[ad_1] Christina Deemer [00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities. If you’d like to subscribe to the podcast, you can do that by searching for WP Tavern in your podcast player of choice, or by going to WPTavern.com forward slash feed forward slash podcast, and you can copy that URL into most podcast players. If you have a topic that you’d like us to feature on the show, I’m keen to hear from you and hopefully get you all your idea featured soon. Head over to WPTavern.com forward slash contact forward slash jukebox, and use the form there. So, on the podcast today, we have Christina Deemer. Christina is a senior UX developer at Lede, a company of the Alley Group, where she champions accessibility and headless WordPress in her work with publishers and nonprofits. She’s passionate about inclusivity and community and has spoken at a variety of events about the subject. Christina is autistic and brings her personal experience with neurodivergence and disability to bear in her work. At the recent WordCamp US, Christina gave a presentation called “embracing minds of all kinds, making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities”. And it’s this talk, which is the foundation of the podcast today. In her description of the presentation, Christina wrote, “cognitive disabilities are among the most prevalent types of disabilities, yet experts have struggled to provide web accessibility best practices around this area due to cognitive disabilities being such a broad category. However recent work by standards groups has begun to address this deficiency”. In past episodes, we’ve covered website accessibility from some different angles, and today we focus on how the web might be experienced by people with cognitive disabilities. First, Christina talks about what the term cognitive disabilities actually means, and what it encompasses. It’s a wide range of things, and so we talk about how people may differ in the way that they access the web. Memory, over complicated interfaces and readability are a few of the areas that we touch upon. We also discuss what legislation there is in place to offer guidance to those wishing to make their sites more accessible, and as you’ll hear, it’s a changing landscape. Towards the end, Christina talks about her own late diagnosis of autism and how this shapes her experience of the web, particularly with auto-play content and when web design includes elements which flash or flicker. Typically when we record the podcast there’s not a lot of background noise, but that’s not always the case. This is the last of the live recordings from WordCamp US 2022, and you may notice that the recordings have a little echo or other strange audio artifacts. Whilst the podcasts are more than listenable, I do hope that you understand that the vagaries of the real world were at play. If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links and the show notes by heading over to WPTavern.com forward slash podcast, where you’ll find all of the other episodes as well. And so, without further I bring you Christina Deemer. I am joined on the podcast today by Christina Deemer. Hello. [00:04:14] Christina Deemer: Hello Nathan. [00:04:16] Nathan Wrigley: It’s very nice to have you on. We are at WordCamp US 2022. We’re upstairs in the media room, and we’ve got Christina on the show today because she did a presentation. Have you actually done the presentation yet? [00:04:27] Christina Deemer: Yes, I did it yesterday morning. I was lucky in that I got to get it over with early and then enjoy the rest of the conference. [00:04:34] Nathan Wrigley: How did it go? [00:04:35] Christina Deemer: It went really well. It was a lot of fun. I had a really great audience. [00:04:39] Nathan Wrigley: That’s nice to hear. That’s good. The subject, I’m just gonna give everybody the title. That’s probably a quick way to introduce what we’re gonna talk about. The subject title was embracing minds of all kinds, making digital content usable for people with cognitive disabilities. So we’ll dive into that in a moment. Just before then, though, just paint a little bit of a picture about who you are and how come it is that you’re speaking at a WordPress conference particularly about this topic. [00:05:04] Christina Deemer: Okay. I am a career changer. I spent the first 12 years or so of my career working in arts management. Then I decided I wanted to do something very different, and I became a developer. And one of my early mentors introduced me to WordPress. So, the first projects that I worked on were WordPress sites. I wrote my first WordPress theme when I was 35, and just really enjoyed getting involved in the WordPress community. And from the beginning of my career, I’ve been very interested in accessibility for a wide variety of reasons. And it’s become a passion of mine. I really enjoy sharing knowledge about accessibility with people. I enjoy hearing people’s stories about accessibility. And recently there’s been a lot of work done on the standards around cognitive accessibility or accessibility for people with cognitive disabilities, and that work has been really fascinating and I’ve wanted to share it with people. And that was how, the reason that I pitched this talk for WordCamp US. [00:06:13] Nathan Wrigley: Thank you. That’s great. The words cognitive disabilities, it probably makes a great deal of sense to you because you’ve parsed and you’ve said it many times. You fully understand it. Would you just run over a brief definition of what it encompasses? And I’m sure it’s not just one thing, maybe it’s a multitude of things. [00:06:28] Christina Deemer:
Continue readingTag Archives: Content
How to Set Up a WordPress Paywall for Your Content
[ad_1] Lots of WordPress site owners see their content as more than information – it’s money. Taking your hard work and charging for it is a natural progression for many. Because the ecosystem is able to help you bolt on almost any functionality you need, a WordPress paywall is straightforward to implement. You’ll know a paywall through lots of different names, but regardless, it lets you restrict access to your content unless a user pays up. The form of this payment doesn’t have to be cash though: emails, social media mentions, and more can be the currency. There are lots of plugins to help you implement all manner of paywalls on your site too – good news if you have a specific need in mind. In this article, we’ll look at a few options to help you create a WordPress paywall. Before this though, we’re going to give you the lowdown on what a paywall is, the positives and perils to consider, and how to choose the right style of paywall for your site. What a Paywall Is In short, a paywall is a way to restrict access to content on your site. You’ll see this type of content restriction have different names depending on the use case, branding of the company, and more. For example, you might see this called a content locker, gated content, and other terms. It all helps you achieve the same goal. Your content sits on your site as normal, while a plugin locks a certain set of users out of the content you set. You’ll often find this sort of restriction suits informational content, such as a course or tutorial style blog. In contrast, you could also use a WordPress paywall for time-limited and relevant content, such as news and current affairs. Later on, we’ll talk about the different ways you can implement a WordPress paywall. For now, let’s discuss the benefits something like this can give you. Why a Paywall Is Fantastic For Monetizing Your Content and Cultivating a User Community You can see the evolution of self-hosted WordPress through the companion subscription site, WordPress.com. This platform has a free tier for users, which harks back to the early days of blogging: The reason this is relevant is because lots of these blogs went from being personal diary entries to information hubs. At some point, the blogs with heavy traffic and users began to monetize their content. This precipitated the evolution of WordPress from a blogging platform into a Content Management System (CMS). When these sites switch to a premium subscription model, the users (or some of them) will come along for the ride. However, it’s a fallacy to think that a paywall will decimate traffic and income. It might seem counter-intuitive, but a paywall can give you a greater sense of community and better quality traffic. Here’s why: The new users you bring in will want to be there, because they have paid to do so. Your existing users will offer greater loyalty to your brand and site, again because they are paying to stick around. Combined, you have two groups of users who see enough value in your content that they will shell out for it. This gives more value to any hits you get behind the paywall, and drips through to your comments sections, social media engagement and promotion, and much more. However, there are some definite negatives to consider if you want to implement a WordPress paywall. We’ll go over some of these next. The Drawbacks of Using a Paywall for Your WordPress Website You’ll want to note a few of the cons when it comes to WordPress paywalls. No system is perfect, and this one comes with its own unique challenges: First, you will have less traffic. However, as we note in the previous section, the numbers hitting your site will be of a higher-quality. Because that traffic expects more from your content, you’ll have to deliver. This can change how you create and deliver content, and will also affect your expenditure. You’ll have to mind that you don’t affect your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) when you implement your paywall. Because the visibility of this content is less, you’ll see fewer backlinks as a result. Advertising on your site can go either way. On the one hand, your paywall and resultant lower traffic might mean ad revenue isn’t as straightforward to come by. However, ads within locked content should perform well because it will offer high targeting. We’d argue that the positives outweigh the negatives in most cases. In fact, you’d likely already know if you want to use a paywall, or if one isn’t right for you. For instance, if your site’s revenue is based around advertising, a paywall doesn’t make much sense. For the classic blog transforming into an information site, you’ll likely want to consider content restriction. How to Choose a WordPress Paywall Model and Architecture for Your Site As you might expect, there are different types of paywall you can implement, and in some cases you can also decide on the architecture you use. For WordPress users, the latter is simple. You’ll use a plugin to implement the paywall, so this will dictate the architecture you use. In most cases, it will be a local setup. This means the functionality to lock content will live on your server. Cloud-based paywalls won’t, of course. As for the paywall model you choose, there are a few to note: Free trials. You’ll often sign up to receive a few days free of unrestricted access. From there, you’ll need to choose a plan. Subscriptions. This is the classic approach to gated content. You’ll ask the user to pay a set amount over a designated period for access to the content. Pay-Per-View. Some sites will let you purchase access to a single article, yet restrict the rest. It’s arguably the least sustainable paywall strategy, but it can help a user to read the content they want. Free trials
Continue readingThe Easy Way to Improve Your Content Production with Artificial Intelligence
[ad_1] If you’re relying on quality search engine-optimized posts to grow your WordPress website but you’re struggling to find the time, energy, and effort to create those posts, this Content at Scale review is worth paying attention to. Launched in late 2022, this powerful AI platform promises to take your keywords and turn them into complete, fully-optimized content with no intervention on your behalf, helping you to increase your content production tenfold. Still, Content at Scale isn’t the only AI writing software on the market, so what makes this one so special, and how exactly do you put it to work on scaling your content creation process quickly and effectively? You’ll find the answer to both of these questions, and more besides, in this comprehensive review. What is Content at Scale? Content at Scale is the first AI writing tool designed by marketers, for marketers. Many of the other similar tools you may have encountered are created primarily by AI developers who simply lack experience in content creation and search engine optimization. Ultimately, that means that while the content they produce may be of a good standard, it not only lacks many of the subtle nuances and emotional connection of human-created content but also requires more input to create the content. That’s before we mention the amount of work that you often need to carry out to proof, fact-check, and optimize that content. By drawing on their decade-and-a-half of experience in the digital marketing industry, developers Leadfuze have solved this problem by coming up with a platform that they promise will automate the entire process of creating engaging, well-optimized articles that require little (if any) intervention on your part. In fact, the company assures us that this sample blog post was created entirely without human input, using only a combination of three different AI engines along with two NLP (Natural Language Processing) and semantic algorithms. Article Continues Below Ultimately, this means that whether you’re a solo blogger who is pushed for time or a marketing agency that is already getting results from SEO content and now wants to scale that process further, you’ve got everything you need to dramatically cut the time it takes to write meaningful posts thanks to all of the following features. Content at Scale Key Features: AI-generated article length, headings, and media count based on what already ranks for your chosen keyword Search Engine Optimization features Plagiarism detector White label tools for developers AI-generated metadata Image gallery for adding featured images and in-post media Intuitive dashboard and post editor. Content at Scale User Experience: How to Automate Your Content Creation Process with AI 1. Create a New Project Your first task is to install and activate the Content at Scale plugin. If you’re not sure how to do that, we’ve written a step-by-step tutorial in our complete beginner’s guide to WordPress plugins. Activating the plugin ensures the platform is synced with your website so that the AI tool can do a better job at creating the kind of content that’s right for your website as well as publishing your AI-generated content directly to your WordPress installation. When that’s done, return to the Content at Scale app and log in. As a first-time user, you’ll find that your Projects dashboard is currently empty, so click the ‘Create New Project’ button to get started. 2. Enter Your Project Details Each website that you want to create content for should be its own individual project. With that in mind, you’ll need to enter a name for your project and your website URL. Below that, Content at Scale asks you to provide it with some context. This essentially means entering a few words on what you write about and who you write it for. To use WPLift as an example, we entered the following in the Project Context field. “We help WordPress users learn about how to build blogs and websites through plugin reviews, theme reviews, and tutorials.” To give you another example, if you were running an eCommerce or affiliate marketing site focusing on basketball, you might enter something like this: “We create content that helps basketball coaches, players, and fans.” From there, you can choose whether or not to enter the number of monthly posts you’d like to create the platform for you. Entering this figure here will help you to keep track of how close you are to achieving your content scaling goals, though you can always skip it and it won’t affect the quality of your posts. When you’ve done all that, simply click ‘Create Project.’ 3. Enter Your Keywords Your next job is to give the platform a keyword (or multiple keywords) that you want your content to rank for. If you’re not sure where to start with this, our guide to WordPress SEO has some handy tips on how to do keyword research, including using platforms such as SEMRush to find the most searched-for keywords in your niche. If you want to rank for multiple keywords, you can click on the attachment icon and upload them in a .CSV file. If you do this, Content at Scale will create an individual post for each keyword. After that, you’ll want to give the platform some additional context so that it knows what you have in mind for your finished content. For this tutorial, we’re creating a piece on the best AI writing software with the following context: “Cover the different types of AI writing software that are compatible with WordPress, including top plugins and platforms and how to use them. Mention at least one free tool and include pros and cons plus frequently asked questions about AI writing tools for WordPress.” Once all that is in place, all that’s left to do is to click ‘Create Content.’ The AI generator will then get to work on creating your post. You’ll be able to see how far that post is progressing under the status heading in your project dashboard. For our ‘Best AI Writing software’
Continue readingFirst Commercial Content Pack for Launch With Words Now Available – WP Tavern
[ad_1] Marketing consultant Bridget Willard announced the first commercial content pack for her Launch With Words project. Last week, she released a set of 12 blog posts for roofing contractors, but there are more on the way for industry-specific content. In January, alongside Ronald Huereca of MediaRon, Willard launched the Launch With Words plugin. The initial project supported a single “starter pack” of draft blog posts to prompt website owners to publish something new each month to build their brand. The plugin itself is primarily an importer. For the developer crowd, Huereca has a post that covers the technical details of the project. It is well worth a read to see how he approached building the plugin. The idea was unique. Willard had written starter content for both the default Twenty Nineteen and Twenty Twenty WordPress themes. She then asked why no one was doing the same for post content. Thus, a new product was born. The roofing content pack carries a price tag of $497. Companies can publish the posts directly on their sites or customize the content for their locale. The imported content is a set of 12 blog posts specific to the roofing industry, each set as a draft that users can publish on their own schedule. Each is around 500+ words and includes headings, links, and quotes. Preview of a daft post. “So many roofing contractors don’t address the frequently asked questions from property owners,” said Willard. “These blog posts address 12. Having content that is turnkey ready allows them to have more content to share on social media as well as helping their SEO efforts.” She has been writing about the construction industry for over 20 years, so this was an easy jumping-in point. The challenge was creating this first pack while also publishing two new books and wrangling client work. With things settling down a bit, she thinks monthly pack releases are a more realistic target. Future Content and Starter Packs Willard is already working on a new content pack that focuses on general contractors, which she may split into two products between residential and commercial. She plans to have at least one ready by the end of the month. The long-term goal is to hire other writers to cover industries where she has less knowledge. First, she needs a few more sales to bring others on board. She may also create some industry-specific blogging prompts similar to the starter pack that is available for free. These would also come at a lower price point of around $97. “The starter pack (blog prompts) aren’t mutually exclusive with the premium packs,” said Willard. “They can be used together. Ideally, they should be used together. Because the content packs are JSON files, and the posts are imported as drafts, they can be written (prompts) or localized (premium) and scheduled. It’s the best of both worlds.” Writing, Writing, and More Writing “Writing is the way I can teach and solidify my legacy,” said Willard. “It’s super important for me to create a life worth living. Sadly, I found this out after a mental health emergency in February of 2020.” Her most recent book is The Only Online Marketing Book You Need for Your Nonprofit, co-authored by Warren Laine-Naida. Adrian Tobey, the founder of Groundhogg.io, also contributed an extra chapter. “You can’t create unless you consume,” said Willard when asked how she kept up her pace and the creative juices flowing. “I prioritize reading fiction and nonfiction, watching documentaries, taking walks in my neighborhood, going to a museum or a park alone to think and reflect and spend time with my friends laughing and playing card games. “The best thing for a writer to do is to write. Don’t worry about whether other people already talked about your subject. Don’t worry about what people will say. This is why we love WordPress. Start publishing.” Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingStrive Content Calendar Review
[ad_1] The Strive Content Calendar for WordPress aims to solve a problem that any content publisher will undoubtedly be familiar with: Managing the entire process of preparing, creating, and scheduling content as simply as possible without having to manage multiple platforms, apps, or endless spreadsheets. Rather than having one tool for planning your content, another for managing deadlines and scheduling, and a third for actually getting that brand new post lined up in the publishing queue, Strive brings all of that -and more- together in a single tool that you can use from within WordPress itself. The intended goal is a much more streamlined and simplified process that is easier to manage, meaning fewer editorial headaches and more time to focus on growing your sites. Does it achieve that goal? Let’s find out in this comprehensive Strive Content Calendar review. Strive Content Calendar Review Strive is a relative newcomer to the world of WordPress, having first hit the market in June of this year and aiming to give other content scheduling tools such as WP Scheduled a serious run for their money. Speaking of money, that’s one of the first things that really attracted us to this tool. The whole thing is available for the fairly low cost of $7 per month all-in. Unlike other WordPress plugins, there’s no upselling, nor are there multiple pricing tiers to choose from. Article Continues Below If you’re anything like us and sometimes find yourself scratching your head as you spend a long time trying to work out which features -and thus, which pricing plan- you actually need, you’ll no doubt appreciate this all-inclusive, one-size-fits-all approach as much as we do. There’s also a free 30-day trial which gives you access to all the features with no need for a credit card to ensure you don’t accidentally forget to cancel and end up paying for something you don’t need. Again, if you’re used to other plugins which offer limited features with their free trials, this is likely to appeal to you. How to Use Strive – Setup and Features So far, so good, but we’ve talked a lot about Strive’s features without actually saying what they are or how the platform actually works, so let’s put it to work on one of our own sites and look at exactly what this new content calendar has to offer. Getting Started With Strive After heading to the pricing page, select ‘Start Free Trial’ and select the payment option you’d prefer if you later decide to go ahead and make Strive your new content calendar. As you’ll see, things get a little cheaper ($5.83 per month) if you opt to pay for a year’s subscription in advance, and even cheaper still if you opt for the $199-lifetime subscription. For those wondering, we did the math: $199 is the same as paying for 2 years and 4 months on the monthly subscription or 2 years and 10 months on the annual subscription. Either way, this isn’t the most important factor to begin with, as you don’t have to pay a penny to get started, and you can always contact Strive later if you change your mind about your payment commitment. With that done, simply enter a few basic contact details, choose whether you want them to send you security and feature updates (usually a good idea), and hit “Start Trial.” Installation When you’ve done that, check your email address, where you’ll find Strive has sent you a download link and activation key to get started. Article Continues Below The plugin downloads to your computer as a Zip file which you can then upload by going to your WordPress dashboard and carrying out the usual three-step process: Go to Plugins – Add new Click Upload plugin Select the plugin from your hard drive and install it. After activating the license key (included in your email) it’s time to get into all of Strive’s features. Strive Features Calendar View The first thing you encounter when you first open Strive is the calendar view which provides an at-a-glance look at all of your upcoming posts and their scheduled publishing date. This makes it infinitely easier to view your current publishing schedule than scrolling through WordPress’ own posts menu and checking the date of each post. Instead, you can immediately see when content is due to go out, giving you a much clearer picture. The best part is that if you’re not happy with the way your schedule is set up, you can simply drag and drop posts around the calendar to a time that’s better suited to you, which is a far easier approach than opening up each post and manually editing the publishing date. Adding New Content If there’s a free date you wish to add content to, doing so is as simple as hoving over that date in the calendar, clicking on the ‘+’ icon, which shows up in the top-left hand corner, and then selecting to either create a brand new post from scratch or take one of your pre-written drafts and schedule it. Editing Posts If you need to make quick edits such as changing the title, slug, or editorial status or adding categories, doing so is as simple as clicking on the post to bring up the quick edit menu. If you need to make edits to the content itself, that’s as simple as hovering over the scheduled post and clicking the edit icon, which appears in the top-right corner. This highly visual style makes managing your entire content schedule much more straightforward, but it’s far from the only feature you’ll find with Strive. Article Continues Below Color Coding Another aspect of the calendar that we love is that each post is color-coded according to its publishing status as follows: Red – Not Started Orange – Currently writing Yellow – Editing Green – completed and ready to go. If you’re managing lots of content and need to be able to quickly see whether or not
Continue readingGoogle Launches Search Console Insights, a User-Friendly Content Performance Overview – WordPress Tavern
[ad_1] Google Analytics is powerful if you know exactly what kind of metrics you want to investigate, it but can be overwhelming if you just need a simple overview of your traffic and referrals. Search Console Insights is a new tool from the Google Web Creators team that is aimed at making content performance easier to understand at a glance. It combines data from Search Console and Google Analytics for a user-friendly overview of important metrics for content creators. Search Console Insights can help users quickly ascertain which pieces are their best performing content, how new pieces are performing, and how people are discovering the site. Clicking on the little academic cap icon offers more information about understanding the data and tips for improving content engagement and performance. The first section shows a site’s content performance trend for the past 28 days using page views and page view duration. The next card displays a carousel of new content with page views, average page view duration, and badges for content that has high average duration compared to other content on the site. Other cards include the most popular content within the past 28 days, top traffic channels, top Google Search queries, referring links from other websites, and social media. The performance cards are not configurable but they give you a starting point if you want to dig deeper into Google Analytics. It would be helpful if each graph was linked to more data where you could adjust the date range. Search Console Insights doesn’t include all the features unless you are using Google Analytics and associate it with your site’s Search Console property. Users can access the tool’s overview page by visiting the link directly. In the near future, Search Console Insights will be available in the iOS and Android Google apps when you tap your profile picture. The tool is now in beta but Google plans to roll the experience out gradually to all Search Console users in the coming days. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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