Our top 10 blog posts this year

5 December 2017

Siobhan Hancock

With 2017 drawing to a close, we take a look back at some of the highlights from our own blog this year. 2017 has been a busy one on the 34SP.com blog, we’ve published around 80 new posts in the last 365 days. In this blog post we’ve rounded up our 10 most popular posts from this year, so you can make sure you’ve not missed out on our best content.

Our Top 10 blog posts of 2017

1. A free bootstrap theme courtesy of 34SP.com

In March 2017 we published a free site design, which we called ‘Mosley’. Built with open source front-end framework ‘Bootstrap’, Mosley is available for anyone to edit, copy or modify without asking our permission, so what are you waiting for?

2. Impressive features of WordPress galleries

A blog post by our own WordPress Specialist Kayleigh Thorpe delves into the functionality of WordPress’s internal gallery tool. Kayleigh explains how to use the gallery tool and compares some of the frequently overlooked features with popular third party gallery plugins such as NextGEN Gallery. Aside from being a great primer for WordPress galleries, we know what really keeps you coming back to this blog post – the awesome kitten photos 😉

3. Testing Google’s Guetzli JPEG encoder

In March we tested Google’s brand new JPEG encoder, called ‘Guetzli’. We’re always looking at ways to reduce file sizes, so we ran a comparison against some established online encoders such as TinyJPG.com and Jpeg.io. We tested how Guetzli handles different types of photography, from DSLR and mobile photography through to stock photography. Check out the full 34SP.com blog post complete with examples, it may be time to switch up your JPEG encoder use.

4. Moving your WordPress website to SSL

It’s been a huge year for SSL and we’re delighted that all our managed website hosting plans come with free Let’s Encrypt SSL/TLS certificates. In this article, we look at some of the issues that may arise when moving your site from http to https, and how to fix them.

5. Our top 10 favourite WordPress plugins

In November we created a list of 10 WordPress plugins we think every WordPress site should be using. For WordPress novices and experts alike, our top 10 plugins contain some established names (Yoast, Jetpack), as well as some more obscure plugins you may not be so familiar with.

6. Wipe out spam with these e-mail best practises

In this blog post our Business Development Director, Stuart, explains various methods to reduce mailbox spam including Greylisting, DKIM, SPF spam protection and spam scoring. Nobody likes spam and we’ll do everything in our power to make it easier for you to control in future.

7. Getting started with Google AMP and WordPress

Google officially launched their AMP project known as ‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’ in 2016. We explain how to install Google AMP on your WordPress website, and we also run some tests to see how AMP sites look and behave differently to their desktop counterparts.

8. Beginners guide to Twitter for business

In this post we explain how to get started with using Twitter if you are a small business or start up. We look at some of techniques that help you are create the right kind of content for your audience, as well as how to grow your businesses profile in the social space.

9. WordPress security best practices

In an article from back in February this year, Stuart explains some of the security issues facing WordPress. Online security is an important for everyone, but with WordPress powering 25% of all websites it is vital to keep your WordPress website secure.

10. 50 tips and tricks for better e-mail marketing

In this article we provide 50s tip for using e-mail to improve your sales or conversions. We take a look at every aspect of e-mail marketing, from choosing the right mailing list provider all the way through to recording the interactions your e-mail gets after you have sent it out.