BITW 056: Your WordPress Questions Answered with Dustin Hartzler

I met today’s guest at Tbex Fort Lauderdale, where he was manning the WordPress booth. He is the founder of Your Website Engineer; a blog and podcast devoted to helping people create a high quality WordPress website, by teaching the skills to master WordPress. He develops websites full time for his company; Hartzler Digital Media.

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The Finer Details of Episode 54 with Dustin Hartzler!

In this episode Dustin answers questions sent in from all of you listeners as well as sharing some great tips for plugins, backing up your site and WordPress resources.

Whenever I have experts on a specific subject, I love to ask my academy members as well as members of the Aspiring Travel Writers FB group if they have questions on the topic. Dustin answers these questions and more on episode 56! Click here to listen to the podcast now!

Q&A

Plugin Questions

Jaynie Wallfrom from backpackingdetourstravel-blog.com asks:
How do I know what plug ins I need for my blog?
How do I set it up so readers can be notified of more comments or responses to comments? Is this theme related or a plug in?
Elizabeth Lambert Rudd from compassandfork.com wanted to know:
How many plugins is too many? Are you better off using something like Jetpack that does lots of things or the individual plugins?
Cathy Merrifield from http://RoarLoud.net asks:
If I install a Child Theme to my blog to customize will all the plug ins still work?
Who do I contact when I don’t get an answer to my question on help forums for specific plugins?
Is there a list of plugins that are not compatible?
Cate Lincoln from hulalandblog.com asks
What plugins are recommended to optimize user interaction (thinking about social sharing and related posts specifically but I’d like to learn about any good suggestions!)
Lily Zeman From www.ThereSheGoes.co asks:
Which plug-in is best for the floating social media sharing buttons, and can this customized?

Images and photo questions

Mihaela Popa from worldtravelbug.com says:
My blog is very heavy on pictures. Are there specific plugins/tips to speed it up. I am using a number of them already ( such as Insanity, W3 total cache, WP Smush) but lately I see my site’s speed performance going down. Checking it with Google test speed usually. Thank you so much in advance!
Amna Ismail Idris from amnatopia.com says:
My issue is always around ‘Image sizing’ my photos to upload (add media). The right size that is good for mobile uploading it, Some experts/bloggers recommend 640 pix, some say 740?
Swati Saxena from lostinmaps.com said:
I use featured images for blog posts but most of the times, they don’t fit in properly. Even if I edit the image to suggested pixels, it doesn’t show up as it should.
Connie Collier Pearson had a follow up question about images and said:
Just yesterday my feature image was turned on its side. What caused that?

SEO, Landing Page & Forum Questions

Natalie Tanner from www.theeducationaltourist.com said:
I am Using YOAST for SEO now & It wants an outgoing link. What is the importance of this?
Katharina Parsons from Www.beautifullytravelled.com
I would love to find out how to create a landing page in wordpress when it’s not set up by your theme. I’d rather first time visitors arrived on a general introduction page that encourages them to submit their email. But at the moment my url directly leads to the blog and so does the automatic home button in my menu. I am currently looking at using Visual Composer, but I’m not sure how to redirect the url.
Juergen Klein from dare2go.com asks:
If I install a different language pack, like in our case version 4.4.1–en_AU, how can I get a corresponding spell checker? Currently our site is supposed to be in Australian English, yet all I get are US American spelling suggestions for posts, pages, image descriptions, etc.

If you have a question about wordpress that wasn’t answered on today’s show you can head to http://yourwebsiteengineer.com/contact/ which is a form where you can submit a question for Dustin to answer on an upcoming episode of his podcast.

In addition to the above points, Dustin shares the best methods to back up your website and update the theme and plugins. Click here to listen to the podcast now!

Episode Resources
WordPress.org
WordPress.com
WooCommerce
Dustin’s Travel Blog; DustinandMelody.com
Tbex
Automattic
WordCamp
Sumome
Jetpack
W3 Total Cache
Flywheel
WP Super Cache
Darren Rowse
Lead Pages
Optimize Press
OPtin Monster
WP Beginner
WP101
WP Curve
Dan Norris
Jobs.wordpress.net

Connect With Dustin
Dustin’s website; yourwebsiteengineer.com
Dustin’s Podcast
Dustin Hartzler On Facebook
Dustin Hartzler on Twitter
Dustin Hartzler on Linkedin
Dustin Hartzler on Youtube

Connect with Break Into Travel Writing
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
The Aspiring Travel Writer, the Facebook group

Hope you enjoyed this episode and please join me in thanking Dustin for sharing such awesome information and actionable tips! Interested in hearing the full podcast? Click here to listen now!

Tweetables:

Great tips from @dustinhartzler on the @writetotravel podcast for plugins, backing up a site & WordPress resources http://bit.ly/1ZSZT5z [Click to Tweet]
Great interview with @dustinhartzler on Episode 56 of @writetotravel podcast. Awesome #WordPress tips! http://bit.ly/1ZSZT5z [Click to Tweet]

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