7 Best WordPress Resources for October 2022

The holiday season is fast approaching, so this month we have a roundup of how-tos to help you get ready for all of those Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers. Even if you don’t sell anything, we’ve got resources that you can use, including a few free WordPress webinars and a guide to publishing a class on YouTube.

Here are 7 new WordPress resources to explore:

1. How to Boost Black Friday Sales

Is your website ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers? Now is the time to run a few checks and make sure that everything is running smoothly ahead of the holiday rush.

The Kadence Theme is a great starting point. If you already have it installed, you are running on one of the zippiest themes in WordPress. (If not, it’s not too late to make the switch ahead of the big shopping season.)

Here are a few other checks (and tools) to help you create super shopping experiences this season:

• Enhance your store with Shop Kit, where you can add more information to products and customize the checkout experience
• Continue to engage with shoppers after the sale with Kadence Conversions so that you can generate more engagement and more visits to your online store
• Don’t forget to post and share via email and social media; did you know that words such as “just,” “wonderful,” and “upgrade” can boost sales?

Learn more about the 5 ways Kadence can help you boost your Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales.

2. How to Create a Multistep WooCommerce Checkout

There are two types of checkouts for online shoppers – one-page and multi-step. Both have distinct values and benefits and it is important to use the one that works for you. The default if you are using WooCommerce to power your store is one-page, but you might actually benefit from a multi-step checkout process.

Multi-step checkout can be largely beneficial for sales of physical products where you need to collect shipping information or if your current checkout experience includes too many elements and you are experiencing high cart abandonment rates.

As a general rule, simple sales sites – where you buy one thing or there aren’t large carts – work well with one-page checkout. As the potential to buy more items expands, a multi-step process can actually be easier for shoppers to use and convert.

The multi-step ensures that there’s no long scrolling to complete the checkout and item lists can be easy to see.

Here’s one additional bonus: A multi-step checkout won’t just prevent cart abandonment. It will also improve your conversion rate, allowing you to make more sales, all with this one change.

Flux Checkout is an easy-to-use plugin that can help you manage your checkout experience so that you can maximize sales potential this holiday season.

Learn how to switch your shop to a multistep checkout.

3. Using YouTube to Create an Online Course

Even if you aren’t gearing up for holiday sales, you can leverage the season with online courses. If you are already working as a course creator, you may want to move those courses to YouTube, which you can even use to monetize them.

Course creators that use LearnDash have the tools in place to upload courses to the video platform and share them more widely. And it only takes a couple of extra minutes per course!

If you have been toying with the idea of online course creation, now is the time to start. There’s a lot of how-to and learning-inspired search intent during the holiday season for people looking for everything from DIY tips to homemade gifts.

Get the step-by-step process and start monetizing your YouTube courses today.

4. Stop Scrapers from Stealing Your Content

There’s nothing more annoying than stumbling upon another website only to find your content. Content scrapers are stealing more and more content every day and that can impact everything from search traffic to your website to even online earnings potential.

So how do you stop scrapers from stealing your content?

We’ve got an in-depth blog post that walks you through all the different things you can do to limit access to your content by scrapers as well as an SEO tool that makes it easy to manage these tasks in a more automated way.

Common ways to catch content scarpers include doing Google searches, using Ahrefs tools, or monitoring trackbacks. Then the only way to stop it is to contact the offending party and ask them to take it down. You can send a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to the host of the website.

Finally, you can do some things to your website to limit scaping ability such as limiting content to RSS feeds, disabling trackbacks, and rate limiting.

5. WordPress Vulnerability Report

You need to keep up with WordPress issues to help keep your site safe and running smoothly. The WordPress Vulnerability Report shows all of the core issues that might pop up if you aren’t on the latest version of WordPress as well as vulnerabilities with plugins.

Did you know one of the best things you can do to prevent these vulnerabilities on your website is to keep plugins up to date?

Some things to be on the lookout for in the latest report include vulnerabilities with these popular plugins: Smart Slider 3, Easy Wp STMP, Envira Gallery, WP Word Count, and many more.

Read all the WordPress Vulnerability Reports for October:

• WordPress Vulnerability Report – October 5, 2022
• WordPress Vulnerability Report – October 12, 2022
• WordPress Vulnerability Report – October 19, 2022
• WordPress Vulnerability Report – October 26, 2022

6. WordPress Plugin Roundup

Each month Nathan Ingram combs the WordPress plugin directory for interesting plugins that have been added or updated in the last 30 days and assembles a list of helpful and unique plugins for your WordPress website. And it’s free! The next online event is on November 1st. Register today.

7. WordPress News Roundup

If you want to stay up-to-date on everything happening in the world of WordPress, join the monthly
WordPress News Roundup. In this session, Ingram will discuss the latest developments in the WordPress ecosystem in this informational webinar. We’ll talk through this month’s WordPress news with plenty of interaction and Q&A. The next event is on November 22nd.

Wrapping Up

New tools and resources for WordPress are being released all the time and we hope this list helps you discover new ways to improve your workflows. Did we miss something you want to highlight? Tweet us @ithemes.