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Articles Archive

By Jeff Cohan,

WordPress Manual Excerpts: Why, When, & How to Use Them

Your blog’s landing page (aka Blog Archive) is like a magazine’s table of contents. Both have the same purpose: to grab the reader’s attention and to steer him or her to content of interest.

WordPress supports three methods for displaying blog post summaries on archive pages: automated excerpts; excerpts defined by the placement of the WordPress more tag within the body of a blog post; and manual excerpts. Which method should you use? In this article I explain why manual excerpts are always my go-to method.

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By Jeff Cohan,

How to Build Stunning WordPress Photo Galleries Quickly and Easily With FooGallery PRO

Photo (image) galleries are common and popular elements for many Web sites; for some, they’re downright essential. In this article I focus on how FooGallery PRO allows you to create galleries quickly and easily using “Media Tags” as the datasource for a gallery.

I’ve been using and liking the free version of FooGallery for years. Working on several client Web sites with multiple image galleries, I looked for more efficient ways to create and maintain those galleries. The datasource feature of FooGallery PRO is a game-changer. Read on for an explanation of how this works, with detailed instructions and screen captures.

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By Jeff Cohan,

How to Hide the Mai Lifestyle Pro Banner Area With Code

Mai Lifestyle Pro, a popular Genesis child theme, supports banner areas after the header. Banner areas with banner images — much like featured images — can add interest to a post and provide subliminal context. However, the default behavior of the banner area presents a potential problem. Namely, if you want to display the banner area on only some posts, there’s no quick and easy way to hide the banner area from the posts on which you don’t want it to appear. But there’s a solution, involving just a few lines of code.

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By Jeff Cohan,

Sharing Blog Posts on Social Networks: Why & How

If you have responsibility for online marketing for your enterprise, you might be tempted to focus most of your attention and energy on social media destinations like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on.

I get it. Sharing on social networks is a good thing. It’s fun. It encourages engagement and interaction and can be very reinforcing (gotta love those likes and shares and comments). And it’s easy. And you probably spend a fair amount of time on those social networks already.

If you view your social networks as the center of your online marketing universe, I’m inviting you to consider shifting your paradigm. I’m suggesting you consider the argument that it’s your Web site that should be the heart and hub of your online marketing strategy.

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By Jeff Cohan,

A Time For Storytelling

It might seem odd in these extraordinary times for a Web guy to be encouraging people to blog more.

People are dying. Families are being torn apart. Livelihoods are being destroyed. I don’t think anyone alive has ever experienced such overwhelming uncertainty.

I know I’m running the risk of sounding tone deaf and out of touch to suggest we use this time to post stories online. Yet that’s exactly what I’m suggesting.

The art of storytelling is as old as the human race. I can’t think of a better time to breathe life into that art with our own stories.

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By Jeff Cohan,

Strong Testimonials – Problem with v2.40.2

Warning! Strong Testimonials is my go-to WordPress plugin for displaying testimonials. I use it on my own site and on many client sites. Today, after updating WordPress to version 5.4 — and updating Strong Testimonials from 2.40.1 to 2.40.2 — on one of those sites, the WordPress dashboard crashed. The error message: By downgrading back […]

By Jeff Cohan,

How to clear cache on iPhone and iPad

Sometimes your browser will show you a cached (remembered) version of a Web site, no matter how many times you click the “Refresh” button. This can be a problem if you are using an iPhone or iPad to inspect changes made to a Web site during development. Yes, you can use “Responsive Design Mode” in […]

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Blue Sky Coaching & Consulting

Joe Gitto is a 5-time entrepreneur and former corporate executive who, after selling his most recent business, turned all of his attention to his consulting practice: Blue Sky Coaching & Consulting. Joe needed a mobile responsive website to serve as the heart and hub of his online presence.

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By Jeff Cohan,

Try Live Chat Next Time You Need Customer Service

When you’re a consumer dealing with an online merchant and you have pre-sale questions or need support for a product or service you’ve purchased, you have a number of options. In this article, I enthusiastically encourage you to give Live Chat a chance. I offer my reasons for preferring Live Chat to phone and email support, and I include an example of a successful — and money-saving — Live Chat I had with my wireless provider.

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By Jeff Cohan,

7 Lessons I’ve Learned from Live Chat

I’ve installed Live Chat on the Web sites of a number of clients. Most of those clients — especially those who hadn’t used Live Chat themselves as “consumers” — initially pushed back when I suggested they offer this particular form of customer service.

They had lots of common preconceptions. Now that I have a fair amount of experience as a Live Chat “agent” under my belt (I provide Live Chat support on behalf of most of these clients), I can tell you that most of those preconceptions were misconceptions.

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