s not helpful! If you have any questions about hosting services, please speak to our support team today.

Finally, once you’ve sorted some hosting, you can set up your .scot email account. We can help you with this, but if you want to try it yourself, follow these instructions. NB: You will need to make sure that your .scot domain is pointing to your hosting services correctly.

If you have any questions or problems, you can ask our support team who are ready to help you.