The Leokoo.com Weekly Curated Newsletter

Intro

Have a Blessed 2021! A brief recap of 2020 for WPStarters and more

Hey folks! We're now on issue 7 and officially in 2021. Thank you for subscribing to us! In this issue, we look at WPForms' latest update, which gives us hCaptcha support.

Backlinko gave us an in-depth article on content marketing that you need to check out, while Justin Tadlock talks about FSE and how it'll affect the future of WordPress. These two are great reads.

Oh, and don't miss out on the two expiring deals below. They are WPJohnny's Speed Optimization Courses and the Dynamic Content for Elementor.

Personally, 2020 has been a year of growth for my WordPress agency, but at the expense of WPStarters. As worked piled in, I had less time to write due to deadlines and underestimating the scope of work for the various projects we took on. That's why we haven't been taking in new projects since the end of November.

For 2021, I'm looking to grow my web development team, while doing 1-2 reviews per week on WPStarters. Will this really work? Only time will tell.

Till then, do enjoy the curated articles below and join our Facebook Group to discuss anything WordPress or lifetime deals.

News

Announcing hCaptcha Support + Sendinblue Integration

While we love Google Recaptcha, privacy has always been an issue that we strive for. Furthermore, there is no easy way to adjust the difficulty level of the captchas. Not until hCaptcha, which is now officially integrated with WPForms.

On our end, we switched a number of sites which was getting spammy entries on the contact form from Google Recaptcha to hCaptcha, and the results were instantaneous. hCaptcha support is a brilliant move by WPForms and makes WPForms worth the switch if Google Recaptcha isn't working for you.

Recommended Articles

What Is Full Site Editing and What Does It Mean for the Future of WordPress? – WordPress Tavern

One of the most awaited features in WordPress, Full Site Editing (FSE) is finally here. While it is still at an early stage, FSE promises much and if implemented properly, will bring WordPress through the 2020s, instead of fading away through obscurity.

What will FSE mean to the future of WordPress? Read on this interesting article by Justin Tadlock of WP Tavern

Content Marketing in 2021: The Definitive Guide

SEO is getting competitive as thousands of sites are launched daily, hence the need for better content. But other than just writing content, having a guide on content marketing will help you grow your blog.

And who better than Backlinko's Brian Dean, who created an in-depth guide on Content Marketing for 2021. This guide covers topics such as video content, email marketing and even scaling up your content.

My takeaway is the portion where Brian mentions the 'Document, don't create' approach. I've bookmarked the page and I'm adding this to the newsletter so that I myself can easily return to Brian's guide in the future.

A definite must read.

13 Things We Learned from 10 Years of Writing SEO Friendly Blog Posts

Here's another article on content. CognitiveSEO's article focuses on practical tips to blog effectively and see results. Having blogged for a number of years myself, blogging can be a chore at times, especially with 'real' work.

And that's why I appreciate this article. It's an article written from the trenches of blogging and content marketing by the CognitiveSEO team. It also complements the Backlinko guide on Content Marketing for 2021, above.

Why you should Self-Host Google Fonts in 2021

I like this article by Gijo, the creator of FlyingPress. If you are like me, you most probably wouldn't have thought that self-hosting Google Fonts was important. And why the hassle?

I was like that until recently, as Google's upcoming focus on Core Web Vitals, spurred me to check out the various performance plugins for WordPress. I'll write about them in my upcoming review on WPStarters.

But for now, check out Gijo's article if you're not yet convinced on the benefits of self-hosting Google Fonts on your site's performance.

Reviews & Comparisons

6 Best Email Hosting Providers for WordPress in 2021 (or Anyone Else)

If you just moved from a shared hosting to a VPS hosting, you'll need to look for an email hosting provider. And this is an issue we encounter regularly as we move a number of our clients out of slow and insecure shared servers, to high performing GridPane-backed VPS servers.

While Google Workspace (GSuite) and MXroute are common names to some of us, the other options listed by Colin are interesting ones. Heck, you can still get free emails with Zoho Mail, albeit with limitations.

BEST WordPress Cache Plugins 2021

Johnny Nguyen, one of my favorite, no-nonsense guys, has released an updated but short article on the best WordPress cache plugins for 2021.

p/s: His usual suspects, Swift Performance Pro and WP-Rocket are in.

Profitable Tools & Resources

WordPress Speed Optimization Courses

And wait, Johnny also created a speed optimization course for WordPress. If you run a blog or an agency, you might want to grab his package deal ($200 at the time of writing), as the prices are going up really soon. In fact, it should have gone up yesterday, but Johnny must be busy.

I bought the course and will be using it to improve myself, my blog (WPStarters) and the speed of sites under our care plan. Long term, it'll also be used to train our staff.

Do yourself a favor and grab a copy before its gone (like WPvivid Pro, which I didn't manage to write about before the removal of their lifetime plan yesterday)

Dynamic Content for Elementor 20% OFF

Lastly, if you are an Elementor user, you might want to check out the Dynamic Content for Elementor Addon. Unlike regular Elementor Addons which adds a bunch of widgets, Dynamic Content focuses on extending Elementor with a bunch of unique features.

The plugin complements the two other Elementor Addons that I recently found, Toolkit for Elementor and Designer Power-up for Elementor. When used in combination with Dynamic Content for Elementor, they bring Elementor to the next level.

The Christmas sale ends in about 6 hours, so grab yourself a copy if you are looking to go beyond static content and utilizing Elementor with ACF and Toolset.