Web Development

You may have seen the trend of websites having a bar at the top of the site, that stays there as you scroll through the site.

This static hover bar catches users eyes and increases click throughs and conversions. Neil Patel of Quicksprout says that 11% of his revenue comes from HelloBar.

But is there something special about HelloBar, or will an alternative be just as effective?

Any other bar with the same features will absolutely be as effective.

HelloBar has a link to their own site on the top left corner. They also have minimums and monthly pricing. The bar has some features, such as analytics tracking, which others don’t offer. But is that really what you’re looking for?

I went searching for an alternative and I found themify.me has something called the Announcement Bar.

The Announcement Bar has everything I was looking for.
Here are the 7 things that I think make this $19 plugin 10 times better than HelloBar.
1. $19 one time pricing
2. Schedules – You can schedule when your announcements appear, and they automatically disappear at the scheduled end time.
3. Design – It is super easy to control the design. Choose fonts, colors and layouts to fit the style of your site.
4. Placement – You can easily have the bar at the top or bottom of your site, but you can also integrate this tool into your site using shortcodes or widgets.
5. More – There is an option to allow the user to expand the bar and get more information on your announcement… but it’s not just a text area, it’s an easy to use layout builder.
6. Close feature – allow your users to close the bar, and remember their preference (if you allow this).
7. Multiple announcements – Add more than one announcement and have it auto-scroll through them, or set it up to slide or fade.

Check out Announcement Bar for yourself.

I use 1and1.com(affiliate link) to buy domains cheap. I have a hosting account with them as well.

WordPress allows you to update your version within the dashboard, but when used on 1and1 (one and one or 1&1) servers it hangs and never completes the update. This is also a problem when updating plugins from within the wordpress CMS.
But I’ve found a solution to wordpress upgrades not working on 1and1.

To fix this, modify your .htaccess file, or create a new one with the following information.

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

I’m on the path of completing more mini sites for the domains I own. This way I won’t have so many parked domains, but rather domains that are indexed and getting some traffic for intended keywords.

In addition to developing the domains, I’ve decided I have to take a more active role in link building.  I’ve heard of some success with article submission sites, but only if it is done manually and slowly.  I’ve compiled a list of article sites and have started to setup logins.  I’ll have to also write content for the article submissions.  A small increase in rankings for keywords may be enough to make these sites “successful”.

Well I’ve finished a spreadsheet determining keyword eCPM for all the domains I own.  I’ve also determined competition based on allintitle and allinanchor searches.  This has given me some direction on which sites to develop first.

I have created a simple site template that is optimized for high clickthrough rates with Adsense, as well as good SEO practices.  Using this template I’ve developed the first mini site.  It’s a mini site, meaning there are only a few pages and it’s not a full CMS that allows to easily add content. It might be enough of a site to get indexed and rank for some keywords.  If each site can bring in some traffic and create a little income to pay for itself, then I can focus on fully developing the core sites I own.