A few other reasons you can’t see comments on Facebook are that your Facebook app is glitchy, you’re using an outdated app version, your app has core file issues, and more.

Check Your Smartphone’s Internet Connection

The most common reason your Facebook comments aren’t loading is that your internet connection has stopped working. Your Apple iPhone or Android phone may have lost internet access, causing your comments not to load.

In this case, check and fix your phone’s internet connection problems. You can launch a web browser and try to load a site to check if your connection is active. If your connection is faulty, try to resolve the problem by rejoining your wireless network, restarting your router, or contacting your internet service provider (ISP).

Check if Facebook’s Servers Are Down

If Facebook’s servers are experiencing an outage, that can cause your comments not to load. Facebook isn’t always up, and there are occasions when the social media platform faces outages.

In this case, check if Facebook is currently down using a site like Downdetector. If this site says the social media platform is down, wait until the company fixes the issue and brings the service back up. You can’t do anything on your end to resolve the problem.

Close and Relaunch Your Facebook Application

If your Facebook comments still aren’t loading, your app may be experiencing problems. Such app glitches are common, and you can experience these problems in many other apps as well.

One way to fix these minor app problems is by closing and reopening your apps. This turns off and re-enables all your app features, fixing many minor issues.

On Android

1. Press the Recents button to view your open apps.
2. Find and swipe up on Facebook to close the app.

3. Launch the app from your app drawer.

On iPhone

1. Swipe up from the bottom of your screen and pause in the middle.
2. Find and swipe up on Facebook to quit the app.
3. Relaunch the app by tapping the app icon on your home screen.

Clear Your Facebook App’s Cache Files

Your Facebook app stores various temporary files on your phone to enhance your app experience. You may start to experience issues in your app if these cached files become corrupted. This may have happened to your Facebook app.

Luckily, fixing an app’s bad cache is as easy as clearing the cache. Doing so only deletes your app’s temporary files and doesn’t affect your personal data.

Note that only Android allows you to clear an app’s cache files. You have to remove and reinstall the app on an iPhone to delete the app’s cache.

1. Launch your Android phone’s app drawer, tap and hold on Facebook, and select App info.
2. Choose Storage usage on the following screen.
3. Select Clear cache to remove the app’s cached data.

4. Launch the app.

Update Your Facebook Mobile App

If you’re using the Facebook app’s old version on your phone, that may be why you have issues loading your comments. Old app versions often have bugs and other problems, which prevent the app from working normally.

Fortunately, you can fix that with ease by updating your app to the latest version. This patches your app’s bugs and possibly adds new features.

On Android

1. Launch Play Store on your phone.
2. Find the Facebook app.
3. Tap Update to update the app.

On iPhone

1. Open App Store on your phone.
2. Tap the Updates tab at the bottom.
3. Choose Update next to Facebook on the list.

Fix Facebook Comments Not Loading by Restarting Your iPhone or Android Phone

If your Facebook app update didn’t fix your issue, your phone’s operating system may be acting up. Such system problems can cause your installed apps to malfunction.

In this case, give your iPhone or Android phone a restart to possibly resolve your problem. Restarting often helps fix many minor issues on your devices.

On Android

1. Hold down the Power button on your phone.
2. Select Restart in the menu to reboot your phone.

3. Launch Facebook when the phone restarts.

On iPhone

1. Press either Volume button and Side button at the same time.
2. Drag the slider to power off the phone.

3. Power on the phone by pressing and holding down the Side button.
4. Open the Facebook app.

Log Out and Back Into Your Facebook Account

If your Facebook comment issue persists, your login session in the app may be problematic. One way to get around these sign-in-related problems is by signing out and back into your account in the app.

That refreshes your account session in the app and possibly fixes your issue.

1. Launch Facebook on your phone.
2. Select Menu.
3. Choose Log out at the bottom.

4. Sign back into your account.

Uninstall and Reinstall Facebook on Your Phone

If the above methods haven’t fixed your Facebook comment issue, it’s likely the problem is with your Facebook app. Your app may be faulty at its core, causing your problem.

In this case, you can resolve the issue by removing and reinstalling the app on your phone. Doing so deletes all your current app files and brings new files. You’ll have to log back into your account when you re-download the app, so keep your logins handy.

On Android

1. Find Facebook in your app drawer, tap and hold on the app, and select Uninstall.

2. Choose Uninstall in the prompt.
3. Re-download the app by launching Play Store, finding Facebook, and choosing Install.

On iPhone

1. Tap and hold on Facebook on your home screen.
2. Choose Remove App > Delete App in the menu.
3. Reinstall the app by visiting App Store, locating Facebook, and tapping the download icon.

The Comment May Have Been Deleted

If even reinstalling the app didn’t fix your issue, the comment you want to see may be deleted. The original comment author or Facebook may have removed the comment from your post.

Facebook usually removes the comments that go against the platform’s guidelines. This may have happened to the specific comment you want to see.

Your “Why Can’t I See Facebook Comments?” Question Is Answered

Facebook’s comments can go missing for various reasons. Something on Facebook’s end may be off, or your mobile app may be experiencing issues. Regardless, you can use the above methods to resolve your problem and access your comments again.

We hope the guide helps you see the comments you’re interested in.

So what is GDPR and how can you make your business compliant?

In this article, you’ll learn how to be GDPR compliant without having to read the dry EU data protection directive. We’ll help you understand what GDPR is and tell you what steps you need to take to make your site GDPR compliant.

What Is GDPR?

GDPR is a data protection directive in the European Union designed to protect the online privacy of EU citizens. It regulates the way personal data is used and what type of data websites can collect about you. Despite being an EU regulation, GDPR applies to all websites accessed by users from the EU. As a result, websites and businesses have to be GDPR compliant or block EU traffic.

With that in mind, here are the key aspects of GDPR that might affect your business:

• Your site has to clearly inform the visitors that their personal data is being collected.
• You also need to disclose how and why their data is collected and stored.
• If users ask you to delete personal data you collected, you must comply with the request in most cases.
• Users can also request a copy of all the personal information you store.
• If one of your business’s main activities is to gather and store personal data, you need to hire a data protection officer.
• If your website is breached and the personal information of your users leaks out, you have 72 hours to report the breach.
• Breaking the GDPR regulation can lead to fines of up to €20 million (~$24 million) or 4% of your company’s annual turnover.

The main purpose of GDPR is to protect people and their personal information from data breaches. Now the question is, what types of data fall under GDPR?

Types of Data Regulated by GDPR

Whether you built your website from scratch or used a WordPress theme, your site gathers different types of data. Websites collect information in different ways, including through analytics, WordPress forms, subscription forms, contact forms, and email marketing campaigns.

In short, all personal data falls under GDPR, but we can break it down into the following types:

• Genetic and health information.
• Biometric data.
• Political and/or religious views.
• Race, ethnicity, and gender.
• Web data such as your IP address and cookie data

As long as your business stores any of the aforementioned data of EU citizens, your site needs to be GDPR compliant. Remember that this applies even if you don’t have a presence within the European Union’s borders.

Steps Required To be GDPR Compliant

When you read about your responsibilities as a website owner you might feel overwhelmed and decide it’s easier to block all incoming EU traffic. Don’t let GDPR discourage you. Below are the main steps you need to take to be GDPR compliant.

1. Improve Your Privacy Policy

Be transparent with collecting, storing, and sharing data. Your website should contain a detailed privacy policy that clearly explains data collection practices, data protection, the usage of cookies, and data sharing. A good privacy policy should at least include the following points:

• You don’t sell your users’ private data.
• You don’t share private data unless the law obligates you.
• The types of data you collect.
• The reasons why you collect data and how you use it.
• How you protect user data.
• How your plugins collect and use data.

Be as clear as possible by using simple language that doesn’t leave any room for interpretation and you’ll have a clear-cut transparent privacy policy.

2. Create a Cookie Collection Notice

According to the GDPR, cookies count as personal data, so you need to ask your users for consent before using cookie data. Place an explicit cookie collection notice on your website and make sure you allow users access to your website even if they don’t give consent. Your users should also have an easy way of withdrawing their consent at any time.

3. Display Notices On All Website Forms

It’s standard practice to collect some user data through various types of submission forms. If you want to continue collecting email addresses and other details, post a data collection notice. Don’t gather any data before that point and without the user’s acknowledgment. Otherwise, your business could receive a hefty fine for breaking GDPR.

Be as clear as possible with your wording and offer all the important details about collecting data. You should also avoid using pre-checked tick boxes. The user needs to understand that data collection is optional and that it requires their consent.

4. Make Sure All Plugins Are GDPR Compliant

If you’re using third-party plugins that collect data, like Google Analytics, you need to make the data anonymous. This can be challenging to do manually, but you can find GDPR-compliant plugins that handle this process for you. Just search for a tool with GDPR compliance settings.

5. Use the Double Opt-in

GDPR doesn’t make double opt-ins obligatory, but it’s highly recommended to use them. A double opt-in means you’re asking the user twice to acknowledge that they’re giving consent for data collection. This is particularly important for email list subscriptions. 

To add a double opt-in, you need to first request consent through the website’s subscription form. Then the user should consent a second time by clicking a link they receive through email.

Using the double opt-in shows that you’re dedicated to data protection and privacy, and it also gives the authorities further proof that your site is GDPR-compliant.

6. Add Unsubscribe Links

Include easy-to-read unsubscribe links with every communication you send to your subscribers. Unsubscribing from your mailing list should be an easy process and instant.

7. Delete Personal Data on Request

GDPR gives users the right to be forgotten. This means they can request at all times for their data to be deleted. Always do as requested. This includes removing your users from mailing lists, deleting their accounts, and wiping any personal information you have about them. Even blog posts and forum comments count as personal data and should be removed if requested.

8. Don’t Buy Mailing Lists

Buying mailing lists isn’t recommended because you might be in violation of GDPR. In most cases, you can’t be sure whether those email addresses were collected with the users’ consent.

That said if you’re still determined to buy a mailing list, make sure you at least include unsubscribe links with every email you send.

Being GDPR Compliant Is Worth It

Open your website and business to EU citizens by following all the steps above. Being GDPR compliant might sound challenging at first, but it’s not that hard. It mostly involves being transparent about collecting data and asking for consent. As a bonus, non-EU users will see that your business cares about privacy and data protection and they’ll be more likely to trust you.

There are a few ways you can add a Discord server widget to your site. The easiest way is to use Discord’s own widget system, but this is quite basic. If you need something more advanced, you may need to look at a third-party alternative like WidgetBot. Here’s what you’ll need to know to add a Discord widget to your website.

What Is a Discord Widget and How Can It Be Used?

A Discord widget is an embedded version of the Discord client that you can integrate into pages on a website. Depending on the type of widget you use, this can show your members and channel list, provide a quick invite link to new users, and allow users to chat directly without visiting the Discord website or using the client.

The built-in widget is an advertisement tool for your server, allowing you to show off your members and gain new ones through your site. However, it doesn’t allow you to send messages or interact with the server, other than joining it using the integrated invite link.

If you want to use a more advanced widget, you can use a third-party alternative called WidgetBot. WidgetBot looks almost exactly like the Discord client, allowing users to sign in, send messages, switch between channels, and use everything that Discord has to offer—all within an embedded widget on your site.

While the setup process for WidgetBot is a little more complex, it offers a more functional alternative to users than Discord’s own widget system. Both types of widgets allow server owners to quickly advertise their server to new users, however, making it a better alternative than Slack, which offers no similar marketing features.

Embedding a Standard Discord Server Widget

There are two stages to adding a standard Discord server widget to your website. You’ll first need to enable the widget, then copy the auto-generated HTML code from Discord’s server settings to embed it into your website.

1. To start, open the Discord website or desktop client and sign in, then select your server from the server icons on the left. Select your server name at the top of the channel list, then select Server Settings from the drop-down menu.

2. In the Discord settings menu, select Widget. To enable the widget on your server, select the Enable Server Widget slider, placing it in the On position (in green).

3. With the server widget activated for your server, you can now copy the necessary HTML code to embed it into your website. Scroll down to the bottom of the Widget menu, then select Copy in the Premade Widget code box.

Once you’ve copied the code snippet containing the premade Discord widget, you can then integrate it into your website code. The widget will allow users to view the active member list and sign up to your server. If you need a more advanced widget, however, you’ll need to use WidgetBot.

Creating Custom Discord Widgets Using WidgetBot

Discord’s widget is a great way to add a more advanced invitation link to your server, but other than showing off your members list, it doesn’t offer much else. If you want to integrate a (near) fully functional version of the Discord client into your website, you can use WidgetBot to do it.

WidgetBot is a fully embedded version of Discord that you can tailor to your needs. Size, functionality, channel support, guest memberships, and more—all can be used in a WidgetBot widget on your site to bring in new users and chat with them directly without needing to visit the Discord website or use the client app.

Some features, such as read-only channels and custom widget themes, require a paid membership. However, the core features (including sending messages and joining the server directly) are supported for free.

Adding WidgetBot to Your Server

To begin, you’ll need to add WidgetBot itself to your server. WidgetBot works by adding the WidgetBot bot to your server, so you’ll need to do that first.

1. Open the WidgetBot invitation link and sign in to Discord to proceed. You’ll need to select your server from the list, then select Continue to proceed.

2. At the next stage, you’ll be asked which permissions you want to grant WidgetBot. Leave all of the checkboxes enabled, then select Authorize to proceed. Return to your server once this process is complete.

Embedding WidgetBot on Your Website

Once WidgetBot is running on your server, you can then proceed to add a WidgetBot widget to your website. There are several types of widget you can use, but the simplest way to add a basic widget is to use the ??crate command on your server.

This generates an HTML code snippet that you can easily embed into your web pages, creating a Discord chat icon in the bottom-right corner. Once pressed, this opens a small (and fully functional) Discord client for your web users.

1. To begin, open the Discord website or client and select your server from the list on the left. In a suitably private channel on your server containing the WidgetBot bot, type ??crate into the message box, then send the message.

2. Sending ??crate in your server will cause the bot to automatically generate a HTML code snippet that you can embed. Select the code from the message, then right-click > Copy or select Ctrl + C on your keyboard.

3. With the code copied to your clipboard, paste the code into your website HTML and publish. The code itself will create a Discord icon in the bottom-right—select this to view and interact with the widget, including posting messages to your server directly.

If you’d prefer to use a different type of WidgetBot widget, you can learn more about each type of widget, including how to create and embed them into your website, by visiting the WidgetBot documentation website.

Making Use of Discord Widgets

A Discord server widget is a good way to advertise your community to new visitors to your website, giving you another way to increase membership. Once you’ve built up your server, you can then think about how to use Discord effectively. You can start by adding bots to your server to increase functionality, from music bots to moderation.

If you’re having trouble with Discord, however, there are solutions. For instance, errors like a Discord fatal Javascript error can usually be fixed by reinstalling the app, while Discord connection issues could point to a problem with your DNS settings. There are a number of Discord alternatives you can try, too, if you still have issues.

So what’s a “custom” domain? If you purchase a domain name that you can define yourself, that’s called a custom domain. The opposite of this might be a domain you receive from a service like WordPress.com or Blogger.com. 

Online publishing services that provide you with a domain name typically provide you with a “subdomain” underneath their own parent domain. For example, WordPress.com gives you a blog with the URL “yoursite.home.blog”. 

In this case, home.blog is the parent domain, and “yoursite” is your subdomain.

How to Set Up a Custom Domain

Before you can configure a domain name to point to your website, you need to buy one. 

The cheapest way to buy your own custom domain is to find one that isn’t taken yet. All domain registrars where you can buy a custom domain name provide a search feature for you to do this.

The most popular and well-known domain registrars where you can search for and purchase a domain name include:

• Domain.com
• GoDaddy
• Namecheap
• BuyDomains

You can also usually purchase a custom domain from your web hosting provider as well, so that may be a good first place to check.

Expect to pay about $9.99 to $24.99 per year for an available domain name. If you don’t want people looking up domain ownership from a service like ICANN or Whois Lookup, you can purchase what’s known as Ownership Protection or Domain Privacy.

This is available for a small annual fee (usually from $2.99 to $7.99), and provides you peace of mind knowing that spammers or others won’t be able to obtain your email address or phone number.

How to Configure Your New Custom Domain

Once you’ve purchased your own custom domain, you still need to point it to the web server where your actual website is hosted.

To do this, log into the account where you purchased your domain and find the Manage DNS settings for that domain. This will take you to an area where you can change the “custom nameservers” for your domain.

Nameservers are the servers (typically provided by your web hosting company) that the domain registrar will refer web browsers to whenever anyone types your custom domain into their web browser.

The web host’s name servers handle redirecting traffic to the correct server that hosts your website. How do you find the correct name servers for your web host? You can find them by logging into your web hosting account and navigating to your admin panel where “Site Information” is provided.

Just look for the IP and Name Servers section and you should see the names of your web host’s two name servers.

Make a note of these two name servers, then return to your domain registrar account and type those into the fields for your domain’s custom nameservers.

Just Save the changes, and you’re done. 

Name server changes don’t usually take effect immediately. In fact, it can take up to 24 hours before the changes propagate across the internet. You can use a service like whatsmydns.net to check whether your domain’s IP address and DNS record information has propagated across the internet.

Once this process is done, any time anyone types your new custom domain into their browser’s URL field, the browser will be directed to your web server where your website is hosted.

How and Why to Redirect a Custom Domain

Redirecting a domain means telling the web host you’ve pointed the domain to, to redirect incoming traffic for that custom domain to a different one. There are important reasons you may want to redirect a custom domain.

The most common reason for doing this is if you want to register slightly alternative spellings of your domain name so you can point them all to your main domain. This can help you recapture potentially lost traffic due to misspellings.

For example, if you type “googel.com” into your web browser’s URL field, you’ll notice that the URL automatically changes to “google.com” and takes you to Google’s search engine. This is because Google redirects “googel.com” to “google.com”.

To do this, register the custom domain with the alternative spellings, and follow the same steps above to point that custom domain to your web server using the correct name servers.

Then, log into your web hosting account and find the menu option for Redirects.

You’ll see a window where you can select the original (typically misspelled) custom domain you registered. Then in the Redirects to field, you can specify what URL you want the web host to redirect that custom domain’s traffic to.

Keep in mind that you can type any URL at all, even if you don’t own it. For example, you could redirect your custom domain to “google.com” if you wanted to. There wouldn’t be much sense to it, but this is how redirects work.

You’re not redirecting directly to the web server location where your website files are. Instead, you’re sending incoming visitors to the URL, which will then deliver them ultimately to the web host location.

Other Uses for a Custom Domain

Another useful benefit of registering and redirecting a custom domain is that you can also create your own email address that contains that custom domain.

For example, if you create a custom domain for a profile website using a domain with your own name, you can then create an email address with your own name. To set up such an email, you first need to redirect the custom domain to your web host using the steps above.

Then, log into your web host account and select Accounts in the Email menu (the menu itself might be slightly different).

Here you can create any email account you like. For example, with my registered domain name of ryandube.com, I can create the email account, ryan@ryandube.com.

A custom domain name lets you create your own email accounts using your own domain ending to the email. For many people, this is enough benefit to register a custom domain, even if they don’t host a website to redirect it to.

Whatever your reason for registering a custom domain, as you can see it’s easy to do and useful to have.

Those services can be web services like Facebook or Spotify, or they can be devices that are part of the Internet of Things—like home automation devices connected to Google Home or Amazon Alexa. 

For example, you could set up an applet that automatically turns certain lights on in your home as soon as your smart phone connects to your home WiFi network.

Free Vs. Ready-Made IFTTT Applets

Users can choose between using ready-made applets created by the IFTTT community or creating custom applets from scratch. 

Until recently, IFTTT has always been free to users, but now the company has come under fire for implementing a limited freemium model along with a subscription-based version called IFTTT Pro. Pro subscribers pay $3.99/month, and in return they can enjoy unlimited custom applet creation, more complex applets with multiple steps, queries, and conditional logic, and customer support. 

The free plan allows users to turn on an unlimited number of ready-made applets, but users can only create three custom applets of their own. 

But don’t fret, even if you don’t want to pay for the Pro account, you can still choose from thousands of ready-made applets. 

13 Best IFTTT Applets for Online Automation

See the list below for the best IFTTT applets that will help you automate your online life on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Spotify, YouTube, and Instagram. If you’re more interested in IFTTT applets to control all your smart home automation devices, we’ve got you covered there, too.

1. Add songs to your Spotify playlist using Google Assistant 

Spotify users with Android devices can say, “Hey Google” or “OK Google, add to playlist, [Artist Name], [Song].” 

Here’s an example: “OK Google, add to playlist, The Beatles, Here Comes the Sun.” This applet turns the multi-step process of adding a song to a Spotify playlist into a single step. 

2. Add songs from videos you like on YouTube to a Spotify playlist

Any time you hear a song you like onin a YouTube video, just give the video a thumbs up on YouTube, and this applet will search for the song on Spotify. If the song is available, it will be added to the playlist you designate.

3. Automatically upload your Instagrams to a Facebook page album

If you have both an Instagram account and a Facebook page for your small business or hobby, then this applet is for you. It will save you the extra steps of posting new images to Instagram and Facebook by automatically uploading your Instagrams to whichever Facebook page you designate.

4. Tweet your Instagrams as native photos

Similarly, you can have IFTTT automatically tweet your Instagram photos to your Twitter feed. This one’s great because it tweets the actual photo instead of just an Instagram link.

5. Automatically change your Twitter profile pic when you update your Facebook photo

Some people like to standardize their online profile photos so they’re more recognizable across social media platforms. When you change your Facebook profile photo, this applet will automatically update your Twitter profile pic to the same photo.

6. Save new photos you’re tagged in on Facebook to Dropbox

Part of maintaining your online reputation is keeping an eye on what photos of you are available on the internet. This applet monitors Facebook for any photos you’re tagged in and automatically downloads them and saves them to your Dropbox.

If you don’t like what you see, you can ask your friend to either delete the photo or untag you. Plus, it’s nice to have your own copies of photos your friends and family take of you. 

7. OK, Google, call my device

Can’t find your iPad? You can’t have an online life if you can’t find your device! This applet is super handy for tracking down missing devices.

8. Create a note in Evernote by telling it to Google Assistant

Evernote users have got it good with this applet. Just say “Hey Google” followed by a phrase you can choose in the applet’s settings, and then your note (like “Hey Google, send to Evernote, check out the new restaurant on Fifth Street.”) 

9. Save Receipts to Evernote

Do you have a Health Savings Account (HSA) or incur reimbursable expenses at work?  If you need to keep track of receipts for any reason, get this applet. Not only will it save the photos you take of your receipts to Evernote, it also allows you to search for them later. Never forget to get paid back again!

10. Send me an email when Netflix updates their new releases

Do you feel like you’ve already watched everything there is to watch on Netflix? Are you constantly on the lookout for new movies and TV shows to binge on? This applet will email you when Netflix updates their new releases.

11. Update Your Android wallpaper with NASA’s image of the day

Sometimes we all need a break from this Earth. Every day this applet will update your Android device’s wallpaper to NASA’s image of the day. Start the day off right with a photo from the beautiful and cold vacuum of space!

12. Automatically set your Android wallpaper to Wikipedia’s picture of the day

If space isn’t your thing, use this applet to set your Android wallpaper to Wikipedia’s picture of the day. You’ll learn about things you never knew existed!

13. Set your Android wallpaper to the album cover of your most recently saved Spotify track

Give those album cover artists some love! This applet sets your Android wallpaper to the album cover of your most recently saved Spotify track.

Automation means more quality time for you

IFTTT is all about being kind to your future self. The more you automate, the more time you will have for the things that really matter to you. 

With so much content and products on the internet, how can you even get your site noticed? It’s like trying to get a single grain of sand noticed on a beach that’s miles long.

Thankfully, there are proven methods to stand out, and then increase website traffic rapidly once people realize your site exists.

1. Establish Your Authority

The first place people will look to learn about you when they visit your website is your About page. 

About Page and Author Bio

That’s where you want to solidify the visitor’s trust in you as an expert in the field you’re publishing content about.

It’s also a good idea to include a small profile bio at the bottom of each article. This allows visitors to see your relevant expertise without having to click anywhere else on the site.

How does this help to increase website traffic? Several ways.

First, when visitors see that you’re actually an expert in the field, they’re more likely to share your post on social media and help draw in more traffic there. Secondly, one of the many signals Google uses in its search algorithm (for where your web pages will rank) is author reputation.

Author Credentials

While their earlier authorship initiative using Google+ was phased out, the reality is that the authority and credibility of an author makes sense as a signal for the value of any article. So we can be sure that Google uses author authority and credibility to adjust the value of any web page. 

So include your credentials and experience relative to the page content anywhere and everywhere you can.

Social Media Presence

There is nothing quite as powerful at increasing website traffic quickly than getting a post to go viral on social media.

The best way to make this happen is to create an official Twitter presence for your site, and an official Facebook page as well.

If you have the time and resources to invest in it, you might also consider taking advantage of Pinterest, Instagram, and any other social networks you know well.

Once you’ve established your presence there, remember to engage, engage, and then engage some more. There is no better way to establish authority on a topic than being fully-engaged in that relevant community.

Don’t only post your blog posts or web pages whenever you publish something new. Remember to interact with other users. Follow people in your field. Reply to their comments. Retweet or repost what other people share.

Sometimes social media only provides a trickle of traffic to your site, but other times when you’ve posted something especially unique or interesting, it can easily go viral. That will send swarms of visitors to your site very quickly.

Offer Free Classes or Webinars

There are countless free platforms out there to create your own online courses or webinars. Take advantage of these and prove that you really are an expert in your field.

You can link to these courses on your website, and share them from social media. Make sure to include a link, at least in your course profile, to your website so people know where to find you.

Choose course topics to create that mirror the sorts of things you publish on your website. This way you could actually use examples or reading material from your site to bolster the course content.

Post on Quora

Quora is the site where you can find experts to answer any question you might have. Quora gets over 100 million monthly visitors. And the great thing about those visitors is that they’re highly interested in the kind of topics you publish on your site.

So this gives you two benefits. By posting answers on Quora as an expert, you gain credibility on those topics. At the same time, you can include your website in your profile, which can increase website traffic.

Again, this is another resource that does require time and effort on your part to take advantage of. So if you take this route, make sure you schedule time every week to visit the site and post responses to questions or comments.

2. Implement Common Sense SEO

Obviously, a big component of your traffic will come from Google Search. You don’t have to be an SEO expert to do a good job here, but you do need to follow basic SEO optimization tips to make sure you aren’t hurting your site’s chances of ranking well.

Here are a few of the most important items to take care of to optimize your site’s SEO.

• Choose a good domain name, preferably as short as possible and easy to remember.
• Set up the Title and Description for your site. WordPress provides fields for these.
• Configure your post slugs (URLs) to use the category and the title of the post. If you don’t use categories, then just include the title to make the URL as short and simple as possible.
• Create unique, quality content. Use SEO tools like WordTracker or SEMRush to find topics that a lot of people are searching for but have low competition (few sites on the web cover it).

• Use an SEO plugin if you use WordPress. These make sure the basic things like sitemaps and other technical issues are set up properly for the best site SEO.
• Hire experts to write content for you who have proven expertise and credentials on those topics. Make sure to include their profiles with the content.
• Install a CDN service like CloudFlare or Stackpath. These services store and cache some of your site’s content on servers local to your visitors, so things like pictures or scripts will download to their browsers more quickly.
• Install an SSL certificate on your site so that your URL starts with “HTTPS”. Google ranks secure sites higher than others.

If you implement all of these tips, you can be confident you’re doing everything you can to optimize your site for the best SEO. This will increase website traffic significantly.

3. Create YouTube Tutorials

YouTube has a tremendous audience. So, why not take advantage of that and drive some of that audience to your site by creating YouTube tutorials?

Once you’ve created these, include them in your website content for visitors who prefer to watch videos rather than read content to learn things.

Include a link to your site content in the YouTube video description, as well as a link to your site in your YouTube profile.

4. Write Medium Articles

Medium, the crowd-sourced article website, gets nearly 200 million visitors a month. It may seem counterintuitive to publish content on a site other than your own. However, publishing articles here establishes you as an expert.

You can mention the site or sites you run in your profile, and also sparingly link to your own site as a resource anywhere in your content.

Like Quora and YouTube, posting here builds up your reputation, has the potential to increase website traffic via links, and it also provides your site with backlinks from a highly ranked, authoritative domain.

5. Constantly Update Old Content

Outdated content just doesn’t usually rank as well as freshly published content. The key word here is “usually”. This will typically be the case if the content of the article itself is outdated and no longer accurate.

However, it’s not the case when that article is still accurate, and remains one of the best sources of information about the topic on the internet. To determine whether you should update old content to increase your website traffic, consider:

• Does the content accurately answer the query, and offer the most recent information?
• Is the formatting well optimized for SEO (good headers throughout, easily readable).
• Is there any new information missing from the original article?
• How well does the article already rank in Google Search results?

The bottom line is that if you’re already listed in the top spot in Google Search results, you probably don’t have to do much to the original article, unless the content is outdated.

6. Conduct Online Surveys on Hot Topics

If you really want to drive a Twitter or Facebook post viral, create a poll or a survey on a controversial topic.

Here’s the great thing about polls. They get people forwarding the poll to friends in order to achieve the final results they want. People come back to check results. 

You can do this the easy way on Twitter by creating a new Tweet and then selecting the bar chart Poll icon. 

Just enter the poll question, choices, and other details. Then Tweet it and wait for the responses. You can embed the Twitter poll on your website to further drive traffic to it (and responses).

The hope here is that people will also check your profile and learn about your site. However, if you want to drive more traffic, create your own custom poll and then post it to Twitter. Direct people to your site to view results. This will encourage people to bookmark your site so they can check it later.

7. Conduct Influencer Interviews

A final way to drive a great deal of traffic to your site is by reaching out to influencers on Twitter in the same field you publish content about. Reach out and ask about doing an interview. 

When you publish an interview with an influencer who has a very large social media following, it helps both the influencer and your website.

What does the influencer get out of the interview?

• More credibility as an expert in their field
• Pride from having their interview published online
• Proof to their followers that they are in fact influential
• Free publicity

What does your site get out of the interview?

• Search traffic whenever anyone searches their name on Google
• Social traffic when the influencer shares a link to the interview
• Potentially more followers on your own official social media account

Interviews are a fantastic way to engage with the community and also get your site a much needed boost in traffic.

A YouTube channel’s visual style is almost as important as the content it creates. Everything from the banner on your YouTube page to each upload’s thumbnail will affect whether people decide to watch your videos.

This article will show you how to decide on and make the perfect YouTube channel artwork.

YouTube Channel Art Explained

Before going into the technical details of actually creating your YouTube channel art, it’s worth learning what you’ll need to make. The main visual points of any YouTube channel can be divided into three parts:

• A profile picture – think of this as your channel’s logo
• A channel banner – a larger image representing what your channel does
• Individual video thumbnails – Similar themed but self-contained images designed to be enticing for viewers.

The OnlineTechTips YouTube channel uses a similar art style and color palette for all three elements. The profile picture features the name of the channel. The banner tells you it’s about technology, and each thumbnail shows specifically what’ll be talked about in the episode.

This isn’t just the way tech channels do it though. All kinds of YouTube channels use this winning formula, and it’s easy to see why. The profile picture and banner artwork make it clear what the channel is about, and each individual thumbnail gives a good idea of who will be in the video, and what it will be about.

Getting Inspiration From Other YouTube Channels

A good way to get ideas for your channel’s artwork is to take inspiration from others. 5 Minute Crafts is one of the most popular channels on YouTube. Their art is slightly different from other channels, relying mostly on strong colors and imagery rather than text. 

A good way to decide what to create for yourself is to think about what kind of video content you will create. Are you going to be on camera a lot? If so, then it makes sense to have an image (or drawing) of yourself in the artwork. Is your channel based more around talking and discussion rather than visuals? Then using text is probably a good idea!

While you will want to ultimately create something unique to your channel, spending time looking at how other channels present themselves can be a good way to get inspired.

Create Artwork Using Adobe Spark

Once you’ve decided on what you want your channel to look like, it’s time to choose the tools to create your YouTube channel art. 

Adobe Spark is an online editor for creating simple graphics and web pages. It is one of the easiest options for YouTube artwork, as it has a vast array of templates for banners, thumbnails, and logos.

With an easy to use interface and many options for tweaking images to your liking, it’s easy to see why so many people use Spark for all their social media artwork. Adobe Spark offers a two-month free trial, after which you’ll be paying $11.59 per month for the service. 

Free Options For Creating YouTube Channel Art

If you are looking for an easy to use tool for creating artwork on a budget, Canva might be for you. It’s a free to use service for designing graphics, including YouTube banners and thumbnails.

As a free option, you are expected to do a little more of the work than with a paid product like Adobe Spark, but as the above video from GCFLearnFree.org shows, it’s still a simple and quick option for creating great art.

The DIY Option

The best way to get your artwork looking perfect is to use image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop. You’ll have many more editing and filtering options than in any of the free or paid choices above. More importantly, you’ll have complete control over the file size and dimensions of the finished product.

If you don’t have access to Photoshop, plenty of powerful and free image editors are available. Learning the GIMP image editor’s basics will give you all the skills you need to create beautiful, unique artwork for your YouTube channel.

Going this route will mean you’ll need to source out your own images and graphics, but with so many awesome and free stock photo sites out there, you’ve got plenty to choose from!

YouTube Channel Art  In Numbers

Whichever way you decide to make your artwork, it will need to comply with the following conditions:

• The image must be at least 2048 pixels wide by 1152 pixels tall (though YouTube recommends 2560 x 1440px)
• The image’s file size must be under 6 megabytes (MB)

Another important thing to consider is what section of your channel banner will be visible. The Google guide to creating YouTube banners shows which areas of the image are visible on computers, smart devices, and televisions. 

Your channel’s profile picture is linked to your Google account and must be a minimum of 180 x 180 pixels. Don’t worry if it’s bigger, Google will resize it for you.

Thumbnails should be 1280x720px and smaller than 2 MB in size. Remember that these images will be seen across a variety of devices. Any text should be easy to read on even a smaller smartphone.

Getting Creative With YouTube Artwork

Starting a YouTube channel is a great way to challenge yourself creatively. Alongside your artwork’s graphic design elements, you’ll be learning other valuable skills like video editing and public speaking.

WordPress has a market share of 35% of the websites on the internet, according to W3Techs. That’s over a third of all websites—crazy, right? That being said, for content-oriented websites, why even consider another option?

This is where Drupal comes in. But what is Drupal? As the web’s leading content management framework, it provides a level of modularity that you won’t find in a CMS such as WordPress. A CMS is a web application used primarily for managing content, but a framework such as Drupal lays the foundation for a content-heavy website that is able to be customized in very robust ways.

Drupal vs. WordPress

The best way for the average user to appreciate what Drupal is, is to compare it to a much popular open-source content system, WordPress. WordPress’s core functionality is to provide users with a system that allows them to manage both static and dynamic pages of their website. WordPress supports a plugin architecture and template system, both of which have received massive contributions from its community.

When you navigate to a WordPress website, it’s often easy to see that it’s powered by WordPress. WordPress websites generally have the same structure, same URL and file naming convention, and other key giveaways. However, you’ve probably been to dozens of websites powered by Drupal without ever knowing it. This is due to how customizable and flexible Drupal is.

Drupal is more of an enterprise solution for creating dynamic websites. It sets a robust codebase that developers can customize and build upon to do much more than create blogs or news sites. 

While WordPress is modular in the sense that you can always install third-party plugins and integrations, Drupal is modular at its very core—it’s meant to be customized, extensively so that you can shape Drupal into an e-commerce site, intranet, forum, social networking site, and much more.

How Drupal Was Built

Drupal incorporates a lot of popular web technologies, but the majority of its code is in PHP, with MySQL powering the database side. Drupal is completely open-source, so you can feel free to check out all of the code behind it whenever you want.

Drupal incorporates elements of HTML5, YAML, Twig, jQuery, Backbone.js, and more. The more of these technologies you’re familiar with, the better you’ll be at building Drupal into a customized solution. 

However, Drupal only requires you to know the basics of HTML to begin building dynamic pages and creating a functional website.

Drupal Hooks Explained

Like WordPress, Drupal supports modularization for adding more to it than what you get out of the box. To fully understand and appreciate how this works, you’ll need to understand Drupal’s hooks system.

In Drupal, think of a module as a collection of PHP files that enable extended functionality not available in Drupal’s core. Hooks are a way for these modules to interact with other modules or the core. Drupal’s core ships with a long list of supported hooks that you can read more about here.

Without getting into the confusing technical jargon behind hooks, you can think of them as simple event listeners that alter Drupal’s core behavior. Invoking a hook effectively allows you to “borrow” the functionality from another module, or Drupal’s core, and add it to your own module.

So, while WordPress plugins offer the instant plug-and-play gratification of enabling a new and complete feature, Drupal’s hooks are more developmental and designed for use across one or many other modules.

How to Get Drupal

Drupal’s latest version, Drupal 8, can be downloaded at the official Drupal website. On this same page, you’re able to get a list of all modules, themes, distributions, and translations. Other recommended versions can be found here.

While the official site’s Evaluator Guide will show you how to deploy a temporary local demo of Drupal 8, there are several web-based solutions for achieving this. OpenSourceCMS.com is our favorite, and it will allow you to use a public, self-resetting Drupal demo or even request your own instance with a lifetime of 24 hours.

While Drupal is completely free to download, it’s not entirely “free” in the sense that it’s going to require quite a lot of development. WordPress is much more community-driven than Drupal, and within a day you can probably set up a WordPress site using a custom theme and suite of plugins.

Drupal, as a framework, requires much more work under the hood. If you yourself aren’t a web developer, expect to hire someone with experience coding and designing on the platform.

So, in summary, what is Drupal? It’s one of the most powerful and robust content management frameworks, allowing developers to create fully customizable websites that can powerfully deliver content but don’t have to revolve entirely around content—an important difference from WordPress.

Did you learn anything new about Drupal or have a question that this article didn’t address? Drop us a comment below and let us know!

Online dating scammers rely on our need for companionship, love and the avoidance of painful loneliness. Everyone deserves to find someone special, but that doesn’t mean you need to be completely uncritical when looking for love online. 

We’re going to look at how online dating scammers work, what the warning signs are and how you can deal with each one.

How Online Dating Scammers Work

There are two main types of online dating scammers. The first is motivated by pure profit. The idea is to build a relationship with you. Then emotionally manipulate you into parting with your valuables. 

The second type of scam is more insidious, since most of the time, there’s no monetary gain. This is known as “catfishing” and is a form of internet trolling. The aim is to humiliate or otherwise emotionally harm you as a cruel prank. 

While catfishing doesn’t generally fleece you of money (although it may move in that direction) many of the signs are still shared between both types of online dating scammers. Here are some of the most common red flags.

Things Move WAY Too Fast

The scammer needs to make a profit, which means they are on the clock. While you may be in no rush and just want to enjoy the early stages of getting all lovey-dovey, the real person behind the fake profile wants dollars and they want them now. 

This means you’ll definitely sense a certain lack of hesitation from the other side of the screen. Your online “date” wants to go from 0-60 in no time flat. So if things are getting hot and heavy at an insincere speed, you should definitely take a step back without those rose-tinted love glasses.

What To Do About It

You need to take control over the pace of commitment. Ask them detailed questions about their lives. Take a real interest. Let them know you’re interested in getting to know them before getting serious. 

This isn’t foolproof. Some online dating scammer outfits are willing to work their marks for months or years, but most are in it for a quick buck and putting the brakes on makes you unprofitable.

Things Don’t Add Up

Online dating scammers have to build multiple fake online personas. Yes, even the scammer has to play the field. They might tell you that there are no other victims, but the truth is being an online dating scammer is a bit like being a battery farm chicken. You’re stuffed into a box and expected to produce, produce, produce.

The good news is that this means most of these fake online profiles are paper thin. Just a casual read through their social media profiles should highlight details that don’t match up.

What To Do About It

Do your research just as you would with any other stranger on the web. It’s almost impossible for people to keep their lives off the net these days. So look beyond the channels your prospective online date has used to contact you. 

Do a reverse image search on their profile picture. See if they interact with family members. Do they have a LinkedIn page? Do the details about their lives add up? Are they the same between profiles?

They Ask For Money

The hallmark of an online dating scammer is that pretty quickly after hooking you, the requests for money will come. There are many different tacks that can be taken here, but the central issue is the request for money in the first place.

What To Do About It

It may be difficult, but you need to absolutely refuse any form of monetary payments. If you already made a payment, it’s still not too late to stop. Even if the person isn’t a scammer, it’s still predatory and highly inappropriate to ask someone you’ve only known for a few days or weeks for money. 

Ask yourself if you would have been comfortable giving a person you’ve never met in real life money? Even best friends don’t ask for financial help lightly. More importantly, this is the age of crowdfunding. If someone has a genuine emergency and wants money from strangers, they’d be better off starting a GoFundMe page.

Poor English Or Overall Language Use

This can be a touchy one. Having a poor command of the English language doesn’t automatically mean you are dealing with an online dating scammer. The web makes it possible for people from any background to meet. So it’s entirely possible that the person you are legitimately starting a romantic journey with just doesn’t speak or write English well.

The actual red flag is when there’s no reason to expect bad English from the person they are pretending to be. If the person claims to be an English speaker, college educated or a native of an Anglophone country, then it’s a major red flag when their English is broken and of poor quality. 

The same principle applies if you are communicating in a language other than English, of which you are a competent speaker.

What To Do About It

The only thing you can really do is be wary if the person’s language use is poor, inconsistent or otherwise suspicious. Raising the issue with someone who isn’t a scammer could still be highly offensive. 

However, you can ask questions related to the issue that might clear things up. Questions such as “How many languages do you speak?” or “Is English your first language? You have an interesting way of writing.”

Elaborate Sob Stories

Another common feature of online dating scammers is the elaborate sob story. It just so happens that you’ve come into this person’s life just as everything was about to go wrong. Their dog is sick, their mom needs cancer treatment, they’re about to be evicted and so on.

Typically these stories are convoluted and the more you question them, the more details are added to muddy the waters further. This is all underscored by desperation and heart-wrenching pleas for help. They really do love you, if you love them you’ll help them out. 

You can bet the request for ever-escalating amounts of money will soon follow.

What To Do About It

Most people with a healthy nonsense-detector will smell something fishy when the stories of melodramatic tragedy start rolling in. Whether the story is true or not, it’s not your responsibility to fix it. 

You can sympathise, you can offer advice, but never offer money. It’s especially nasty if there’s an implication of quid pro quo, but that’s a matter for your own moral compass.

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

You can bet that online dating scammers are no strangers to being interrogated. Most of their marks smell something fishy pretty quickly, so they have a playbook of excuses to string you along for as long as possible, just in order to get a few more dollars or (with catfishing) a few more laughs.

Since they aren’t a real person, anything you ask for that would be trivial for a real person to do is something they have to avoid. Want to have a video call? They’ll find a reason why they can’t. Want to fly out to meet them to call their bluff? They probably won’t agree unless they’ve already fleeced enough from you for the scam to end. 

As much as possible, the scammer will want to keep you at a distance they can control. This makes it easy to hold up the facade.

What To Do About It

A few reasonable excuses are one thing, but if it turns out that your request for a real life meeting or a simple Skype call are met with an iron curtain of reasons they can’t happen, then it’s best to end things. Even if it was never a scam. 

Relationships are meant to open up gradually over time, someone who is red-hot in texts, but won’t get on camera is a major red flag.

Escalating Desperation

Online dating scammers are no stranger to people resisting the call for money. That’s where they really begin to ply their trade. First they get a foot in the door with the opening gambit of the sob story. Then, when you aren’t forthcoming with the cash, things get worse. 

Eventually you’ll have the other person begging you for help, questioning your self-image as a good person. They will not shy away from hurting you emotionally for a few bucks. In fact, the more distraught they can make you through your empathy the less likely you’ll be to stop and think. 

What To Do About It

This can be a tough one, especially if the scammer has spent a long time grooming you for this moment. The best thing to do is put time and distance between yourself and these please. 

Go for a walk, take a deep breath and look at what’s being said outside of the influence of strong emotion. Time pressure and heightened emotions are tools that manipulators use to force you into making decisions without thinking. 

Forcing You To a Different Service

One common tactic used by these scammers is to quickly move you from a mainstream platform like Facebook or Twitter, to somewhere only they control. This can be simple text messaging, WhatsApp or something obscure. They don’t want to be reported and they don’t want you bringing other people into the conversation. 

It’s critical that they control as many of the variables in your conversation as possible. If the person is strangely insistent that you move away from the platform where you met, be suspicious.

What To Do About It

Refuse. There’s no good reason to move you away from the platform you trust and are already using. Don’t cede control over the terms of the conversation to the other person. If they won’t meet you halfway, then you don’t have any reason to keep talking.

Dodgy Link Sharing

While online dating scammers (apart from catfishers) are interested in making money, they might not go about it in a direct way. Online dating scammers may build trust with you to get you to click on scam links. 

We all love sharing memes and good content with our friends, so you are much more likely to click on something a “trusted” person sends you without stopping to think. It could be a phishing link, a malware download or anything really. If your online beau really wants you to click on a link, be very wary.

What To Do About It

The standard cybersecurity rules apple. Don’t click on the links you don’t know and trust. Don’t download and run files you don’t know the provenance of. If you really must, run antivirus scans on any downloads and only open suspicious links using a browser sandbox. Never type sensitive or personal information into any forms found through these links.

Supermodel Photos

OK, it’s not impossible that your online date actually is an incredibly attractive professional model. However, the vast majority of people don’t have profile photos that seem to have been ripped from a magazine. So it’s a red flag for sure.

Of course, scammers are getting wise to this. So they might simply steal the profile picture of another person. They might also steal other photos from that person’s profile to make their own seem more legitimate.

What To Do About It

The easiest thing to do is simply run a reverse image search on the photo in question and see if it comes up somewhere else.

Thinking With Your Head, Not Your Heart

Humans tend to reason emotionally. People in marketing know this, which is why adverts focus on feelings. They want to make you hot under the collar with the “sex sells” strategy or make you feel sad and sympathetic so you’ll buy a product or donate to a cause. 

Scammers are using the same playbook, but don’t even offer something in return for your cash, time and emotional investment. Which is why you should always maintain some degree of distance between yourself and your feelings when it comes to online relationships. 

Until you’re physically present together, the relationship isn’t concrete. Plenty of people are finding love online, but you need to be the one hooking a good catch, not the one getting hooked by a criminal. 

Making your very own Wikipedia-like website can seem like a large undertaking, and to be honest, it is. It will take a lot of time, foresight, and research to get yourself on the right track.

Once you understand what it takes to make a wiki successful, you will need to know where to begin once the site is created. This will include how to create pages and add text, images, and videos to them, the differences between page editors, and how to enable collaboration on the site.

How To Make Your Own Wiki Page

Before you can create a wiki site, you’ll need to choose how you want it hosted. There are plenty of options out there depending on how much you’re willing to put into it. Free options include Windows SharePoint, MediaWiki, and Wikia, which allow you to create your very own wiki site from scratch.

If you’ve got the capital, paid services like Same Page will offer you tools and a few templates to help get you started. TikiWiki is a great software option for anyone who wants to host a private wiki on a business or personal server.

As a wiki is just an ever-evolving site where colleagues and strangers can collaborate on a primary focus, Google Sites, and even WordPress, are also potential hosts.

You’ll want to make your choice based on why you need the wiki, how many people are going to be involved in the project, and how much time you have to dedicate to the setup and maintenance of the site. Security is also a concern for anyone with a website, especially when self-hosted.

Moving forward in this article, we’ll be using Wikia, also referred to as FANDOM, for our walkthroughs.

Let’s Create a Wiki Page

FANDOM is generally seen as a collection of wikis on topics primarily comprised of media and entertainment. It’s also incredibly user-friendly for beginners.

Here, you’re more likely to find wikis based on trending movies, a favored comic book character, and videogames than you are historical events and things with political leanings. However, a wiki is a wiki and you should be able to craft one that suits your needs.

To begin:

• Scroll over the WIKIS tab and click the START A WIKI button.

• Decide on a wiki name, domain name, and preferred language for your wiki. Click NEXT when finished.

• At this point, you’ll need to sign in to your account if you haven’t already. For those who need an account, you have the option to create one via social media account or fill out a standard registry form.

• Next, you’ll need to add a description for your wiki letting readers know what it’s about. Select what hub it fits into and any additional categories you feel are necessary, before clicking CREATE MY WIKI.

• Here is where you can choose a quick theme for your wiki. There are a few different choices, primarily changing the color of the page background, text boxes, and fonts.
  

• You’ll be able to change this at any time so your selection is not set in stone.
• Once a theme has been selected, click SHOW ME MY WIKI.
• You’ll be greeted with a small congratulatory window that will ask if you’d like to begin creating new pages. We’ll skip this for now and focus on the main page instead.

• Click the ‘x’ in the top right corner of the window to close it out.

I’m On The Home Page, Now What?

At this point, you’re either super excited to get things started or more confused than ever. Or both. The main page of your wiki has a menu bar with a few different tabs you’ll want to get acquainted with before moving on.

The menu bar contains three important sections that we’ve color-coded to make it easier for you.

Red Section

This portion of the menu is less important in the earlier stages of your wiki’s development. It will grow more important once things have been added, your community grows, and as the wiki expands.

• Popular Pages – This tab will show you what pages are being visited most often on your wiki.
• Community – Displays the conversations happening within your wiki’s community and the most recent blogs that have been written.
• Explore – You can jump to a random page within your wiki, take a look at what’s been happening on your wiki, and check out at all images and videos that have been posted.
• Main Page – A quick link that will bring you back to the main page.

Green Section

More important at all stages of development, this menu provides helpful options to the continued growth of your wiki.

• (1) Add new page – The bread and butter of any wiki is the ability to continuously add new pages. Every new page provides new information to your readers about the topic. You’ll be clicking on this icon a lot.
• (2) Wiki Activity – Clicking this icon will send you to a page for recent wiki activity. This can be anything from additional information added to an existing page, a newly created page, or comments from the community.
• (3) Admin Dashboard – Anything you need to know about or have access to when it comes to your wiki can be found here.

• The General tab provides access to everything from a theme designer and CSS options to a full user list with provided rights to basic content additions for edits and the like. The Advanced tab is more of the same only broken down into smaller, specified links for quicker access.
• (4) More Menu – Add new images and videos to the wiki gallery and look up any recent changes that have taken place.

You’ll notice a page counter to the left of this section. This will keep track of the number of pages your wiki currently has publicly displayed.

Yellow Section

The yellow section contains the links specific to whichever page you’re currently working on within your wikipedia site.

• Edit – Should be rather self-explanatory. This button will allow you to edit the current page. By default, you’re provided with a visual editor version of the text editor. More on this later.

• Dropdown Menu – This menu houses a few different links that can prove very important in moving forward. Here, you can rename the page, protect the page (and specific sections) from further edits, delete the page, and even edit the visuals for how it will look for mobile devices. There is also an option to use the Classic editor, which is the source editor, instead of the default visual editor.

Main Page First Steps

The main page should contain content that is relevant to the topic of your wiki. This includes adding a short paragraph, detailing to your readers what your community is about and what they can expect to find within it.

To get started with some edits, click the EDIT button found in the yellow section previously discussed. Your page should look something like the image below.

We’ll get into the differences between visual and source editors later. For now, we’ll continue with the visual editor as it’s the more beginner-friendly option.

Aside from the visual editor menu bar, you’ll also notice something above the intro title at the top left section of the page. It reads as <mainpage-leftcolumn-start />. Anyone familiar with web design will recognize it as a tag similar to <div> which indicates the beginning of a section or column on a page.

Scroll further down and you’ll see similar text <mainpage-leftcolumn-end /> which indicates the end of a section or column on a wiki page. Everything written within this section will be situated in the left-most column of the main page.

To understand my meaning, by default, the pages on FANDOM are divided into two columns –a left and a right– in a ⅔ x ⅓ split. So, your left column will contain the bulk of the information on a page while the right side is generally reserved for quick links and statistical information.

Do yourself a favor and keep these tags intact. Their removal could cause issues with how the design appears on all devices and browsers. Remember that an ugly main page is likely to result in less viewership.

Everything within these tags is fair game. You can change any of the default information and save it to have the edits reflected on the actual page for all to see. This includes images and videos added by clicking the appropriate icon in the visual editor menu bar.

Visual Editor vs Source Editor

The use of the visual editor allows for easy mode content that can be set within the given parameters of the editor. This means that you only have as much control over how you edit content as the editor allows. It’s very minimal but for a beginner, it can be your best friend.

To use the source editor, knowledge of wikitext is encouraged to make good use of all that it offers. Using the source editor will provide you with far more control over the look and feel of your pages and the content placed on them than is capable of the visual editor.

This is the key difference when it comes to choosing one over the other. Are you okay with playing within a limited sandbox or does the ambition for your wiki require more control?

Regardless of whichever you choose to begin with, the source editor, and wikitext, is something that every wiki editor should strive to learn and understand. Wikitext, also referred to as “markup”, is not only used on FANDOM sites, but with practically every wiki host site available.

You can find a complete list of markup text formatting on FANDOM in the help subdomain.

Templates

Another tally to add to the column of source editor would be the ability to create and save custom templates. These templates can then be used to create page consistency across your entire wiki without the need to redo each page over again from scratch.

To learn more about templates, FANDOM help has provided a comprehensive walkthrough that should help get you started.

User Management

Adding multiple contributors to your wiki is what it will take in order to have it grow and flourish. Once you’ve put together a team, you can add them individually to your wiki, providing them specific user rights.

To do this:

• Navigate to the Admin Dashboard and click User Rights located in the Community section.
  

• Enter in the user’s name that you want to add to the wiki, and click Edit user groups.
  • The team member you intend to add will have to have previously registered for an account prior to being added.
• Place a check in the box(es) of the group(s) you would like to add the user to, provide a reason for this change (optional), and then click Save user groups.

The only question now is, how do you set up an e-commerce store in the quickest and easiest way possible?

What It Takes To Open An E-Commerce Store

Before you begin building your online store, you’ll need to choose which website builder you’ll use. There are many to choose from, but for the sake of this article, we’ll use Shopify. 

Here’s a quick look of the steps you’ll have to take beforehand:

1. Find the type of products you want to sell (a niche is preferred — i.e., beauty products, health supplements, baby toys).
2. Select a store name (which will ultimately be your domain name).
3. Purchase your domain name (you can buy one for cheap at Namecheap or you can buy it through Shopify).
4. Find a dropshipper or manufacturer for the products you want to sell.
5. Perform market research to see who else sells your products and determine your price point (only go cheaper if it won’t hurt your profitability).
6. Find photographers (and models) for shoots with your products.
7. Determine who will store your products — a dropshipper or order fulfillment. 

Setting Up Your Shopify Website

• Now, it’s time to start your free trial with Shopify (or purchase if you’re sure you want to stick with it). Once you’re on Shopify.com, select Start free trial.

• Then fill out your email address, password, and store name. Don’t worry if you don’t know your store name — you can change this later. 

• Next, it’ll walk you through setting up your profile, which includes submitting your address, where you are in the business, and your expected revenue range. 
• After completing the two steps, Shopify will take you to your dashboard.

Selecting a Store Theme

• On the left side of your dashboard, click Online store. This will drop down a menu of options. 

• Next, click Themes and then you’ll see the option to either customize your current theme or to choose from free or paid Shopify themes. 

• To keep things cheap, you can click Explore free themes. There aren’t many options, but you can customize them to your liking. 

We’re going to select the Supply theme. When you click on each theme, it’ll list the features it comes with. The Supply theme comes with:

• Large catalogs
• Collection filter in the sidebar
• Slideshow
• Featured collections (shows on the home page)

Then you have two styles to choose from — light or blue. It also shows how your site will look on a mobile device. 

• Once you’re ready, click Add to theme library.
• You’ll see an area show up with your theme — select customize to get started making the design your own. 

From here, you’ll be able to add things to your website like:

• Slideshows
• Collection lists
• Featured collections
• Rich text
• Footer/Header

You’ll find this in the Sections tab at the top. You can see how the site layout changes as you add each section. 

Then when you click the Theme settings tab, you’ll be able to tweak the:

• Colors
• Typography
• Favicon
• Cart
• Social Media
• Price format
• Checkout

What’s great about Shopify is that you can have a fully functional website created without knowing any coding knowledge. 

Selecting a Payment Processor

You don’t want to publish your online store without a way to accept digital payments. Lucky for you, there are several platforms to choose from. 

One of the most prominent is PayPal, which connects with your store cart. You can then accept PayPal, credit cards, debit cards, and e-checks. PayPal also allows you to extend credit to your customers so they can finance your products. This is ideal if you’re selling high-ticket items. 

Here is a list of the top payment processors:

• PayPal
• Stripe
• Authorize.net
• WePay
• Dwolla
• Braintree
• 2Checkout

Expect to pay fees per transaction. For instance, with PayPal (and most others), there is a 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. However, there are no setup fees to worry about. 

Where To Purchase Inventory

The key is to find a supplier for the products you want to sell. One of the most popular is Alibaba. Here, you can find thousands of manufacturers and suppliers who will not only sell you items in bulk — but they’ll also customize your product. 

For example, if you want to sell UV protection glasses, you can make your product unique by including a case and a microfiber cleaning cloth. This will help to set your product apart from others on the market so customers are more likely to buy from you. 

Another option is to go with a dropshipper. These companies will supply and ship products for you. Some also offer customizations for products. One example of a dropshipper is Chinabrands. 

How To Get Products To Your Customers

When you’re first starting out, you may not have space to store large amounts of inventory.

There are two main ways e-commerce sellers maintain their inventory — dropshipping and fulfillment services.  

If you decide to go with dropshipping, you’re entering into a relationship with the manufacturer. They manage the storage of the items and will ship to your customers for you. There’s no need to buy anything in bulk, since items are shipped as they’re purchased. You then split the costs with the manufacturer. 

Order fulfillment services, on the other hand, require you to buy items in advance and ship it to the fulfillment warehouse. They will then create a SKU and ship the items for you. This is ideal if you have a good relationship with a manufacturer, but need someone to handle the warehousing and shipments. 

The costs for the two vary, but you can expect to spend more upfront with order fulfillment since you need to buy bulk products in advance.

Also, keep in mind the location of your customers. You’ll need to find dropshippers and fulfillment service providers in the regions you plan to sell to. 

Set Up Your E-Commerce Store In No Time

If you play your cards right, you can have your online store published and ready to go within weeks. Dropshipping is the best option if you’re trying to get started as soon as possible. 

However, if you want to spend more time searching for manufacturers and perfecting your product, then order fulfillment may be the way to go. Don’t forget to invest in quality photos and product demo videos to help sell your goods. 

If you’re not careful, you could end up with a site that’s sluggish and unstable. Slow websites alone are costing businesses $500 million per year. Just a single second delay can also reduce your conversion rates by 7%. 

The best way around this is to find a top-tier web host. So let’s take a look at some of the lesser-known, but equally reliable web hosting providers. 

HostPapa

We all heard of GoDaddy, but what do you know about HostPapa? This isn’t a new kid on the block — the web host has been around since 1998. 

It’s also not a slouch — it comes equipped with multiple GigE fiber connections, fully-redundant Liebert HVAC cooling systems, and a diesel generator. In other words, it has all the geek tech needed to ensure it stays operational. 

It also means you get maximum uptime and speed for your website. You can choose between several plans, but one that may catch your eye is one that offers SSD performance. 

If you’re looking for shared hosting, you’ll spend under $4/month (starting price). Then for VPS hosting, the price starts at $45/month. Plus, it’s available to Linux and Windows users. 

So what’s the downside? There’s no uptime monitoring. However, it does offer backup through its numerous dashboards, and you’re allowed to build scripts to automate backups. 

Just make sure to request malware scans, since this isn’t performed automatically. 

InMotion Hosting

Maybe you’re looking for something with more tech support and hosting options. If so, InMotion Hosting offers hosting for WordPress and businesses. Plus, you get access to web design services and excellent tech support. 

Familiar with cPanel and Softaculous? It comes with that as well. Then to top it off, you get some handy extras bundled into the packages that other web hosting providers charge extra for. This includes protection from malware and DDoS attacks, spam emails, and data loss using basic backups. 

The overall performance of the service is above average, which means faster load times. However, some complain that the shared hosting speeds are subpar. 

The plans begin at $4/month for basic, and then InMotion pro is $14/month. There’s also a 90-day money-back guarantee. 

A2Hosting

Did the shared hosting speeds turn you off from InMotion Hosting? Then here’s an alternative. A2 hosting offers the quickest speeds for shared web hosting (somewhere around 336ms). 

It comes with free site migration for those who are considering switching web hosting providers. Then if you need tech support, you’ll find it offers quick and efficient services to members. Plus it’s compatible with popular content management systems (CMS) like WordPress. 

Then for the environmentally-aware out there, you’ll be happy to know that using A2Hosting also means you’re reducing your carbon footprint. It operates in an environmentally-friendly manner, all without disrupting your site’s uptime (around 99.92%). 

The downside is that there are restrictions for its cheapest plans, which start at $3/month. For instance, you have limitations like:

• Hosting for one website.
• Five databases.
• Add-on domains excluded.
• Limits to WordPress caches.

However, it does come with unlimited SSD storage and transfers, 25 email accounts, and an anytime money-back guarantee. 

iPage

Now let’s say you have a website without a blog. In this case, you may only have a handful of web pages to host. If so, then you can go lightweight with iPage. 

It has an impressive uptime rate of 99.97%. Plus, it comes with enhanced security scans using SiteLock (for free). When you need help, you can use its live chat service, which is available 24/7. 

When you sign up, you pay only $2/month for the first three years, then it rises to $8/month. If you’re just starting out, you can use its free website builder. Also, there are thousands of templates to choose from, and you get a free email address. 

You can also use this if you’re hosting an eCommerce website. It even has analytics tools so you can keep an eye on your website’s performance. 

Ready for the downside? If you need a domain, you’ll have to pay $17/year and $150 per site transfer. The speeds also aren’t the greatest (787ms). 

However, if you have a small website, then you may not have to worry too much about this. On the other hand, if you’re not satisfied within the first 30 days, you can get your money back. 

GreenGeeks

Here’s another one for you, eco-conscious consumers. GreenGeeks isn’t your typical gas-guzzling infrastructure. The company buys 3x the energy it uses, transferring the remainder into wind energy credits. You can look at it as recirculating energy back into the economy. The idea is to help fuel the green energy economy. 

Now, here’s what you’ve been waiting for — is it an overpriced powerhouse? Yes and no. 

Yes, it’s a powerhouse offering SSD infrastructure and 24/7 phone support. Then no, it’s an affordable option, starting at $3/month (lite) for shared and WordPress hosting. VPS hosting starts at $5/month. 

The price resets to its typical $10/month for the lite shared hosting package. You also get nightly backups, proactive server monitoring, and real-time security scanning. 

GlowHost

The web is a diverse platform. So what do you do when you need a host for more than a website? Maybe you’re running a podcast, for example?

GlowHost is an exceptional choice — it offers FFmpeg, podcast, and SHOUTcast hosting. They pride themselves on being a VPS hosting alternative. It also boasts having a user-friendly platform (similar to shared hosting plans) with robust performance (like VPS hosting offers). 

Most plans come with a cPanel option, and all members get access to 24/7/365 phone support. The added bonus is that it operates using wind power. 

The prices start at $5/month for shared hosting and can go as high as $50 for cloud VPS hosting. GlowHost offers a 91-day money-back guarantee, so it wouldn’t hurt to try it out.

Give Your Website The Hosting It Needs

As a webmaster, you will want to ensure your site is up and running at full-speed every second of the day. While this is impossible to guarantee, you can decrease the odds of your website going down repetitively by choosing a reputable web hosting provider.

Now that you’re equipped with this list, you can begin your hunt with some of the top hosting providers out there. At the end of the day, it’s about getting the best bang for your buck.

One of the many benefits of using the WordPress platform is the ability to use plugins. They extend functionality and add needed features to help you grow your small business. 

In this article, we will discuss ten plugins every small business website needs:

• Yoast SEO
• WordFence
• Social Warfare
• Akismet
• Broken Link Checker
• W3 Total Cache
• Smush Image Optimization, Compressions, and Lazy Load
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Simple Author Box
• Google Analytics Dashboard

Yoast SEO

Get more visitors to your website and increase your search engine rankings with Yoast SEO. 

With millions of users worldwide, this SEO plugin for WordPress offers the toolset you need to please search engines and users.

Below are some of the powerful features of the free version of SEO Yoast.

• Create an XML sitemap.
• Avoid duplicate content by setting canonical URLs.
• Add title and meta descriptions to improve branding.
• Take control over site breadcrumbs by setting primary categories and determine taxonomies.

• Write SEO-friendly text, including focus keyphrases and SEO snippet.

• Get SEO analysis and actionable suggested results.
• See a snippet preview of how your post or page will look in search results.

• Optimize your site structure with internal linking and content features.
• Control access to different sections of the plugin for teams or colleagues.
• Use the bulk editor to make large-scale edits.

SEO Yoast offers a premium version with even more capabilities.  They also offer paid training. Anyone can read the helpful tips on their blog.

If your target audience can’t find you online, they can’t purchase your products or services. SEO Yoast helps your potential customers find you.

WordFence

WordFence makes it harder for someone to hack your WordPress site and protects it from potential hacking, brute force attacks, and other security vulnerabilities. WordFence will scan your site, track, and alert you of suspicious or malicious behavior. 

See an overview in the dashboard of the security of your website, including status features, notifications, and attack statistics.

Some of the features of the free version include:

• Blocks and identifies malicious traffic with the web application firewall.
• Limits login attempts to protect from brute force attacks.
• Protects your website at the endpoint.
• Checks core files, plugins, themes, backdoors, bad URLs, malicious redirects, SEO spam, and code injections with the malware scanner.
• Alerts you to known potential security issues and security vulnerabilities.
• Scans your files, comments, and posts for suspicious content and dangerous URLs.
• Blocks administrator logins when passwords have been compromised.

There is also a premium version with more security options and resources.

Social Warfare

Social Warfare is a fast and visually appealing social sharing plugin. Unlike other sharing plugins that may slow down your website, Social Warfare doesn’t.

It isn’t bloated with unnecessary code and loads faster.

The plugin is easy to set up and enables users to customize the share buttons.

If you move or change your domain name, there is no need to worry about losing existing social shares.Social Warfare’s Share Recovery feature protects your social proof and saves your share counts.

The free version of Social Warfare comes with:

• Social sharing buttons for the major social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest.
• Share counts.
• Click-to-tweet.
• Button placement locations.
• Content-protection.
• Popular posts widget.
• Shortcodes.

The free version can be downloaded from the WordPress repository. There is also a premium version if you want expanded capabilities.

Akismet Anti-Spam

Akismet automatically checks all the comments on your site to filter out spam. Site owners can see which ones were caught as spam in the comments section of the administrative dashboard.

Akismet comes pre-installed in WordPress but must be activated to use. You will need to get an Akismet API key to use the plugin. Keys are free for personal use. Commercial and business sites must get a paid subscription.

Why do you need Akismet? You want to prevent hackers from creating new user accounts on your small business website. If they add spam hyperlinks, you can get penalized by Google. This also includes spam comments. 

See overall stats in the settings of your activated plugin. Click on Detailed Stats to see a breakdown by month.

Broken Link Checker

Broken links will hurt your search engine rankings. Broken Link Checker will monitor your site for broken links and missing images. It will notify you if any are found.

With Broken Link Checker, you can:

• See broken links in content differently than other links if selected in settings.
• Monitor links in comments, posts, and pages.
• Edit broken links from the plugin page.

Broken Link Checker is highly customizable. Change the settings in the plugin dashboard. 

Fixing broken links can create a better user experience, reduce bounce rates, and increase page views.

W3 Total Cache

Website speed and user experience are essential ranking factors for SEO. Webpages that take too long to load will reduce your search engine rankings. They will also create negative experiences for your users who don’t want to wait.

W3 Total Cache increases your site performance by increasing load speed. It creates cached HTML files so that visitors don’t have to wait for all your site’s functions to load every time they land on a page.

Smush Image Optimization, Compression, & Lazy Load

Large, unoptimized images take up a lot of space on your website, slow down site speed, and harm your search engine rankings.

Some of the many features and benefits of Smush include:

• Optimize your images while preserving the quality.
• Automate the image optimization process.
• Detect incorrect image sizes.
• Compress any image in any directory.

Increase your rankings by using Smush to help your small business website load faster.

Google XML Sitemaps

Every website needs a sitemap to tell the search engines which pages and posts on your site to crawl. 

If you are running Yoast SEO, you don’t need a separate plugin for this. Google’s XML Sitemap Generator helps you create and upload one without coding or using HTML.

With this sitemap, it is easier for the search engine crawlers to see the structure of your site and retrieve it. 

Also, every time you create a new post or page, the search engines will be notified. The plugin is free for personal and commercial use.

Simple Author Box

For sites that have multiple bloggers, Simple Author Box is a must-have. Easily add a mobile responsive box at the bottom of your blog posts.

The main features enable you to:

• Customize options to match your brand design.
• Show author name, website, gravatar, description, and social icons.
• Insert the author box at the end of each post automatically.

With Simple Author Box you can clearly differentiate between different authors on your site. The plugin is free, but if you want additional features, you can upgrade to Simple Author Box Pro.

Google Analytics Dashboard

Knowing how visitors are getting to your small business website, how long they stay, and which pages they are landing on is essential to small business owners.

Rather than having to log into your Google Analytics account, track your stats and get in-depth posts and pages reports inside your WP installation with Google Analytics Dashboard.

Some of the robust features include the ability to:

• Track events easily.
• Customize dimensions to track.
• Use Google Tag Manager as an alternative tracking code.
• See your analytics in real-time right inside your WP dashboard.

The Google Analytic Dashboard is compatible with multisite network installations.

One of the many reasons people choose to use WordPress for their website is the ability to enhance and customize it using plugins. Consider the plugins listed above to help your small business grow.

Both web design tools are designed to be user-friendly, but there are a few key differences in how each one approaches website layout and design, as well as in their pricing tiers. This guide will break down what each service has to offer and help you decide which of the two—if either—is the best option for you. 

At the end of this Wix vs Squarespace guide, we have recommended a few other website builders that you might consider if you feel like neither Wix or Squarespace meets your needs.

Pricing

If you’re new to building websites, you don’t want to invest a lot of money into something you aren’t sure will work for you. In this case, Wix has the upper hand. Wix offers a free tier of web design, while Squarespace only has paid tiers. Both fall a bit short on pricing, however.

Both Wix and Squarespace advertise a monthly price, but the actual price is paid upfront all at once. The advertised monthly price is just the annual price divided by twelve. Squarespace makes the customer aware of this (albeit in smaller font), while Wix does not.

There are multiple tiers for each service. To make it easier to see, we’ve created the following chart.

Wix offers four more tiers not shown here for business and ecommerce customers that are $23, $27, $49, and $500 per month, respectively—but at those price points, you are better off hiring a professional to design a site rather than paying a monthly subscription to a DIY web builder.

Wix Vs Squarespace: The Better Editor

The primary difference between Wix and Squarespace is in how websites are built and designed.

Wix provides users with far more freedom in how they design their sites. Their editor has dozens of elements to choose from, but the sheer number of options can be overwhelming to an inexperienced designer.

The benefit to this amount of creative control is that you can drag an element pretty much anywhere on the page and arrange your site how you want. The downside is that elements do not auto-correct themselves.

For example, if you create a column of different elements but move something above them, they will automatically move down to make room. However, if you delete that element, the others won’t move to fill in the space—you’ll have to do that manually.

Squarespace, on the other hand, does not provide users with as much creative freedom. Its web builder is more rigid. You choose a template to start from and make changes to that template. 

While it may frustrate someone that wants to design a website from scratch, Squarespace is ideal for someone that wants a good-looking website that they can essentially plug their own information into and hit the ground running.

Themes & Templates

If aesthetics are not your strong suit, a list of themes (sometimes called templates) can be a huge boon for designing a website. Just pick one and modify it to fit your needs. 

Themes are also one area where Wix and Squarespace differ dramatically.

Wix has more than 600 different themes to choose from in a variety of different categories, including Business, Restaurants & Food, and Creative Arts. Decide which category your site will fall into and search through those themes; only search the other categories if you find nothing to your liking. There are almost too many to choose from.

Squarespace does not have nearly as many themes—there are somewhere between 60 and 100 different options to choose from. However, each theme is carefully chosen and curated for inclusion in the web builder. Their themes have a modern, sophisticated feel and go hand-in-hand with Squarespace’s editing tools.

The Better Option

In truth, neither Wix or Squarespace is really better. While Wix does have a free option (versus Squarespace’s 14-day trial), the most powerful features are locked behind premium subscriptions. The decision really comes down to what your intended use for a website is and how comfortable you feel designing one.

Are you a small business owner that needs an attractive, inviting website but you have little to no web design experience? Then use Squarespace. The time you save with their simple, intuitive editor will balance out the higher costs you pay month-to-month to use the service.

Are you an experienced designer that wants to create a personal site or a portfolio page? Then go with Wix. Its drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to layout a website, and the vast number of elements and themes give you the creative freedom you need to bring your vision to fruition. 

Alternatively, if neither of these services deliver quite what you’re looking for, consider these other options:

• WordPress.com
• Weebly
• Webs

Once you’ve finished reading, you’ll have a good understanding of the YouTube algorithm and how to adjust your content to match it.

The Basics of the YouTube Algorithm

There are possibly hundreds, if not thousands of factors that help to boost your video views on YouTube, but there are two that are abundantly more important than any other in 2019. This is click-through rate and average audience retention rate.

Click-through rate is the percentage of people that click your video when they see it on their screen. Average audience retention rate is the percentage of a video your audience watches, averaged out across all watch sessions.

If you can improve these values, your videos will be recommended more. That means more impressions, more clicks, and more views. 

Make a Good Thumbnail 

The YouTube thumbnail is what drives the most attention and gets the most clicks. So how do you create an engaging thumbnail? First, choose to include text. Your text should take up two thirds of the image and engage your audience with relevant buzz words.

Don’t use clickbait because people will just leave your video and that damages audience retention. More on that in a minute. Instead, take a topic that you think will get people’s attention, then include the topic in the text.

Let’s say, for example, you want to offer golfing tips. Here’s a good thumbnail example for that. So to summarize this image, we’ve done a number of things.

• Choose a bright background color (Blue or green work best)
• Choose a contrasting text color
• Use two thirds for text, one third for facial expressions or topic context

By creating these thumbnails, you’re going to improve your clickthrough rate drastically. Improving your click through rate is great because it means for each impression your video gets, you’ll get more views.

For example, a video that gets 100,000 impressions with a 5% clickthrough rate will get 5,000 views, whilst a 12% clickthrough rate will get you 12,000, a huge 140% increase in views.

For more tips, initially try A/B testing with each video to test different colors and backgrounds. Once you’ve found a good option, stick with it – viewers love consistency.

Get People Engaged Straight Away

To ensure your videos get recommended to more people, the average audience watch time needs to be as high as possible. Videos of 5 to 12 minutes long are going to perform better than videos less than 5 minutes. 

However, video length doesn’t matter if more viewers leave early. So, we need to ensure we get people engaged straight away. To do this, don’t go off topic. Provide quick evidence why you should be trusted, then get straight to the point. Avoid having any pointless intros, avoid long B-rolls, and don’t waste time asking for likes and subs.

I learned this the hard way. You can see here how even a 4 second intro gets 20% of my viewers to leave the video entirely. I dropped the intro and I maintained that same 78% audience retention for an additional 42 seconds. 

In summary:

• Get straight to the topic ASAP
• Explain your expertise quickly
• Tease viewers with the content, then lead straight into it
• Fewer B-rolls, intros, or begs for likes

Monitor Your Audience Retention

We can use this same audience retention report to learn why people leave our videos. To find it, click on any video in your dashboard. Then, click analytics on the separate video page. After, click the engagement tab.

Here we can see the audience retention report. Remember, the better your audience retention, the higher chance you’ll have to be recommended. We have two reports here – one for a healthy video and one with some potential issues. From my experience, videos with 45% or higher retention perform particularly well compared against my other videos.

Notice how the chart above, for the most part, gradually declines. There are no steep drops. 

Next, we have the unhealthy report. The audience retention is a lot lower. 44% still isn’t bad, but there are three significant drops where viewers leave the video. We can go to those moments in the video to find out what happened.

In this video, I attempted to add more length by talking about another unrelated topic, but my viewers dropped. So my solution should be to stay on topic and not worry about the video length past 5 minutes. You can do the same with your videos to learn more about your mistakes.

Build More Loyal Return Viewers

Each viewer is a real person. Pin a comment and suggest for your viewers to comment and share their thoughts. Interact with them, talk to them.

As you build more real viewers, you’ll have a better head start each time you post a video. Your loyal viewers will be more engaged, pushing up your audience retention and click through rate.

Find the Best Time to Post Your Video

The best time to post your video is the time you can post videos the most consistently. Stick to what works best for you. Consistency is key for building a loyal audience that will always be there to kickstart your views.

With that being said, it’s usually a good time to post in the early evening for your most popular region. You can find your ‘Top countries’ report in the audience tab in analytics on the dashboard.

Summary

Thanks for reading my top five tips on getting more views on YouTube. I hope these tips have helped. Have any specific questions for me? Feel free to reach out on social media and I’ll be happy to help.