EDITS.WS

Author: Syed Balkhi

  • Welcome HeroThemes to the WPBeginner Growth Fund

    Today, I’m extremely excited to announce that WPBeginner Growth Fund has taken an investment stake in HeroThemes, the parent company behind the popular WordPress knowledge base theme and plugin called Heroic KB and KnowAll Theme.

    Over 26,000 smart business owners use HeroThemes’ plugins and themes to create an extensive knowledge base and offer best-in-class customer support to their customers.

    WPBeginner Growth Fund invests in HeroThemes

    About HeroThemes

    HeroThemes is a UK based WordPress company founded by Chris Hadley and Richard Long.

    They specialize in building tools that enable you to deliver great customer service on your WordPress website.

    With HeroThemes’ plugins and themes, you can

    • easily manage all your support tickets and emails
    • add a fully-fledged knowledge base to your site or build one on a dedicated customer support portal
    • improve support response time with helpful FAQs

    … all within your WordPress website.

    In a nutshell, HeroThemes transforms your WordPress website into an excellent customer support platform.

    Let’s take a detailed look at different HeroThemes products.

    Heroic KB: #1 WordPress knowledge base plugin that helps you add a customer support portal to your existing business website.

    heroic kb

    KnowAll: It’s a dedicated knowledge base theme that enables you to build a knowledge base website and also offers deep integration with Heroic KB plugin.

    knowall

    Heroic Inbox: The #1 WordPress powered help desk & customer support plugin that lets you manage support tickets and customer emails right in your WordPress site.

    heroic inbox

    Heroic FAQs: It lets you publish frequently asked questions to improve support response time and avoid receiving repetitive customer emails.

    heroic faqs

    Background Story

    4 years ago, I published a post celebrating WPBeginner’s 10 year anniversary. In that post, I asked our readers to share their WPBeginner story as a video and explain what they have learned from WPBeginner and its impact on their business.

    I got tons of user videos, and in there one of the video responses was from Chris Hadley, so I connected with him at that point.

    Chris has been a longtime follower of WPBeginner. He learned about WordPress super loop from one of our articles on WPBeginner in the early days, which played a critical role in building the HeroThemes business.

    Several of our own knowledge base sites are also powered by Heroic KB plugin, and our other doc sites use a lot of the functionality that we forked from this plugin in the earlier days.

    Going into 2023, we eventually decided to join forces.

    I invested in the HeroThemes through the WPBeginner Growth Fund and will be advising the team on how to expand their business.

    At Awesome Motive, we have years of experience building popular WordPress plugins that are used by over 25 million websites, including OptinMonster, WPForms, MonsterInsights, and many more.

    Not to mention, our WPBeginner growth fund portfolio companies like MemberPress, Formidable Forms, Pretty Links, Wholesale Suite, Uncanny Automator, and others have seen tremendous growth over the years.

    Sharing our combined knowledge with HeroThemes will help all of us better serve the larger WordPress community.

    I’m really excited to be working with Chris, Richard, and the entire team to help accelerate their growth in 2023 and beyond. They will be joining me at our next Mastermind.

    As always, thank you so much for your continued support of WPBeginner.

    WPBeginner and Awesome Motive would not be here without YOU, and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you.

    And I look forward to continuing serving you and the larger WordPress / web ecosystem for years to come.

    Sincerely,

    Syed Balkhi
    Founder of WPBeginner

    P.S. Want us to acquire or invest in your WordPress business? Learn more about the WPBeginner Growth Fund.

    The post Welcome HeroThemes to the WPBeginner Growth Fund first appeared on WPBeginner.

  • Introducing Broken Link Checker – Never Have Dead Links On Your WordPress Site Again

    Are you tired of finding and fixing broken links on your WordPress site?

    Have you ever wished there was a foolproof method to periodically monitor all internal and external links easily WITHOUT the high costs?

    If you’re like me and most other smart website owners, then you have at least wished for this solution a couple of times in your WordPress journey.

    Today, I’m excited to announce my new product, Broken Link Checker, which works silently in the background on your site, giving you peace of mind.

    We built this tool to help you quickly check your site for broken links and easily fix them to improve search engine optimization (SEO).

    introducing broken link checker for wordpress by aioseo

    What is Broken Link Checker?

    Broken Link Checker is a powerful WordPress plugin that crawls your website periodically and checks every link to ensure it is not broken.

    It is built as a SaaS service, so it never puts load on your WordPress hosting server or slow your website down.

    The Broken Link Checker plugin was developed by the same team behind AIOSEO (All in One SEO), the best SEO plugin for WordPress.

    When broken links are found, the plugin makes it easy for you to fix them right from within the plugin without even having to visit individual pages where those links were added.

    Why Do You Need Broken Link Checker?

    Broken links can frustrate your website visitors and cause them to leave your site. They can even hurt your website’s SEO, conversions, and sales.

    On WordPress sites, broken links typically occur when moving a site to a new domain name, or when deleting a post or page without proper redirection.

    Sometimes broken links can also happen due to a typo, and they can go unnoticed for months if not years. But worse, if you ever link to an external website that’s not yours, and they change the page, delete it, or shut down the site, then your site will have broken links.

    This is why monitoring broken links on a regular basis is important for your WordPress website.

    While there are SaaS broken link checkers in the market, most are either crazy expensive or not built specifically with WordPress websites in mind.

    So I decided to work with my team to finally create a beginner-friendly broken link checker for WordPress.

    With Broken Link Checker, you can…

    • scan all links on your site every 3 days
    • detect valid links, broken links, and redirects
    • set which post types (posts, pages, or custom post types) and statuses (published, draft, and so on) to monitor
    • exclude certain URLs from being checked

    … and a whole lot more.

    If you’re serious about your website and want to grow your online business, then you know how important it is to offer a seamless website browsing experience to your visitors.

    The last thing you want your readers to see is a big 404 page not found error message serving as a dead end on your WordPress site.

    How to Use Broken Link Checker in WordPress

    The first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate Broken Link Checker on your site.

    aioseo broken link checker

    For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

    Next, you’ll need to connect the plugin to your Broken Link Checker account.

    Upon connecting the plugin with your account, you can turn the toggle on to stop search engines from following broken links. You can even set it not to update the modified date for a page/post when a link is updated via the plugin.

    link tweaks broken links tool

    When you click the Broken Links tab, you can see that the plugin has automatically scanned the entire site, and links are categorized into broken, redirects, and dismissed.

    The Broken Link Checker plugin lets you fix broken links quickly and easily right within your plugin. To replace a broken link, simply click Edit URL.

    Alternatively, if you want to remove the link, just click Unlink and the link will be removed from the page.  

    edit url in broken link checker

    After updating the link, you can recheck if the link is still broken by clicking the Recheck option. If you want, you can even dismiss the message from the plugin.

    Get More Details About Each Link

    Broken Link Checker gives you additional details for each link, like how long the link has been broken and response header information, HTTP Status code, and more.

    get status details for broken links

    Control Which Types of Pages are Scanned

    Another important aspect of Broken Link Checker is its advanced settings, which give you full control over which pages get scanned. Within the plugin, you can set which post types (posts, pages, or custom post types) and statuses (published, draft, and so on) to monitor.

    You can also exclude certain pages from being checked.

    advanced settings of broken link checker

    This helps you better manage the crawl budget, so you can ensure you’re not wasting the link scan credits.

    Scanning Your Site the Right Way

    Broken Link Checker scans both external (links from your website to others) and internal links (links from one page on your site to another page) on your site.

    Unlike other WordPress plugins, Broken Link Checker uses an external private server to scan (or, in other words, ping) for broken links on your site. That’s because repeatedly pinging external sites from your servers can make your site look suspicious to internet service providers, putting your sites at risk of being blacklisted.

    This is why most WordPress hosting companies put traditional broken link checker plugins in their block list.

    Since Broken Link Checker uses an external private server for pinging external links, you can rest assured that you’re in safe hands.

    What’s Coming Next?

    Broken Link Checker is a product by my AIOSEO team which is a leading WordPress SEO plugin with over 3 million installs.

    Our goal is to continue to build best-in-class SEO tool to ensure your website is always outranking your competitors.

    Broken Link Checker is just one of the new tools that we’ve launched.

    We have an exciting roadmap ahead of us to make this plugin even more powerful, and I am very proud of our team.

    If you have ideas on how we can make the Broken Link Checker platform or other SEO tools more helpful for you, then please send us your suggestions.

    As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner, and we look forward to continue serving you for years to come.

    Yours Truly,

    Syed Balkhi
    Founder of WPBeginner

    P.S. Want us to acquire or invest in your WordPress business? Learn more about the WPBeginner Growth Fund.

    The post Introducing Broken Link Checker – Never Have Dead Links On Your WordPress Site Again first appeared on WPBeginner.

  • Welcome WP101 to the WPBeginner Family of Products

    Today, I’m extremely excited to share that WP101 is joining Awesome Motive, and they’re now part of the WPBeginner family of products.

    WP101 is one of the most trusted premium WordPress video training providers in the market. Over 3 million users have learned WordPress from their WordPress video tutorials. The WP101 Plugin allows WordPress agencies and service providers an easy way to offer white-labeled professional WordPress training videos to their clients.

    WP101 is joining the WPBeginner Family

    Introduction to WP101 – Quick Overview

    WP101 offers professionally-produced WordPress training videos to help you learn WordPress, fast. It’s a perfect solution for small businesses owners, large corporations, and government agencies who want to offer professional WordPress training videos in their employee onboarding process.

    With WP101, you get access to over 200+ WordPress training videos that cover everything you need to learn the WordPress user interface in a university style format.

    In addition to the popular WordPress 101 series for both Gutenberg and the Classic Editor, the current library also includes video tutorials for top WordPress plugins including WooCommerce, WPForms, Elementor, Beaver Builder, and more.

    WP101 Course Library

    The WP101 Plugin makes it easy for WordPress developers and agencies to offer white-label training videos to their clients, right inside the WordPress dashboard.

    It gives you the ability to add your own custom videos as well as selective show / hide videos based on client’s needs.

    WP101 WordPress Training Videos inside WordPress Dashboard

    Whether you’re a small business owner or large corporation, I highly recommend adding WP101 training to your employee onboarding process.

    Get Started with WP101 → 

    If you’re a WordPress freelancer or agency, then you should consider adding the WP101 Plugin to your client and build a recurring revenue stream.

    Background Story – Why WP101? 

    Both WPBeginner and WP101 started around the same time with a similar mission: making it easy for people to learn WordPress.

    At WPBeginner, we did it with our easy to understand written tutorials, while Shawn at WP101 offered premium video training.

    I have been friends with Shawn Hesketh, founder of WP101 for a long time, and we have enjoyed over a decade of coopetition. I have a lot of admiration and respect for the massive impact he’s had in the growth of the WordPress community.

    Syed Balkhi and Shawn Hesketh at Pressnomics

    After 14+ years of creating WordPress training videos, when Shawn was ready to move on to the next chapter of his life, we started talking about the future of WP101 and carrying his legacy forward.

    Given my experience running the largest WordPress resource site, it made perfect sense for us to be the future custodian of the WP101 brand. 

    It gives me great joy to be there for a friend and offer him the exit that he deserves as he pursues the next chapter of his career. At the same time, it’s an honor and a privilege that Shawn trusted us to carry the mission forward.

    Note: Want to join our remote team to work on something awesome & make an impact? We’re hiring. Come work alongside me and help shape the future of the web.

    What’s Coming Next? 

    Our work is just starting.

    My goal is to create the best class-room style WordPress training videos to help WordPress grow in enterprise, government agencies, as well as at the school and collegiate level. 

    I’m really excited about the latter because I believe that education helps level the playing field, and that’s the mission of my Balkhi Foundation.

    WordPress is an open source platform, and open source is one of the greatest ideas of our generation. It has the power to transform the lives of so many people across the world, like it did for me when I first immigrated to the US.

    While talent is everywhere, opportunities are not. I want to use the WP101 training platform to bring opportunities everywhere, so we can help shape the future of the web for billions worldwide.

    This is a big mission, and I need your help. If you have experience with instructional design or higher-ed, I would love to chat with you to see how we can work together to bring WordPress to classrooms and universities. Please send me a message via WPBeginner contact form.

    If you’re passionate about teaching WordPress and want to be a part of our mission, we’re hiring content creators and trainers. While the listings for these roles aren’t public, just send me a brief message via our contact form with your resume, and I’ll get in touch with you.

    As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner. 

    Every time I share an announcement like this, I realize that I’m only able to do what I love every day because of you, our amazing readers, and I’m extremely grateful for your support throughout the years.

    WPBeginner and Awesome Motive would not be here without YOU, and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you.

    I look forward to continuing serving you, and the larger WordPress / web ecosystem for years to come.

    Yours Truly,

    Syed Balkhi
    Founder of WPBeginner

    P.S. Want us to acquire or invest in your WordPress business? Learn more about the WPBeginner Growth Fund.

    The post Welcome WP101 to the WPBeginner Family of Products first appeared on WPBeginner.

  • Welcome Duplicator to the WPBeginner Family of Products

    Today, I’m extremely excited to share that Duplicator is joining Awesome Motive, and they’re now part of the WPBeginner family of products.

    Duplicator is a top-rated WordPress backup and site migration plugin. Over 1,500,000+ smart website owners use Duplicator to make reliable and secure WordPress backups to protect their websites. Along with backups, you can also use Duplicator to easily migrate your website from one host to another within minutes.

    Welcome Duplicator to the WPBeginner Family of Products

    Introduction to Duplicator – Quick Overview

    Duplicator makes it easy for website owners to protect their websites with reliable and secure cloud backups. You can use it to create manual or scheduled WordPress backups and store them on any cloud service like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, etc.

    You can also use Duplicator to easily migrate and restore your website from one hosting provider to another, or even from local server to live.

    This is why over 1,500,000 smart website owners and developers use Duplicator to backup or migrate websites while saving time.

    What makes Duplicator stand out is that it’s both EASY and POWERFUL.

    It comes with all the powerful backup features that you need including complete WordPress files & database backup, scheduled backups, recovery points to allow for quick rollbacks, archive encryption for enhanced security, and integrations with all the popular cloud storage platforms like Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, FTP / SFTP, and any S3 compatible storage service like Wasabi, etc.

    Duplicator Cloud Backup Integrations

    When it comes to WordPress site migrations, Duplicator really stands out from competition. It has an easy migration wizard, streamlined installer, custom search & replace, support for larger websites & managed hosting, server-to-server import, ability to migrate WordPress multisite to standalone or vice-versa, shared database support, and more.

    Easily Migrate WordPress Websites from One Location to Another with Duplicator Plugin

    For developers and agencies, Duplicator helps eliminate the rework by allowing you to create pre-configured sites that you can quickly set up with just a few clicks. Instead of manually configuring the same themes and plugins over and over, just configure one site and bundle it into a Duplicator package. Install the package to create a pre-configured site on as many locations as you want!

    Aside from that, you can brand the installer with your own logo, and it comes with tons of developer hooks for further customization.

    Smart developers and agencies use Duplicator as their preferred tool because it’s always reliable and it helps simplify even the large complex website migrations.

    Duplicator - Branded Pre-configured WordPress Installer for Agencies and Developers

    Whether you’re a small business owner or developer, I highly recommend adding Duplicator to your WordPress toolkit.

    Get Duplicator Plugin →  

    You can also use the free version of Duplicator to get started. 

    Background Story – Why Duplicator? 

    As you know, every year I do a WPBeginner reader survey where I ask for your suggestions on what new tutorials we should write, plugins we should build, new features we should add to our existing plugins, and so on.

    For the last several years, the number of requests for us to build a beginner-friendly WordPress backup & migration plugin has been increasing.

    So in 2020, I finally decided to reach out to Bob & Cory (co-founders of Duplicator) to see if they would be interested in joining Awesome Motive. The reason why I picked Duplicator was because I have used it numerous times for our various website migrations, and it was always the most reliable solution especially when dealing with complex migrations.

    Not to mention we have written about them in numerous WPBeginner tutorials, so you already know that I am a fan of the product.

    Well 2020 was a crazy year for everyone, so the timing wasn’t right for an acquisition, but nonetheless we stayed in touch. Fast forward to 2022, we came to an agreement for Duplicator to join WPBeginner family of products.

    The two co-founders will not be joining the team as they want to move on to the next chapter of their life, but the entire Duplicator team will be joining us in the journey ahead, and I am very excited to work alongside them to build the features that you have been asking for.

    As you know, my goal at Awesome Motive & WPBeginner is to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. Our software today powers over 21 million websites and helps shape the web for billions worldwide.

    I believe that a reliable website backup solution is a critical part of every website because it helps you protect your website in case something goes wrong.

    And that’s why I’m really excited to have Duplicator join the AM family.

    Note: Want to join our remote team to work on something awesome & make an impact? We’re hiring. Come work alongside me and help shape the future of the web.

    What’s Coming Next? 

    Our work is just starting.

    We have an extensive list of ideas and feature roadmap from the feedback that you, the WPBeginner audience, have shared with us in the survey.

    I’m looking forward to making those ideas come to life.

    This is truly going to be a game changer!

    Whether you’re a small business owner or a developer, I think you will want to choose Duplicator to protect your website with our reliable secure backups, and easily migrate your website when you’re looking to switch hosts.

    If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in the Duplicator plugin, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.

    As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner. 

    WPBeginner and Awesome Motive would not be here without YOU, and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you.

    And I look forward to continuing serving you and the larger WordPress / web ecosystem for years to come.

    Yours Truly,

    Syed Balkhi
    Founder of WPBeginner

    The post Welcome Duplicator to the WPBeginner Family of Products first appeared on WPBeginner.