As a WordPress expert with years of experience developing custom solutions, I’m excited to share the story behind one of my latest projects: Arrival App.
Arrival App is now in public beta, and it’s designed to transform how offices handle visitors — whether you have a receptionist or not. Our tool can replace or augment a live receptionist, helping offices provide a polished visitor experience while reducing operational costs.
From Idea to Launch: Building Arrival App
Over the past few years, my team and I have been building Arrival App using WordPress as the foundation. Why WordPress? Because it’s a flexible, robust platform that allows us to scale, customize, and quickly iterate features — exactly what we needed for an app like this.
Customization Made Easy
No two offices are alike. That’s why we built Arrival App to be highly customizable:
Add practitioners or staff members with ease.
Tailor app settings to match your specific needs.
Implement software safeguards for privacy and security.
Mount an iPad at your reception desk, transforming it into a smart check-in station.
Instant Notifications for Staff
The moment a visitor checks in, Arrival App sends an instant, time-stamped notification to the practitioner’s phone. This keeps your team informed and ready — whether they’re in the office or stepping away from their desk.
We built this notification system using a combination of WordPress back-end tools, custom REST API endpoints, and mobile notification services — a great example of WordPress powering beyond just websites.
Why WordPress Was the Right Choice
Many people think of WordPress as “just a blogging platform,” but as a WordPress expert, I’ve consistently used it as a full application framework. For Arrival App, WordPress allowed us to:
Build a scalable and secure app.
Quickly prototype and deploy new features.
Leverage an ecosystem of plugins, APIs, and developer tools.
Comply with specific legal requirements that would have been alot of extra work if this was built as a regular app.
Ready to Try Arrival App?
We’re thrilled to be in public beta and invite you to experience the future of reception management. Whether you run a medical office, coworking space, or any business with visitor flow, Arrival App can help streamline your front desk operations.
I’m proud of how we leveraged WordPress to bring Arrival App to life. It’s a testament to what’s possible when you combine technical expertise, thoughtful design, and a clear understanding of your audience’s needs.
If you’re looking for a WordPress expert to help build your next custom solution — whether it’s an app, a site, or something in between — let’s talk.
ADA Compliance is a complex legal question – there is not a strict definition of what ADA compliance for the web means. We have been through this process with our clients (some of whom have been sued for not being compliant) and it can involve lawyers chiming in to help define what is good enough for your site. I can’t tell you how at-risk your site is in terms of being sued. And of course, this is not legal advice!
It can get expensive. Some small business owners end up just documenting that they did a (free automated) audit, fixed the high-priority items (an invoice can prove they paid us to fix the ADA issues) and then hope that any lawsuit would not be successful since they had made a “reasonable effort”. But it’s a confusing legal landscape and you should bring in your lawyers to weigh in on the risks involved for your company.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires businesses that are open to the public to provide equal access to their goods and services, and courts have ruled that this includes websites. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are internationally recognized standards for making web content more accessible and serve as a guideline but don’t provide a simple, overall scoring system.
One option is to run the site through a variety of free accessibility testers (audit tools):
Often there is quite a bit that needs to be done to fix critical issues found on these free, automated audits. You also have to do it on every page, but since many pages share elements (the header, newsletter signup, etc.) fixing some issues will spread throughout the site and other pages, like product pages, will usually only have to be done once and that’ll fix the issues across all of that page type.
Ideally, your legal team will guide us in this process and decide what needs to be fixed and what can be left alone.
Part of the solution can be to use an “overlay tool” for ADA: a web accessibility tool that appears as an overlay on a website, designed to add features like text resizing, color contrast adjustments, screen reader functionality, and other modifications to potentially make a website more accessible to users with disabilities. They may offer back-end AI tools that do things like come up with image “alt” text as well as regular online audits, generation of an accessibility statement and an accessibility certification.
However, it’s tricky if you are relying solely on overlay tools as they often do not fully address underlying accessibility issues and can even create new problems. Most importantly, proper website development practices are crucial for true ADA compliance.
However, it’s tricky if you are relying solely on overlay tools as they often do not fully address underlying accessibility-related code issues. Full accessibility often requires addressing issues within the website’s core structure. Some overlays can create new accessability problems.
Extracting Images from Google Sheets: A Quick Guide
Getting images into Google Sheets is a straightforward process, but extracting them isn’t as intuitive. Unlike typical cell data, images in a Google Sheet aren’t directly accessible as files or links, which can make moving or copying them a bit tricky.
Recently, I was asked: “How do you grab an image from a Google Sheet and drag it out to make a copy elsewhere?”
After some experimentation, I found a simple workaround that makes this possible.
Steps to Extract an Image from a Google Sheet
Right-Click on the Cell with the Image Locate the cell containing the image, and right-click on it.
Select “Show Edit History” In the context menu that appears, choose “Show edit history.” This feature usually displays the recent changes made to that specific cell, but in the case of an image, it reveals additional useful details.
Access the Image Link Within the edit history pop-up, you’ll see information about who added the image and, more importantly, a clickable link to the image itself.
Download the Image Click the link, and the image will open in a new tab or window. From there, you can save the image to your device. Note that the downloaded file will often be named “unnamed,” so you may want to rename it for clarity.
Key Considerations
Filename Issue: The image file will likely have a generic name like “unnamed.” If you need to manage multiple images, be prepared to rename them after downloading.
Ease of Use: This process isn’t as seamless as dragging and dropping, but it works reliably to access embedded images.
This approach is particularly useful for those who deal with collaborative Google Sheets containing image data, as it allows for easy access and reuse of embedded visuals. While Google Sheets doesn’t yet have a “download image” button, this workaround gets the job done.
Is There a More Affordable Email Option for Artists and Art Galleries?
As an artist or gallery, maintaining an email list can be essential for promoting exhibitions, new works, or upcoming events. So what to do when your subscriber count exceeds 500? If you’re using popular services like MailPoet or MailChimp, that milestone often triggers a significant price jump. For those of us who don’t even send emails monthly, paying premium fees seems excessive. So, what are the more affordable options for email marketing when your list grows beyond 500?
I’ve worked with many clients who start with the free version of MailChimp, but they eventually hit a wall when that 501st subscriber signs up. Paying $20/month for a list that only goes out once or twice a year feels like overkill.
Why Popular Options Get Expensive After 500 Subscribers
Both MailChimp and MailPoet offer free tiers, but the moment your list reaches 501 subscribers, you’ll notice steep fees. While these services are easy to use, they may not be the most budget-friendly solution for artists or any small business that doesn’t send frequent emails.
The Need for a Plugin That Connects to a 3rd Party Delivery Service
For WordPress users, a better option might be using a plugin that manages your audience and campaigns on your site but connects to a 3rd party email service for delivery. Many hosting providers struggle with plugins that use PHP’s built-in Sendmail function due to performance and spam issues. But by leveraging services like AWS SES or Mailgun, you can ensure reliable delivery without being penalized by your host. So you need 2 parts – a plugin that lives within WordPress that builds the emails and the reporting and a service from a third party (that is not your web host) that will deliver the emails.
Part 1: A Plugin to manage lists, campaigns and reporting
Here are 2 leading WordPress plugins that can handle audience management while connecting to more affordable 3rd party email services:
Mailster: A full-featured WordPress email newsletter plugin that lets you manage campaigns directly from your WordPress dashboard. You can connect it to third-party services like Mailgun or SendGrid to keep costs down as your list grows.
$79/yr with unlimited subscribers and sends
You will pay your third-party service for sending – see below
Newsletter Plugin: A free option that offers premium add-ons. This plugin connects with services like Mailgun and SMTP servers, making it ideal for occasional senders with small budgets.
Free version is powerful
You will pay your third-party service for sending – see below
Compatible with every SMTP plugin
Part 2: A Service for sending bulk mail
Delivering emails at a large scale is a constant challenge for 4 main reasons:
Volume and velocity: Massive amounts of emails need to be delivered quickly.
Infrastructure: Global reach, dynamic networks, and especially spam filters.
Security and compliance: Authentication and regulations.
User experience: Deliverability, engagement, and scalability.
Services like AWS SES or Mailgun charge based on the number of emails you send, not the size of your list. This pricing model can be much more affordable for occasional senders than paying for subscribers you don’t actively email each month.
For example, AWS SES with a list of 1,000 subscribers, sending one or two emails per month would cost less than $1—far cheaper than most mainstream email marketing platforms.
AWS SES: (Amazon Web Services Simple Email Service)
free: send or receive up to 3,000 messages each month (for a year after starting account)
Basic fees: $0.10/1000 emails.
So this is a great “pay-as-you-go option —but the AWS interface can be daunting.
Mailchimp has a new pay-as-you-go but it is very expensive (and hard to find the place on the website that shows how much it actually costs):
3 credits per email, 1 credit per SMS
Credits expire in 1 year
$200 for 5,000 credits (1,666 emails) (60x the price compared to AWS!!!)
$260 for 10,000 credits (3,333 emails)
$390 for 15,000 credits (5,000 emails)
$1,300 for 50,000 credits (16,666 emails)
If you purchase Pay As You Go credits while on the Forever Free Plan, you are immediately upgraded to a paid plan and any remaining Forever Free credits are not carried over
Google Cloud: (not easy) sending mail from a GCE instance requires a non-GCE server through which you relay mail. SES or SendGrid or Mailgun.
Mailgun was inexpensive via “Flex”: Mailgun’s Send flex plan was a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) billing model that allowed users to pay for each message they send, rather than committing to a subscription. Only $1 per thousand messages sent, with the first $1 charged for the 1,001st message sent in a month. update 2024: The Flex plan is no longer offered.
There is another plugin that replaces the “send mail” function of all emails that WordPress sends: WP Mail SMTP: but this is not specific to sending newsletters.
Mailchimp pay-as-you-go pricing
All-in-one email list providers
If you don’t want to use a WordPress plugin with a separate email-sending service you can still get more than 500 contacts for free from these first 2 services:
Free includes up to 500 contacts, with 1,000 sends per month and a daily limit of 500
pay-as-you-go – is an option but pricing is not revealed
this page mailchimp.com/pricing/marketing has a nice way to price out options based on number of subscribers – but the “essential” plan is not on here. I can’t find anywhere on the site how much essential costs with 1000 or 2000 subscribers. I tried reaching out to sales but got stuck in an AI infinite loop when I didn’t want ot give up my phone number. I am done with MailChimp!
Another option to consider is Substack. They don’t have limits on subscribers even when you are not charging for your content. They are organized around charging for content however so there might be some confusion there. You can choose to offer some content for free while reserving premium content for paying subscribers.
Drawbacks: when signing up there is a 2nd step where you indicate if you want paid or free. Not sure if that step exists if it’s free only but I am guessing yes. If you already have an account, There is a 3rd step of ‘recommendations’ for other substacks to follow. And a 4th and 5th step of “do you want to recommend this to your readers”.
Overall, it’s formatted a bit more like a blog vs a newsletter. But you could still format each entry with links back to your “real” blog/news posts.
Signup forms: Substack provides a form that can be embedded on a website using the iFrame Embed feature. But this doesn’t offer many customization options and isn’t ideal for custom landing pages. Some useful tools are available at: substackapi.com.
Conclusion
Artists and galleries with growing email lists shouldn’t have to pay high fees for email marketing, especially if they’re only sending emails occasionally. By using a WordPress plugin that integrates with third-party delivery services like AWS SES, you can manage your campaigns and save money as your audience grows.
I have been using Domain Tools’Domain Monitor for several years to get alerts when my clients’ domains are about to expire so I can warn them to renew. This is part of my WordPress managed hosting service and since I manage almost 200 websites I need a robust domain monitoring tool. The Domain Monitor service is going to be retired on September 30th 2024 so I’m sharing here my research on other options.
Key features I am looking for:
Monitor tracks domains (all TLDs) for impending expiration. less useful for me is to track changes in status
Email alerts when monitored domains are approaching expiration
Dashboard to organize monitored domains – perhaps link to Whois records
Tracking SSL expiration is not an issue I need to worry about but might be of interest also
Domain Monitor used to be free but currently most alternative services are paid, the price depending on the number of domains monitored.
Many options:
https://pingerman.com/ – they have a credit-based pricing and they claim that expiration monitoring for 100 domains should cost $7 per month.
https://www.remindax.com/pricing – It is free for up to 15 tracked items. For 200 tracked items it is $29/month, and for 500 items it is $49/month .
https://updown.io – seems that you can’t turn off the server uptime monitor but the pricing is flexible based on how often server (and APDEX) is checked. If you don’t need more than 1h check interval, price is beterrn 0.61€/month and 1.83€/month for 100 websites (range depends on how many credits bought upfront)
“Be alerted (at 10am) 14, 7, and 1 day(s) before your domains expire. We use RDAP and WHOIS, not all TLDs are supported. Might not be very useful if you have automatic renewal, unless you just want to keep an eye.”
The site founder wrote to me with interesting details about the reliability of checking expiration via WHOIS: “You can’t select only the 1 day alert and this would not be reliable anyway. Because “…when you have auto-renew enabled, the registrar tends to update the WHOIS record very late, sometimes even after expiration date. For domains with no auto-renew the standard alerts starting at 14days will work fine. For domains with auto-renew enabled it’s fairly random, good behaved registrars will renew a couple weeks before expiration and you won’t get any alerts, other registrars will always show the record expiring in the WHOIS before updating it, which means you’ll always get false positive alerts”
Tracking an expired domain can be trickier than you might expect because there’s no universal way for domain registrars to mark a domain as expired. That said, in most cases, uptime monitoring services can catch an expiration because the domain typically gets replaced with a 404 (Not Found) or 402 (Payment Required) error page. You might also see the domain’s IP address removed from the DNS entirely — though detecting this takes a bit longer due to DNS caching.
But not all registrars handle expirations the same way. Here are some variations you should be aware of:
Grace Period with Continued Hosting: Some registrars keep your website live even after the domain expires, reserving the domain for you so you can still renew it (often with an extra late-renewal fee). In this case, your site’s uptime remains unaffected, so an uptime check won’t catch the expiration. A WHOIS or RDAP lookup is the most reliable way to confirm the domain’s status.
Parking Pages or Misleading Error Pages: Other registrars might replace your website with a generic parking page to monetize your traffic or a poorly implemented error page that still returns a 200 OK status code. Since the site technically stays online and returns a 200 OK, a default uptime monitor won’t register it as down. To catch this, you can configure your monitoring service to look for a specific search string that only appears on your legitimate website. This approach has the added benefit of detecting issues like site defacement or CMS errors that don’t affect HTTP status codes.
Understanding these nuances can help you choose the right monitoring strategy and avoid unpleasant surprises when a domain expires.
Another option is the Domain Control & Whois WWW application for iOS (or MacOS with M1). It has a free and a premium version, which gives you an unlimited domain count. The paid version is $1.49/month or $15.49/yearly. You can also pay $39.99 for a lifelong license. It allows easy import of a long list of domains but I found the SSL expirtion notices got in the way and I could not turn on notifications for all domains – I had to do that one at a time. Also it doesn’t refresh expirations dates automatically so that is a big limitation also. The language is also very confusing in the app. Not a great experience.
*The information about pricing in this article has been updated on August 20, 2024.
We help many of our clients with search engine optimization (SEO) – especially if they are focused on online sales with WooCommerce. SEMrush is a complex, powerful tool that we have been using for more than a year now and we are very impressed with it. If you’re using a WordPress-based website, integrating SEMrush into your SEO strategy can significantly enhance your efforts and drive more organic traffic to your site. In this blog post, we’ll explore how SEMrush can help you optimize your SEO and the major features that make it such a useful tool. SEO is an art and a science and it takes a creative approach to testing the right options and carving a track through the wilderness of marketing choices towards a useful ROI.
We offer reduced rates on the monthly SEMrush fees to our clients. Clients can log in on their own and review progress at any time and we also provide regular reports that focus on the goals we help them set.
Why SEMrush?
SEMrush is a powerful SEO tool that provides comprehensive insights and data to help you improve your website’s visibility on search engines. It offers a wide range of features that cater to different aspects of SEO, from keyword research and competitor analysis to site audits and backlink tracking. Here are some of the key benefits of using SEMrush for your WordPress site:
Major Features of SEMrush
1. Keyword Research
Keywords are the foundation of any successful SEO strategy. SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool helps you discover high-performing keywords relevant to your niche. It provides detailed information on search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitive density, allowing you to target the right keywords that can drive traffic to your site.
2. Competitor Analysis
Understanding your competitors’ strategies can give you a significant advantage. SEMrush’s Competitive Research tools enable you to analyze your competitors’ websites, identifying their top-performing keywords, backlinks, and content. This information can help you refine your own SEO strategy and uncover new opportunities for growth.
3. On-Page SEO Checker
Optimizing your individual pages is crucial for improving your search rankings. The On-Page SEO Checker analyzes your content and provides actionable recommendations to enhance your on-page SEO. It looks at factors such as keyword usage, meta tags, readability, and more, ensuring your content is fully optimized.
4. Site Audit
A healthy website is essential for good SEO. SEMrush’s Site Audit tool scans your WordPress site for technical issues that could affect your search rankings. It checks for problems such as broken links, duplicate content, and slow loading times, providing detailed reports and suggestions for fixing these issues.
5. Backlink Analysis
Backlinks are a critical factor in SEO, as they signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy and authoritative. SEMrush’s Backlink Analytics tool helps you monitor your backlink profile, identify toxic links, and discover new opportunities for acquiring high-quality backlinks.
6. Content Marketing Toolkit
Creating high-quality content that resonates with your audience is key to SEO success. SEMrush’s Content Marketing Toolkit provides tools for topic research, SEO writing assistance, and content auditing. It helps you create content that is not only engaging but also optimized for search engines.
7. Position Tracking
Monitoring your search rankings is essential to measure the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. SEMrush’s Position Tracking tool allows you to track your keywords’ positions in real-time, providing insights into how your rankings change over time. This helps you adjust your strategy as needed to improve your visibility.
Contact us for more.
SEMrush is a versatile and comprehensive SEO tool that can significantly boost your WordPress site’s search engine performance. By leveraging its powerful features, you can gain valuable insights, optimize your content, and stay ahead of your competition. As seasoned SEO professionals, we help our clients creatively find the right ROI on their SEO spend. We specialize in using SEMrush to deliver exceptional SEO results and would love to help you enhance your online presence. Let’s work together to make your WordPress site a top performer in search engine rankings.
Many WordPress users recently received a fake email claiming to be from the WordPress Security Team about a supposed vulnerability called “Remote Code Execution (RCE)” on their website. The users are asked to download, install and activate a CVE-2024-46188 Patch plugin.
Here is what the email looks like:
This is not a solicited email and you should not click on the download button, which will actually take you to a site that has cloned the WordPress.org site in a very sophisticated way. If you get tricked into installing the plugin, it will create a hidden user account with administrator privileges which will be sent to the attackers.
Here are a couple of things to be aware of so you can recognize phishing emails:
The WordPress Security Team will never email you requesting that you install a plugin or theme on your site, and will never ask for an administrator username and password.
Official emails from the WordPress project will always come from a @wordpress.org or @wordpress.net domain. You can notice that the above email comes from a “mailing-wordpress.org” domain. Tricky!
Phishing emails insist that you act immediately or there might be crucial consequences. Always make sure you check if the information is legitimate before taking any action.
You can find more about WordPress Security Team impersonation scams here.
There are many services today that will sell you a business card that has a QR code and or a NFC chip so you can present it to a new business contact and they can easily scan it and add to their contacts. Who needs paper anyway?
But many of these services (like linqapp.com or popl.co or mobilocard.com) will want to sell you a monthly fee to host your data online and give other features. One simpler solution is to build your own QR code. Once you generate it you can share it a bunch of ways:
print it out on paper
print it as a sticker and put it on the back of your phone
save it in your phone so it can be scanned from your screen.
HOW TO MAKE A VCF FILE
Generate a plain text file that contains the Vcard info. One way to do this in MacOS is to click and drag your contact card out of your Contacts app – it will generate a .vcf file on your desktop.
Click and drag that icon into TextEdit and you will see the plain text. Once you have the plain text you can paste that into a QR code generator like https://www.qr-code-generator.com (there are many others – note that they might also have paid features but the basic QR code is a free feature).
URL redirects play a crucial role in website management, ensuring seamless user experience and preserving SEO rankings. When it comes to implementing redirects, domain registrars often offer limited options, and some even charge additional fees for this service. However, Cloudflare, a leading web performance and security company, provides a powerful solution for bulk redirects, completely free of charge. Here’s how Cloudflare’s bulk redirect feature offers superior control and flexibility compared to other options in the market.
Bulk Redirect interface (2023)
The Power of Cloudflare’s Bulk Redirects
Cloudflare’s bulk redirect feature enables users to define a large number of URL redirects at the account level, all with a given HTTP status code. This means that you can effortlessly redirect multiple URLs simultaneously, saving time and effort in managing individual redirects. By leveraging this feature, website administrators gain granular control over their website’s redirection strategy, leading to improved user experience and optimized SEO.
Unlike some domain registrars, such as GoDaddy, that offer basic redirects at the domain level for free, Cloudflare goes beyond by offering a more comprehensive solution. Other registrars like Register.com charge a monthly fee ($1/mo) for redirect services. In contrast, Cloudflare’s free bulk redirect feature provides extensive functionality without any additional cost, on top of their many security and performance offerings.
Bonus: Email Forwarding
In addition to URL redirects, Cloudflare also extends its redirection capabilities to email accounts. You can forward email addresses associated with your domain to other email addresses. This added flexibility allows website administrators to streamline their online presence by managing both website and email redirects from a single platform.
Navigating the Bulk Redirect Interface
While Cloudflare’s bulk redirect feature is incredibly powerful, it’s become more confusing over the years as they added more and more features. The interface includes two key elements: “Create Bulk Redirect List” and “Create Bulk Redirect Rule.” Their documentation is not so helpful on this feature.
Create Bulk Redirect List: This step involves defining a list of redirects by specifying the source URLs, destination URLs, and the desired HTTP status code for each redirect. This list acts as a repository for all the redirects you want to implement.
Create Bulk Redirect Rule: After creating the redirect list, you need to create a rule that governs the application of those redirects. Without creating a rule, the redirect list remains inactive, which can be a source of confusion. By associating the redirect list with a rule, you activate and enforce the redirects across your website effectively.
Detail view of the list of redirects. I created these manually but you can also upload a CSV file with many redirects. 20 are allowed in the free version
Cloudflare’s free bulk redirect feature offers website administrators an unparalleled level of control and flexibility when it comes to managing URL redirects. Although the interface’s dual steps might seem confusing initially, understanding the purpose of creating both a redirect list and a redirect rule ensures a smooth implementation process.
By leveraging Cloudflare’s free bulk redirect feature, website owners can enhance their website’s user experience, preserve SEO rankings, and simplify their overall online presence.
HelloAri is proud to announce the launch of a new education website. USF approached us in September of 2021 with their project to publish these detailed historical studies of San Francisco Jewish communities. We worked closely with the researchers to refine the content and find simple ways to present the data in a clear and compelling format — on a very tight budget. As always, we leveraged the power of WordPress, the world’s most popular content management system. We assembled many pre-built pieces of code to streamline the process. These include plugins and themes as well as security and performance enhancements.
The University of San Francisco’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice’s new Jewish history resource is called Mapping Jewish San Francisco.
Mapping Jewish San Francisco is a new digital humanities project that takes a collaborative approach to examine the complex history and unique religious, cultural, and political identity of Jewish San Francisco. Top scholars and experts are contributing exhibitions to tell stories of the Jewish individuals and institutions that have shaped and are shaping the San Francisco Bay Area.
Along with other academic institutions, libraries, archives, and leading Jewish organizations, Mapping Jewish San Francisco aims to bring the past to life, making it possible to travel back in time to visually explore the rich Jewish history of the Bay Area.
The project presents two current exhibitions – Out of Egypt by Aaron J. Hahn Tapper and The House of Love and Prayer by Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, with a third one called Honoring Our Elders: Queer Jewish Lives in the Bay Area by Rabbi Camille Shira Angel soon to come.
Learn More:
Jpost “In Mapping Jewish San Francisco, a treasure trove of Bay Area Jewish history goes on display”
