Login to your WordPress Website without Typing the Password

As is common knowledge, two-factor authentication is necessary for increasing the security of WordPress websites. Once enabled, you’ll need a one-time password generated on your phone, in addition to your existing WordPress username and password, to log into the website. WordPress has not included 2-factor authentication in the core yet but there are WordPress plugins that will easily add this layer of security to your website.

The only downside of adding 2-factor authentication is that you need to type a few extra digits on the login screen before you are allowed in. And if you have a handful of WordPress websites to manage, this can be a bit time consuming.

This week I discovered Clef and it will completely changes the way you log into your WordPress websites. With Clef installed, you can log into your website by simply waving the mobile phone at the computer screen. Clef also secures your site with 2-factor authentication but you don’t have to type any username or password nor do you have to wait for the one-time tokens.

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Send Personalized Tweets & DMs in Bulk from a Google Spreadsheet

Introducing Twitter Merge, a new Twitter app that will help you send personalized tweets and direct messages (or DMs) to multiple Twitter users in one-go. You create a template for the tweet, specify a list of Twitter users and the app will take care of the rest. The Twitter Merge app, like Gmail Mail Merge, also runs inside a Google Spreadsheet but instead of emails, this one allows you to send customized tweets and DMs in bulk.

Let me share a scenario where such an app may be useful.

Say you are a brand and you are trying to organize meetings with Twitter users in various cities on different dates. You want to send them invites on Twitter but it would take just too much effort to compose the tweets or DMs manually. You thus create an invite template and add the Twitter user names in a Google Sheet. The Twitter Merge app, using that template, will send a personalized tweet (or DM) to every handle listed in the sheet automatically

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The Best Websites to Learn Coding Online

The Learn to Code movement has picked up momentum worldwide and that is actually a good thing as even basic programming skills can have a major impact. If you can teach yourself how to write code, you gain a competitive edge over your peers, you can think more algorithmically and thus can tackle problems more efficiently.

There’s no reason why shouldn’t know the basics of coding. You can automate tasks, you can program your Excel sheets, improve workflows, you can extract data from websites and accomplish so much more with code. You may not be in the business of writing software programs but knowing the basics of coding will help you communicate more effectively with developers.

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How to Monetize Google Maps on your Website with AdSense Ads

You have been using Google AdSense ads to monetize the content of your website but did you know that you can also use the same AdSense program to also monetize any Google Maps that are embedded on your web pages. You can embed a Google Map and AdSense ads will be automatically served inside the map that will either be contextually relevant to the content of the page or targeted based on the location of the visitors.

The Google Maps block embedded below contains a rectangular AdSense ad unit placed near the top-center area of the map. Where Am I is another example of a website that embeds Google Maps with ads.

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Add Related Posts to WordPress without Affecting Page Speed

It is recommended that you include Related Posts on your blog pages as they help decrease the bounce rate of your site and are good from the SEO perspective. That’s because when you publish a new article, the old content, that was previously hiding in the archives, shows up in the list of related posts and thus gets fresh exposure to both human visitors and search engines.

Matt Cutts, in 2010 when Google search results were a collection of 10 blue links, recommended using related posts and the advice is still relevant today in the age on Penguins and Pandas.

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Make International Phone Calls from your Mobile even without the Internet

How do you make international calls from your mobile phone? Mobile carriers often charge exorbitant rates for international phone calls but you can Internet based services like Skype or Google Hangouts and call any landline or cell phone number in the world for a low per minute fee.

All you need is a mobile phone connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot and some credit balance in your account for making the phone call. You can use these VoIP apps when travelling overseas as well and make significant savings for both domestic and international calls.

Now consider a scenario where you have a mobile phone but there’s no Wi-Fi around and the 3G/4G services are either slow or unavailable. Would you still be able to place calls through any of these apps? The answer is obviously in the negative but there’s at least one app that has figured out a unique solution to this common problem.

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