Blog Archives

How to Blog Anonymously

There are many valid reasons to blog anonymously. Perhaps you want to write about a controversial issue and would rather not be “doxxed” (publicly outed) by opposing minds. Or perhaps you want to reveal private parts of your life without revealing your identity. Unnamed references to individuals in your life story can also stay anonymous. Or, perhaps, you are divulging the inner workings of a named business as an employee and whistleblower and need to stay anonymous to avoid the firing squad or any other type of employer retribution.

Blogging anonymously can be tricky. But it can be done so long as all identifying markers are avoided.

1. Develop Your Nom de Plume

First, come up with a pen name you’ve never used before. This can be anything you want but make sure you like it, because it might be sticking around for a long time. If you plan on making a possible career out of this blog, you can protect your new name with a federally registered trademark. And to protect your identity further, contact an attorney to create another entity, such as an LLC or trust, which you would then use to register the trademark instead of your real name. This way, you can shoot for the moon with editors, book deals, interviews – all using your anonymous nom de plume.

2. Sign Up for a VPN

A VPN is a virtual private network. Some are cloud-based and some are software applications you can download and activate on your machine. When you use a VPN, your identifying IP address will be shielded and your browsing data will be completely anonymous. Whenever you start to work on anything related to your new anonymous blog, activate the VPN.

3. Get a New Free Email Account

Using your new VPN, create a new email account with Gmail or another free email hosting provider. You can create a completely anonymous account. This new account shouldn’t be connected to any of your identifying email accounts – however, even if it is – it will remain confidential.

4. Choose Your Hosting Wisely

A web host is the service that puts your blog or website online. When choosing where to host your blog you have two broad options: free or paid.

Free platforms like Blogger offer the ultimate in anonymity since your payment details are not connected to your account. However, free platforms have several drawbacks as well. They are susceptible to being removed at the whims of the host (should someone complain about your content), and they just don’t look professional, so people are not likely to take the content there very seriously.

Because of these drawbacks, free blogs are best-suited for those looking to journal about a private matter, but are not a good choice for those who want visibility for their content.

For information on how to set up a professional blog on a paid host, you can read this tutorial. To keep things anonymous, it is recommended that you only host your anonymous blog in your account. Don’t host any other websites/blogs you have that include personally identifiable information on the same hosting account. So if you start a new WordPress blog that you think is anonymous, but also host a website where you post public book reviews under your name and on the same hosting account, your anonymous profile will be outed quickly.

For the tech-savvy: You can edit your .htaccess file with the following line of code to prevent nosy people from being able to see a directory index listing all of your folders and websites.

DirectoryIndex some-file.html

5. Keep Your Domain Name Private

If you’re going to use your own domain name, you will have to purchase it. You can keep your personal information completely private by activating the “WHOIS” privacy feature available on most registrars to keep your information out of public view. This will prevent your information, except for what you choose to reveal, off of sites like WhoIs.net and Icann.

6. No Names, Genders, Locations, Ages, Etc.

Now that you’re ready to start blogging with your new pen name and using your VPN, it is essential that you change up all references to yourself and other real people by altering names, genders, occupations, ages, and locations. The last thing you would want after going through all the trouble to stay anonymous is for some lonely soul to recognize your caricatures and name you and your blog publicly. It would be a disaster, and could potentially land you in legal trouble if someone claimed defamation.

7. Schedule Your Posts to Go Live at Different Times

Another identifying factor that many people don’t consider is TIME. If you’re an employee, for example, posting about your arduous daily work life at a company that is desperately trying to find out who their naughty blogger is, you could be identified simply by deducing who could be blogging during non-working hours. So if you schedule a post to go live while you’re hard at work – it couldn’t possibly be you, could it? Have your posts go live while you’re busy with friends, at work, or out in public in some way. This will relieve you of most suspicion.

8. Be Careful with Social Media

You may be tempted to create social media accounts using your new pen name to be associated with your new blog. This is fine, so long as these social media accounts are created using your VPN, and attached to your new anonymous email. But be careful. Do not associate your own profiles in any way with your new social media accounts. Make sure there is absolutely no connection between your real profiles and your anonymous ones. No “likes”, “follows” or “connections” between the two.

9. Don’t Be Tempted to Tell Anyone

If you are serious about staying anonymous, don’t tell anyone about your blog. Don’t tell your spouse, your children, your mother, your siblings, or even your best friend from fifth grade. Don’t tell anyone. I can’t stress this enough. If you tell one person, that person could accidentally let it slip. Suddenly ten people know. Then everyone knows. TRUST NO ONE.

With these steps in place, you are set to begin blogging anonymously. Good luck and stay dark!

How to Migrate Your WordPress Site to BlueHost

Website migrations are complex and these complexities are not always simplified with WordPress blog or sites. There are a number of steps that should be followed in the correct sequence to ensure a proper migration. If done incorrectly you may experience website downtime.

Please make sure to read through this entire guide before initiating your website migration.

Step One: Setup Your New BlueHost Account

I recommend using BlueHost because of their reliability and cost-effectiveness. In addition, in my experience their customer support has been top-notch, which is particularly nice to have when you are doing something like migrating your site.

Disclosure: The Blog Starter receives a commission when you purchase a BlueHost package through our link.

Use this link to get the discounted rate of $2.75 per month on a BlueHost package.

Bluehost offers a number of packages. For most people the Starter plan will be fine (if you are just hosting 1 site), or get the Plus plan if are hosting multiple sites.

Step 2: Create FTP Credentials in Your Existing Hosting Account

In the cPanel of your existing hosting account, navigate to FTP Accounts usually under the “Files” heading.

Add a new FTP account by filling in the user name and password. Often, a file path under “Directory” will be automatically created. Delete this file path completely so that your new FTP account will have ROOT access.

Make sure the quota is set to “Unlimited” and click “Create FTP Account”. Make sure to notate your new FTP account password.

You should see the new account at the bottom of this page. Click “Configure FTP Client” next to the new account and then notate the User Name, Host Name, and port number.

Step 3: Download Filezilla

Filezilla is a free FTP client and is the most commonly used. You can download this software here. After downloading the installation file, click “run” to begin setup.

Step 4: Connect to Your Server

Once Filezilla is installed on your machine, open the program and under “File” click “Site Manager”. Here you’ll be setting up the connection to your existing server. Add in the hostname and port from above, and then your username and password.

Click “Connect” to begin the connection.

Note: If you’re unable to connect, try adding @yourdomainname.com to the User Name. If that doesn’t work, you may need to call your hosting provider to troubleshoot.

Step 5: Download Your Files

On your local machine, create a new file folder where you will be able to transfer all of your website files and remember its location.

In Filezilla and connected to your server, navigate using the top right window to the file folder containing your website files. Usually, this is under the public_html file. If you click on the public_html folder, the files within this folder will appear on the bottom right window.

Your website files may be in a different folder within the public_html folder. Locate the appropriate folder and open it.

In the top left window, navigate to the empty folder you created on your machine. Open the folder by clicking on the + icon to the left of the folder name. The empty folder will open in the left bottom window.

In the RIGHT bottom window, click on the first folder and then scroll down to the very last file, press and hold the SHIFT button and click the last file. All files and folders should be highlighted.

Drag and drop all of the highlighted files and folders into the bottom LEFT window by pressing and holding the CTRL button and clicking on any file/folder and dragging them over.

The download will begin in the bottom window. This will take some time. There are a LOT of files in WordPress. And don’t worry, you’re only copying the files, not removing them!

Go have a cup of coffee. Or move on to the next step which you can do while the download is running.

Step 6: Download Your Database

In the cPanel of your existing server, navigate to phpMyAdmin under Database.

On the lefthand side, click on your website’s database.

Note: If you have many databases, and you’re not sure which one it is, take a look at your website’s wp-config file and notate the database name. That’s the one you’re looking for.

With this database file open on the left, click on “Export” in the top menu of phpMyAdmin. Keep the export at “Quick” and the format as “SQL”. Click “Go”. This will download the SQL file onto your machine. It’s a fairly quick process.

Step 7: Create a New Database

In the cPanel of your new Bluehost hosting account, navigate to MySQL Databases.

First, create a new database. Give it any name you like next to the designated prefix and click “Create Database”.

Next, scroll down to the bottom of this screen to create a “User” attached to this database. Under “Create User” add a new user name and password, and click “Create User”.

Under “Add User to the Database”, select the user you created and the new database you created, and click “Add”.

Note: Remember to notate the name of the user and database (with the prefixes!).

Step 8: Upload Your Database

Access the phpMyAdmin of your new Bluehost server in the same manner described above. Select the new database you just created on the left-hand side.

Navigate to “Import” on the top menu. Here, you can browse from your computer and select the SQL file you recently downloaded. At the bottom of the screen, select “Go”. This will upload your database and your new DB will show on the left-hand side of the screen momentarily.

Step 9: Create an FTP account in Bluehost

Using the same method described above for creating an FTP account, create a new FTP account in Bluehost, remembering to notate your credentials.

Step 10: Connect to the BlueHost Server

Assuming your download is complete (Do NOT disconnect if it is not complete! Wait until the transfer is done!), under File and Site Manager of Filezilla, click “New Site”.

Using your new BlueHost FTP credentials, and the method described above, connect to your Bluehost server.

The local file containing your WordPress files and folders should be already showing in your left-hand window. In the right-hand top window, your server, navigate to public_html or to the file you would like to store your WordPress site.

Using the method above to select all files, move all files and folders from the bottom left-hand window to the right-hand window.

Again, this will take a while. Go walk the dog.

Step 11: Adjust the WP-config file

Once all of the files have been uploaded, access your Bluehost cPanel and navigate to the file manager. Then navigate to the folder where you’ve uploaded all WordPress files. Open the wp-config.php file in the editor.

Change the DB_NAME to your new database name, the DB_USER to the new database user name, and the DB_PASSWORD to the new password you just created.

The DB_HOST is normally ‘localhost’ and you won’t need to change this. However, if you have a VPS, the hostname might be different.

Step 12: Is there an SSL?

If your existing website has an SSL certificate installed, you will need to have one installed on your new hosting account for the same domain before you point your site over. Contact Bluehost and make sure the SSL is installed and ready to go.

Step 13: Point Your Domain

Now that your files and the database have been transferred, you can point your domain over to Bluehost. You can achieve this by changing the nameservers or by creating DNS records.

Navigate to the domain registry where your domain is registered. Select your domain to manage the DNS and find the nameserver section. Change the nameservers to:

ns1.bluehost.com

ns2.bluehost.com

It can take up to 24 hours to propagate to all servers, but most of the time your site should be working correctly within 1-2 hours. Keep checking your domain and make sure everything looks good. If you have a database error, recheck your config file for the proper credentials.

Note: Changing the nameservers will also change the email to Bluehost. Log into your Bluehost account and create new email accounts.

Note: Domains registered through GoDaddy often encounter trouble with changes to the nameservers, especially with SSL. Rather than changing the nameservers, make DNS entries instead of altering the nameservers.

Six Comprehensive Strategies for Increasing Blog Traffic

You have a blog and you’ve been writing for weeks, maybe even months or years, but the traffic is lackluster. You’ve been putting in the time and effort, so where are the hordes of people who should have found your content by now? Where is your audience?

Blogs are rarely set-and-go assets. They require daily work that goes beyond the scope of writing and posting to acquire a growing audience and maximum views.

The six major arms of blog traffic growth are: Calendar, Content, Social, Engagement, SEO, and Advertising. Each segment offers a number of methods any blogger can and should use to increase traffic at supersonic levels.

Calendar

Create an editorial calendar: Create a writing calendar and stick to it. This could be writing Monday-Friday, as an example, and could even include different subjects or themes for each of the days involved.

Regularity: One your editorial calendar has been established, do not – under any circumstances – stray from this calendar. If you plan on a vacation, write posts and schedule them for the days you’ll be absent.

Your schedule is monitored by search engines: As you start posting on a regular schedule and with frequency, search engines will begin scraping your site with the same regularity. Your posting schedule sets the schedule for search engine bots. Imagine that!

Content

Know your material: If you’re writing about how to get rich online and, in reality, you’re flat broke and know nothing about online businesses, readers will know. You don’t have to have a Ph.D. in your field, but you should be passionate about your blogging niche, be able to provide interesting, relevant, and educational information, and be knowledgeable in general.

Know your audience: People who are interested in the topic you blog about – this is your audience. This can vary from blog post to blog post. For example, one post may be geared toward those who understand technical terminology within your field while another post may be geared toward potential new audience members who don’t know much about your topic but want to know more.

Imagery: Include images in your blog posts. Try to use your own photos or manipulate stock photos to create a cohesive look. People are visual and often initially attracted to the imagery.

Video: Selfmade videos are a powerful way to bring people to your blog. Video platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo allow you to upload your own videos, providing you with bits of code to place those videos on your own blog while using their bandwidth and video speed strength. Better yet, these platforms have the ability to drive traffic straight to your blog on their own.

Lists: With long-winded articles, people can get bored which, in turn, can cause a high bounce rate. Break up your content into smaller, readable portions such as lists and shorts bursts of information within subheaders.

Evergreen: Make sure your articles can withstand the test of time. A blog post about “The Best Places to Eat in Portland, Maine” written ten years ago will most certainly have no relevance today when restaurants come and go. Either refresh your posts that have gone stale (updating them yearly) or write “Evergreen” posts that will withstand the passage of time.

Guest Contributors and Posting: Encourage guests posts from those in your field who are admired or well known. In the same vein, offer to contribute guests posts (with a backlink) to blogs within your field of expertise.

Social Media

Inspire curiosity with a great title: Sharing your blog post on social media will display the title and a snippet. That title should be amazing. Create an irresistible blog title that will cause people to click the link with urgency. They must know more!

Find your people: Find groups and communities on social media platforms devoted to your interest or a variation of it. When you find your people, share your posts there and like-minded individuals will follow.

Social sharing buttons: Include social sharing buttons on your blog posts. It makes it easy for people who want to share your information to do so.

Reshare old content: Recently updated content or blog posts that are suddenly relevant again can be reshared on social media platforms. Think about using this strategy at least once per week.

Engage

Use a comment system: Allow readers to leave comments and encourage the use of your comment system by asking readers questions and/or their opinions.

Employ giveaways: Contests and giveaways can have a viral effect, especially if you set a condition for entry by requiring the post to be reposted, liked, or tweeted by the entrant.

Use USG (User Generated Content): A common way for bloggers to gather USG is through Reddit. Pose a question to people in your related interest groups, and utilize their answers. The same method can be used on other social media platforms.

Encourage email signups: Add an email sign-up box on your blog that captures emails to be used by an email system such as Constant Contact. Sending monthly recap emails remind your audience of your existence and brings back readers.

SEO

Use keywords: Use the most relevant keywords multiple times in your copy, in your headings, in your metadata, and in your image alt tags. Don’t overdo it, but make sure they are used more than once.

Use links: Linking to high-ranking, relevant, authority sites is a powerful way to signal to Google and other search engines that you can be trusted.

Crosslink your articles: A great way to “connect the dots” and create a hierarchy of related pages within search engine indices is to crosslink your own posts. Link to related posts that might be of value to the reader for the current post.

Write long articles: If you’re looking for better rankings on search engines, write long articles – the longer the better. Google gives a nearly disproportionate amount of weight to longer articles – the more information, the better.

Advertise

Spend the money: Advertising online can cost a pretty penny, but the stakes are worth it when building your audience. Online advertising delivers highly targeted traffic straight to your site, readers who are genuinely interested in what you have to say. It is definitely something to consider.

Each fundamental strategy for blog traffic growth has multiple facets, and each of these facets can be discussed in great detail. Conduct your own research on each facet and work to employ all items in your daily blogging schedule.

Happy blogging!

How To Transfer From Wix to WordPress

How To Migrate Your Wix Website to WordPress

The Wix platform is alluring for new and small businesses when they are able to get a website up and running quickly on a limited budget. But after a while, this allure fades with the realization of major limitations and the need to pay for each and every plugin and module that soon becomes a necessity.

A WordPress hosted website is hard to beat and the statistics speak for themselves. Over 30% of all websites use the WordPress codex for many reasons: a vast repository of completely free plugins and tools, superior SEO, thousands of free themes, and a much easier platform for customizing.

With Wix feeling a steady loss of customers to WordPress, they recently disabled their RSS feed, a tool commonly used to transfer blogs, in an effort to staunch the steady flow of Wix customers jumping ship for WordPress by making it more difficult for customers to transfer data.

If you have an older Wix site, you may still have a feed. But if your website is newer on Wix, you may have no feed and might have to take manual steps for a transfer.

Let’s explore the steps needed to be taken in order for you to transfer your site from Wix to WordPress without a loss in traffic or SERPs (Search Engine Results Placement).

1) Sign Up For WordPress Hosting

A web hosting company will give you space on a web server where you can install WordPress. This sounds complicated, but the process is actually pretty simple.

For WordPress sites I personally recommend using BlueHost.com as your web host. BlueHost has been recommended by WordPress since 2005, and currently hosts several million websites. WordPress also comes pre-installed, which makes this whole process much easier.

Disclosure: BlueHost compensates me when you purchase with this discount link, so all of my help is free of charge to you! Contact me if you have any problems transferring from Wix to WordPress.

Once you complete your registration with BlueHost you can continue with the steps below to get everything migrated over from Wix.

2) Get A Temporary Domain

Since your domain is likely tied up with Wix, you can start building your new website straight away on a temporary domain provided to you for free with your web hosting plan.

3) Log In to WordPress

You can log in to WordPress directly from your BlueHost dashboard.

Alternatively, you can log in to the backend of WordPress using your temporary domain with /wp-admin appended to the URL.

http://yourtemporarydomain.com/wp-admin

4) Pick a Theme and Customize

In the backend of WordPress, also known as the dashboard, navigate to Appearance > Themes.

At the top of the next screen, select “Add New”.

Here you can search through the WordPress Repository for thousands of free themes. Search by popularity, or the newest, or by using the feature filter to find specific needs. You can even use the search bar to find a possible theme related to your business through the use of keywords.

Once you find the perfect theme, download it and then activate it.

You can customize the theme by navigating to Appearance > Customize on the left side of the dashboard. And to view your progress at any time, simply view the site in a separate browser tab without the /wp-admin in the URL.

4) Create a Menu and Pages

Take note of your existing pages on Wix and create the same ones on your new site.

Easily create all of the pages you need by navigating to Pages > Add New.

Title each page, leaving the body blank for now, and save them. Don’t forget to create a “Home” and “Blog” page. After these two pages are created, navigate to Settings > Reading to set your Home and Blog (Posts) page.

Once you’re done, navigate to Appearance > Menus and click the link to “Create a New Menu”.

Fill your new menu with the top-level pages you just created by dragging and dropping them over from the left module and save when you’re done. Don’t forget to set the menu position which is theme dependent. It is usually the “Main Menu” position.

5) Set Your Permalinks

Navigate to Settings > Permalinks to change your URL structure which is a good step to take prior to your move.

Change the Permalinks structure to “Post Name” and click Save Settings.

6) Transferring Your Data

Now that you have your WordPress website ready to go, it’s time to transfer your data. And this is where it gets tricky. There are several methods and parts that can be employed. The two main methods are manual (free) and automatic (paid). With the free manual method, you may be able to transfer the blog quickly and easily if your Wix account has an RSS feed.

If you want to use a paid plugin to transfer everything quickly and automatically, skip to Option Two: Automatic.

Option One: Manual (Free)

1) Determine if your Wix website has an RSS feed. You can do this by navigating to your Wix website and appending /feed.xml or /blog-feed.xml to your URL. If you don’t have a custom domain and instead have a Wix subdomain, use the URL:

username.wixsite.com/blogname/feed.xml

username.wixsite.com/blogname/blog-feed.xml

If one of these URLs produces a feed, right-click anywhere on the feed and click “Save As” to save the XML file to your computer.

Now, let’s import all of your blog posts through the WordPress RSS feed importer.

In your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Tools> Import, and under RSS, click “Install Now”.

When the “Run Importer” link appears, go ahead and click it. Next, click “Choose File” and select the XML file you recently downloaded, and then simply run the import. Depending on how many blog posts you have, it may take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.

When the import is complete, check to see if your posts have been uploaded. Navigate to Posts > All Posts and confirm all of your blog posts have been uploaded.

While the blog posts are there, we encounter another problem: the images are not hosted on your site. But there is another quick and easy fix.

Navigate to Plugins > Add New and conduct a search for “Auto Upload Images”. When the plugin appears, download it and then activate it. This plugin will look for external images and then upload them to your server, but only when a page/post is saved.

The plugin works automatically when you open up any post and save it by looking for an external image and then uploading and replacing it.

If you have many blog posts, you can save them all simultaneously by going to Posts > All Posts and selecting “Screen Options”. Change the “Number of Items Per Page” to 999 and then click “Apply”. This will display all blog posts on one page.

Now you can tick the very top checkbox above all posts which will then check all blog posts automatically. Change the dropdown to “Edit” and then click “Apply”. This will open a box under the first blog post. Click “Update” and all of your posts will be saved, automatically uploading and replacing all images.

To make sure this worked, navigate to Media > Library, and confirm all images have been uploaded. It may take several minutes for all images to appear.

When you’re satisfied that all images have been uploaded, deactivate and remove this image uploader plugin.

Now that your blog has been moved over, the next step is to import your pages. Unfortunately, this must be done manually through copying and pasting the text. There is no automatic importer for pages.

And if you have no RSS feed, all blog posts must also be copied over manually.

Option Two: Automatic (Paid)

This option will transfer all posts, pages, and images to your new site with a click of a button. And it’s very inexpensive to boot! Pricing depends on the number of pages and posts you have.

CMS2CMS provides plugin software for a variety of platforms, and they are commonly used for Wix to WordPress migrations. You cannot download this plugin from the WordPress repository.

Navigate to CMS2CMS and visit the pricing page.

Change the first box to Wix and the second box to WordPress. Change the number of estimated pages and taxonomies, and the system will give you an estimated price. Next, try the demo to see it in action.

CMS2CMS will provide you with the plugin and instructions for use. It is easy, affordable, and they have great customer support with – gasp! – real people at the helm!

7) Make a List of Your URLs

Now that you have pulled your content over, it’s time to make the final switchover as long as you’re okay with your new site’s appearance. First, make a list of all URLs (all pages and posts) on your existing Wix site. For posts, you don’t need to list every single blog post URL- just note the structure of one blog post URL.

8) Point Your Domain

Who has control over your domain name? If your domain is hosted by Wix, you will need to transfer your domain to your new hosting provider. Simply log into your Wix account, navigate to your Subscriptions and then click on “Domains” in the dropdown. Choose your domain and then select the “Advanced” tab. Choose “Transfer Away from Wix” and you will receive a code.

Use this code in the domain section of your hosting provider to transfer the domain to you.

If the domain is somewhere else in your ownership, you can simply point the domain to your new server by altering the nameservers. Your hosting provider will give you the nameservers.

When the domain is pointed to your server, it often takes 24 hours to propagate globally.

9) Change Your Domain References

Your website is likely built using the temporary URL. Therefore, we need to change all references to this URL to the new one.

Navigate to Plugins > Add New and search for Better Search Replace. Download and activate this plugin.

Now navigate to Tools > Better Search Replace and you’ll find an easy-to-use interface. This plugin will replace all references of your temporary URL with the new one.

In the “search for” bar, enter your temporary URL. There may be variations such as with or without an http or https.

And then choose to replace it with your new URL.

TAKE CARE TO MAKE SURE THE URLS MATCH. A full temporary URL should replace a full new URL. If one has a trailing slash at the end, so should the other. You do not want to replace tempurl.com with a URL with https:// because it will then be rewritten as http://https//newurl.com in many cases.

When you are certain you have the correct URLs, highlight all tables, click “Replace GUIDs”, uncheck “Dry Run”, and run the search/replace.

When finished, you will have to log back in again using the same credentials, but under the new domain.

10) Redirect The URLs

You’re almost done!

Compare the list of Wix URLs to your new URLs. There may be some differences in URL structure. If so, let’s create some redirects to make sure we tell Google and other search engines, as well as visitors following old links, that the pages have been moved.

Navigate to Plugins > Add New and search for Redirection. When you find the plugin, install and activate it.

After activating, you’ll notice a message at the top of your screen.

Redirection needs to make changes to your database. Click the link and proceed with the updates which take a couple of steps.

Once finished, navigate to Tools > Redirection. Here, add in your old URL slug and the new one. Then click “Add Redirect”. You can test to see if the old URL is redirected to the new one in a new browser window.

Once all redirects are in place, you’re officially transferred over. Congratulations!

How to Embed PDF Files in WordPress Posts

Traditionally, PDF documents are uploaded to your media bank in WordPress and then linked through a “Download Now” button. Because PDFs are not images, the WordPress editor is not able to display the PDF directly on the page or post.

If you try to embed a PDF by uploading the PDF into your media bank, and then selecting that PDF to insert into a page or post, you will see a blank image representing the PDF.

Selecting the PDF will only provide the title in your text editor. There will be no image and no PDF link. Simply put, it doesn’t work.

But there is a way to display PDFs on your WordPress website with a handy plugin.

How to embed PDFs in your WordPress Post

Navigate to the backend of your WordPress dashboard and go to your plugins page. Click “Add New” to search the WordPress repository, and conduct a search for “PDF Embedder”.

Click the “Install Now” button next to PDF Embedder (there are other options, make sure to select the correct title!) and after it has finished downloading, activate the plugin.

PDF Embedder has “Activate and Go” capabilities, meaning it isn’t necessary to edit the settings or copy shortcode for this plugin to work. You’re ready to add your PDFs directly to your website! And it’s as easy as adding media.

Using the embedder with the classic editor

Create a new page or post and select the “Add Media” tab.

Just as would with a normal image, select the PDF from the media bank or upload it. When you are done with the selection, a piece shortcode will be automatically created and populated within the text editor.

Most likely, you won’t be able to see the image in your editor. But if you save the post as a draft or publish it, you will be able to see it on the front end.

Voila! The PDF will automatically resize to fit the container where it is placed.

To change the sizing, you can find the plugin’s settings in your dashboard under “Settings”.

In the PDF Embedder settings, you can change the width or height of the PDF display. This will change the dimensions for all PDFs embedded with this plugin.

Changing the width to 300 and keeping the height set to max will yield this result:

If you would rather not change the universal settings, you can alternatively manipulate height or width by editing the shortcode directly. This way, only the PDF you’re working on is affected.

You can find more shortcode manipulations for PDF Embedder here.

Using the embedder with the new block editor

In the new block editor or with builders such as Divi, you can create columns and blocks with definitive widths set so that you don’t need to edit the size of the PDF.

In your new post, set the columns and blocks as you would like the post to appear. Within the chosen column where you want to embed a PDF, click “Add Block”.

The block editor will provide an option for PDF Embedder as its own block. Select this option.

You will then see “Click Here” text to insert your media.

The PDF Embedder settings are set to max size, but the PDF will display perfectly to fit the max width of that specific container.

Embedding a multi-page PDF

The PDF Embedder handles this for you and there are no additional steps that need to be taken. Once the PDF has been embedded, only the first page will show. But if you hover over the PDF on the front end, directional tabs will appear at the bottom, enabling the user to easily flip through the pages within the container.

And that’s it! Not so terribly tough, is it? We hope this article helped you!

How to use your GoDaddy domain name with BlueHost

If you have your domain registered with GoDaddy and a hosting account with BlueHost, you do not need to transfer domain ownership to Bluehost. In fact, it’s highly advisable that you keep your domains and hosting accounts separate in order to minimize loss in the event of account corruption or disruption.

To use your GoDaddy domain and build on a BlueHost hosting account, you must change the nameservers of your domain to point to your Bluehost account.

Step One: Copy and paste the BlueHost nameserver details

Take note of the Bluehost nameservers. They are:

NS1.bluehost.com

NS2.bluehost.com

Step Two: Change the nameservers on GoDaddy

Log into your GoDaddy account and go to your products page. Under the Domains heading, select “DNS” next to the domain you want to point to BlueHost.

Scroll down to the Nameservers heading and click “Change”.

You will be given the option to choose your Nameserver type. Default is the option set for hosting on GoDaddy. To change your nameserver destination, you’ll need to select “Custom”.

Enter the nameservers for Bluehost, copied from above, and then click “Save”.

Step Three: Make sure the domain is entered in your BlueHost account

**Note** It usually takes a full 24 hours for nameserver DNS propagation from the GoDaddy servers. Therefore, you might not be able to work with your new site under your domain for a full day.

Option One: If you set your up Bluehost account with the domain name in question, you won’t need to add it again. Build your site, if you haven’t already, within the /public_html file.

Option Two: If this domain is new to your BlueHost account, you will need to add the domain as an “Addon” domain.

Navigate to “Domains” in your BlueHost account.

Next, select “Assign a domain to your cPanel account”.

Enter the domain that is not already associated with the account. Do not use the http:// or www headers.

BlueHost will analyze the domain and verify ownership by checking to see if the nameservers on GoDaddy have been properly set to the above BlueHost nameservers. Since you have done this already, verification will be complete.

Under Step 3, make sure “Addon Domain” is selected.

Step 4 will ask you to choose your Addon and subdomain directories. It will automatically assign and create a directory based on the name of the domain you entered. As long as you are okay with this creation, click “Assign this Domain”. Otherwise, you can enter a different folder name.

You are done! It’s a good practice to wait a full day before beginning your build or working with the website after a nameserver change. This is only due to the delay in full nameserver change propagation which is typically completed in 24 hours.