Monthly ArchivesSeptember 2022

Making art typically pays off emotionally, but less often monetarily. Thanks to technological advances, it is much easier to make money out of art, and music is not an exception. The internet introduced many ways to make music available to large audiences and enabled fans to support their idols worldwide.

In this blog, we’ll review how to sell music online. Keep reading to learn how to put your music onto the web, the best ways to sell music online, and more.

Digital Media vs. Physical Media

There are two ways to distribute your music products — via digital means or on hard copies. Each option has its own pros and cons. Let’s analyze them.

Physical Media

Physical media are a traditional way to share music. They include CDs (compact discs), vinyl records, and tape cassettes. Music industry trends show that physical media is experiencing hard times, and that isn’t hard to believe — when was the last time you saw a CD-ROM drive on a PC?

Despite the physical media market shrinking each year, CDs and vinyl are still being sold. From the entrepreneurial perspective, it requires more effort to make a profit from them. Dealing with physical media involves ordering disks, vinyl, and cassettes from your record label, storing, and shipping. Additionally, you will need to set up an online store to serve your fans.

Digital Media

Selling music online requires little to no investments. Whether it’s your own website or a streaming platform such as Spotify or iTunes, you do not have to keep a stock of CDs and vinyl or arrange shipping. The beauty of this method is that all processes can be highly automated. Despite that, revenue generated this way has its caveats.

In the case of streaming platforms, you need to pay a distributor either a one-time or recurring fee to have them add your music to their distribution platforms. Royalty payouts in this model will depend on how many plays your music gets.

That being said, using digital media is a great way to increase your fan base while providing a few good opportunities to earn some money on your creativity.

What You Need To Sell Music Online

Combining the two methods above is a solid way to sell music online successfully, so we will cover a few essential points needed to sell music online both ways.

Inventory Management

Selling physical copies requires keeping a stock of them. CDs and records can take up a lot of space, which means you need a place to store them. It is important to assess your storage space – know how much stock you can keep on hand. You may have to consider long term options such as renting a small storage unit or garage. Of course, you can always order more copies from your record company as you need them, but delays in stocking mean your fans wait longer.

Digital media is much simpler — you do not need to store anything but your music on a server. Paying for server storage is a lot cheaper and has a much higher capacity than a physical storage unit. What’s more, if you don’t sell as many CDs or records as you’re expecting, they’re not laying around collecting dust.

Website

Nowadays, the core of every business is its website. No matter if you decide to go with physical or digital distribution, you need a site to receive orders and communicate with your fans. In addition to that, your own website can help you collect data needed to sell music online even more efficiently.

It’s easy to track orders and anticipate demand for future releases. Also, keeping a record of email subscriptions shows how fast your fan base grows.

Picking a web host that is optimized for ecommerce will help with the specific needs you have as an online retailer.

Naturally, there are companies, such as Horus Music, that are willing to take the burden of physical delivery off your plate for a percent of the revenue. Such companies can also be beneficial if you are not pursuing physical-only distribution — they can upload your music across different platforms, which is a great way to promote your music.

Payment Options

Different ecommerce platforms offer many payment options. On WooCommerce, for example, it is possible to configure multiple payment options – Stripe, Amazon Pay, Paypal, credit card payments, and more. That works for both physical and digital media.

If you hand off the distribution to a third-party company, they will charge your fans via their own channels. The ways you can receive your payouts are usually discussed during the contract signing process.

Return Policy

Return policies differ from state to state, but generally, it is up to you on how to handle returns and refunds. There should not be any issues refunding or sending another copy if your fans can prove that the product they purchased was damaged and/or became unusable. However, it is hard to come up with good reasons to refund digitally distributed music.

If the distribution is handled by a third-party company, your fans will be subject to return policies enforced by the distribution platforms. In this sense, you will not have many options to advocate for your fans if disputable situations emerge.

How You Sell Music Online

Besides recording music and displaying it on your website, there is much more to selling music online. Below are a few points that can help you boost your sales.

Creating a Customer Base

In the music business, your customers are your fans. That being said, you do not want to miss out on any opportunities to promote what you do. Create a social media presence, upload content, share news about your band, and stay in touch with your fans. New bands can take advantage of paid ads to make their presence more visible, and placing paid ads on social media sites can pay off really well.

Also, be aware of your target audience – younger generations prefer newer and more interactive social media such as TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram, while older audiences may only be using Facebook.

Most likely, you will have an image of your typical listener based on what kind of music you create. Nevertheless, you can create accounts on every social media channel, but bear in mind, you’ll need time to maintain all of them properly.

Utilizing Video For Organic Marketing

Videos are a great way to promote your music. You can create different videos and upload them to YouTube — music videos, Q&As, teasers, some backstage stories, or just your plans and thoughts. All that helps your fans be constantly engaged with you and your content. Cross-posting videos across your social media accounts will also be beneficial.

Leave the comments open and try to address everyone’s questions — your fans expect you to interact, at least while the number of comments under the video is not too high. Additionally, pay attention to what people say — their feedback can be very useful to iron out the kinks.

Marketing Plans & Content Strategy

If you are about to introduce a new product to the world, you should have a plan on how to market it. For example, try to plan how to share the content. If you have 5 videos ready to be published, do not release all of them the same day. Releasing one video every few days can fuel the hype much longer than dumping everything in one day.

Good timing is also of importance – be aware if your competitors are planning on releasing their album. If you release your music together with your competitors, chances are your album might go unnoticed. Ideal timing for releasing an album is when the media landscape is clear – no major political events, no war outbreaks, no recent tragic incidents.

Now What?

The first step in selling music online is creating a website. Developers charge hundreds and thousands of dollars to design even simple sites, and such amounts can be showstoppers to new businesses.

At Hostdedi, we created a perfect solution for such cases: StoreBuilder. You can start building your own website in a matter of minutes using a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface — no coding knowledge required.

This solution is bundled with the fastest, most secure, and fully managed WooCommerce hosting. We take server management out of the equation, allowing you to focus on creating quality content and growing your business.

Try StoreBuilder risk-free for 30 days.

Statista estimates that the number of emails exchanged daily will increase from 319.6 billion in 2021 to over 333 billion in 2022. So if you haven’t already, it’s time to diversify your ecommerce marketing strategy and tap into this growing channel.

Magento’s core email functionality includes essential features such as responsive and customizable email templates. But if you want to leverage the true potential of email, you need a dedicated email marketing tool like Mailchimp.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to install Mailchimp for Magento 2 and configure it to transfer customer data securely.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

5 Reasons To Use Mailchimp for Magento Email Marketing

Here are five practical reasons to use Mailchimp for Magento email marketing.

1. Flexible Pricing Plans

According to Datanyze, Mailchimp is the world’s most popular email marketing service with a massive 68.52% market share. That’s because Mailchimp provides some of the best email marketing features, including:

Audience segmentation.

• Customer surveys.
• Behavioral targeting.
• Pre-built email templates.
• Automation builder.

Note: Make sure you backup your server before you proceed. If you’re a Hostdedi customer, you can create an on-demand backup from your Client Portal by navigating to Plans > Site name > Backups and selecting Create Backup from the main menu.

Step 1: Create a Mailchimp Account

Create an account on the Mailchimp website by clicking the Sign Up Free button on the top-right corner of the screen.

On Mailchimp’s signup page, enter details, such as your email address, username, and password, and click the Sign Up button.

Follow Mailchimp’s guided signup process by verifying your email address, selecting a plan, and configuring basic account information.

After that, proceed to the next step.

Step 2: Install the Mailchimp Extension

Head to the Magento Marketplace and purchase the free Magento 2 Mailchimp extension.

Next, log in to your Magento server over SSH, navigate to the project root directory, and put your store in maintenance mode using the following command:

<code>

$ bin/magento maintenance:enable

</code>

This step ensures customers can’t access the storefront when you install Mailchimp for Magento 2.

<code>

$ composer require mailchimp/mc-magento2

</code>

<code>

$ composer require mailchimp/mc-magento2:102.3.48

</code>

<code>

$ bin/magento module:status Ebizmarts_MailChimp

</code>

<code>

$ bin/magento module:enable Ebizmarts_MailChimp --clear-static-content

</code>

<code>
$ bin/magento setup:upgrade

$ bin/magento cache:flush

$ bin/magento cache:clean

</code>

<code>

$ php bin/magento setup:di:compile

$ php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy

</code>

<code>

$ bin/magento maintenance:disable

</code>

You can also configure settings to send promotional codes and display prices, including taxes. If you prefer to configure those at a later time, use the default settings and proceed with the Magento 2 Mailchimp configuration process.

We recommend configuring cart abandonment emails because data collected by the Baymard Institute reveals that over 58% of U.S. online shoppers abandoned a cart within the last three months. Sending abandoned cart emails will help you drive conversions and sales.

Once you’ve assigned preferences for Abandoned Cart Configuration, click Save Config to complete Magento 2 Mailchimp configuration.

Note: Magento relies on cron to perform automated tasks such as synchronizing your store data with your Mailchimp account. You will need to configure Magento cron to ensure Mailchimp collects data from your store automatically.

Final Thoughts: How To Install Mailchimp for Magento 2

We’ve shown you how to install Mailchimp for Magento 2 and automate data transfers between your store and Mailchimp account. But that’s just the first step.

Here’s what’s next: you can build a campaign in Mailchimp to offer personalized product recommendations. After that, you can design automations to target customers at different stages of their buying journey.

Need more tips to help your business grow?

Here’s one more: sign up for Managed Magento Hosting with Hostdedi and simplify hosting your Magento store. We’ll handle server security and optimization so you can focus on growing your online business.

Browse our plans to learn more.

Managing WordPress sites can be a hurdle, but using proper tools and following the best practices can make it really easy. In this article we will break down the major aspects of managing WordPress sites and provide a few considerations to make this process simple and enjoyable.

Hosting a WordPress Website

There are hardly any web-based projects done without a server. A proper hosting plan can play a huge role in the management of your WordPress site.

Hosted Or Self-Hosted?

Self-hosting means that you deploy your WordPress website on your own private machine and manage everything starting from server power and internet connection to backups and technical troubleshooting.

Using a hosting provider means deploying your WordPress website on a rented server where the hosting company maintains the server and sometimes provides technical support. Hostdedi, for example, provides 24/7 fully managed technical support for all our WordPress plans.

Consider Your Technical Aptitude

Unless you are a tech guru, always have your site hosted with a provider. It will save you a lot of trouble when problems start to arise as you will have someone covering your back.

There are several factors that you need to take into account when deciding on whether to host your website yourself or use a hosting provider. The first one is whether you are comfortable fixing issues on your website yourself. While it may not be a problem for tech-savvy users, in many cases it is worth having an expert resolve everything in a professional manner. Tinkering around on a broken website without knowing what to do can make things even worse.

Factor in Hosting Support

Before committing to a hosting provider, check into what kind of support they offer. Are they available via chat, email, and phone? Do they work 24/7? Also, reading reviews featuring their support can help you make the decision.

Tip: Another point to consider is whether it is critical for your website to be online 100% of the time. No hosting is immune to hardware failure, or outages, but hosting providers typically have monitoring systems in place allowing them to detect such incidents and fix them very quickly, even at night.

Don’t Forget About Hardware Health

Check if your hosting provider monitors servers’ health and has SLA (service level agreement) for failed hardware replacement. If the website goes down in the middle of the night and no one fixes it, it can lead to lost traffic, and for ecommerce websites, that means missed revenue.

Using a hosting provider is more expensive than hosting and managing your WordPress site yourself, but it is definitely worth every penny.

Speed

These two parameters heavily rely on the hosting provider (or yourself, in case of self-hosting). Let’s start with the speed. There are several factors that contribute to your website’s speed.

Type of Hosting

The type of hosting you have can affect website performance. Among all the hosting options, in most cases you do not want to go with shared hosting. It is appropriate for small websites that have very little traffic. On shared hosting, you share resources with other customers. So-called “noisy neighbors” may steal your resources, which as a result can slow your website down. Additionally, shared hosting does not allow for fine tuning server configurations. Everyone on the same server will use the same averaged settings which may not provide the best speed.

Dedicated and cloud-based servers such as VPS (virtual private server) should be your choice if you want to run a stable and fast website.

Tip: Shared hosting can be a good starting point, but sooner or later your website will grow and you will need to move to a more robust server. If your budget allows, start with a small cloud server and save yourself from the headache of a migration once shared hosting is no longer good for you. One good feature of cloud-based hosting is that it is scalable — once you need more resources, you can add more without having to migrate to another server.

Resources

Ensuring your website gets an adequate amount of resources, such as RAM, disk space, and processing power, is an integral part of WordPress management. Lack of resources may lead to degraded performance of your website or even downtime.

Tip: Periodically review your hosting package for resources. If you anticipate a traffic surge, upgrade your server beforehand. Temporary downgrades are fine if your traffic decreases.

Code Quality

The way your site was developed affects how fast it will load for your users. Extensive use of drag-and-drop website builders can generate lots of hidden bogus code that increases the time for browsers to handle it. The same goes for sites overloaded with features.

Tip: Ideally, have your website built by a professional from the outset. However, if you already have a website in production, for a fee a developer can take a look to see if any speed-improving code adjustments can be made. They can also redesign the website using the coding best practices.

Security

Being familiar with how to maintain your website’s security is essential if you want to know how to manage a WordPress website properly. The first line of defense in most setups is passwords. Weak passwords can be brute forced or even guessed, so having a strong password policy in place is a good preventive measure.

Use Strong Passwords

Use case-sensitive passwords and encourage your users to do the same. Ideally, set up different passwords for each website. A good password vault can help you memorize all of them, but make sure it is well-protected as well. Multi-factor authentication is a great addition to any security setup.

Prevent Spam With Captcha

If your website utilizes contact forms, it is good to have captcha in place to prevent bots from sending hundreds of spam messages. It is highly recommended to use a secure contact form that can work with captcha or other mechanics that prevent abuse. Managing WordPress is much easier when you do not have to comb through spam emails every day.

Updating plugins and themes is also very important in terms of security, but we will cover it in a more detailed manner below.

Automatic bulk updates are available since version 5.5. They can be enabled in the same section of your dashboard, the most right column.

While managing one WordPress site does not seem complex and time-consuming, it all changes when you have a number of sites to manage. That is the case with WordPress Multisite setups — when core WordPress files are utilized across multiple WordPress websites united in a network, or with several separate WordPress installations, sometimes hosted with different providers.

Features to Look Out For

Plugins dedicated to managing multiple WordPress sites can connect all your websites to a single dashboard where you can manage different aspects of your websites:

• Automatic updates — This feature is the centerpiece of any WordPress management tool. It is usually included in every tool, so if automatic updates are not present then it is a troubling sign.
• Backups — If your hosting provider does not provide backups, paid or free, it is certainly a feature that you want to look out for. If it does, then it can be an additional layer of protection for your data.
• Security — Additional security is never excessive. Many WordPress management tools include malware scans for all the connected websites, site activity logs, application firewalls, and so on.
• Uptime and performance monitoring — This is a great feature that you should look out for in case your hosting provider does not offer it. Knowing your website’s problematic areas will allow you to fix them more quickly and easily.

Tip: When choosing a WordPress management tool, consider only those having critically important features. For example, some tools offer SEO optimization, but SEO can be implemented with the help of plugins, which is usually more effective. Other features might overlap with what the hosting provider offers, so when looking for a management tool, the primary goal is to obtain new features, not duplicate them.

The Best WordPress Management Tools In 2022

Some hosting companies have their own WordPress management tools. This is a great solution if all your websites are hosted with one company. For example, at Hostdedi you can manage all your sites from a single dashboard.

If your websites are scattered among different hosts, you can connect them to a dashboard provided by a third-party organization to manage them under one roof. Below is the list of the most popular and feature-rich platforms.

1. iThemes Sync

2. InfiniteWP

3. ManageWP

4. CMS Commander

5. MainWP

6. WPMU DEV

7. WP Remote

They all provide core management features, but some of them, for example iThemes and WPMU DEV, also provide hosting services, making them a great one-stop solution.

Choosing The Right Solutions for Your WordPress Website

Now, it is time to come up with the best solution to manage your website.

Hosting And Server Management

When it comes to hosting, “the more expensive the better” is not a good approach. Each project needs a careful examination of its needs. After all, it is possible for you to host and manage your website on shared hosting if it’s a good fit for you. Some features the hosting company offers might not be useful to your use case. That being said, go for an adequate amount of resources and only the features you really need.

As far as support goes, the rule of thumb here is that it is better to have support of any kind. The more they are willing to go an extra mile the better, but as long as it does not cost you an arm and a leg.

Tools For Managing Multiple Sites

Different WordPress management tools have different plans and features associated with them. In some cases, it is worth upgrading your plan to unlock features that you really need, but the principle is similar to selecting the server and support level — review what the market offers and choose what suits your project best. There is no need to overpay for something you will not use.

Consider Hosting With Hostdedi

Hostdedi is a great choice for those who want to manage their websites with ease. We offer fully managed WordPress plans maintained by an expert support team 24/7 via chat, phone, and email.

Our plans are cloud-based and deliver the best speed and performance in the industry for WordPress and WooCommerce websites.

Additionally, we offer major management tools, such as automatic core, plugin, and theme updates, a one-click staging environment, automatic daily backups that are stored for 30 days, and a dashboard to manage all your websites from. Plus, we also provide free SSL certificates and take care of your website’s security.

Our Visual Comparison tool will never let your website go down because of a defective update. On top of that, we monitor your website’s uptime and if for some reason it goes down, we make it a top priority to bring it back online.

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

Nonprofit organizations naturally differ from small businesses and corporations since their main purpose is to make a difference instead of improving revenue. Still, nonprofits require an online presence to spread awareness of their cause and gain loyal adherents.

The best way to establish an online presence is to build a nonprofit website. Luckily, the process to create a nonprofit website is straightforward, especially if you rely on a website builder to get the job done.

In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know to streamline a successful build for a nonprofit website project.

Do Nonprofit Organizations Need Websites?

The internet is a powerful tool that can help nonprofit organizations in several ways. A website allows you to:

• Educate people about your cause
• Collect donations
• Promote upcoming events
• Recruit volunteers
• Share impactful stories

Much like other businesses, nonprofits can benefit from the exposure a successful website can provide. Nonprofits can use their website to target a wide range of audiences, from individuals interested in donating money to people who want to get involved with the organization.

A well-designed website is also a valuable asset for promoting your nonprofit to potential donors and volunteers. A prospective donor can visit your site to learn more about your mission and what you’ve accomplished so far. If they like what they see, they’re more likely to make a donation.

The same goes for volunteers. When people are considering giving their time to a nonprofit, they want to know that their efforts will be used effectively. A great website allows you to show potential volunteers exactly how their time and energy will be put to good use.

Is Building a Nonprofit Website Expensive?

In the past, building and maintaining a website was expensive and required a lot of technical expertise. However, advancements in technology have made it easier (and more affordable) than ever to create a professional website.

Now, there are plenty of nonprofit website builders on the market that allow you to create a website quickly and easily, without any prior experience or design knowledge. Most of these builders offer free plans that include everything you need to get started, including templates, hosting, and support. 

Paid plans typically start at around $15 per month and offer additional features like custom domains, ecommerce functionality, and advanced integrations. 

If you’re serious about building a successful nonprofit website, we recommend opting for Hostdedi’ website builder to take advantage of affordable and dynamic website development capabilities.

No one wants to wait around for a slow website to load. If your site takes more than a few seconds to load, you’re likely to lose visitors. In fact, most people expect a website to load quicker than 2-3 seconds.

There are a number of factors that can affect your website’s speed, including the size of your images and the quality of your hosting. If you’re using a website builder, they will typically take care of optimizing your site for speed.

You can also use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to get insights on how to improve your site’s performance.

Digestible Content

For nonprofit websites, compelling storytelling is critical. You need to be able to clearly communicate your mission and what you’re doing to make a difference.

When writing content for your website, keep it simple and easy to read. Use short paragraphs and breaks between sections to make the content more digestible. And, if you can, include images, videos, or infographics to break up the text and add visual interest.

Vibrant Color Scheme

Your website’s color scheme should be cohesive and reflect your brand. For example, if your nonprofit is focused on environmental issues, you might want to use green in your color palette.

If you’re not sure what colors to use, a good starting point is to look at other websites in your industry. See what colors they’re using and how they’ve put together their overall design. You can also use a tool like Adobe Color CC to create a custom color palette for your website.

Usable Forms

If you want people to take action on your website, you need to have usable forms. Forms are commonly used for things like email newsletters, volunteer sign-ups, and donation pages.

When creating forms, keep them short and to the point. Only ask for information that you actually need. And, make sure the form is easy to understand and use. If someone has to spend more than a few minutes trying to figure out how to fill out a form, they’re likely to give up and go somewhere else.

8 Steps to Create a Nonprofit Website

Ready to start the nonprofit website development process? Here are all the steps you need to take to get started.

1. Determine Your Goals

Before you start building your website, it’s important to take a step back and think about your goals. What do you want your website to achieve?

Are you looking to increase donations? Drive more traffic to your blog? Get people to sign up for your email newsletter? Once you know what you want to accomplish, you can start making decisions about the design and functionality of your site.

For example, if one of your goals is to increase online donations, you might want to make sure that your donation page is prominently featured on your website and easy to use. Or, if you’re trying to get people to sign up for your email newsletter, you might want to add a pop-up form or a sign-up form in the sidebar of your website.

Knowing your goals upfront will help you build a more effective nonprofit website.

If you’re not sure what your goals should be, take a look at some of these common nonprofit website goals:

• Increase donations
• Drive traffic to your blog
• Get people to sign up for your email newsletter
• Increase event registrations
• Boost volunteer sign-ups

After you’ve determined your goals, it’s time to move on to the next step in the process, which is picking a domain name.

2. Purchase Your Domain Name

Your domain name is your website’s address on the internet. It’s what people will type into their browser to find your site. For example, Google’s domain name is google.com.

When choosing a domain name for your nonprofit website, you want to make sure that it’s easy to remember and spell. You also want to make sure that it’s relevant to your organization.

If you can, try to include keywords in your domain name that describe what you do. For example, if you run a food bank, you might want to include the word “food” or “hunger” in your domain name.

3. Choose a Website Builder

Now that you have a domain name, it’s time to start building your website. To do this, you’ll need to choose a website builder.

A website builder is a software platform that allows you to create and build a website without any coding knowledge. It’s an easy and effective way to build a professional-looking website quickly and without any headaches.

There are many different website builders on the market, but not all of them are created equal. When choosing a website builder for your nonprofit website, you want to make sure that it’s easy to use, has good customer support, and offers the features and flexibility that you need.

4. Choose a Website Host

After you select a website builder, find a hosting provider. Hosting is not a one-size-fits-all solution. There are different types of web hosting to choose from, and some options may work better for your nonprofit website than others.

Be sure to check out reviews for hosts you’re considering, especially when it comes to technical support. You may also want to consider uptime, which features the hosting plan comes with, and any security the host provides. You’ll want to be sure your website is in good hands, so you don’t have to worry if things go awry.

5. Create a Sitemap

Once you have a website builder, it’s time to start planning out your website. The first step in doing this is to create a sitemap.

A sitemap is an outline of all the pages and content that you want to include on your website. It helps you organize your thoughts and make sure that everything is accounted for before you start building your site.

To create a sitemap, simply create a list of all the pages that you want to include on your site. For example, if you’re creating a simple website, your sitemap might look like this:

• Homepage
• About page
• Contact page
• Donation page

If you’re creating a more complex website, your sitemap might be longer and include sub-pages. For example, if you’re creating a website for an event, your sitemap might look like this:

• Homepage
• About the event
• Schedule of events
• Speakers
• Sponsors
• FAQs

6. Choose Your Website Theme

Next, it’s time to start thinking about the design of your website. One of the easiest ways to do this is to choose a pre-designed theme.

A theme is a collection of design elements that you can use to create a visually cohesive website. Most website builders come with a library of themes that you can choose from.

When choosing a theme for your nonprofit website, you want to make sure that it’s easy to use and customize. You also want to make sure that it’s mobile-friendly and responsive, which means that it will look presentable on all devices, from smartphones to laptops.

7. Install Plugins

Plugins are like apps for your website. They allow you to add features and functionality to your site without any coding knowledge. There are plugins for just about everything, from contact forms to social media integration.

When choosing plugins for your nonprofit website, you want to make sure that they’re compatible with your website builder and theme. You also want to make sure that they’re well-rated and supported by the developer.

For example, if you’re using WordPress, one of the most popular plugins is Jetpack. Jetpack is a plugin that offers a wide range of features, from website stats to security. Another popular plugin for WordPress websites is Yoast SEO. Yoast SEO is a plugin that helps you optimize your website for search engines like Google.

8. Optimize for SEO

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It’s the process of optimizing your website for Google and other search engines.

There are many different factors that go into SEO, but some of the most important ones are:

• Keywords: Keywords are the words and phrases that people use to search for your website on Google. When choosing keywords, you want to make sure that they’re relevant to your website and that you’re not using too many or too few.
• Page titles and descriptions: The title and description of each page on your website should be unique and include relevant keywords.
• Content: Your content should be well-written and include relevant keywords.
• Links: Your website should have links to other websites, as well as internal links (links to other pages on your own website).

9. Beta Test & Launch

After you’ve designed and built your website, it’s time to put it through a beta test. A beta test is when you allow a small group of people to test out your website before you launch it to the public.

This helps you catch any errors or bugs that you might have missed. It also allows you to get feedback on your website so that you can make improvements before launching it. Once your beta test is complete and all the bugs are fixed, it’s time to launch your website.

Build and Host Your Nonprofit Website with Hostdedi

As you can see, building a nonprofit website isn’t an impossible task once you’re finished with your research. The process can become even easier when you choose a website builder that does all the work for you.

Get started today and choose Hostdedi to host your website for your nonprofit organization.

A 2021 consumer survey by iPaper found that 66% of online shoppers choose not to visit ecommerce stores that offer a poor user experience (UX). And there’s nothing that screams bad UX like landing on a Magento store undergoing maintenance.

The default Magento 2 maintenance page displays an uninformative Service Temporarily Unavailable message that can confuse your customers. Some visitors might assume you’ve shut up shop.

To prevent such outcomes, we’ve created this guide to help you create a custom Magento 2 maintenance page with information that encourages visitors to return to your store.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

The Magento 2 Maintenance Mode in a Nutshell

The Magento 2 maintenance mode is one of the four operation modes in which you can use the Magento application. When Magento is in maintenance mode, the front end is offline, and visitors are redirected to a Service Temporarily Unavailable page.

The Magento 2 maintenance mode helps test new changes since it lets you allow one or more IP addresses to retain access to the front end. That way, you can test design and theme changes or troubleshoot bugs in a production store.

You can enable maintenance mode in Magento 2 with the following command:

$ php bin/magento maintenance:enable

Once enabled, Magento adds the .maintenance.flag file to the var/ folder in the project root directory. If you’ve exempted one or more IP addresses from being redirected to the Service Unavailable page, it includes those in a separate file called .maintenance.ip in the same folder.

When a visitor reaches your website, Magento checks for the maintenance file in the var/ folder. And if the file exists, it checks for the .maintenance.ip file containing the list of exempt IP addresses.

In case of a match, it directs the visitor to the front end. And if the IP isn’t listed in the .maintenance.ip file, it redirects them to the maintenance page.

Here’s what the default maintenance page looks like:

Access the Magento command line interface (CLI) over SSH and go to the pub/errors/ folder in the Magento root directory.

Duplicate the default/ folder using the following command:

$ cp -R default custom

The above command copies the contents of the default folder into a new folder called custom. That way, the default folder can be a fallback for when the Magento error processor cannot find our custom template.

$ cd custom

<?php

/**

* Copyright © Magento, Inc. All rights reserved.

* See COPYING.txt for license details.

*/

?>




<h1>We&rsquo;re Temporarily Offline</h1>

<p>

We&rsquo;re conducting routine maintenance to improve your shopping

experience. Here are some ways you can reach us in the meantime:

</p>

<p><strong>Email: </strong><a href="mailto:#">[email protected]</a></p>

<p><strong>Phone: </strong><a href="tel:#"> (555) 555-1234</a></p>

<h2>We&rsquo;ll be back online shortly!</h2>

<p>&mdash; Example.com</p>

The above code is a simple responsive maintenance page template. Make sure to edit the information inside it, such as the business name, email address, and phone number, before pasting the code.

Next, we’ll create a CSS file to style our custom Magento 2 maintenance page.

Navigate to the CSS folder inside the custom directory and create a backup of the default .css file as follows:

$ mv styles.css styles.css.bak

Then, create a new CSS file named styles.css and insert the following code inside it:

/**

* Copyright © Magento, Inc. All rights reserved.

* See COPYING.txt for license details.

*/




body {

display: block;

max-width: 750px;

background: #0092C8;

color: #fff;

font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif;

font-size: 18px;

line-height: 1.5;

margin: 0 auto;

padding-top: 150px;

text-align: left;

}

a {

color: #000;

text-decoration: none;

}

a:hover {

color: #fff;

text-decoration: none;

}

h1 {

font-size: 50px;

font-weight: 700;

margin: 0 0 20px;

}

h2 {

font-size: 30px;

font-weight: 700;

margin: 0 0 10px;

}

Step 3: Create a local.xml File

Now, it’s time to edit the local.xml file to instruct Magento to use our newly created custom Magento 2 maintenance page.

Navigate back to the pub/errors/ folder using the following command:

$ cd..

Copy the sample local.xml file to create a new one using the following command:

$ cp local.xml.sample local.xml

Edit the newly created file and replace default inside the <skin> node with the name of the folder containing our custom maintenance mode page. In our case, it’s custom. Here’s what the file should look like:

$ php bin/magento maintenance:enable

$ php bin/magento maintenance:disable

We’ve shown you how to create a basic custom Magento 2 maintenance page without a Magento extension. But that’s just a glimpse of what’s possible. Play around with the HTML and CSS to customize the maintenance page to match your online branding.

And make sure you test this in a staging environment before implementing it in your production store. If you don’t have access to a staging environment, sign up for Managed Magento Hosting with Hostdedi to access Magento-ready servers with dedicated staging websites.

Browse our plans to get started today.