Trending December 2023 # WordPress 5.3 Will Change How It Blocks Indexing # Suggested January 2024 # Top 13 Popular

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WordPress announced an important change to how it will block search engines from indexing websites. This change abandons the traditional chúng tôi solution in favor of the Robots Meta Tag approach. The change brings WordPress in line with the reason for blocking Google, which is to keep the blocked pages from showing in Google’s search results.

This is the Robots Meta Tag that WordPress will use:

Blocking Google From Indexing

It has long been a standard practice to use chúng tôi to block the “indexing” of a website.

The word “indexing” meant crawling of the site by GoogleBot. By using the chúng tôi blocking feature you could stop Google from downloading the specified web page and, it was assumed,  Google would be unable to show your pages in the Search Results.

But that chúng tôi directive only stopped Google from crawling the page. Google was still free to add it to its index if it was able to discover the URL.

So to block a site from appearing in the index, a publisher would block Google from “indexing” the pages. Which wasn’t consistently effective.

WordPress 5.3 Will Truly Prevent Indexing

WordPress adapted the chúng tôi approach. But that’s changing in version 5.3.

Starting with WordPress 5.3, WordPress will adopt the more reliable Robots Meta Tag approach for preventing the indexing of a website.

This change will affect the “discourage search engines from indexing this site” setting. 

This change is an improvement. WordPress publishers can be more secure in knowing that the blocked web pages will not be shown in Google’s search results.

Why Did WordPress Use Robots.txt?

WordPress relied on chúng tôi for blocking the indexing of a website because that’s how everybody kept pages from showing in Google’s search results. That was the standard way of doing it.

Yet even though everybody did it that way, as has been explained, it was an unreliable approach.

The word “indexing” has two meanings:

Indexing can also mean adding a web page to Google’s database of web pages (which is called The Index).

Blocking Google from “indexing” a web page will keep it from seeing the web page but Google could still index the web page and add it to Google’s index. Make sense?

Robots.txt Versus Robots Meta Tag

Keeping a web page out of Google’s index was not the intent of the chúng tôi solution. Doing that is the job of the Robots Meta Tag.

So it’s good to see WordPress embrace the Robots Meta Tag as the solution to blocking web pages from showing in the search engines.

WordPress 5.3 is scheduled to be released in November 2023.

Read the WordPress announcement:

Changes to Prevent Search Engines Indexing Sites

Read Google’s Authoritative Documentation

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How To Add Or Remove Background In WordPress Gutenberg Blocks? – Webnots

Unlike the old Classic Editor, Gutenberg block editor offers various features to customize your content. One of the cool things is that you can easily add background to any block in Gutenberg editor. You can do this without any additional plugin and showcase important portion standing our from other area on the page.

Adding Background to Blocks

There are two possibilities of adding a background to a block:

Adding a solid color background

Using gradient colors as background

Using a background image

We will explain both options in this article.

1. Adding Background Color to Blocks

Let us say, you want to add background color to a paragraph in Gutenberg.

First insert your text using a paragraph block.

Show More Block Setting in Gutenberg Editor

Add Default Background Color to Blocks

Choose Custom Background Color for Block

Change Color Format

You can also copy flat UI or other color codes from other site and simply paste the code in the text box to apply the background.

Applying Gradient Colors as Background

Add Additional Gradient Color

Changing Text Color

When you select background color, it is also necessary to change the text color appropriately for clear visibility. If background and text colors are not matching, then WordPress will show you a warning on the sidebar mentioning the color combination may be hard for the people to read.

Set Proper Text Color Matching Background Color

Grouping Blocks and Add Background to Non-Supported Blocks

If you notice, Gutenberg will support adding background to few blocks like paragraph, list and columns. What about if you want to add a background color to an image? You can add background to any block by using “Group Blocks” option. You can use this for single block (like image) or combine multiple blocks (like image + paragraph). Let us combine a paragraph and an image and add background colors to them.

First insert the blocks one below other.

Press shift key and select both the blocks that you want to group.

Group Blocks in Gutenberg

Now, you will see the selected blocks are grouped together and the sidebar shows “Color” section. Now, you can change the text and background colors as explained above.

Add Background to Grouped Blocks

Remember, you can simply ungroup the blocks to remove the text/background colors and reset the block to their initial state.

Ungroup to Remove Background

Removing Background from Blocks

Select “Text” to remove the text color.

Remove Text or Background Color in Gutenberg

After removing the text or background color, the option will show with a tick mark instead of minus sign. You can use the undo icon showing on top toolbar to revert the changes back.

Background and Text Color Removed

Using Image Background for Gutenberg Blocks

You can set background image for certain blocks like Cover block in Gutenberg. However, there are no options available to setup image background for most other blocks like paragraph. You need to follow a lengthy process for this.

Select the block and expand the “Advanced” section on the sidebar.

Add a custom CSS class in the text box below “Additional CSS Class(es)” heading. Let us add a CSS class with a name as bgimg.

Add Custom CSS Class for Block

Copy Image URL to Clipboard

Paste the image URL in Notepad or TextEdit.

Copy the below CSS and replace the “image_url_ with your image URL.

.bgimg{ background-image: url("image_url"); padding: 25px; }

Paste Background Image CSS

The paragraph block should have a background image added to it.

Background Applied to Block

You may need to adjust the text color in Gutenberg editor or add “color:color_code” property to your CSS code to adjust the text visibility on the background image. Similarly, you can adjust the padding and margin to align the paragraph content properly on the image background. You can check the image background tutorial on W3 Schools to learn more on that.

Final Words

You can add background colors or image to blocks to create attractive call to actions and notifications inside the content without any additional plugins. You can also make the block as a reusable block and insert anywhere you want on the site.

WordPress Considers Historic Development Change

Matt Mullenweg, developer of WordPress and CEO of Autommatic, proposed no longer adding new features to the WordPress, pivoting instead to a plugin-first policy.

This new approach to the future of WordPress has already resulted in a new feature intended for the next version of WordPress to be dropped entirely.

Canonical plugins are said to offer a way to keep improving WordPress on a faster schedule.

But some WordPress core contributors expressed the opinion that publisher user experience may suffer.

Canonical Plugins

First discussed in 2009, canonical plugins is a way to develop new features in the form of plugins.

The goal of this approach is to keep the WordPress core fast and lean while also encouraging development of experimental features in the form of plugins.

The original 2009 proposal described it like this:

“Canonical plugins would be plugins that are community developed (multiple developers, not just one person) and address the most popular functionality requests with superlative execution.

…There would be a very strong relationship between core and these plugins that ensured that a) the plugin code would be secure and the best possible example of coding standards, and b) that new versions of WordPress would be tested against these plugins prior to release to ensure compatibility.”

This approach to features and options is also referred to as Plugin First, to emphasize how features will first appear in the form of plugins.

These plugins are called canonical because they are developed by the WordPress core development team as opposed to non-canonical plugins that are created by third parties that might limit features in order to encourage purchase of a pro-version.

Integration of canonical plugins into the WordPress core itself would be considered once the plugin technology has proven itself to be popular and essential to the majority of users.

The benefit of this new approach to WordPress would be to avoid adding new features that might not be needed by the majority of users.

Plugin-first could be seen to be in keeping with the WordPress philosophy called Decisions, Not Options, which seeks to avoid burdening users with layers of technical options.

By offloading different features and functionalities to plugins, a user won’t have to wade through enabling or disabling functionalities they need, don’t need or don’t understand.

The WordPress design philosophy states:

“It’s our duty as developers to make smart design decisions and avoid putting the weight of technical choices on our end users.”

Canonical Plugins the Future?

Matt Mullenweg published a post titled, Canonical Plugins Revisited, in which he made the case that this is the way that WordPress should be developed moving forward.

He wrote:

“We are reaching a point where core needs to be more editorial and say “no” to features coming in as ad hoc as they sometimes do, and my hope is that more Make teams use this as an opportunity to influence the future of WordPress through a plugin-first approach that gives them the luxury of faster development and release cycles (instead of three times per year), less review overhead, and and path to come into core if the plugin becomes a runaway success.”

The first casualty of this new approach is the cancellation of integrating WebP image conversion into the next version of WordPress, WordPress 6.1, currently scheduled for November 2023.

Plugin-First is Controversial

Some developers, such as core contributor Jon Brown, expressed reservations about the proposal to switch to developing with canonical plugins.

“The problem remains that there are too many complicated plugins standing in for what would be a simple optional feature.

Plugins are _not_ a user-friendly option to core settings. First users have to discover there is a plugin, then they have negotiated yet another settings screen and updates and maintenance of that plugin.”

They noted that having one canonical plugin to solve a problem is preferable to the current state where desirable options can only be found on bloated third party plugins.

But they also said that having a settings option within core, without the need for a plugin, could present a better user experience.

They continued:

“Now, I do think Canonical plugins are a better situation than 6+ bloated plugins like exist here, but so would a single checkbox added to the settings page in core to do this. Which would further improve the UX and discovery issues inherent in plugins.”

“Canonical plugins” seems like a weaponized tool to derail discussions the same way “decisions not options” has become for years.”

That last statement is a reference to frustrations felt by some core contributors with the inability to add options for features because of the “decisions, not options” philosophy.

Others also disagreed with the plugin-first approach:

“Canonical plugin sounds grand but it will further increase maintenance burden on maintainers.

In my opinion, it’s no go.

It will be much more better to include some basic features in core itself instead of further saying – It’s a good place for plugin.”

Someone else pointed out a flaw in plugin-first in that collecting user feedback might not be easy. If that’s the case then there might not be a good way to improve plugins in a way that meets user needs if those needs are unknown.

They wrote:

“How can we better capture feedback from users?

Unless site owners are knowledgeable enough to report issues on GitHub or Trac (let’s be honest, no one reports plugin issues on Trac), there’s really no way to gather feedback from users to improve these recommended/official plugins. “

Canonical Plugins

An early indicator will be in what happens with the cancelled WebP feature that was previously intended to be integrated into the core and will now become a plugin.

Featured image by Shutterstock/Studio Romantic

Green Cement Could Change The Construction Game—But Will Builders Actually Use It?

Concrete is the second-most used material in the world. We need it to support bridges, buildings, patios, staircases, countertops, and more—and its use has been growing and tripling in the past forty years. 

The essential building material comprises water, coarse aggregates, like sand and gravel, and a binding agent—which is where cement, an especially carbon emissions heavy product, comes in. 

 According to the International Energy Agency, the cement sector is the third-largest industrial energy consumer in the world, consuming seven percent of industrial energy use. It is also the second-largest industrial emitter of carbon dioxide, responsible for seven percent of global emissions. Most emissions occur when raw materials, typically clay and limestone, are heated to more than 2500 degrees Fahrenheit to become the super-strong binding material. Roughly 600 kilograms of carbon dioxide are released per ton of cement produced. 

But, sustainable, “green” cement is becoming increasingly popular, especially considering the environmental footprint of traditional cement. A recent example came out of the University of Tokyo last year, when researchers Kota Machida and Yuya Sakai made cement out of food waste. Food waste has been used as a filler in cement alternatives before, but Machida and Sakai developed the world’s first process for cement made entirely from food waste.

The duo spent months mixing food waste with plastic to get the materials to stick together. Finally, they found the right combination of temperature and pressure to make cement from just the food waste without additives. Using a “heat pressing” strategy typically used to make construction material from wood powder, they mixed the food waste powder with water and pressed it in a mold heated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. The researchers say the tensile or bending strength of the cement is more than three times the strength of ordinary concrete. 

[Related: Tech to capture and reuse carbon is on the rise. But can it help the world reach its climate goals?]

“The most challenging part was that each type of food waste requires different temperatures and pressure levels,” Sakai said in a press release. They have used tea leaves, orange and onion peels, coffee grounds, Chinese cabbage, and even leftovers from lunch boxes. 

“Our ultimate hope is that this cement replaces plastic and cement products, which have worse environmental impacts,” said Machida in an interview with the AP earlier this month.

Engineers and researchers have been developing innovations to reduce cement and concrete’s carbon footprint for years. In 2023, scientists from the University of Tokyo created a process for making concrete that reuses old concrete products (which can often go to waste), heats materials at lower temperatures, and captures carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. 

In 2023, researchers from the National Taipei University of Technology in Taiwan and the Water Resources Department in India discovered that natural wastes from agricultural and aquaculture farming could partially replace coarse materials and binding materials in green concrete. Plenty more alternatives exist, and though these innovations are early in their development, they bring building materials closer to meeting reduced carbon emissions goals.  

But when it comes to scaling food waste cement up to use for buildings, Sohan Mone, a structural design engineer with multi-national infrastructure company Ferrovial, says it could be challenging to convince companies to make the swap. 

“To change how we use cement entirely would require a lot of fundamental changes in our industry,” Mone says. “All of the infrastructure is geared towards how cement currently works, from how we install it to how we transport it, everything.”

That isn’t to say that it couldn’t be done or isn’t worth it, Mone adds. But one type of technology won’t fix all the issues in the building industry.

“The second you apply a shearing force, like any tension or bending, [cement used on its own] shatters,” Mone says. “It’s not good at taking tension.” 

So, using food cement or cement alternatives in concrete for more complicated and building-intensive purposes would require significant safety and durability testing, Mone says. And the organizations that regulate the industry and contractors themselves would have to be convinced of its viability.  

“We’re heavily regulated, rightly so, and we’re not very free in terms of what materials we can use,” Mone said. “The life cycle of these structures can be hundreds of years, and it’s an open question about how some of these things perform when exposed to the environment over time. There’s always that fear of not knowing how something new will react. And concrete itself needs a lot of maintenance.”

[Related: Pollution kills 1 in 6 people worldwide.]

Green materials can also be expensive, which Mone says adds to the difficulty of convincing companies to use them. In big construction projects, it’s more common to see developers choose the most economical plan. But switching to green cement might be worth the cost, especially when concrete use increases as developing countries accelerate construction projects and other countries update aging infrastructure.  

Global cement production could increase by as much as 23 percent by 2050, the Mission Possible Partnership reported in their Concrete Action for Climate plan. Just as cement and concrete are shaping our built environment, their impacts also shape our climate future. 

The cement industry will need to decrease its annual emissions by at least 16 percent by 2030 to meet the Paris Agreement on climate change standards. And because cement and concrete will be crucial for future development, researchers argue that making the material inputs to cement will be one of the fastest ways to reduce emissions and environmental impact. 

“Given the urgency of the challenge and the time taken historically for technology systems to evolve, a considerable push will be needed to get the next generation of low-carbon cements out of the lab and into the market. Not all will succeed, but those that do could have significant decarbonization potential,” Chatham House, a policy institute, wrote in their 2023 Making Concrete Change: Innovation in Low-carbon Cement and Concrete report. 

Growing cities and repairing infrastructure certainly won’t slow down anytime soon. But, with new developments in greener building materials, the carbon impact of revitalizing the built environment doesn’t have to be as hefty.

What Is Inbound Marketing? How Will It Help Your Business?

blog / Sales and Marketing Is Inbound Marketing the Strategy You Need to Boost Sales?

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As businesses go digital, a variety of marketing avenues and techniques continue to emerge. Among them, inbound marketing takes a content-intensive approach to attract customers. It blends content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and branding. While traditional marketing methods chase customers, inbound marketing allows customers to approach businesses by gradually establishing a thought-leadership position, unique brand image, and authentic brand voice. The article below is a comprehensive overview of this technique that is slowly but surely becoming a hit among marketers across industries.

What is Inbound Marketing? Inbound Marketing Examples

These examples can give us a clearer idea of the concept, most of which is content that we encounter and interact with regularly on the Internet.

Blogs

E-books

E-books usually reach customers via email or when they visit the business’s website. Packed with concise but useful information, they are a powerful promotional tool used to raise brand awareness and reputation.

Interactive Email Signup

Email sign-ups lead to high ROI and pave the path for effective email marketing. They are an interactive element designed to attract customers through various means, such as discounts and free subscriptions in exchange for signing up.

Infographics

Infographics present important information in a format that is accessible as well as visually striking. This goes a long way in attracting and retaining customers’ attention, instilling a sense of curiosity, and ultimately leading them to the business.

YouTube Videos

Types of Inbound Marketing

Content Creation

Content creation begins with a common vision where the company decides what position it wants to establish within the target audience. Global digitization has resulted in a huge demand for compelling online content, with the content marketing industry set to double its revenue by 2026, from $66 billion in 2023. When it comes to creating brand authority and driving sales, very few methods are as effective as in today’s day and age.

SEO

What are the Benefits of Inbound Marketing?

There are several benefits given its unique combination of various elements: 

It is a cost-effective marketing strategy, especially suited to small- and mid-sized businesses.

Today’s customers are more tech-savvy than ever and spend much time on the internet, which allows inbound marketing to gain more traction.

It is sustainable and has long-term value, both in terms of revenue and building successful business relationships.

Trust is essential to a good business and one of the key tenets of inbound marketing is establishing the same via authentic and actionable content, thus making it a successful, future-forward marketing technique.

Pros and Cons of Inbound Marketing

There are various unique ways in which inbound marketing helps businesses thrive in a dynamic and competitive market. However, there are also certain downsides to the technique. 

Pros of Inbound Marketing

Solution-oriented:

The information conveyed through inbound marketing is oriented toward solving specific customer problems.

Interactivity:

Being content-intensive, inbound marketing allows for active interaction with the customer rather than bombarding them with unnecessary information. The marketing messages, thus, are more personalized and actionable.

Non-invasive:

Inbound marketing is less aggressive as compared to conventional methods, which gives customers the time to engage with the content and make informed choices.

Cons of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is time-intensive and takes longer to deliver results.

As the strategies and content are deployed via various platforms, inbound marketing risks integration issues in terms of purchase and implementation.

Inbound marketing necessitates expertise in specific domains, such as SEO and content creation, which can be difficult to scale for companies.

How Can Inbound Marketing Drive Business Growth?

Furthermore, it cuts company costs by prioritizing quality over quantity, which ultimately drives growth with a higher ROI. Last but not the least, businesses grow by connecting with people; this, perhaps, is inbound marketing’s greatest USP. As a long-term marketing solution, its strategies are grounded in establishing a brand rather than a product, fostering customer trust rather than pushing them to make a purchase. In this regard, this form of marketing boosts fiscal gains by simply engaging meaningfully with customers and ensuring growth in the longer run. 

Conclusion

While the world races towards immediate gratification, inbound marketing comes to us with the promise of long-term rewards. Think of it as a marathon instead of a sprint and apply the analogy to business. That’s inbound marketing in a nutshell, where more and more businesses now look to humanize their brands. So if you’re interested in a lucrative marketing career, head over to Emeritus and check out the available courses. Good luck!

By Deyasini Chatterjee

Write to us at [email protected] 

If You Can Imagine It, This Ai Generator Will Draw It

There are now a lot of AI image generators which will produce images based on text descriptions. This means you can dream up anything at all, type it in and mere seconds later see a selection of images matching that description.

For example, the image at the top was generated using the description “steam train going across a curved viaduct on rolling green hills with a river running below, cloudy blue skies.”

But you can go into as much detail as you like. For example, the following produced these variations “A beach on a cloudy day. In the distance, people are walking towards cliffs in the background”.

Midjourney

Or even “1970s Porsche racing car on track leading a pack of period cars with crowds of spectators in stands in the background”.

Midjourney

AI is good at generating images of people. For example “a 35 year old IT officer working at his desk, wearing glasses and a blue blazer” led to this:

Midjourney

These generators vary in quality and usually allow you to generate only a few images before you have to pay to use their services.

But it’s fun to do, and well worth trying out as there’s every chance you’ll be blown away by the results.

Regardless of which generator you decide to use, the process is the same: type a detailed description of what you want. The longer that description, the better.

Midjourney

Shorter descriptions can still generate incredible images, as demonstrated by the birds above, but they may not be quite what you wanted. Plus, AI isn’t human – duh! –  so although some of the images appear flawless, others have clear errors, and AI struggles with text in particular.

Really, you also need to specify the style of image you want. That’s because the AI needs to understand whether you want a photorealistic images, a cartoon, a sketch or something else. If you don’t specify, it may choose at random.

Since the images are created by powerful servers, you can use these generators on whatever device you have: a phone, laptop, tablet or PC.

Some generators are available only as mobile apps, but others work in a web browser. Here are some to try out now.

Midjourney – Runs on Discord

Fotor – works in a browser

Photoleap – Android and iPhone

DALL-E – works in a browser

DALL-E is one of the best known, and is from the same people – OpenAI – that made ChatGPT. Unfortunately, its popularity means it’s all but impossible to use: we could barely create an account without the website falling over, presumably due to being overloaded.

However, Midjourney stands out from the crowd, partly because of the sheer quality of the images it creates, but also because you’re given 25 minutes of GPU time for free: you’re not restricted to a specific number of images.

The only snag is that it uses Discord, which can be a little bewildering to use if you’re not familiar with it. You’ll also need to create a Discord account if you don’t have one.

How to use Midjourney

1.

Create a Discord account

2.

Join the server

3.

Find a Newbie room

4.

Generate an image

Midjourney

In the message box at the bottom type /imagine and press Enter. A prompt box will appear. Type into this any description you like and press Enter. Here we’ve typed ‘photorealistic close-up of a stained glass bird’

5.

Wait for your image

6.

Specify aspect ratio

Midjourney

If you don’t want a square image, you need to tell Midjourney the aspect ratio you want. Do this by adding -—ar 16:9 if you want a TV-sized image. You can specify any ratio, including the common ones such as 3:2, 4:3 and 3:4.

7.

Find your images

8.

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