Will Full Site Editing Help WordPress Themes Finally Reach Their Potential?

Marketing buzz has never been a true reflection of reality. No, the “right” drink won’t make you more desirable. A new car won’t bring your family a higher level of togetherness. And a WordPress theme can’t possibly fulfill every single need.

The myth of that last one has persisted throughout the years. Theme developers position their products as one-size-fits-all. Whether you’re a baker, a plumber, or a multinational corporation – a singular theme has you covered.

It’s easy to understand why themes have been marketed this way. WordPress powers 40% of the web and has a very broad user base. The desire to reach every corner of it is strong.

Still, the reality is often something altogether different. While a theme could theoretically be utilized for any purpose, this doesn’t mean it’s a good fit. But maybe that’s about to change.

The introduction of Full Site Editing (FSE) could be the thing that makes a “multi-purpose” theme more than just a positioning statement.

If you’re unfamiliar with WordPress Full Site Editing, you’ll want to check out our writeup on the feature. It will give you a background regarding what it does and how it might be useful for users and developers alike.

More Flexible, Less Opinionated Themes

Part of the challenge with building themes for a mass audience is balancing “opinionated” design with flexibility. Until now, that has seemed like a losing battle.

In this realm, flexibility tends to be defined as having a lot of readymade site templates. For example, a theme may come with demo websites for a construction company or an electronics retailer. But just because you throw in a few relevant stock photos and change the layout doesn’t mean it’s at all appropriate for the user’s needs. That’s more like opinion disguised as something else.

Full Site Editing brings something different to the table. Since it allows every portion of a compatible theme to be customized directly within WordPress, it could potentially redefine the role of a theme developer.

Instead of offering completely rendered designs, a theme might include an array of options for the header, footer, navigation, and content area. From there, a website owner can choose the options that best fit their needs and fill in the blanks with content.

Since block patterns have become an established part of the Gutenberg block editor, they are a natural fit for FSE themes. Theme authors can include relevant patterns and maybe even some custom blocks that enhance functionality.

Design assets like photos and icons can still be included to provide a polished look. However, they’ll be easier to swap out thanks to the block editor.

Editing a theme template with WordPress full site editing.

Reducing Theme Bloat

As it stands, finding a WordPress theme that doesn’t include massive amounts of code is difficult. Bulky option panels, “required” plugins, libraries, and custom templates all take up space. They also add to the maintenance burden. More code means more potential for bugs to pop up.

Because FSE is an extension of the Gutenberg experience, there’s hope that it will help themes jettison bloat. For example, many themes bundle in a page builder plugin. However, this should become unnecessary as a theme can now take advantage of the native editor.

The aforementioned block patterns and custom blocks could take the place of additional templates and plugins, respectively. This further reduces the size of a theme package and might ease maintenance requirements.

To be fair, custom blocks also tend to be placed into their own plugins. But rather than bundle a half dozen separate plugins (like we tend to see today), blocks could be combined into a single package. Even better if they’re theme-agnostic and can be used down the road with other themes.

Hopefully, FSE leads to leaner themes that are better optimized for performance.

Cleaning signs lay on a floor.

The Big Question: Will Theme Developers Buy into FSE?

The potential of FSE seems quite large. It represents a major shift in the way we build and maintain WordPress themes.

But success will require some buy-in from theme developers. And there’s no guarantee that the larger theme shops will immediately jump on board.

Commercial themes built with Gutenberg in mind aren’t nearly as plentiful as those that rely on page builders. Then again, early versions of the block editor were clunky and constantly changing. Perhaps FSE will be the feature that pushes developers to finally embrace the new way of doing things.

The transition will take some time. Developers have a lot invested in existing products and are obligated to continue supporting them. Then there is the learning curve that comes with FSE and Gutenberg.

Once a few popular FSE-capable themes prove themselves on the market, you can expect other developers to join in the fun. Until then, we can dream about what WordPress themes can and should be. Maybe this will be a major turning point.

The post Will Full Site Editing Help WordPress Themes Finally Reach Their Potential? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

10 Useful Responsive Design Testing Tools

To make the crucial duty of testing your site’s responsiveness easier, here are a few excellent free online tools to check out.

ResponsiveTest

ResponsiveTest

This open-source tool (repo is on GitHub in case you want to set it up locally) lets you see how a web page will render in various screen sizes. There are lots of devices supported by ResponsiveTest, such as iPhone, Blackberry, Samsung mobile phones, Dell laptops, and much more.

Responsinator

Responsinator

Responsinator takes in a URL and then outputs a sequence of device mockups with the web page rendered in them so you can get an idea of how the page layout will be experienced by your users in various devices.

Responsive

Responsive

A useful feature this tool has is it gives you keyboard shortcuts (for example, pressing T will show you the tablet preview). This is handy if you like quickly switching back and forth between various device previews.

Am I Responsive?

Am I Responsive?

This is a simple Web tool for testing the responsiveness of any site. Plus, the preview image it renders can be a great visual for your presentations, design meetings, etc.

Viewport Resizer

Viewport Resizer

This useful bookmarklet simply lets you resize your browser to a specific dimension, e.g. the dimension of an iPhone 5, or Amazon Kindle Fire, or any one of Viewport Resizer’s 47 screen size presets.

resizeMyBrowser

resizeMyBrowser

This tool lets you resize your browser based on any of the 15 default sizes that match up with some popular devices (MacBook, iPad, etc.). You can also set your own custom dimensions, and it also tells you what your current browser window size is.

Screenfly

Screenfly

Just like some of the other tools in this list, Screenfly takes in any URL and then gives you a preview of the web page under various preset screen dimensions.

Responsive Web Design Test Tool by Designmodo

Responsive Web Design Test Tool by Designmodo

Designmodo has its own responsive design testing tool that can come in handy when you’re designing or debugging your responsive breakpoints.

Responsive Web Design Testing Tool by pixeltuner.de

Responsive Web Design Testing Tool by pixeltuner.de

Like Responsinator, this responsive web design testing tool by pixeltuner.de allows you to enter a URL which is then rendered inside several device mockups.

responsivepx

responsivepx

responsivepx can work with your local files. What I would do is just open your HTML document in your web browser and then copy-and-paste the URI into responsivepx. This is useful when you’re working on a responsive design project on your computer.

Which Tool Should You Use?

Many of these responsive design testing tools work pretty much the same way, so picking one over another is really just about personal preference.

I recommend playing around with all of them and then choosing the one you like most.

What’s your favorite responsive design testing tool? Share and talk about it in the comments.

Read Also

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Hunspell FFI PHP Spell Check Library

Package:
Summary:
Check the spelling of words in text using Hunspell
Groups:
Author:
Description:
This package can check the spelling of words in text using Hunspell...

Read more at https://www.phpclasses.org/package/12163-PHP-Check-the-spelling-of-words-in-text-using-Hunspell.html#2021-07-24-07:09:25

10 Best Hosted Ecommerce Platforms

If you’re thinking about putting up an online store and would like to do it quickly and easily without worrying about coding or web hosting, the hosted ecommerce platforms discussed in this article are ideal options.

What is a Hosted Ecommerce Platform?

A hosted ecommerce platform is a type of software as a service (SaaS) that hosts online stores. A good hosted ecommerce platform will have ecommerce-specific features such as online payment integration and inventory management, powerful and reliable server technology resources, and expertise in compliance and security as it pertains specifically to web-based transactions and data management.

Generally, ecommerce web hosting is ideal for individuals or small- and medium-sized businesses that have little or no ecommerce development experience.

The biggest trade-off when using a hosted ecommerce platform compared to self-hosted solutions like Magento and Open Cart is your ability to have full control of your online store, which (among other things) means you will encounter some areas that you will not be able to customize or change.

There are many hosted ecommerce platforms out there. I will talk about your top ten best options.

1. Shopify

Shopify

Shopify is a popular hosted ecommerce platform. Their user-friendly administration interface gives store owners the ability to manage their product inventory and customize their online store without knowing how to code. Shopify recently launched a separate service that allows you to run a POS system through your mobile device, it integrates with your Shopify store so that you can manage your inventory using only one platform.

Pricing starts at $14/month for the Starter plan, but you will quickly outgrow this plan if you’re serious about selling online. The next plan, called Basic, is more practical: It’s $29/month and gives you 1 GB storage, an unlimited number of products in your online store, and a 2.0% transaction fee.

Online stores that use Shopify

2. Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce

Bigcommerce is comparable to Shopify and, really, you can’t go wrong with either one. Bigcommerce is a host to over 55,000 online stores that (combined) have done over $4 billion in sales. Have a look at their collection of free and paid store apps that can extend your online store with extra features and integration with third-party services like MailChimp and Visual Website Optimizer.

Pricing starts at $29.95/month and comes with 3 GB of file storage and a 1.0% transaction fee.

Online stores that use Bigcommerce

3. Volusion

Volusion

Volusion is, in my opinion, in the “Big Three” of the top hosted ecommerce solutions (alongside Shopify and Bigcommerce). According to Volusion, the online stores they host have generated over $16 billion in combined sales. This platform boasts over 900 ecommerce features and offers additional personal services to their customers for a fee, such as conversion rate optimization which provides store owners one-on-one consulting with the company’s marketing consultants (for $899).

Pricing starts at $15/month and allows up to 100 products in your online store, unlimited storage, and no transaction fees.

Online stores that use Volusion

4. X-Cart Cloud

X-Cart Cloud

X-Cart is a free and open source PHP shopping cart software that you can host and manage on your own. The company has a hosted ecommerce platform service called X-Cart Cloud which runs the X-Cart software. Think of X-Cart Cloud as being akin to WordPress.com, a subscription-based hosted publishing platform for the WordPress open source project. X-Cart Cloud has an assortment of free and paid modules that extend your X-Cart online store. In three of their more expensive subscription plans, you will get access to their point of sale (POS) system module that will allow you to manage the inventory of your brick-and-mortar stores and online store within a single interface.

Pricing starts at $15/month and allows you to have up to 100 products in your online shop, 1 GB storage, 10 GB of bandwidth, and no transaction fees.

Online stores that use X-Cart

5. Big Cartel

Big Cartel

Big Cartel is a hosted ecommerce platform that has found a niche in the creative industry. It hosts over 500,000 online stores, with most of them being stores for jewelry, fashion, music, arts, crafts, and other creative endeavors.

Pricing starts at $9.99/month, which allows you to have up to 25 products (with a limit of 5 photos per product), and no transaction fees. They also have a free plan that allows you to use the service for up to 5 products.

Online stores that use Big Cartel

6. 3dcart

3dcart

3dcart boasts a ton of ecommerce features: This hosted ecommerce platform allows you to accept Bitcoins and has a loyalty program system that gives your users the option to earn rewards points whenever they shop at your online store.

Pricing starts at $16.99/month and allows you to have up to 200 products, unlimited storage, and no transaction fees.

Online stores that use 3dcart

7. PinnacleCart

PinnacleCart

PinnacleCart displays an impressive client list of companies that includes HBO, Discovery Channel, and the Miami Heat. It has the ability to integrate with for third-party apps like Facebook, QuickBooks, and more.

Pricing starts at $29.95/month, which includes 1 GB of storage, 2 GB bandwidth, and no transaction fees.

Online stores that use PinnacleCart

8. Yahoo! Ecommerce

Yahoo! Ecommerce

With Yahoo! Ecommerce, you get peace of mind knowing that your online store is hosted by one of the biggest giants in the technology industry. They have supported over $65 billion in transactions and over 1 million businesses. As to be expected from a tech company like Yahoo!, their ecommerce solution has a ton of excellent features such as direct integration with UPS (a major shipping company) to make managing your product deliveries easier.

Pricing starts at $26/month (billed annually) and includes the ability to have up to 1,000 products in your online store, 5 GB of storage, 150 GB bandwidth, and a 1.5% transaction fee.

9. Wix Online Store Builder

Wix Online Store Builder

Wix is an extremely popular and easy to use DIY website builder. They recently ventured into the ecommerce space by launching the Wix Online Store Builder, a hosted online store platform.

Pricing for their ecommerce solution starts at $19.90/month, which comes with 20 GB of storage and 10 GB of bandwidth.

10. Storenvy

Storenvy

Storenvy is different from the other hosted ecommerce platforms discussed above in the sense that your online store is going to be included in their marketplace/network of brands. All of your products will be featured and searchable within their marketplace, which means your items will be visible to their existing base of customers. Storenvy has over 100,000 brands selling on their site. Storeenvy also has an impressive developer API.

Pricing for Storenvy online stores is free, but if you would like to have a custom domain, it costs $5/month.

Conclusion

Hosted ecommerce platforms take the hassle out of self-hosting an online store. The biggest disadvantage with this type of ecommerce solution is that you will have less control and ownership of your online store.

My top picks are Shopify and Bigcommerce. They both have wonderful user-friendly features, excellent documentation and support, top-notch expertise, and good reputations in the hosted ecommerce platform space.

Related Content

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Weekly News for Designers № 602

Envato Elements

Pattern Collect – Browse this curated gallery of patterns from around the web.
Example from Pattern Collect

Designing for the Unexpected – Thoughts on designing for situations and devices you didn’t anticipate.
Example from Designing for the Unexpected

GradientArt – Give this feature-packed, web-based CSS gradient editor a try.
Example from GradientArt

The Current State of Homepage UX – 8 Common Pitfalls – A look at how well various eCommerce sites are doing, along with things to avoid in your own projects.
Example from The Current State of Homepage UX – 8 Common Pitfalls

Refactoring CSS: Introduction (Part 1) – Dive into the process of analyzing your code, identifying weaknesses and creating solutions.
Example from Refactoring CSS: Introduction (Part 1)

gridless.design – Interesting thoughts on moving beyond grid-based design.
Example from gridless.design

Is It Time for Web Designers to Retire the Slider? – The slider was once a catch-all solution. But perhaps it has outlived its usefulness?
Example from Is It Time for Web Designers to Retire the Slider?

inLine – Use this free JavaScript library to create a simple text editor.
Example from inLine

The New CSS Reset – Remove the default browser styling for HTML elements with this updated take on the classic CSS reset.
Example from The New CSS Reset

Items Every Web Designer Should Have in Their Office – From the basics to the frivolous, a collection of things to enhance your office.
Example from Items Every Web Designer Should Have in Their Office

10 Free CSS Snippets for Creating Responsive Pricing Tables – Build the perfect pricing table for your project with the help of these code snippets.
Example from 10 Free CSS Snippets for Creating Responsive Pricing Tables

Illustrations – Use this Figma plugin to import high-quality free illustrations into your project.
Example from Illustrations

Boxicons – Download this collection of beautifully simple vector icons.
Example from Boxicons

CSS Bookmarklets for Testing and Fixing – How to build and test your own bookmarklets, with lots of examples included.
Example from CSS Bookmarklets for Testing and Fixing

The 15 Best Free Graffiti Fonts – Create something that stands out with these free graffiti fonts.
Example from The 15 Best Free Graffiti Fonts

ReSizr.in – This online tool will double the size of an uploaded image and reduce noise.
Example from ReSizr.in

How To Network Properly: Networking For Designers 101 – How to adopt a refreshing approach to networking.
Example from How To Network Properly: Networking For Designers 101

SketchKeys – These stickers provide a handy way to learn various keyboard shortcuts. Available for Figma, Sketch, Photoshop and more.
Example from SketchKeys

The post Weekly News for Designers № 602 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Checklist for Moving to Another Domain Name

domain name migrations with Bill Hartzer

In this episode of the Digital Marketing with Bill Hartzer, I took some time to go over my detailed checklist for migrating and moving to another domain name. I’ve heard so many people say that you shouldn’t move to another domain name because there will be issues, you’ll lose traffic, or rankings. That’s simply not true; at least in my experience. All of the domain migrations that resulted in LOST traffic and dropped search engine rankings were a result of a bad domain migration. In other words, whoever did the migrating didn’t do something right. Or, they didn’t follow best practices for domain migrations. That’s why I’ve created a checklist for moving your website to another domain name.

In this episode, I gave my thoughts about doing due diligence before you move; and to give it some time before actually moving. For example, put some pages up on the domain you’re moving TO, then make sure that the domain name’s super clean, there are no issues, and crawling and indexing is going well. Then, use my domain migration checklist to do the domain migration. In the video, I explain all the steps.

Here is the full transcript from the video:

Bill Hartzer (00:02):
Hi, this is Bill Hartzer, and this is the digital marketing podcast with Bill Hartzer. For Thursday, July 22nd, 2021. So I want to go ahead and focus a little bit today on or mostly today on domain migrations and moving from one domain name to another. I’ve talked about this before and in different scenarios and different situations, different articles and different videos, but you know, today I want to go back through and, and talk a little bit about it today, specifically. So I’m gonna go ahead and share my screen here and let’s see, okay. Move a few things out of the way here. So I put together a checklist for moving from one domain name to another. And I want to go through that today. So keep in mind though that, you know, due diligence before you move is one of the things that is absolutely necessary.

Bill Hartzer (01:12):
And so that could either make or break your, your domain migration when you move. I know there are certain situations where you just have to move and you don’t ha you know, you don’t have a choice and that’s fine. But ideally you do have a choice and on when you are actually going to move, okay, take an example. What’s, you know, a company that has the.org and they’ve been using that as their main website and so forth, and they finally acquired the.com. And so they’re not, not, they really want to move in, I, in an ideal situation they, once they acquire that.com domain, they would actually, what you would want to do. And what they would want to do is basically establish a website on the same topic. Maybe take a few pages of content from your site and, and put it on that new domain.

Bill Hartzer (02:19):
You want to make sure that it’s on the same, same topic. If you say you’re a recruiter and you bought a name, a great name, and you’re going to be moving to it, you want to make sure there’s employment and recruiting type of content on that domain. You don’t want to just put up some old you know, other topic, if you will, like, you know dog and cat website, or, you know, or a personal website or something you want to make sure it’s on the same topic, because we want to establish the fact that, you know, what the search engine sexually SI that that’s what the topic of the domain is. And the website, and the reason why I want, we want to do that is for a few things we want to make. We want to verify them in Google search console and Bing webmaster tools.

Bill Hartzer (03:11):
We want to we want to, we want to look and see, look for errors and issues that particular you know, domain that you’re moving to. We want to make sure that there’s, it’s not risky that we move. We want to make sure that it’s all, you know, that the pages can get indexed. They can get crawled and index, and, and we want to work at, to see if there’s any penalties on the domain name that we’re moving to. Okay. Even though it’s a brand, maybe it is, if it’s a brand new domain name that you think, you know, that you think has never been registered before, you know, we’re now 30 plus years, you know, 20 plus years we at least into this main internet thing. And, you know, there’s a good chance that it was used at one point and so forth.

Bill Hartzer (04:03):
So doing that due diligence and making sure that the domain that we’re moving to is not having any problems we’ll want to check the links, want to check the links in Google search console. We want to see, like I said, that it can actually get crawled and indexed, and that there’s not any issues. If there are any issues with it, you’ll probably you’ll probably see them. And it will be you know, a parent you know, things like, for example, you verified Google search console and it’s ranking for all sorts of weird keywords that you, that have nothing to do with the topic of the domain. Or, you know, you see links that you’ve never seen before that are not out there. You know, when you check the wigs and majestic, for example. So basically give it some time establish that maybe even send some ma maybe put some mining pages on it, test the traffic.

Bill Hartzer (05:04):
You could establish, you know, you know, at some point you’re going to be moving to it. So maybe next month they can moving, but put, do some Google ads and, and Facebook ads to start sending some traffic to that domain, to some mining pages there just gets that start using it, start making it and, and so forth and so forth. So when it comes down to this checklist, I’ve, I’ve recently put this checklist out as a blog post, so you can copy it, paste it and use it any way you want. I’ve narrowed it down into basically four different sections, what you need to do. Pre-Move talk about, I talked a little bit about pre-planning what you need to do on moving day, and then after moving day, what you need to do afterwards. So basically that’s the fork, you know, what’s go, I’m going to go through in particular, but yeah, keep in mind that, you know, there may be some that you don’t need to actually do, but there may know, pretending on your situation.

Bill Hartzer (06:08):
There may be some that I just mentioned once, and that’s going to be a real big part of it of, of of the whole process. So it kind of depends on your situation, but this is a pretty good checklist I put together for, you know, with all the different migrations that I’ve done. So let’s talk about the first pretty moving that’s probably, you know, other than the due diligence, which I’ve mentioned and, and, you know, you’re kind of Canterbury, you move, technically speaking. You know, what we want to do is when I make a backup, a copy and we want to be working on the copy. So this is a good chance to probably make make, let’s say you’re going from the.org, the.com. Okay. Let’s make a copy of the site, the.org site on new, on new hosting, on a new server or, you know, or on the same server, but it may be a new instance.

Bill Hartzer (07:08):
Okay. Cause you’re going to need to maintain both copies one for the redirects on that out Oregon, the new site on the.com. So we want to have a copy, you know, essentially that we’re working on. And we want to that’s, you know, we want a separate backup, but also we want a copy. So we’re going to work on the copy. And so in that copy, we want to do some things and working on it to work on it. For example, we may need to do some changes for example, any references to the old domain and so forth, it gets to that, but let’s first, you know, make a copy, set up and consider a new hosting or a new server or something like that. Crawl the current website and start saving list of bay of URLs. Okay. And that’s, this is going to be key.

Bill Hartzer (07:58):
Any URLs that you can find anywhere, whether it’s in Google search console, whether those pages are in Google analytics whether or not they’re server log files anywhere you can find you are, you know, old URLs on the page, just make a list because we’re going to want to use those as redirects. And when we set those up. So we, you know, so even if it’s a version of the site that is from 10 years ago, there were pages that were URLs. If it was whatever, not HTML, and you’re not even using that HTML pages anymore, you still will want to get those redirects in place. Look at all the links. We’ve got all the links that are pointing to the site and some, you know, services like majestic and Atrius and SEM rush can give you lists of URL of, of URLs.

Bill Hartzer (08:54):
You’re going to want to basically have a massive list of every page possible that you could then potentially redirect. So can we view this, this new copy of the site? We want to look for references to the all domain. We may want to update the copy anywhere, mentions the old domain, make, you know, we want to make it ready for the new domain. So, you know, internally any internal links are going to have to go to the new domain rather than the Elba main thing, you know, you might have a logo that has the domain and main minute things like that. You’re going to have to really go over and QA and make sure it’s ready. I mentioned performing due diligence that, you know, on the new domain that you’re moving to, but yeah, that’s kind of the part of this pre-move process, you know, check all the links from other websites, you know, using majestic and so forth check all the links and, and, and make note of all the powerful links, because later on, you’ll probably want to get those updated to the new domain rather than having those go through a in particular, rather than having those go through a redirect it’s, you know, it’s preferable to have them go direct.

Bill Hartzer (10:17):
So for example so in this process, verify the site and Google search console. So we want to verify both sites, both domains, all the different versions, HTTP, HTTPS issue, DPW dub, dub dot, whatever.com, domain.com and all, you know, all the keep in mind, you’re going to have to set up HTTPS on the new domain, but you’re also gonna have to keep it going on the old domain, because any redirect will go to HTTP, you know, people going to HTTPS. So you don’t want, you don’t want them to get an error or, you know, and, and that redirect not occur and so forth when you’re doing that. Think about a press release, think about how you were going to announce to the public that you’re moving. That also may, even though you’re not a large company, maybe you want to get some more additional links and get, you know, when you get, have links, even as oppressors release link, the search engines will see it and it’ll cause them to crawl and, and so forth.

Bill Hartzer (11:26):
We want to get that activity moving with those links and, you know, think about a new marketing campaign. Are you getting, do you know, Google ads are, you get into some kind of, you know, how are you going to announce and how awareness of the new domain that’s important, you know, larger companies would probably, you know, do everything from radio, TV, billboard, and so forth and social media and online ads. Whereas you, you know, if you’re a small business, you may not need to do that, but keep in mind that’s available. Pre-Planning, let’s talk about a date, make a date and time. If you have a larger organization, you’re going to need to detail the process for moving everything. You know, maybe some things from this checklist or all these things in the checklist, or even additional things in your organization, who’s responsible for actually setting up the redirects, going on the domain name and logging into the registrar and changing the names servers.

Bill Hartzer (12:29):
You’re going to have to, you know, figure all that out. Give it a date and time reasonably where you’ve QA, the new version of the site and so forth, even though it’s the same email as the same exact site, you’re still gonna need to fix the internal links and so forth. And, and you’re gonna, you know, you’re going to have to do that. So when you’re actually ready to move, you know, add the 3 0 1 redirects, okay, we don’t want the, we, they should not be temporary. There should be 3 0 1 redirects. We were going to go to, you know, page to page. So all domain.com/contact should redirect the old domain.com. Our new domain.com/contact page to page. You don’t want the old domain flash slash contact to go to the home page of the new domain. You want it to go to the equate, the equivalent tides date page of the new domain.

Bill Hartzer (13:27):
Now keep in mind, you may want to even relook at all the pages on your site, because you may not need all that content, or you may want to add, to add additional content. If you’re removing pages from the old domain, when you’re moving, you will still want to set up those redirects that they re you know, the redirect to the appropriate page on that, on the new domain, the same category, okay, you’re going to notify well, you’re going to call the website once it’s live, crawl the new website with a crawler and look for errors that you’ve missed.

Bill Hartzer (14:07):
I’ve done a lot of re a lot of domain migrations, and frankly, I’m not perfect. And sometimes will find something that I didn’t. I forgot about it happens. Notify Google of the change of address. They have a change of address form that you can actually fill you, fill out. Do you notify them officially? I recommend that. If you can, because I believe that if you do rec you know, if you have their file, that you’re the owner of both domains and you’re actually moving, there’s a good chance that they’ll, they’ll pass all the wing Jews or all the credit from the old domain to the new one. If you just do a 3 0 1, you don’t not notify them, you may lose some, some of that. That’s just my speculation, but that’s why they kind of give us the change of address form update the analytics with the new domain, because you’ll, you’ll want, you know, you’ll want both, you want both to be there because you’ll want to be able, you want to use the same Google analytics account on both domains.

Bill Hartzer (15:15):
Don’t go ahead and, and just and start, don’t start a new analyst because you’ll want to see the progression of when you moved, what the traffic was. You want to monitor that and how that’s going. A social media profiles, new domain name updates, email signatures, email addresses. So you might email there, you know, if you’re in an organization that you’re using, you know, everybody’s used to sending or receiving email and the ultra Maine, give it some time for them to move over and have a plan for that. There’s, there’s a best, it may for scent, you know, you want, you may want to have both emails still wives. So you can still receive email to the old domain after a period of time. And, you know, just don’t cut it off because then you’re not going to receive any to the, you know, to the old domain, any internal documents, newsletters, you know, you may want to do a press release to get some more links get some mentions out of the new domain at PBC campaigns.

Bill Hartzer (16:25):
I mentioned, you know, in do deal in due diligence in particular that you may want to, you know, have that new domain live already and be pushing some PBC traffic to that ahead of time before you actually do the full move. You know, so you may want to update those. And then also, you know, if you do happen to receive, you know, some, some traffic loss which shouldn’t be major at all, you may want to, you know, the PPC campaigns to can compensate for any, you know, that traffic clause customers, clients, business partners, see if you can get those links changed. As many as you can, because once, like I said, if you have a link from another website and they does the re 3 0 1 redirect, and then it goes to your site, you’re going to lose some of that value through that redirect, if you can get that updated, that’s going to make sure you don’t lose that.

Bill Hartzer (17:28):
So after moving day after you’ve moved, you know, watch gain analytics Briony, traffic and chain traffic changes. We also want to look at w you know, work for ranking changes and so forth and just continue to work on getting new links to the note new domain name, basically it’s the payroll process is not very difficult. However, the key here is really working on you know, in fact, it’s actually just working specifically on doing the due diligence to make sure and double is sure, you know, that the new domain is clean and there’s not any issues. And you have those redirects set up. Generally speaking that there shouldn’t be any problems. If you do run into anything, feel free to get in touch with me in particular, and I’ll be happy to take a look and, you know, see if I can advise you about, you know, if there’s anything that I see that could be fixed. So that said, this has been the digital marketing, digital marketing with Bill Hartzer podcast for July 22nd, 2021. Thanks so much for listening today, and we’ll see you online.

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