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How to Do WordPress Load Testing | Stress Test a Website

Is your website ready to be launched? Or are you offering a great discount and expecting a massive influx of visitors?

All this sounds great. But this great news can turn sour if something goes wrong.

If you are running an ecommerce website via WordPress, you enjoy several perks that WordPress offers, but your website still needs to be tested for large-scale requests by active users beforehand.

With WordPress load testing, you can inspect your website’s behavior under different conditions. You can test a beta or final website to verify if it can handle the expected users and offer the desired functionality in aspects of:

  • Website loading speed
  • Network bandwidth
  • Storage
  • CPU
  • RAM

Read on to learn more about WordPress load testing, testing techniques, and testing scenarios.

WordPress Load Testing 101

WordPress load testing includes procedures to test a target website in specific conditions to see if the website offers desired use at the peak of its user load.

For example, if you are an ecommerce website owner, you would want thousands of customers on your website to order simultaneously without lag. Besides that, you may also wish for your product pages to load in under 3.5 seconds.

With load testing, you can test this and see if the additional users cause extra delay in responses or even result in server errors.

WordPress load testing simulates active users and replicates the real user behavior on the website. You can determine your website’s behavior in both normal and high-traffic conditions.

Besides that, you can understand the maximum operating capacity of the website and server and find any hold-ups in the service. You can also pinpoint the element causing the degradation of service.

Load Testing vs. Stress Testing

You may find load testing and stress testing being used interchangeably. However, both have their differences.

Load testing verifies the performance of a website or application under usual peak loads. It determines whether the system is equipped to deal with the expected number of visitors.

On the other hand, stress testing involves overloading the system with more user requests and actions than it’s designed. It determines the breaking points of the system.

Using stress testing, you can determine where the website or application requires scaling when the budget allows.

Why Do WordPress Website Owners Need Load Testing?

As a website owner, you need to ensure two things: constant availability of the website and a smooth user experience. Load testing helps you with both as it defines the maximum load a website can handle without significant performance degradation.

Load testing reveals which elements of a website and system are first to malfunction. This allows you to prepare accordingly. And you can rest assured that the website and server will handle everyday business and user activity without any issues.

Types of Load Testing

To test a WordPress website, you need to understand the types of load testing. Each load testing covers a specific behavior of the website and server.

Common load testing types are as follows:

  • Common load testing: Response time of website page is observed depending on the number of users.
  • Capacity testing: Determines how many users the website and server can handle before the response time falls below the required standards.
  • Stress testing: Determines breaking points and their reasons.
  • Soak testing: Inspects website and server problems during prolonged user activity by monitoring trends and changes in system behavior.

How to Load Test a WordPress Website

Irrespective of the load testing type you opt for, you need to follow some steps to conduct your load testing.

Here’s how you can load test your WordPress website.

Define Scenarios

Select a type of load testing from the above list. You can test your website’s performance in peak load, overload, or over prolonged intervals.

Set Up a Test Environment

Depending on the scenario selected, set up a test environment. The test environment should be as close to the production environment as possible in terms of hardware, network, and software specifications.

Implement Virtual Users With Various Tasks

Create virtual users and assign different tasks to them. You can employ scripts to get the virtual users to perform the required actions for the test session.

Conduct Test Session

Conduct your test session with the developed testing strategy and configured virtual users.

For a successful test session, ensure:

  • Randomized and variable user activity
  • Realistic simulations
  • Simultaneous activity of different actions by virtual users

Monitor Your Website

While the test scenario is running, over the website’s behavior via monitoring of website’s vitals like:

  • Run-time transactions
  • Resource usage
  • Network delay

(Optional) Make Tweaks

Make tweaks if you find issues you can fix quickly. For example, you can get a reliable hosting provider that provides optimized performance.

(Optional) Re-Run Tests

If you made tweaks to the system, re-running already defined test scenarios is a good practice to test the latest modification right away.

Load Testing Tools and Plugins

You can load test your website using open source tools, plugins, and software. They offer scalability and easy implementation of test use cases, with accurate results on a given web browser.

Free, open-source tools you can use include:

  • JMeter
  • Gatling
  • Locust
  • StressStimulus
  • Loader.io

Final Thoughts: How to Do WordPress Load Testing

With the above guide, you can load test your WordPress website and ensure it works as desired under off-peak and peak loads. Besides that, you can stress test your website to find its breaking points to find ways to improve your website in advance.

With Hostdedi, you can avoid all this work and scale your website’s resources for discount seasons, traffic spikes, or whenever required.

Check out Hostdedi Cloud Auto Scaling today.

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How to Simplify Setting Up an Ecommerce Website [2022]

If you’ve never made a website before, the idea of creating an ecommerce store may feel daunting. After all, you’re a business owner — not a web designer. You’ve also likely seen Shopify and Wix stores that all look the same and find yourself wanting more.

If you’ve done your research, you’ll know that WooCommerce stores offer unlimited customizability, lower costs, and better SEO. You may have also heard it’s not for beginners — but that’s not the case.

The more complicated the setup is, the more likely you’ll be tempted to give up or pay a ton of money to have someone do it for you. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

If you’d like a better, easier, and more economical way of setting up your ecommerce website, keep reading. Check out these tips that will demystify where to start and explain how to make it easier for yourself.

Keep in Mind Customer Interactions When Setting Up Your Ecommerce Website

The primary way you’ll interact with customers is via email. This is how they receive their order information, shipping information, and marketing campaigns. These three considerations are things to make sure you’re on top of so your customers are always aware of what’s going on with their orders and your products.

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for Email Deliverability

Spam filters can be super aggressive — and we’ve all been told to check our spam folder if we haven’t gotten an email. When it comes to your customers,  they NEED to get your emails. They want their order confirmations and shipping confirmations, alerts for delays, etc. Email is how you will primarily communicate with your customers so it’s very important.

Out of the box, WordPress uses the PHP mail function on their server. Depending on where you’re hosting your store, that’s probably not configured with the proper records that ensure your email gets through and doesn’t end up in the spam folder. WordPress CAN send emails, but once it gets out of WP, you have to make sure it’s being routed properly.

Therefore, It’s very important to get a good Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) set up. A free and easy to use SMTP is WP Mail SMTP. It’s our pick because it can hook up to a number of different SMTP services. If you’re a high-volume store, try SendGrid or Mailgun.

Default Emails

Default WooCommerce emails come preloaded with content. That’s fine, and you can use them, but it’s a better customer experience when everything isn’t boilerplate.

Updating subject lines, greetings, and signatures breathe life into your correspondence. Some companies go all out and make it a humorous story. Others personalize it. Placeholders function like mail merge fields, so you can customize it to include customer names, for example. Think about what would be on-brand for your store.

If you’re working with a developer and a marketing team, you can also change the look and feel of the email as a whole.

From your dashboard, navigate to Settings > Settings. The menu on the settings page has an emails tab where you can access all the emails that will get sent out.

The first three are emails that are automatically sent to you as the store owner every time you get an order or other transaction alert. The rest of the emails are routed to the customers. Emails sent to you as the store owner don’t matter as much branding wise — but the ones that get sent to your customers do. These are called transactional emails. The template options like “Thanks for shopping with us” are totally fine, but there is something to be said for more original content.

If you click “Manage,” you’ll be brought to a screen like this:

You can edit the text, the email type, and even override the template as a whole — we recommend working with a developer if you’re new to this.

The sense that you care about your customers can drive customer loyalty. Taking a few minutes to update email copy helps set you apart from stores that leave everything on default settings.

Something else to keep in mind is that if you add additional features to your WooCommerce store, more automated emails appear in that section without notifying you. Check in regularly to ensure that your emails are customized to your liking and are still relevant.

Connecting to Email Marketing Platforms

It may seem less crucial to handle this right away, but setting your store up with an email marketing platform from the get-go is actually pretty helpful. You might be hesitant, but we’re here to tell you — bite the bullet and pick one right away. You can migrate later if you’d like, but the sooner you’re capturing every email, the better.

Knowing if your customers are opening your emails and which campaigns work is vital, no matter what stage your store is at. Track as soon as you can, because the sooner you establish baselines and A/B test campaigns, the sooner you’ll find your groove. Being able to track engagement is an important ecommerce KPI.

MailChimp has a fantastic free tier, and it integrates with WooCommerce. There are also plenty of other plugins that are available in the WooCommerce marketplace and from developers themselves.

Check out our resource on choosing the right email marketing software for your store.

Setting Up Your Ecommerce Site: Products and Shipping

You’re running a store. Stores sell products. In order for your customers to see your products, you’ve got to get them on your site. Then you’ve got to get them to become your customers. Here are some no-brainers that a lot of people forget about when setting up an ecommerce website.

Importing Products Via CSV

Something many people forget they can do is import their products using a CSV. Larger stores do this all the time, but small business owners may not realize it’s possible. If you’re only selling a handful of products, this might not be a big deal. But if you have a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand products, it makes no sense to do that much work yourself. You can easily upload a CSV file. This will save you a considerable amount of time and effort.

If you’re brand new to this, you can download the standard form from the WooCommerce repository on GitHub.

First, head into your dashboard and navigate to your products area. You will see options to “Add New,” “Import,” and “Export.”

Selecting “Import” will allow you to upload your CSV.

If you have an existing store, you can also choose “Export” and then upload your existing products as a CSV.

Crucial to this process is that you correctly map the fields from your CSV to your products. If you have questions about fields, you can check out the Product CSV Import Schema.

Be sure to check over them before uploading them, and use the “Column mapping” screen to link your document to the uploaded data correctly. One you’ve correctly mapped your data, click continue and import your file.

It is also possible to use the CSV to update product images, but the images need to be stored online already. It is often easier to upload the data and go back and add the images.

Using a CSV template makes it easy to upload, and it also makes it easier to request the necessary data from your staff or clients.

Product Bulk Editor

You’ve already imported all your products and are ready to implement flat rate shipping. You might be thinking, “Great! Now I have to edit each item to add a shipping class.” Don’t worry — you don’t!

There are two easy options you have. First, you can re-upload your CSV with new, added information. As long as the SKUs are the same, WooCommerce is smart enough to overwrite the existing data. If you’d rather not do that, you can use the Bulk Editing process that already exists in WordPress.

Select the relevant products, and click “Edit” from your Bulk Actions. Here you can make changes, add your shipping class, and just update.

You can do more than just edit shipping classes in the bulk editor, but let’s just focus on that for now. Selecting every “heavy” item from “All Products” will quickly and easily gain a “Heavy” shipping class, ensuring every item you carry that’s, say, over 10 pounds, gets upcharged.

Related reading: Ecommerce Tips: How to Ship Large and Heavy Items >>

You can do this for every shipping class you have now, ensuring you charge the correct amount for every product, every time.

Linked Products

When setting up your ecommerce website, a great way to boost sales is by linking your products. This is called cross-selling and upselling. This takes a bit of effort because it must be done on a product by product basis, but it can be very beneficial.

Back in your products area, if you click “Edit” on a product, you’ll have a number of options. Clicking on “Linked Products” will give you options for upselling and cross-selling. Let’s talk about when you should use each.

For a cross-sell, maybe you offer a less expensive version of a product and also carry an upgraded or more expensive but similar product. Customers may be viewing the cheaper version and you have the opportunity to say, “We also carry this!”

Adding an item or items to the cross sell area will generate a “You may also like…” product linked underneath your original product. Customers may be enticed to purchase the more expensive product, netting you some additional revenue.

When you choose to upsell an item, once a customer adds an item to their cart, your chosen item will appear as a suggestion in their cart.

You see this all the time when you order pizza online. You’ve already ordered your Meat Lover’s pizza, and then you get a reminder that they sell soda too. Who doesn’t need a drink after a few slices? Upselling in your ecommerce store is the exact same thing. Linking relevant products is great, free marketing. It also helps get eyes on more items in your catalog.

Using Flat Rate Shipping & Shipping Classes

When setting up your ecommerce website, adding WooCommerce shipping charges can seem complex, especially if you think you need to calculate shipping based on the weight of each item. The easiest option for most people is to use Flat Rate shipping and create shipping classes.

Shipping options can be found in Settings > Settings  > Shipping.

After you’ve set up your shipping zones, if you click on a zone’s edit option, you can add shipping methods, such as Flat Rate.

One myth we should dispel is that every order costs the same to ship. It’s a bit deceptive in its name, because while you can set it up that way, it’s certainly not the only way. In the Flat Rate Shipping cost field, you can absolutely set it as a fixed price like $5, but you can also input a formula that charges a percentage of the overall cart cost.

As you can see above, you can also designate shipping classes. Adding in a shipping class will designate items as a certain “category” but it doesn’t function like a product category. Think of it as a subcategory for your product.

It’s much more costly to ship a case of bottled water than it is to ship a case of water bottles, right? Designate a shipping class for “Heavy” items, and you may choose to add a predetermined flat fee to those items. To do that, you must add shipping classes first. That can be found in Settings > Settings > Shipping > Shipping Classes.

You can also set up multiple shipping classes, so that when items in an order are combined, it enables much greater specificity for how you’re charging shipping to your customers. Charging shipping for each class individually enables you to charge individual rates for each part of an order. That way, you’re not charging the same fee for a case of water as you would a poster. Don’t forget, heavier and more fragile items will add to your packing costs.

Check out our full guide on WooCommerce shipping for even more tips on how to make this fast and easy.

Setting Up Your Ecommerce Site: General Stuff

Once your site is set up, you’ll start getting customers. Something many new store owners tend to do is finish their site and just … leave it. The site’s made, orders start coming in — that’s it right? Think of a site as an ongoing investment, both with time and money.

You’ve got either a monthly or annual fee, you’ll make changes, and sometimes your site may go down. You’ll want to stay on the up and up with ecommerce trends, too. Here are some things to think about that’ll keep everything going smooth.

Monitoring and Testing

Regular testing is important because delays in processing and loading your site can affect conversions. The longer it takes to load, the more impatient a customer gets. You need to check in regularly to make sure every page presents the way you intend it to.

Making sure your cart loads and everything is fast is often overlooked because you think everything is ready to go. The moment you add a plugin or make changes to a page, you may inadvertently cause some slowdown.

How can you be best prepared? There are plenty of SaaS solutions, plugins, and extensions that can help you monitor your store’s performance. Smaller stores without huge budgets may want to utilize Google Lighthouse, which runs right in your browser.

A few resources that may help include:

You could also choose a host that helps you out. For example, Hostdedi hosting includes Sales Performance Monitor, Plugin Performance Monitor, and built-in automated testing.

Mobile Friendliness

More and more customers are shopping on mobile devices. It’s quick, easy, and they’re likely already on their phones or tablets. It fits into their lifestyle more easily than being chained to a desk. You’re going to want to make sure your site functions just as well on mobile as it does on desktop.

When you’re in your dashboard, you can navigate to Site > Appearance > Customize. You’ll notice at the bottom of the menu, there are three icons: desktop, tablet, and mobile.

Make subtle changes to your layout to ensure everything looks great regardless of where your customers are accessing your store. This keeps their experience consistent. The easier it is to find what they need, the more likely they are to return. Here’s a great resource to help you ensure your store is flawless when you take your WooCommerce store mobile.

Choose Hostdedi for the Fastest, Simplest Way to Set Up an Ecommerce Website

We all want our jobs to be easy and love finding solutions that help. When you are looking for a host that packs the most punch, consider choosing one that seeks to truly simplify the process of getting started.

StoreBuilder by Hostdedi makes setting up your ecommerce website super simple. Not only does it have lightning fast speeds, a sweet CDN, and a bunch of premium, curated plugins and tools — it also gives you the features you need to keep your site at its best.

With our WooCommerce Automated Testing built right in, you’ll always know when something’s gone awry.

It also comes with Plugin Performance Monitor and Sales Performance Monitor, so you’ll know exactly which plugins are slowing your site down, and what your store trends look like.

Take it easy while boosting your sales. Try Hostdedi StoreBuilder.

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Ecommerce Website Best Practices to Increase Sales [2022]

Thinking about building an ecommerce website? If you want to learn how to make a website to sell stuff, whether that’s physical items or a service or even digital products, the good news is that ecommerce is growing exponentially.

Figure out which type of ecommerce business you want to launch, which products you want to sell, and then create an ecommerce business plan.

Once this groundwork has been established, it’s time to start thinking about your website. For ecommerce businesses, your website is highly important. It can make or break the success of your online store.

A good online store has all the right website components. Customers need you to go beyond the basics — they look for ecommerce website features like customer reviews, plenty of payment options, and detailed product information.

But we’re just scratching the surface. Keep reading to learn all the ecommerce website best practices you need to get your business off the ground.

Ecommerce Website Best Practices: Design

Not sure how to design a website? That’s okay. There are many website builders, like StoreBuilder, to help you figure it out — no coding required.

When you’re beginning to plan your website, you’ll want to think about how to make your ecommerce site stand out. After all, you’ll face some competition online from other ecommerce stores. Review ecommerce website examples to see what others are doing. You could also look at the top ecommerce sites for inspiration. See what they’re doing right, and emulate it.

Consider utilizing current website design trends for a modern look, while still adhering to time-tested website design tips. Of course, there are some key website design principles you’ll need to stick to — clear hierarchy and structure, strong visuals, and simple navigation.

If you want to opt for an even simpler design, you could consider creating a one page website — though this won’t be a good fit if you plan on offering many different products.

Homepages

Ecommerce website design doesn’t need to be complicated. A clear, simple site can be appealing to customers. Your homepage is the most critical page on your site and it should be the one you spend the most time crafting. It’s the first impression potential customers will have, so you want a strong homepage to convey your brand and your message. Check out these website homepage examples for some more inspiration.

Product Pages

Product pages need clear imagery and descriptions. Learn how to write a product description that both provides details for the customer and compels them to buy. As for the visuals, you don’t need a fancy camera — you can easily take amazing DIY product photography with a smartphone and good lighting.

Checkout Pages

When customers decide to make a purchase, provide them with online payment methods to choose from. Providing them with options can increase your sales and reduce shopping cart abandonment effects.

Ecommerce Website Best Practices: Testing

You’ll also want to test these functions to ensure your customers can actually check out — and that they don’t encounter the dreaded 404 page. Review our 404 page examples for ecommerce to get an idea of how to make the most of these pages.

Ecommerce testing is critical to providing a good user experience for customers, and keeping your sales soaring. Consider doing ecommerce user acceptance testing yourself — or find a host who does it for you. For example, Hostdedi offers WooCommerce automated testing to detect issues with payment and checkout.

Ecommerce Website Best Practices: Marketing

You may be wondering how to drive traffic to your website. One way to do this is through search engine optimization (SEO). SEO for ecommerce websites helps your site show up when people Google terms related to your products. Research which keywords your target audience searches for on Google — then use them on your product descriptions and elsewhere on your site.

Adding Content to Your Site

You may want to consider adding a blog to your online store. This is another way to draw in traffic with SEO. Ecommerce content marketing allows you to go more in depth on your products, provide advice for using them best, and help convince customers to make the purchase. An ecommerce content strategy can set your store apart, and help you reach more customers.

Marketing Your Store

Ecommerce marketing can help your store reach a broader audience. Consider utilizing an omnichannel ecommerce marketing strategy, which works across different channels like social media, your website, email, and more.

Put in place an ecommerce growth strategy, which can help you establish yourself and grow your sales over time. When beginning to market your store, remember to track ecommerce KPIs — or key performance indicators. Things like average order value and ecommerce conversion rate can help you understand how your business is performing — and where you can make improvements.

By following these ecommerce best practices for marketing your store, you’ll draw in more visitors to your site, and convert more into customers too.

Ecommerce Best Practices: Security

An often overlooked aspect of ecommerce is site security. Ecommerce site security is extremely important for ecommerce sites, since they handle sensitive information from customers, such as payment information. Therefore, it is critical to know how to make your website secure.

Ecommerce security can also impact your sales, since customers may be hesitant to make a purchase if they suspect your website may be unsafe.

Common website security threats that online store owners face today include phishing, ransomware, and cloud-based attacks that are caused by malicious code. To protect yourself and your customers, it is recommended that you always stay up to date on software updates. A reliable web host will also provide added security, like 24/7 monitoring, SSL certificates, and backups.

Implement These Ecommerce Website Best Practices

Now you’re armed with the top ecommerce website best practices to keep your site safe and increase sales.

Hostdedi can help you achieve your ecommerce goals — whether you already have a store or you’re just getting started.

Fully managed WooCommerce hosting from Hostdedi keeps your site safe with automatic updates and backups, an ultrafast CDN, and maintaining compliance and certificates. Your site will be fast, secure, and hassle-free with Hostdedi.

Or, check out our website builder Storebuilder to create a new online store. It’s fast — custom integrations get your online store up and running in just a few clicks. Try StoreBuilder risk-free for 30 days today.

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How to Add Meta Tags in WordPress: 3 Methods to Try [2022]

If you’re using WordPress,you may come across meta tags when editing or posting to your site. Meta is an underlying description. Tags are customized for all types of content defined in the page’s source code.

Meta tags help Google find your site. When search engines index your website, they collect information from the title, headings, content, and meta tags. Search engines compare the language in each of these sections and rank the website depending upon how the information matches.

WordPress doesn’t support meta tags by default, but meta tags can be added manually using theme template files or through WordPress plugins.

If you want to learn how to add meta tags to WordPress, just keep reading.

What Are WordPress Meta Tags?

A meta tag is a piece of HTML code with information about the website or specific web pages, such as the author, keywords, description, type of document, copyrights, and other core information related to your page.

WordPress meta tags inform search engines or web crawlers what the page is about and provide the content that’s displayed in search engine results.

Meta tags are a basic and essential part of search engine optimization, otherwise known as SEO. Optimizing WordPress meta tags can help you rank higher in search results, which helps drive traffic to your website.

Meta tags are hidden in the code of your content, allowing search engines or web crawlers to read them. Search bots and web crawlers look for specific phrases or keywords, which helps them understand and organize your content. And it helps them serve your content to the right people who search for those keywords on Google.

How to Add Meta Tags to WordPress: 3 Methods to Try

Now, let’s discuss how to add meta tags to WordPress. There are two ways to add meta tags to your WordPress website. You can add meta tags manually by editing header.php or functions.php files, or you can add them with the help of WordPress meta tags plugins.

How to Add Meta Tags to WordPress Manually

You can add meta tags to WordPress by editing header.php using the following steps.

1. Find and Open the header.php File

Go to Appearance and click on “Theme File Editor.”

Click on the header.php under Theme Files to open the header.php file.

Note: You can also access and edit the header.php file from wp-content/themes/{YOUR_THEME}/header.php via FTP/SSH

2.  Copying and Customizing Meta Tags

Copy the following generic code and fill it in with the keywords you’re trying to target. Place it under the <head> tag:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keywords related to the content of the website” />

Then, copy the following generic description meta tag and paste it under the previous line:

<meta name=”description” content=”meta description for the content of the website” />

How to Add Meta Tags to WordPress Using functions.php

You can add meta tags to WordPress by editing functions.php using the following steps.

1. Find and Open the functions.php File

Go to Appearance and click on “Theme File Editor.”

Click on functions.php under Theme Files to open the functions.php file.

Note:  You can also access and edit the functions.php file from wp-content/themes/{YOUR_THEME}/functions.php via FTP/SSH

2. Copying and Customizing Meta Tags

Add the following code to the functions.php file.

function hueman_add_meta_tags() {

global $post;

if ( is_singular() ) {

$des_post = strip_tags( $post->post_content );

$des_post = strip_shortcodes( $post->post_content );

$des_post = str_replace( array(“n”, “r”, “t”), ‘ ‘, $des_post );

$des_post = mb_substr( $des_post, 0, 300, ‘utf8’ );

echo ‘<meta name=”description” content=”‘ . $des_post . ‘” />’ . “n”;

}

if ( is_home() ) {

echo ‘<meta name=”description” content=”‘ . get_bloginfo( “description” ) . ‘” />’ . “n”;

}

if ( is_category() ) {

$des_cat = strip_tags(category_description());

echo ‘<meta name=”description” content=”‘ . $des_cat . ‘” />’ . “n”;

}

}

add_action( ‘wp_head’, ‘hueman_add_meta_tags’);

In this article, we have added the hueman_add_meta_tags custom function, which will add meta tags to the different pages of your website. We have also used the wp_head hook to add meta tags to your pages. You can replace hueman_add_meta_tags with your own theme name.

How to Add Meta Tags to WordPress With a Plugin

If you are looking for a faster and easier way to add meta tags to your WordPress website, you can use WordPress plugins. Various options are available for those who want to add meta tags with plugins. You can choose the right plugin as per your requirements. Below, we’ll walk through three plugin options for adding meta tags to WordPress.

Yoast SEO

You can find the Yoast SEO section under any post or page you’ve edited once you activate the Yoast SEO plugin.

Yoast includes fields like focus keyphrase, SEO title, slug, and meta description.

The focus keyphrase is the search term that you want your page to rank for. The SEO title is the page title. For better results, use your focus keyword in the page title and keep it under 60 characters. The slug is a part of your URL that describes the content of a page or post. The meta description appears under the page or post title on Google and provides information about the content.

All in One SEO (AIO SEO)

You can find the All in One SEO section under any post or page once you activate the plugin.

Fields such as post title, meta description, and focus keyphrase need to be filled out as per your requirements in the All in One SEO (AIO SEO) settings.

Meta Tag Manager

Once the Meta Tag Manager plugin is installed, you can access it at Settings > Meta Tag Manager.

You can use Meta Tag Manager to add custom meta tags for specific pages, or you can enable meta tags for specific content types like page, media, and post.

To add the Meta Description Tag for the front page, go to Settings > Meta Tag Manager > Custom Meta Tags section. Click on the Add Meta Tag button, configure the meta description tag as shown in the screenshot, and then save the changes.

If you check the source code of your front page, you can see the following meta tag has been added by the Meta Tag Manager plugin.

<meta name=”description” content=”This is a demo site” />

You can add as many meta tags for your pages as per your requirements.

To enable the meta tag builder for specific content types, such as a post, go to the Settings > Meta Tag Manager and then click on General Options. Then select the posts content type and save your changes.

Now, create a new post and you can see the meta tag builder is added to it. Please refer to the screenshot.

This way, you can use the meta tag builder for different content types.

Power Your WordPress Site With Fully Managed Hosting

If you are looking for a fully managed WordPress host with technical support, choose fully managed WordPress hosting by Hostdedi. Its hosting is optimized for WordPress websites. That means a faster, more secure, and scalable website.

Our smart monitoring tools are built-in to help you keep it that way.

Check our Fully Managed WordPress Hosting to get started today.

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Magento Version Comparison Guide | Latest Magento Version

Magento remains one of the leading ecommerce platforms in the world. In fact, it’s ranked among the top 10 content management systems powering all existing online stores.

First released over a decade ago, the platform has undergone drastic changes over the years.

In this article, we’ll break down each Magento version. We’ll also provide a Magento versions comparison so you can see how it’s evolved — all the way up to the latest Magento version. Keep reading to learn how you can take advantage of new features to power your ecommerce business in 2022.

What is the Latest Magento Version?

2.4.3 is the latest Magento version. It was released on August 10, 2021. The 2.4.3-p1 security release was introduced to the public later last year on October 12, 2021. It provided several security fixes for the vulnerabilities found, which enhanced the version and made it more stable.

What’s New in the Latest Magento Version?

The latest Magento version 2.4.3 provided performance improvements, platform enhancements, and stronger security measures to keep your store secure from various attacks.

Latest Magento Version 2.4.3: Key Updates

  • Substantial security improvements — This version added more than 30 security enhancements, including the new Composer Plugin to reduce security vulnerabilities, and reCAPTCHA expansion.
  • Infrastructure improvements — Version 2.4.3 includes enhanced functional areas like catalog, cart and checkout, and customer account.
  • Platform enhancements — The latest Magento version includes compatibility with PHP 8.0 and Redis 6.0.12, among many others.
  • Performance improvements — Magento version 2.4.3 added various performance enhancements, including decreased indexation time for product price and catalog rules indexers.

Why You Want to Use the Latest Magento Version

Modern content management systems have become so popular that they are used by the vast majority of websites in the world wide web. The increasing popularity of these brought the attention of the community, which, unfortunately, can have both positive and negative consequences. Hackers and cyber security experts are constantly working on identifying vulnerabilities in all kinds of systems, including popular website platforms like Magento.

Running an outdated Magento version, or software of any kind, can put you at risk. It can make your website an easy target for hackers, who are using the most powerful approach to break into a system — automation. Pre-made programs executed by computers can easily perform network attacks, and all it takes is knowing what vulnerabilities a certain system has. That is why using the latest version of Magento is so important.

The 2.4.3 Magento version has been released with over thirty security enhancements, and two hundred functional fixes, which makes it the best version to use right now. We strongly recommend performing updates regularly to ensure you leverage the performance, and platform improvements, and keep your store secure and available for your customers at all times.

How to Check Your Magento Version

You can check the Magento version used by your store by using a few different methods, which we’ll walk through below.

Method 1: Sending an HTTPS GET Request

You can see what Magento version you are currently using by sending the following request to your web browser:

https://<your-magento-store>/magento_version

Your web server will return a page showing the current Magento version used by your store. The response will be similar to the one below.

Magento/2.3 (Community)

Method 2: Using the Command Line Interface

You can also check your current Magento version in use from the command line using Magento commands. Let’s see how we can do it.

Step 1: Log into the server via SSH and navigate to your Magento store installation directory. Log into the server hosting your Magento store and navigate to your Magento base directory as shown in the screenshot below.

The user we are logged in as

[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ whoami

magentotest

Our current working directory

[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ pwd

/home2/magentotest/public_html

Step 2: Check your Magento version by running the magento –version command. You will see the Magento version you are using appear in your terminal. You can see that our Magento store is on the 2.3.7 version, which is not the latest one released.

[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ magento –version

Magento CLI 2.3.7-p2

Method 3: Using Your Magento Admin Panel

You can see the Magento version installed from your online store Magento admin interface. Log into Magento as an admin user and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page. The version will be shown on the right side of the footer.

How to Do a Magento Version Upgrade

Having checked the Magento version used by your online store, you may notice that you are not taking advantage of the newest features released, and your store may be susceptible to known vulnerabilities. To address that, we need to perform a Magento version upgrade. Let’s see how we can do that from the command line interface.

1. Log Into the Server via SSH and Navigate to Your Magento Base Directory

The first step would be to log into the server as the user that owns the installation files and navigate to our Magento base directory. Please see how we did that when we were checking our Magento version in the previous section of this article.

2. Backup Your Magento Store

Before performing your Magento version upgrade or making any other major changes to your website, we strongly recommend getting your Magento store backed up. This is a very important step that can not be skipped regardless of what method you are using.

3. Enable Maintenance Mode

To avoid any issues while the upgrade process is running, we need to put our store into maintenance mode. The front page of your website will display a message letting your visitors know the store is currently unavailable.

[magentotest@newvps ~]$ magento maintenance:enable

Enabled maintenance mode

4. Pull the New Version Files and Update the Dependencies

In this case, we are upgrading to the latest version 2.4.3-p1 of the Magento community edition.

[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ composer require

magento/product-community-edition 2.4.3-p1 –no-update

Updating composer.json for Magento Open Source 2.4.3-p1 …

./composer.json has been updated

Once we have pulled the version files, we can update the dependencies using the composer update command. The command can take up to a few minutes to complete and will produce a long output.

[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ composer update

Loading composer repositories with package information

Updating dependencies

5.  Flush Cache

We can run the following commands to flush cache as shown below. Please note that If you have another cache storage in use such as Memcahced or Redis cache, you will also need to manually clear the cache there.

[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ rm -rf var/cache/*[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ rm -rf var/page_cache/*[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ rm -rf var/generation/*

Or use a Magento command:

magento cache:flush

6. Update the Database Schema and its Data

The final step would be getting our database data and its schema updated. We can do it using the command below.

[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ magento setup:upgrade

Cache types config flushed successfully

Cache cleared successfully

File system cleanup:

Media files stored outside of ‘Media Gallery Allowed’ folders will not be available to the media gallery.

Please refer to Developer Guide for more details.

7. Check the New Magento Version Installed

Now that the upgrade completed successfully, we can verify our website is now using a new Magento version. You can see that now we are running the latest Magento version.

[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ magento –version

Magento CLI 2.4.3-p1

8. Disable Maintenance Mode and Check the Store for Any Issues

After the upgrade has been completed successfully, we can disable maintenance mode, so our store is available to visitors again, and we can check if the upgrade caused any issues to it. If you notice any issues with your website after the upgrade has been performed, you can try to troubleshoot them or use the backup we created before the upgrade to restore the website.

[magentotest@newvps public_html]$ magento maintenance:disable

Disabled maintenance mode

Magento Versions Comparison

Over the course of the Magento platform existence, the world has seen two major releases: Magento 1 and Magento 2. Despite the fact that Magento 1 reached its end of life back in 2020, a large number of ecommerce websites are still powered by it.

Magento 2 became a successor to Magento 1, transforming the platform entirely. In 2018, Magento was acquired by Adobe, starting a whole new era, including the debut of Magento Commerce Cloud.

Numerous new Magento versions have been released since then, adding new amazing features to make it the ecommerce platform of choice. Let’s take a look at the major Magento versions list below along with what was improved and changed every step of the way.

Magento Version Release Release Dates Key Features Added End of Support
Magento 1.0-1.9x August 31, 2007 – 2015 The first Magento versions released. Basic ecommerce functionality added. June 30, 2020
Magento 2.0 November 18, 2015 – February 27, 2018 The total transformation of the Magento platform. Significantly faster, more secure, and user-friendly. March 31, 2018
Magento 2.1 June 23, 2016 – June 25, 2019 Content staging and preview, Solr replaced with Elasticsearch for commerce versions, PayPal payment methods, improved admin interface June 30, 2019
Magento 2.2 September 26, 2017 – January 28, 2020 Advanced reporting functionality, instant purchase checkout, Magento shipping, new B2B features December 1, 2019
Magento 2.3 November 28, 2018 – October 12, 2021 Progressive web apps, multi-source inventory, Elasticsearch introduced for community versions, improved page builder September 8, 2022
Magento 2.4.0-2.4.3 July 28, 2020 – October 12, 2021 2FA for the admin panel, enhanced media gallery, MySQL search engine fully replaced by Elasticsearch, seller-assisted shopping, improved progressive web apps November, 2022
Magento 2.4.4-2.4.6 (latest Magento version) April 12, 2022 Support for OpenSearch, vendor bundled extensions removed, improved page builder, cart and checkout updates, new payment methods November, 2024

Consider Managed Magento Hosting with Hostdedi

Hostdedi keeps pace with all major Magento releases and the improvements provided to make our fully managed Magento hosting pre-packaged with all the best features and tools. Our Magento experts are ready to help you make your ecommerce business even greater every step of the way. Making your website faster and more secure and your web hosting experience convenient and enjoyable are what we do best.

Check out our managed Magento hosting plans to get started today.

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5 Different Types of Membership Sites Explained | Hostdedi

With so many types of membership sites, how do you know which one is right for your website?

The hardest part of starting a membership website isn’t the technical aspects. Most people get stuck coming up with an idea and deciding what type of membership program to build. Check out our post with nine ideas for your next membership site if you need help with ideas. But if you already have an idea, keep reading. This post covers the five most common types of membership websites.

Types of Membership Sites

When we talk about types of membership sites, we’re really talking about how you plan to distribute content or services to your customers. You need to know what type of site you’re building so you can create the correct subscriptions and members’ area on your site. An online course requires a different set up than a service website. Check out the types of member sites below to determine which will work best for your site. Many sites use a hybrid model and combine different elements from several types of membership programs.

1. Content Library

The content library is the type of site most people recognize. You know how this works if you subscribe to Netflix or other streaming services. Members get full access to the entire content library as soon as they subscribe and immediate access to new content when it releases.

The all-access library model is easy to implement. Put your content behind a paywall and keep updating the member section with new things. One word of caution about this type of site. Don’t let members download all of your content. Otherwise, they could download everything and cancel. Streaming services limit how you download and view their movies and shows. When setting up your content library site, look for features to protect your content.

2. Drip Feed

Unlike the content library, a drip-feed site releases content to members a little bit at a time. Online courses frequently use this model. Members access lessons one at a time, either based on a set schedule or their progress. Drip feeds keep members engaged and coming back for more. The model also works well when launching a site because you can start selling memberships before you finish building out your content library.

3. Community Sites

Instead of buying access to content, members of these sites buy access to the community. From exclusive social media groups to online forums, community sites provide a place for people with a shared interest to connect. Fostering and maintaining engagement in community sites can be challenging. The main advantage is you can launch a community site without investing in a lot of content development.

4. Product Combo

This model combines a product with a membership site. For example, a meal kit subscription could include a members-only section of their website with cooking videos and recipe ideas for leftovers. The product is the main offering for these sites. The membership site content is the bonus to keep subscribers engaged.

5. Service Sites

Service sites allow members to access services such as coaching or graphic design. The subscription pays for the service instead of content. The website’s member’s area includes a way for subscribers to schedule or request services and any supporting documents. For example, coaches might include additional worksheets, ebooks, or tools.

Selecting a Type of Membership Site

The content, services, and products you offer members determine which type of membership site is best for your business.

What is the primary benefit you offer members? If the answer is a product or service, build your members’ area around those offerings.

If the content is the main benefit for members, you need to decide between the all-access library option or a drip-feed model. Remember that the drip-feed option allows you more time to create content when starting a new site. Launching a library with only a few pieces of content can cause members to think they’re not getting enough value from their subscription. The drip-feed model keeps members engaged while building up your content offerings and growing your site.

Most membership sites include a mix of different types of content. When building your site, look for plugins that support all the features you want in your members’ area. If you’re unsure about what you’ll need, review this list of what to include in a membership site.

Help Setting Up Any Type of Membership Site

No matter what type of membership site you need, building the site is easy with WPQuickStart by Hostdedi. Use the self-guided setup wizard to configure your WordPress-powered membership site in minutes. All plans include Hostdedi’ managed WordPress hosting and access to the Restrict Content Pro plugin. With this plugin, you can quickly implement any of the types of membership sites from this post.

The Restrict Content Pro plugin included with WPQuickStart offers:

  • Built-in payment integrations with Stripe, Authorize.net, Braintree, 2Checkout, and PayPal
  • Multiple subscription packages and levels, including support for free trials
  • Analytics and reporting on member subscriptions, payments, and business performance
  • Scheduled and automated emails to drive member engagement

Sign up today to start building your membership site.

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Easy WordPress Troubleshooting Tips to Try [2022]

Are you facing issues with your WordPress website? Most of these issues are solved by following easy WordPress troubleshooting steps.

What Is WordPress Troubleshooting?

WordPress troubleshooting is a process for determining why something does not work as expected. The process does not require code experience and can be accomplished if you have basic WordPress knowledge.

Reasons Why You May Need to Troubleshoot WordPress

There are different reasons why you may need WordPress troubleshooting. These are the most common:

Website style issue: The website does not follow the style and looks different than it should be (i.e. the font color is red while blue is the right color).

Speed issues: The website is loading very slowly.

Theme and plugin functionalities don’t work: Sometimes plugins or themes may not work as they should. Maybe your WordPress theme doesn’t look like the demo theme. These conflicts are easily identified with the troubleshooting.

Increase security: Avoiding hacker attacks to the website is crucial. WordPress troubleshooting can assist you in hardening WordPress and keeping your site safe.

WordPress Troubleshooting Techniques

You can troubleshoot your WordPress website using different techniques and plugins. Let’s check the most used below.

Save a Complete Backup of Your Website

Troubleshooting a problem might break something on your website. A backup is essential to easily restore your website to the latest WordPress version before troubleshooting.

You can backup a WordPress website manually, or you can use a plugin. If you are using a WordPress backup plugin, make sure you safely save the backup following the plugin’s documentation.

If you have a managed WordPress hosting plan with Hostdedi, you can easily find the daily backups by going to My Hostdedi > Plans > Your Plan > Your Site > Backups on the left sidebar.

Feel free to create a new backup by clicking on the Create Backup button or restore the files on the Daily Backups list by clicking on the three dots on the right and then Restore Files, Restore Databases, or Restore Files + Database.

If you are not using a backup plugin or don’t have managed hosting with Hostdedi, we strongly recommend you start using a backup plugin on your site. Or, check with your current hosting provider to see if they offer a backup service. The manual backup process is only recommended for developers and may break your website if something is imported or exported wrong.

WordPress Website Site Health Checker Tool

In WordPress 5.1, the WordPress team added the Website Site Health Checker tool that helps to monitor how your website is doing. You can find it under WordPress Dashboard > Tools > Site Health where you will find the status and info tabs.

In WordPress version 5.4, the Website Site Health Checker was added as a widget to the dashboard. This makes it more visible and easier to find errors or improvements from the dashboard view without going to the tools page.

Status Page

This page is the first place you should check in the WordPress troubleshooting process to verify and ensure there are no errors reported.On the status page, WordPress runs a performance and security test to make sure everything is going well with your website. It’s also possible to see a colored circle representing your site status. All items are collapsible, giving you more information about each improvement and how to fix it.

Keep in mind it’s pretty important to keep all those recommendations up to date in order to improve website performance in WordPress.

Info Page

The website’s information is stored on the info page, which is pretty useful to share with developers and support if you are getting help.

Copy the site information to the clipboard easily by clicking on the available button on this page.

WordPress Health Check & Troubleshooting Extension

An extension to the Website Health Checker tool is the WordPress Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin developed by the WordPress community. The plugin is very useful for checking for themes or plugin conflicts on your website, as it adds the troubleshooting and tools tabs to the site health page. As a separate plugin, you need to download and install it on your WordPress installation.

The Troubleshooting Page

When troubleshooting issues on your site, you are likely to be told to disable all plugins and switch to the default theme. Understandably, you do not wish to do so as it may affect your site visitors, leaving them with lost functionality. By enabling the troubleshooting mode, all plugins will appear inactive and your site will switch to the default theme only for you. All other users will see your site as usual.

A troubleshooting mode menu is added to your admin bar, which will allow you to enable plugins individually, switch back to your current theme, and disable troubleshooting mode. Please note that due to how must used plugins work, any such plugin will not be disabled for the troubleshooting session.

The Tools Page

Extra tools offered on this page like the plugin compatibility allow you to see the current installed plugin’s version, as well as minimum and maximum PHP supported versions. It’s essential to know that it must need to be added by the plugin’s author, so don’t worry if you see empty spaces in some plugins.

Manual Theme and Plugin Conflict Check

This process has the same result and intention as the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin. The difference here is that it’s manual, does not require a plugin installation, and will not prevent live visitors from seeing the effects of a theme switch and plugin deactivation. For this reason, it is mostly recommended for staging and development environments where the website is still in progress.

Switch to the Default WordPress Theme

The best way to check for conflicts related to your theme is to switch to the default WordPress theme, always the most recent one like the Twenty Twenty-Two. If the present issue is solved after this, the problem comes from your theme.

It’s simple to do. Just access the Dashboard > Appearance > Themes > Twenty Twenty-Two and click on the activate button. Note you can search by theme if it is not listed on your themes.

Disable and Enable Plugin by Plugin

Disabling all plugins is the best way to verify if they cause conflict. The process may be tiring, but it is worth it. Just check the following example:

The LearnDash LMS WordPress plugin is not working properly and to get the conflict suspicion solved, you will go to the Dashboard > Plugins > Select All Plugins (except LearnDash) > Deactivate, and then if the issue is solved, go back to the plugin’s page and activate one by one until the issue remains. After that, you just need to reach the plugin support reporting the found conflict.

Try Fully Managed WordPress Hosting from Hostdedi

Get fully managed WordPress hosting from Hostdedi. It’s optimized for WordPress, so you’ll have a faster, more secure, and scalable website. Smart monitoring tools are built-in to help you keep it that way. Check out our plans to get started today.

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Small Business Advice — 6 Ways To Scale a Business | Hostdedi

Scaling your business can be an easy task if you know how to do it. But you may have a hard time if you’ve never done it before.

According to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in every five new businesses fails to survive till its anniversary.

You should know how and when to scale to prevent your business from failing. Besides that, you need to scale your business in a way that ensures its security for the future to come.

Read on to learn about how to scale your business:

Scaling a Business

Scaling is growth, but scaling is a different aspect of growth.

To scale your small business means you increase your revenues without significantly increasing your business costs. In other words, you have an exponential increase in your revenues and only a marginal increase in costs, if any.

As an entrepreneur, you often require more resources than before to maintain sustainable growth in your business. But scaling involves optimizing your costs and increasing your revenues and customers to help you grow without extra resources.

For example, ByteDance scaled TikTok and made it one of the most popular social apps in the market today.

Using various growth and scaling strategies, TikTok went from 55 million monthly active global users in January 2018 to over 1 billion monthly active global users in September 2021.

ByteDance achieved this massive feat with a workforce of 1,294 in Europe and 1,400 in the U.S.

Finding the Right Time To Scale Your Business

You can scale up your new business at any time. But you can maximize your efficiency and profits by scaling at the right time: You’ll reach a point where you’re no longer a startup but aren’t a large corporation either.

That’s not the only way to tell. Here are other things you can look out for.

Overshooting Your Quarterly/Annual Goals

You should scale your business if you smash your quarterly and annual goals way before the due dates. Overshooting your goals early-stage means you’re successful at your current level and need to push harder.

Minimal Risk Around Business Growth

A single quarter with outstanding results doesn’t guarantee risk-free growth in an online business. Assess your business model’s risk and only scale when you’re ready.

Proven Business Concept

Does your new idea do exceptionally well in the market? Have you proved that your solution will sell? If so, consider scaling your business model.

Your scaling exercise will likely succeed if your business concept enjoys market support.

Strong Revenues and Increased Sales

Consider scaling If your business sees increasing revenue streams for periods exceeding six months.

A positive cash flow in your business can help you project new revenues and expenses in the future. It also enables you to prepare for setbacks and protect your business from threats like bankruptcy.

Owning the Right Technology

If your company takes the initiative to use automation, it may be time to scale. Also, consider scaling if you own or develop cutting-edge technology with a unique advantage in the marketplace.

Another way technology can help you scale is data analytics. If you can collect and leverage customer data, you can identify trends and patterns to help you scale.

How To Scale a Business

1. Know your business goals and purpose.

2. Benchmark similar companies that have scaled successfully.

3. Develop a business plan.

4. Establish your team.

5. Improve the quality and consistency of your product.

6. Connect with your customers.

1. Know Your Business Goals and Purpose

Goals help track your progress, motivate you to do more, and keep you accountable for success. To scale, keep yourself and your team up to date with business goals that clearly illustrate what to target.

2. Benchmark Similar Companies That Have Scaled Successfully

Identify businesses within your community that have experienced rapid growth. Find what they did right and use that to guide your scaling activities.

Benchmarking also helps you learn how to address challenges the previous companies faced. You can avoid common errors and other undesirable outcomes to scale as smoothly as possible.

3. Develop a Business Plan

Think of your business plan as a map that directs your internal processes and spending towards a goal. A business plan helps you see the big picture, scale systematically, and reduce your risk of failure.

You always have guidelines for success with a business plan. It brings you back to your main focus whenever you get off-track with your scaling efforts.

4. Establish Your Team

Your team members play a pivotal role in scaling your business efforts. As you scale, hire new employees whose values align with your company culture. Your new hires will use their skill set and work with enthusiasm to help you scale.

Your team isn’t just your workers. It also includes your suppliers and other partners essential for your growth. Create strong and lasting partnerships with them, and they will help drive your business into a bright future.

5. Improve the Quality and Consistency of Your Product

Whenever scaling, many small business owners focus on other functions and forget one vital aspect: product quality. To scale successfully, improve the product quality. Standardize your production processes to ensure your products are uniform and consistent across all batches. You can also offer new products or create varieties to keep your customers hooked.

6. Connect With Your Customers

For efficient scalability, communicate with your customers. Social media is an excellent way to engage your current and new customers. You can also use new media like podcasts and webinars.

Or you can switch to customer relationship management (CRM) software for your growing business as you scale. Using this software-as-a-service (SaaS) and social media integrations, you can communicate and collect feedback from all your product users.

Final Thoughts: 6 Ways To Scale a Business

Scaling is better than growth as it costs less in the long run. Once you figure out when to scale your business, you can do it the right way.

Are you looking to scale your website to support massive traffic from your users? Get Hostdedi Cloud Auto Scaling to support high speeds and efficiency during traffic surges while offering excellent customer service.

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What is the Domain Name System? How DNS Works [2022]

The Domain Name System (DNS) is indisputably one of the most essential parts of the internet. Without the DNS, the internet would collapse. Although it is one of the most important parts, it is also one of the most overlooked.

For many of us, being able to connect to the internet is a quick and easy process. We connect our devices to the internet within seconds, and we don’t have to memorize anything in order to access any particular website. We have DNS to thank for this.

The internet is set up by large networks that communicate with each other via wires and are identified through a series of numbers known as IP addresses. Since the majority of people can’t memorize hundreds of numerical sequences, we need to assign special names to each address. DNS essentially translates these names into numbers, which is why people usually compare DNS to a phonebook.

If you are a WordPress site admin, you will need to deal with DNS configuration when setting up a new website, buying a new domain, or migrating to a new web host. Because DNS is basically the core of the internet, a small mistake in DNS records will keep visitors from being able to access your site. That is why it is crucial to have an initial understanding of what DNS is and how it works.

What is the Domain Name System (DNS)?

DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is a hierarchical naming system used by computers with access to the internet to assign domain names to IP addresses. Put simply, it translates human language domains into its assigned series of numbers.

When working with WordPress, DNS is usually used to refer to what your domain displays when a visitor sees it and how that domain interacts with different services.

Every device connected to the internet, whether it is a computer, tablet, or smartphone, has a unique IP address. Similarly, every registered website is hosted on a web server with an individual IP address that looks something like 111.222.333.4.

If DNS did not exist, we would have to remember the IP address of every website that we wanted to visit. Since people don’t have the mental capacity to store hundreds of numerical strings, DNS was created to work as a phonebook for the internet. Now, we can use domain names that are easy to remember and let DNS do the hard work.

How Does DNS Work?

When you enter a URL in your web browser’s navigation bar, your device will need to know the IP address of where that website is stored. Your operating system will determine if they already have this information in the cache. The cache is basically your computer’s memory. When you search a domain, that information is saved on the cache, so your computer doesn’t have to access a DNS server to resolve the name with its IP address.

So, if the information isn’t in cache and the operating system doesn’t know where that website is stored, it will ask a DNS server to find it. The DNS server is the main working part of this whole search. It is typically a server from your internet service provider or network router, and it is usually automatically configured on your computer’s network interface.

These DNS servers are called recursive servers because they simply forward your request to other servers higher up in the hierarchy instead of storing domain data. The servers that actually hold this data are called the Name Servers. Every domain or URL should have two or more Name Servers. You have to configure these Name Servers whenever you first buy your domain. We will talk about this in more detail later on.

At this point, your DNS server has received the list of name servers for the website you are trying to reach. It then sends a request to another server to translate the domain to an IP address, and it gets an answer.

Now that your DNS server has the IP address of the website you are trying to reach, your device can connect to the web server using that IP address. Congrats, now you can finally browse your chosen web. All this was done very quickly, and you didn’t have to do any of the hard work.

WordPress DNS Configuration

Now let’s walk through a WordPress DNS configuration step by step.

Registering a Domain and Web Hosting

To register a domain, you first need to go to a domain registrar to purchase one. Follow domain naming best practices and choose a domain name that’s easy to remember, and easy to spell.

Pointing Your Domain

When you register your domain at a domain registrar and your webspace at a web host, the domain registrar isn’t aware of this, so you need to point your domain. Pointing a domain is the process of linking your domain to your web space. That will allow you to get traffic to your website.

When configuring WordPress DNS, tell the domain registrar where your website is hosted. The domain registrar will then know that if a user requests that particular domain, it should forward that request to the web host. Then the web host will point the user in the right direction.

So, how does it do that?

How DNS Works

When you sign up for web hosting, you specify your domain. That particular step instructs the web host where to point requests. To simplify this even further, our domain is “onewebsite.com.” We first tell the web host there is a site on its servers with the domain “onewebsite.com,” then we tell the domain registrar that “onewebsite.com” is with this web host.

When a user types “onewebsite.com,” the domain registrar forwards their request to the web host. Then, the web host looks through its servers and sees that “onewebsite.com” exists. After that, it redirects visitors to their website.

The domain name system is one of the most essential and also one of the most overlooked parts of the internet. DNS translates easy-to-remember domain names into IP addresses every time you try to access a website on the internet.

When you want to register a domain, you first need to go to a domain registrar to purchase it. After you buy your domain, you will need a good web hosting service to host your website.

When it comes to hosting your website, you need to make sure that you use a professional web host designed for WordPress. We’ll watch your site’s performance every day and give you insight into your site’s speed and performance. And we include it free with every WordPress plan.

Check out our fully managed WordPress hosting plans to get started today.

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How to Do PHP Unit Testing for WordPress [20222]

Testing is a routine part of life. We test everything before and after buying to ensure we’re getting the full functionality of a product. If you have a WordPress website, you probably check to make sure it’s functioning as it should. And that includes PHP, WordPress’ scripting language.

Testing is essential to verify that code is working correctly, and in PHP, this usually entails unit testing. Keep reading to learn about PHP unit testing, how to write and incorporate these tests, and why it’s important.

What is Unit Testing?

Unit testing refers to a level of software testing where individual units or components of code are tested in isolation. This gives us the ability to check if each unit of code performs as expected. A single unit can be a line of code, a phrase, a function, or a class. In PHP and WordPress, typically a unit is a function or a class.

Although units can come in all sizes, as a rule, smaller tests are better. By using smaller tests, you can obtain a more granular view of your software’s performance. Plus, if you use tests for smaller units, you will be able to run thousands of tests in one second because small tests can be run very quickly.

Related reading: How to Create a Test Plan for Your Ecommerce Website >>

We mentioned that unit tests are tests run in isolation, so what does that mean? Testing in isolation means that we test only one unit at a time. Almost all types of testing require some sort of isolation, but in PHP unit testing this is particularly important. We isolate our test because if a test fails, it will be easier to know which part of the code is not working properly.

Why is Unit Testing Important?

Unit testing helps us make sure that for any function and given set of units, we can ascertain if the unit is returning the proper values. It also assures us that if invalid input is provided, the code can identify and handle the failures. Thus, it helps us identify bugs in our algorithms, which will enhance the quality of our code.

As you write more tests, eventually you will create a series of tests that can be run continually to establish the caliber of your work.

When you incorporate unit testing in your software, you will inevitably start using code that is easy to test. Having easily testable code is a necessity for unit testing because it ensures smaller and more focused functions provide a single operation.

Furthermore, if you write well-tested code, you can prevent breaking your software’s functionality if you incorporate future changes. Since you are testing your code as you are adding functions to it, you will eventually have a series of tests that will help you address code failures as they happen.

Additionally, poorly written code can make your website susceptible to hacking, and you should make sure that you are hosting your website on a secure server.

Is PHP Unit Testing Worth the Time and Effort?

Unit testing indeed takes a lot of time and effort to write, but it saves you considerable time you would have spent fixing unexpected bugs. Writing unit tests maximizes the performance of your program by making it high quality and bug-free.

The confidence that comes from depending on your code’s functionality makes unit testing definitely worth your time. Not only can you be sure that your code does what it was designed to do, but you can rest easy knowing that adding new functionality later on will not sabotage your existing project.

Things to Consider When Writing PHP Unit Tests

There are two ways that you can go about writing unit tests. Either you write the tests first and then write code to make those tests pass, or you can write the code and then test how that code is performing.

It is generally better to write tests first if you are starting a project from scratch. That’s because it is harder to design tests for an application that you already wrote and know how it works. If you write the tests first, you will document how the application is supposed to work, and that will immediately catch a failure when the code isn’t working as it should.

Related reading: What Is User Acceptance Testing? How to Do Ecommerce UAT >>

Nevertheless, it is unrealistic to expect that you will write unit tests for all your code in the beginning because that will take dozens of hours. Instead, you can be pragmatic about it.

One way to go about it is to create unit tests for every bug that you stumble upon. That’s because bugs are usually small mistakes in your code, making it easier to create a test for it. This approach will also help you better understand the function of unit tests because you see firsthand how the test is identifying a bug and helping you fix it.

Another thing you can do is write unit tests for new features that you want to add to your software. This is a good idea because the code for a feature will usually be specific to it, making it ideal for unit testing. This practice will also train you to be mindful of the code you are writing because you will be forced to write code that is easy to test, which is always a good practice.

How to Write Unit Test Cases in PHP

To Install PHPUnit you need to have a few prerequisites:

  • Use the latest version of PHP.
  • PHPUnit requires dom, JSON, PCRE, reflection, and SPL extensions, which are enabled by default.

Installation (Command-Line Interface)

Download PHP Archive (PHAR) to obtain PHPUnit. To install PHAR globally, we can use the following commands in the command line.

$ wget https://phar.phpunit.de/phpunit-6.5.phar

$ chmod +x phpunit-6.5.phar

$ sudo mv phpunit-6.5.phar /usr/local/bin/phpunit

$ phpunit –version

Via Composer

If you have installed composer in your system you can download it by using the single command.

composer require –dev phpunit/phpunit

Test your phpunit work by typing

./vendor/bin/phpunit

in Windows

vendorbinphpunit

Then you should Init your PHP unit configuration:

By typing:./vendor/bin/phpunit –generate-configuration

Or in windows machines: vendorbinphpunit –generate-configuration

There will appear three questions, just type enter and the files will be auto-generated.

Bootstrap script (relative to the path shown above; default: vendor/autoload.php):

Tests directory (relative to path shown above; default: tests):

Source directory (relative to path shown above; default: src):

Cache directory (relative to path shown above; default: .phpunit.cache):

Generated phpunit.xml in /php_test.

You should exclude the .phpunit.cache directory from version control.

Let’s Start Our First Unit Test

First create a file and name it. For this example, we will name it HelloworldTest.php

mkdir src tests

code tests/HelloworldTest.php

This will open Visual Studio code in your file. Then, write the following code:

Run the following command on your command line to start the unit test

./vendor/bin/phpunit

In Windows Machines :vendorbinphpunit

Here is the output for the run test:

Now, Let’s Try Testing a Class

First, create the file in the src/ folder and name it Hello.php and set the namespace App.

Then we should require the following file like documented in the photo below:

Let us run a test and see the results.

As the image says, assert is failing because the two strings are identical. We can make the expected variable to helloworld again and get the assert true like in the following example:

Let’s see the result of the tests.

As we can see from the image, we now have an assertion.

Now You Know

Testing is essential when we want to verify if our code is working correctly. Unit testing is a level of software testing where individual units or components of our code are tested in isolation.

When you unit test WordPress, it is important to test in isolation because if a unit test fails, it will be easier to know which part of the code is not working properly.

Unit testing is a lengthy process but it is essential to a high-performing site.

As you saw, well-tested code and a secure web host provide you with reliability and valuable insight on performance and speed.

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