In this post, I’m going to introduce you an easy solution: GoogleMapsWidget. It’s what you need to build the perfect map with a thumbnail and lightbox in minutes!

No nonsense. Just install it and get it done.

How Google Maps Widget Works

GoogleMapsWidgets allows you to display maps anywhere on your web pages: in posts, pages, custom post types, sidebars, menus and as widgets or shortcodes.

For installation, simply follow the usual process:

1. Open your WordPress admin, go to Plugins, click Add New
2. Enter “Google Maps Widget” in search and hit Enter
3. Plugin will show up as the first on the list, click “Install Now”
4. Activate & go to Appearance – Widgets to configure

This is the free version and it’s also available for download here at WordPress plugins depository.

I’m going to take the FREE 7 days PRO trial, to show you the main features.

GoogleMapsWidget Features

Once you have installed the plugin, visit the settings page in your WordPress dashboard:

Here are some of the most important things to know here.

First, you need to create a Google Maps API key (the new Google Maps usage policy dictates that everyone using the maps should register for a free API key). The procedure is really simple:

1. 1. Open Google Developers Console from this link
   2. Click on the Agree and continue button
   3. Click the API key link
   4. Click on the Create button
   5. Copy your API key and paste it in the plugin’s settings

Then, in the advanced settings, you may want to check some features like tracking the visits via Google Analytics, and other options like inlcuding:

• Google Maps API JS
• jQuery
• Colorbox JS
• Colorbox & Thumbnail CSS

Now, you may want to know about the main features. Here they are.

Easy to Use

With over 100,000 users, GoogleMapsWidget is a popular solution for creating maps because it works the very moment you install it. No nonsense.

See in the following screenshot how easy is displaying a map as a widget with this plugin:

Loading Time

Instead of 40+ requests, initially, the plugin take only 1 request to load the map, reducing the site load by 2 MB (it’s important you optimize the loading speed of your site).

There are 5 thumbnail map image formats for even faster loading – PNG 8bit, PNG 32bit, GIF, JPEG non-progressive JPEG.

Unlimited Maps & Pins

You can create as many maps as you need on your site, as well as adding as many pins on them. There are no limits (there are more than 1500 map pins – doesn’t matter what kind of map you’re creating, there’s a pin for everything; and they come in 2 sizes).

Also, you can custom pin bubbles/description (clicking a pin in the interactive maps opens a bubble with text, images or any other data you want to show).

There are 4 thumbnail map types; hybrid, road, satellite, & terrain, as well as 4 interactive map modes – directions, view, street & streetview.

Every Option You’ll Ever Need

Directions, satellite view, street view, custom information bubbles, customizable lightbox: GoogleMapsWidget has it all.

For example, there are 12 thumbnail map skins (more coming with every update). Color schemes can easily be switched by selecting one of the predefined schemes in Thumbnail map options (lightbox has been purposely disabled on the following examples):

Match Any Site’s Style

You may custom pins, map styles and lightbox skins to match your website, so to blend in perfectly for a perfect experience.

For instance, lightbox skins can easily be switched by selecting one of 21 predefined skins in Interactive map options. Some skins have a close button and can show the map title. All have the option to show arbitrary text above and below the interactive map. Lightboxes can be closed using the ESC key, clicking outside the lightbox or using the close button if the skins has it.

Here’s how it looks the minimalistic lightbox skin:

There are 6 options for thumbnail map links – disable link, open interactive map in lightbox, open custom URL in same or new tab, replace thumbnail map with interactive one, skip thumbnail map and imediately load interactive one.

Premium Support

There’s a friendly USA based support, with agents answering most emails within 3 hours; guaranteed response within 24h.

Introductory Video

Take a look at this interesting video, that introduces GoogleMapsWidget.

With more than 100,000 active installations & over 4 years of continuous development, Google Maps Widget is one of the most popular map plugins in the official WordPress repository.

Pricing Plan

Other than the free version, GoogleMapsWidget comes with three different paid plans:

• PRO Unlimited Agency: at $99, for unlimited client and personal sites (lifetime upgrades);
• PRO Unlimited Personal: at $29, for unlimited personal sites (lifetime upgrades);
• PRO Personal: at $15/year, for one site (1 year of upgrades).

All three plans come with USA based email support.

Important Note: if you want to try all PRO features free for 7 days, you can start a free trial, with no credit cards or PayPal required.

Final Words

With its simple interface, numerous options, and outstanding support, Google Maps Widget is an excellent choice for numerous webmasters and businesses building their WordPress sites.

It has been chosen by more than 100,000 users and most of them have rated the plugin 5 stars:

If you need specific help, you can find a forum here or simply contact the developers via email.

Now over to you.

Have you ever needed to add a map to your site?

If so, how did you do it?

Have you ever heard of GoogleMapsWidget plugin?

Please share your experience in the comments below, thanks!

When was the last time you monitored its level of security?

Your answer may be “a long time ago”, or even “never”…

Although few people do it regularly, making your site secure is extremely important.

WordPress is, in fact, an open-source platform (that is, the codes are publicly consulted by everyone, including hackers). Similarly, there are also the codes of all plugins. With this information, an experienced hacker might be able to identify any flaws and attack your website.

Today I will introduce a very useful tool.

It’s called “Wordfence Security” and it’s a plugin you can download for free.

It’s extremely popular (4.7 million downloads and 1+ million active installs) and, in addition to having several features to monitor the security status of your site, it also allows you to speed it up with the caching option.

Let’s see its features.

Scan

The first thing you should do when you install Wordfence Security is running a scan of your site.

Finished the scan, all the problems identified will be displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Here you can select various options.

In the screenshot below, the plugin has identified a new issue: a contributor of my blog is using an easy password.

In this case, I simply generated a strong password via “users” panel within my WP dashboard and notified the contributor.

I then marked “I have fixed the issue”, to find out, there are no more problems to fix.

Live Traffic

In the section called “Live Traffic”, you can monitor real users and robots visiting your site.

On this page, there are several tabs:

• All Hits
• Humans
• Registered Users
• Crawlers
• Google Crawlers
• Pages Not found
• Logins and Logouts
• Top Consumers
• Top 404s

In the following image, you can see a real visitor from Absecon, United States, arrived from https://www.google.com/search who visited the blog post https://nopassiveincome.com/tools-blogging-social-media-marketing/

Important Note: at the top of this page, you’ll see an ON/OFF button (to activate or deactivate the Live Traffic).

This option is useful to avoid consuming too much of your server resources.

Performance Setup

As mentioned in the introduction, in addition to monitoring the level of safety of WordPress sites, this plugin also allows you to improve performance by caching.

With the “Performance Setup” option, you can:

• Activate two types of caching: the basic and the Falcon (to speed up your site up to 40-50 times)
• Configure the cache so that it is emptied automatically when you publish a new post
• Empty the cache manually
• Exclude specific URLs from the cache

Obviously, this Wordfence Security feature would overlap with those of other cache plugins like WP Super Cache.

Blocked IP

If you want to block access and/or the view of your site to a particular user, crawler or bot, you can do it here, by specifying the IP address to be blocked.

If you block the view of your site at a particular IP, when the user tries to open a page you will see a message that indicates that you entered a block.

If you want, you can also block specific IP addresses from the Dashboard WordPress, but without limiting to them viewing the site.

Whois Lookup

Would you like more information about a particular domain or IP address?

Simply, paste it in this section and click “Lookup IP or domain”.

The publicly available information will appear on screen.

Advanced Blocking

If you want to block a particular bot, a range of IP addresses or even visitors coming from a specific URL, do it from this page.

Options

Finally, in the section called “Options”, you can find some basic functionalities of the plugin to work with in order to optimize their use.

There are two sections (Basic and Advanced Options).

Among the advanced options available, you may want to:

• Configure the frequency and content of notifications
• Set the Traffic Live feature so that you do not consider the visits of admin
• Configure the scan of the website
• Set some features to limit the number and frequency of login to the Dashboard

And many other features.

Being a plugin with many options, the configuration of which it will probably take up to a few hours of work, Wordfence Security also lets you export and then import your preferences, in the event that may be lost due to some error.

Wordfence Security Premium

Some features are available to premium account Wordfence users, like “Password Audit”, “Cellphone Sign-in” and “Scan Schedule” options.

The cost of a single API for 1 year is of $ 39. This price will decrease if you order a higher number of API or subscribe to the service for a longer period.

Conclusion

Wordfence Security is a great plugin. The many available features allow you to monitor the traffic on your pages, to block any suspicious users and also to improve the performance of your site.

Of course, some functionalities will keep using a bit of resources of your server; for this, you may want to disable specific features, so to avoid any issues if you are on a shared server.

Overall, if you want to pay special attention to the security of your WordPress blog, this is a plugin that I definitely recommend you to install.

Have you ever used Wordfence Security plugin?

Was it a positive experience?

Do you suggest any alternatives?

Please leave your comment below, and let’s start a discussion.

And don’t forget to share the post, if you enjoyed the content, thanks!

But there are always new users who still need to set up their own; hence, leaving comments without any image to identify their identity.

In this article I’ll explain what is a gravatar and how you can get your own.

Plus, I’ll give an advice on how to personalize blog commenters without a custom avatar, so you can either display your site logo.

What Is a Gravatar?

Gravatar stands for “Globally Recognized Avatar“.

It’s an image that follows you around the internet, appearing each time you comment on a site and it’s bounded to a specific email.

To differentiate from the avatar, a graphical representation with which a user wants to be identified as an image, a photo or a personal icon. In fact, the purpose of the avatar is just to allow users to be recognized every time they interact within any discussion forums, blogs and more.

Generally to get an avatar you need to register to the website on which you decide to participate to the conversation.

But blogging is evolving. Most of the sites, in fact, do not require the registration for commenting, with the aim to facilitate and speed up the engagement, opinions and interactions.

To avoid commenting virtually as anonymous, you need to set up your gravatar.

It’s really easy.

Just visit: http://en.gravatar.com/

You can create a new account with your WordPress details or simply adding your email.

Once you signed up, you want to add your favorite image (it’s good to add a picture with your face, if you want to be recognized around blogosphere):

You can upload it via your computer, from a URL, from past uploads or by taking a picture with your webcam.

Now, aside managing your gravatars:

You can add your personal details within your profile, your contact information, but most of all, you may want to add your websites and earn a new backlink:

It’s set up!

Now, everytime you comment around the internet with the email you registered to Gravatar, your favorite image will show up!

What Are the Advantages of Having a Gravatar?

If you need to be identified immediately, then I recommend you to create a gravatar right now!

Especially if you have a small business, you are building a brand or you are a professional blogger, you should start thinking of creating one right away.

With time, people will remember you (your gravatar) and intrigued by your comment activities around the internet, with all probabilities will come to visit your site.

It’s a great opportunity to be recognized and be heard!

Don’t repeat the mistake I made at beginning of my blogging journey. I was “afraid” of showing my face and I hid myself for 3 months behind my site logo.

Results?

I lost opportunities to build connections and create relationships online, which is one of the most important things you need to do, if you are a marketer, a blogger or an internet professional.

“Add New Default Avatar” WordPress Plugin

Within your WordPress dashboard, under “Settings”, click on “Discussion”.

Here, among the other settings, you can choose which “default avatar” you want to display for those commenters who do not have a gravatar.

You can choose between:

• Mystery Person
• Blank
• Gravatar Logo
• Identicon (Generated)
• Wavatar (Generated)
• MonsterID (Generated)
• Retro (Generated)

But each of these “default gravatars” looks really ugly to my eyes. Plus, you will be like everyone else!

What if there would be a way to personalize that “default gravatar” with, for example, your site logo?

Wouldn’t it be awesome?

With “Add New Default Avatar” plugin (free), you can easily achieve this.

Just click on the link or simply make a search via your WordPress dashboard, within plugins:

Once you installed and activated it, you can return to your WordPress blog “Settings”, under “Discussion”, to discover a new menu:

First, you need to add a new avatar (50×50 pixels), by indicating the path (I added this one).

Then click on save changes, to get that new avatar under the “default” options, as indicated in the image above.

It’s done!

Now you can get your logo displayed each time a commenter without a gravatar leaves his views on one of your blog posts.

Something like this:

Conclusion

In this article, I showed you a strategy to achieve greater visibility online and increase your reputation.

I also suggested a way to personalize the anonymous commenters at your blog, by adding your favorite logo to the people who are not using any gravatar.

If you have any suggestions, questions or you simply want to show your gravatar, just leave a comment below.

Thanks!

Do your visitors just open and close your website without letting you know if they will return?

If your stats show that you attract more new visitors rather than entice old ones to return, then you must recognize that you need to focus on working harder on your audience, instead of thinking about just getting more traffic.

To generate more traffic you can make use of social media, guest posts and forums, but users who return on your web pages usually need to have a good reason to do so.

If your website is already popular and you have invested your time to create a community around your blog, then the problem of having repeat visitors is solved and all that’s left to do is to keep doing well your job.

On the other side, if you have trouble getting users returning to your site, you should think of creating a healthy list of subscribers.

The truth is that even today, after years and years of radical changes in the web, email marketing remains one of the most effective strategies that need to be developed and integrated into your road to success.

2 Techniques to Collect Subscribers

Here are two ways to convince your visitors to leave their email address and subscribe to your mailing list.

1. Box Enrollment at the End of Each Post

The registration box is an organic method to collect email addresses.

Who is looking for information about what he just read, he’ll likely insert his email address (usually this happens with those who find a solution to their problems).

Make known to users that can receive content similar to those who are searching for, using a box at the end of each post.

Despite being considered the best tactic, it will help only to collect email addresses from those who have already been convinced to sign up for other reasons.

If you want to make a difference and collect more contacts, compared to other bloggers, you may consider a second option to collect more emails.

2. Exit Pop-up Opt-in

Unlike simple registration boxes, exit pop-up opt-ins allow you to be more persuasive.

Here are the major benefits that can be drawn using the pop-ups to encourage the user to enroll:

– surprise effect: no one expects to receive something when is about to leave the page;

– you can use incentives to encourage anyone to join in the exchange of free ebooks, guides or checklists;

– becoming a promoter of valuable information for your readers;

– one of the features of the pop-ups is that you can test different versions.

Try to run several A/B tests, to find out which of them converts more. This way, you’ll know exactly which resource is more interesting, what content like most to the public and, of course, collect more subscribers.

Also, you should know that once gone down this road, you have to continue to send relevant content to your subscribers, keeping in mind what they have downloaded.

Target and email marketing play a crucial role in building a huge mailing list.

Other than using pop-ups, be sure to learn how to write newsletters that get opened, read, and clicked.

4 Tools to Increase Subscribers to your Mailing List

For those who decide to use them, let’s see some examples of WordPress plugins that use the “exit intention” technology and other tools that can help you to capture more email addresses.

1. Optin Monster

Optin Monster works out of the box with all major email marketing software, including GetResponse.

It’s a complete tool that allows you to have the following features (and more):

• triggers the pop-up opt-in, while scrolling the page
• allows to try different versions, making A/B testing
• provides data and relevant statistics on A/B tests
• allows to create opt-in widgets, registration boxes, slide in and much more

There are different packages, from the basic plan at $49, passing through $199 and the biggest one at $499.

2. PopUp Domination

One of the most popular ones.

It allows you to use different layout and colors, produces statistics and reports and integrates with all the most used and famous autoresponders.

It also includes rules for the target and the option to run A/B testing.

The basic plan is $77 per year, which you can use only for one site.

3. Dreamgrow Triggered Scroll Box

You can set it to work based on the percentage of sliding, so when your readers reach the end of a post or comment, a small popup appears in the lower right or left corner.

It’s free and you can get it here.

4. Icegram

It’s the most versatile WordPress plugin of this list and allows you to customize the design of your pop-up.

You can use Icegram to give users access to any of your eBooks and capture their email addresses.

But be careful: you have to build a landing page yourself.

Conclusion

Hope you will find some inspiration and ideas, browsing this list of email marketing resources.

Whether the tool you are using to capture the attention of your users, be sure to track the results.

Also, remember that the important thing is not only the technology you use to achieve your goals, but also the value of the content you offer to your subscribers.

What do you think?

Are you using pop-ups on your website?

Which tools do you recommend?

Please share your experience in the comments below, thanks!