Reginald Chan

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  • 31 WordPress Agency Tools That Everyone Should Be Using Today

    31 WordPress Agency Tools That Everyone Should Be Using Today

    What are the tools used by WordPress agencies? For starters, no two WordPress agencies are using similar set of tools. But in this post, you will find popular WordPress agency tools that are commonly used by WordPress agencies around the world.

    Let’s start, shall we?

    WordPress Builders And WordPress Themes

    Most WordPress agencies would use WordPress builders to build websites. These tools are fast and easy to use, as well as creating templates to make the website development even faster.

    Here’s the list:

    Using WordPress builders are not compulsory but they certainly helps when it comes to WordPress development.

    Analytics Tools

    WordPress agencies don’t only create WordPress websites, they often offer SEO and content writing services. In this case, analytics tools are critical for performing the tasks properly.

    Here’s the list of analytics tools most agencies are using:

    Using the right analytics tool will help you create better content and UI to create conversion-focused WordPress designs.

    WordPress Hosting Solutions

    One of the best way to upsell a client is to offer WordPress hosting solution. This allows the WordPress agency to have better control of the server and perform the need speed optimization to make WordPress faster.

    Here are some of the best WordPress hosting solutions for WordPress agencies:

    I recommend you to take your time to decide on choosing the best WordPress hosting solution for your client. Going with the wrong one will create a lot of headache and unforeseen challenges.

    WordPress Plugins

    The right WordPress plugin is going to save you a lot of time and gives you tons of advantages when building WordPress posts and pages.

    At the same time, WordPress plugins give you functionabilities that would take a long time to craft if you are hard-coding yourself.

    Here’s the list of WordPress plugins that are used by WordPress agencies:

    It is important to note that some of these WordPress plugins come with lifetime deal (LTD). This makes it even more profitable for the WordPress agencies in the long run—since they only need to pay once and use forever.

  • Do I Need A WordPress Care Package?

    Do I Need A WordPress Care Package?

    WordPress care packages are pretty much on demand WordPress support. WordPress is a powerful and user-friendly CMS for beginners but at times, it can be really challenging for those who have no experience with coding. 

    If you have ever encountered your WordPress going down (error 404, ouch) or a totally destroyed website layout thanks to the incompatibility of new plugins, you know exactly what I mean.

    Launching a WordPress agency with the right skills and people can be really profitable — that’s why there are so many companies including large ones are promoting WordPress care package.

    But, do you know that you DO NOT need WordPress care package as much as you thought you need it?

    Here’s why!

    The Truth About WordPress Care Packages

    When you sign up for a WordPress care package like the ones I personally promote in WP Maven, you are guaranteed with support whenever you need it. This means that you don’t need to wait for day for a response for your support ticket. 

    These on-demand WordPress support allows you to solve WordPress related problems fast and effectively, avoiding any downtime or loss of income.

    Here are some reasons why you NEED a WordPress care package:

    • High traffic website (over 100k traffic per month)
    • A complex WordPress site, making out of over 20+ plugins
    • Cases of hacking and invulnerability
    • Using shared web hosting or low powered web hosting plans
    • You want to sleep well at night knowing that your website is taken care of

    Here are some reasons why you DON’T NEED a WordPress care package:

    • Paying a subscription fee on a monthly basis can be heavy for your wallet
    • You require less than 5 hours of support each month
    • Your website has under 100k traffic per month
    • Your website revenue generation is under $100 per month
    • You don’t mind ‘trying an error’ and fixing WordPress problems

    You see, WordPress care packages are often billed on a monthly basis. This can be rather heavy for many website owners especially when they are only generating under $100 a month.

    In this case, it is better for you to go for pay-as-you-go WordPress care packages that helps you to save money and only paying for WordPress services when you really need it.

  • How To Make My WordPress Lightweight And Loads Blazing Fast?

    How To Make My WordPress Lightweight And Loads Blazing Fast?

    Having a fast loading WordPress website is important and there is absolutely no denial in this. While there are many tricks to improve the loading speed such as using cache plugin, it is important to understand that a lightweight WordPress website loads way faster than a heavy one.

    So, how to make my WordPress lightweight?

    I’m happy that you asked and in this article, I’ll share with you exactly how I made my WordPress lightweight and improved the loading speed dramatically.

    But Wait. Who Am I?

    My name is Reginald and you can call me “Reg”. I’m the founder of this blog as well as the founder of the WordPress agency, WP Maven. I do WordPress for a living and been doing this passionately since 2004.

    A well optimized WordPress site is not only improves the loading speed, it makes your visitors happy and ranks better on Google too.

    Here’s the latest speed optimization I did for my corporate site. Take a look.

    Lightweight WordPress Site Loads Faster

    Lightweight WordPress Site Loads Faster

    For the record, the site above has 20 WordPress plugins (essential ones only), uses Kinsta hosting and WP Rocket. The website is build on Oxygen Builder and Advanced Gutenberg Blocks.

    1. WordPress Hosting

    First and foremost, the most effective way to make a WordPress website loads blazing fast is by using the right hosting solution.

    And I don’t mean any hosting solution.

    You see, a good WordPress host will ensure that the server is optimized for WordPress websites. NGINX, Apache etc. You get the point.

    If you are going for a cheaper WordPress hosting solution, make sure that you understands what you are signing up for. An easy alternative is to use managed WordPress hosting solutions such as Kinsta or litespeed shared hosting.

    “You don’t need to have a website loading under 1 second (even though it is very cool). Make it under 3 seconds and you will be just fine.”

    Reginald Chan

    Depending on your budget, there are quite a few great WordPress hosting that you can take a look at including:

    • Kinsta hosting (starts at $30 per month)
    • Litespeed WordPress hosting (starts at $10 per month)

    2. WordPress Theme

    Lightweight WordPress Themes

    Having a lightweight WordPress site means having a lightweight WordPress theme. A lightweight theme means that it is as bloat free as it can gets.

    Building a WordPress site is easy—get yourself a nice website builder and create a beautiful template with drag and drop. But there’s a problem.

    Some of these drag and drop builders come with tons of bloat items, from CSS to other irrelevant codes. This makes your website ‘heavy’ and this will slow down your site loading speed.

    In other words, your website is not be that blazing fast anymore.

    So, what are the best WordPress themes that are lightweight? Glad you asked. Here’s my favorite drag and drop WordPress theme builders that are super lightweight.

    “This page that you are reading is build solely on Oxygen Builder and Thrive Architect. Oxygen Builder is extremely lean and lightweight while Thrive Architect allows me to curate engaging content in just a few clicks.”

    – Reginald Chan –

    3. Remove Unwanted Plugins

    Remove Unwanted Plugins To Make WordPress Lightweight

    If you want to make your WordPress lightweight, focus in removing unwanted plugins. For example, I used to run over 40+ plugins on a single WordPress site. The sheer number of plugin makes it tough for me to manage my WordPress and optimize it properly.

    With a few tweaks and customization, I was able to remove unwanted plugins and make my WordPress lighter.

    Take a look at the plugins you had installed. Uninstall those who are no longer in use and redundant.

    4. Use A Cache Plugin

    Install WordPress Cache Plugin

    Using a WordPress cache plugin goes a long way. From optimizing codes (HTML, CSS and JS) to preloading your site files so they get delivered faster to your web visitors.

    There are many cache plugins found in the WordPress repository and I personally recommend WP Rocket. As a matter of fact, I was so happy with WP Rocket that I signed up for 24 months for additional discounts.

    Some of the best WordPress cache plugins are:

    • WP Rocket
    • WP Super Cache
    • Autoptimize

    5. Use A CDN

    How To Use CDN To Make WordPress Faster

    A CDN has many usages, including serving files and images from the nearest datacenters. All my sites are using Kinsta CDN for general static files while I use Gumlet to as my image CDN.

    There are also great alternatives such as Cloudflare CDN which performs decently well too.

    6. Optimize Images

    Optimize Images To Make WordPress Lightweight

    Last but not least, make it a point to optimize all images before uploading to WordPress. There are many ways to optimize the images and one of them is to resize the images based on your site’s image dimension. 

    Not sure how to do it?

    Here are some of the best and free WordPress image optimizers that you can download today.

    Building A WordPress Website That Is Lightweight

    The process of building a lightweight WordPress site isn’t a walk in the park. It takes time, effort and patience to get it right (such as configuring WP Rocket). Nonetheless, Google is playing the speed factor for websites and if you want better ranking on Google, make sure you are making your WordPress website as lightweight as possible.

  • What Should I Do With $200 (And Make A Profit)?

    What Should I Do With $200 (And Make A Profit)?

    Do you have $200 right now and not sure what to do with it? Don’t worry, I got you covered right here.

    You see, some days back I had an extra $200 which I was thinking how I can make some money out of it. I ended up making an extra $30 out of the $200 investment which is pretty cool.

    Hey, you can’t complain for getting extra money or profit, right?

    So, what did I do?

    Introducing Day Trading

    What To Do With $200 Day Trading

    Yes, this is gambling and if you are in some way not agreeable with gambling, the money is best invested into small business ideas such as business ideas for men, and these for women.

    Now that we are clear, let’s talk about day trading a.k.a. mid-range risk in investing.

    Day trading is a process where you do not keep the stock or bond in your hand overnight. Some trading platform charges an amount for ‘night storage’ and day trading is an excellent choice to avoid the additional fees.

    Start Day Trading For FREE

    There are many trading platforms in the market but my favorite is eToro as it is legal entity that is safe to play and free from scam.

    How To Make Money With Day Trading With Only $200?

    If you are using eToro (which I highly recommend) for day trading, there are two ways you can do with this.

    • Copy other professional traders (minimum investment is $200)
    • Buy and sell stocks on your own account

    The first option is risky but effective if you want a hand’s free strategy. However, it is important to understand that NOT all traders are day traders.

    The second option is to buy and sell stocks on your own—a.k.a. becoming a day trader for yourself. Personally, I go with this route if I have $200 only as I have control on how much I could sell and profit.

    What Is The Safe Value For Profit In Day Trading?

    I wish I had the answer to this but sadly, no. 

    Day trading counts on gut feeling and yes, some knowledge in the stock market. If you are looking for quick turnaround, cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin is a great option to roll with. Two other slower but safer options are oil and gold. In the recent drop in oil and gold prices, I was able to generate around 20 – 35% profit in a day.

    But yes, there are certainly some risks within it. Therefore, I recommend you to play it safe and take sometime to understand the game before going all in.

  • 5 Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers To Improve Your SEO Ranking

    5 Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers To Improve Your SEO Ranking

    Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers

    Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers 2020

    Some months back, I was wondering if I’m using the best WordPress SEO plugin for my blogs (yes, it’s plural). You see, I migrated Yoast SEO to Rank Math in early 2019 and Rank Math was great. But, I couldn’t stop thinking if there is other better WordPress SEO plugins that I should be using which will help me in my WP sites rankings.

    After a good two months of research, I came into conclusion on the best WordPress SEO plugin that I should be using.

    And here’s the funny thing.

    My research had opened up MORE SEO plugins—which ultimately, I decided to create this post.

    I hope this post helps you to decide the best SEO plugin for your WordPress site!

    Which Is The Best SEO Plugin For WordPress In 2020?

    If you are looking for a quick summary, here’s are the top WordPress SEO plugins that will help you increase your blog ranking quickly and effectively.

    Our Top Rated Products

    #1st RatedSEOPress Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers

    SEOPress

    I discoverd that SEOPress is the best WordPress plugin that fits my needs. Unlimited websites and all SEO features including schemas, markps and broken link checker, you can easily remove several plugins at one go with SEOPress.

    #2nd Rated#2nd Rated#2nd RatedRank Math Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers

    Rank Math

    Prior to SEOPress, I use Rank Math due to superiority (multiple primary keywords and social SEO). This is a best free WordPress plugin for bloggers and it offers tons of SEO features to help your article rank faster on search engines.

    #3rd RatedYoast SEO Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers

    Yoast SEO

    I’d used Yoast SEO longer than I can ever recall. This is an awesome WordPress plugin that performs decently well for bloggers. It is rather easy to setup and it doesn’t take an SEO wizard to use the plugin and configure your site for SEO properly.

    #4th RatedAll In One SEO Pack Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers

    All In One SEO Pack

    Make no mistake with AIOS. This SEO plugin is extremely easy to use and setup. All In One SEO plugin is a good choice for bloggers (too) who are looking for a simple plugin to start sending the right signals to Google (for more blog traffic).

    #5th RatedBroken Link Checker Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers

    Broken Link Checker

    I’m going to cheat a little. Broken Link Checker is the most popular SEO plugin when it comes to checking for broken links. Yes, it is not really a full-fledged SEO plugin. However, it is really easy to use (literally a plug-and-play plugin with no skills or prior knowledge required). The down side, this plugin requires heavy resources to run especially for large sites.

    Choosing The Best WordPress Plugin

    If you are looking for a reliable WordPress plugin, you can’t go wrong with SEOPress.

    Okay, I heard you.

    SEOPress is a premium WordPress SEO plugin that costs $39 per year for unlimited sites. And if you are not ready to invest right now, there’s also SEOPress free version which gives you all the basic goodies of an SEO plugin.

    SEOPress Best WordPress SEO Plugins For Bloggers

    SEOPress Pro

    Personally, SEOPress is one of the best WordPress investment I had done. With its inbuilt Dublin Core, I am able to format and structure my posts and pages to rank higher on Google.

    What Is The Best Alternative To SEOPress?

    For me, there is no denial that SEOPress is the best WordPress SEO plugin for bloggers. If SEOPress isn’t your cup of ‘tea’, a good alternative to SEOPress is Rank Math.

    At this point of writing, Rank Math is a free WordPress SEO plugin that offers significantly more SEO features compared to other free SEO plugins in the market.

    As the summary, SEOPress and Rank Math are two of the best WordPress plugins for bloggers in 2020—and you can’t go wrong with any of them.

  • 5 Most Powerful WordPress Hosting In Performance And Pricing 2020

    5 Most Powerful WordPress Hosting In Performance And Pricing 2020

    Most Powerful WordPress Hosting

    The Most Powerful WordPress Hosting 2020

    I’m a huge gig when it comes to web hosting. I have read and published posts related to “the best WordPress hosting”, “the cheapest WordPress hosting” and “the ultimate WordPress hosting” to name a few. But this is definitely the first to write about the most powerful WordPress hosting for 2020.

    Yes, you read this right.

    This post is not about just-any-other web hosting companies—these are the most powerful WordPress hosting in terms of performance, market share and of course, my personal favorite … customer support.

    So now, if you are tired of reading all those crap and full of promotion based WordPress hosting review, you are going to love this WordPress hosting review.

    Let’s dig in!

    What Is The Most Powerful WordPress Hosting Means Like?

    Honestly, there could be dozens of variations but for me, it boils down to these simple checklist:

    • Overall features
    • Customer support
    • Pricing strategy

    “More importantly, a powerful WordPress hosting is someone you can trust and backs you up when you need it.”

    Reginald Chan

    List Of The Most Powerful WordPress Hosting 2020

    BlueHost

    BlueHost Powerful WordPress Hosting

    Features

    1-click WordPress installation and multiple perks such as free domain and SSL are certainly huge plus points.

    Support

    Support is rather okay. They are not the best in the market but certainly delivers the support when you needed.

    Pricing

    BlueHost offers an excellent introductory WordPress hosting price that is unbeatable by many.

    Overall rating :  4.5 / 5

    Verdict: BlueHost is my favorite option when it comes to cheap and reliable WordPress hosting. It offers everything I need to start a blog without burning a hole in my wallet. With pricing starts at $3 per month, you can’t go wrong with BlueHost.

    Suitable for: Small WordPress websites, beginners and low traffic websites.

    SiteGround

    BlueHost Powerful WordPress Hosting

    Features

    One of the most unique semi-managed WordPress hosting that offers flexibility and scalability.

    Support

    Support is by far the best among the ‘lower’ tier WordPress hosting. Live chat is definitely a huge bonus.

    Pricing

    SiteGround comes with 3-tier WordPress hosting that are affordable and suitable for small to large sites.

    Overall rating :  4.5 / 5

    Verdict: SiteGround is another great and powerful WordPress hosting provider. It offers a nice value pack, along with top notch customer support. However, its entry level plan doesn’t come with much perks especially if you are serious in having a fast loading WordPress website.

    Suitable for: Small WordPress websites, beginners and low-medium traffic websites.

    Flywheel

    FlyWheel Powerful WordPress Hosting

    Features

    Flywheel is apart of the WPEngine family and it is a very popular option for agencies due to whitelabeling.

    Support

    Support is rather good and courteous. However, it doesn’t offer live chat which could be improved.

    Pricing

    Flywheel is highly affordable and you can even transfer the billing to your clients in just 1-click without hassle.

    Overall rating :  4 / 5

    Verdict: Flywheel is an excellent WordPress hosting provider for creative agencies and freelancers. The biggest advantage using Flywheel is the ability to transfer payments to your clients in just 1-click (which is pretty awesome). It’s pricing of $15 for a tiny site (up to 5,000 visits a month) is a great entry level for a fully managed WordPress hosting solution.

    Suitable for: Creative agencies, freelancers, WordPress developers and serious bloggers.

    Kinsta

    Kinsta Powerful WordPress Hosting

    Features

    Google Cloud Platform, CDN and DNS management make Kinsta stay right ahead of its competitors in the race.

    Support

    Support at Kinsta is superb with 24/7 live chat support and super courteous suppor team members.

    Pricing

    Kinsta is not the cheapest managed WordPress hosting but the pricing is rather decend according to market price.

    Overall rating :  4.5 / 5

    Verdict: Kinsta hosting is by far my favorite and most powerful WordPress hosting I had ever reviewed. This site is hosted on Kinsta and if you want to have an excellent experience with web hosting, Kinsta is the answer. 

    Suitable for: Medium to high traffic websites, business owners and serious website owners.

    WP Engine

    WP Engine Powerful WordPress Hosting

    Features

    Optimized servers for speed and bullet proof security features are some of the WP Engine selling points.

    Support

    WP Engine excels in customer support and its support team are always happy to chip in to help out.

    Pricing

    WP Engine is priced slightly higher than the market median. It’s entry level is also higher than the rest in the market.

    Overall rating :  3.5 / 5

    Verdict: WP Engine is one of the leading managed WordPress hosting provider in the world. Their backend and branding give a very premium feel and in terms of performance, they are slightly slower than Kinsta but excels above the rest.

    Suitable for: Medium to high traffic websites and while its plans are geared towards low to mid tier plans, WP Engine enterprise plan is one of the most expensive in the market with above average server performance.

    Which Is The Most Powerful WordPress Hosting Provider In 2020?

    This is an excellent question. For me, I would go with Kinsta hosting anytime of the day mainly for their excellent support. If you are having a bad day, speak to the support team and I’m sure they will delight you more than you can ever imagine!


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