In the previous article in this series—The Everything Guide to Data Collection in DevSecOps—we discussed the importance of data collection. In this article, we'll explore the role of monitoring in observability, especially as it relates to security, performance, and reliability. Monitoring is essential for detecting issues and outliers as they happen in production and allows DevSecOps teams to identify and address issues before they cause serious damage. Monitoring performance degradations or suspicious activity can result in alerts and automatic responses to isolate potential problems or attacks.
In this article, we’ll look at monitoring in detail, provide several use cases and best practices, and discuss how monitoring can specifically improve security, performance, and reliability through observability.
A headless CMS (Content Management System) is an emerging technology that allows content producers to manage and deliver digital content without needing a traditional web page or presentation layer. A headless CMS separates the back-end...
If you are running a web design business, your portfolio website is one of your most important tools to attract new clients. In order to actually generate leads through your website, you have to get people there, and that means you need to continually generate new content along with having it optimized for search engines. If you’re a freelancer or small business, that means you are not only a web designer or developer, but you also have to wear the hat of the content creator. How are you supposed to find enough hours in the day?
This is where Spark Writer comes in. Spark Writer is a GPT-3 writing tool that allows you to create texts such as articles, blogs, ads, and even SEO meta descriptions in an instant. In this post we are going to take a look at how Spark Writer can make your life easier and help you grow your web design business.
What Is Spark Writer?
Spark Writer is a creative tool that helps you write better, faster and more easily. It provides you with a range of templates, tips and resources that makes writing easier and more fun.
The previous paragraph was actually written by Spark Writer in a matter of seconds using the paragraph tool. That summarizes it pretty succinctly, but there is much more to this AI writing tool. There are a variety of ways to use it for your web design business blog, including generating titles and ideas, introductions, outlines, conclusions, listicles, and more – all the way to even a full article generator.
So you can see how this tool could save you a significant amount of time when creating content. Let’s take a look at several ways in more detail.
Create Catchy Titles
With the Article Title / Idea Tool, you can take your blog topic idea and generate several catchy titles easily. For example, we put the title of this post in and Spark Writer popped out the following:
How to take your web design business to the next level with Spark Writer
How Spark Writer can help you stand out from the competition
Create better content and improve your web design business with Spark Writer
The secret to success: How Spark Writer can help improve your web design business
How to improve your web design business with Spark Writer
In literally seconds we have five alternate titles we could use instead of what we started with! Coming up with ideas or refined, catchy titles no longer has to consume your time when writing new content for your blog.
Write Article Outlines
Many blog posts and articles start with an outline in order to better organize your thoughts and map out the sections and main points. With the Article Outline Tool you can type in what your article is about and in seconds have an outline of it right in front of you. If you prefer to do the actual writing of the article yourself, this would be a great way to get started and save you tons of time along the way.
Generate Listicles
One of the most popular types of blog posts is listicles, offering, for instance, “10 top web design tools of the year” or any other idea you can come up with. Spark Writer’s Listicle Tool can generate these for you in seconds.
Take a look at what we got when we typed in “Top Web Design Tools of 2022”:
Adobe XD
Figma
Sketch
Invision Studio
Protopie
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe After Effects
Cinema 4D
Blender
Just like that, the research has been done for us instantly. Then we could take this list, fill it in with descriptions of each tool, add an introduction and conclusion, and presto! Another way to come up with a quick blog post for your web design business!
Write Full Articles
If you’re really in a hurry, you can elect to use the Full Article Generator from Spark Writer to generate a complete, unique, and SEO friendly article in 30 seconds or less. While this may not be the best way to make sure your blog has your own unique “voice” in its writing, it can definitely save you hours per post. You could also take what the tool produces and edit it to your liking to make it more your own, which would still be a great way to reduce the amount of time you spend creating blog content.
How Will You Use Spark Writer To Grow Your Web Design Business?
Although we’ve touched on just a few ways this new tool can be used to greatly increase your efficiency as a content creator, there are many more options to look into beyond what we’ve described here. Best of all, Spark Writer is 100% free to use, so you can take it for a spin right away!
It’s a brave new AI-generated content world we’re stepping into. We recommend you give Spark Writer a try and see how it can be used to help you save time, inspire creativity, and grow your business.
Louis Lazaris has made a ton of Pens, often in support of one of his newsletters Web Tools Weekly. And yet, like a lot of folks, has never really dug into the Editor Settings of CodePen. Here’s a recent newsletter where he finds those settings and digs into them.
I haven’t really messed around too much with CodePen’s settings other than laying out the editor to display the code panels on the left.
Maybe you also use CodePen a lot. If you do, it’s good to know there’s a specific page where you can modify editor-specific settings to suit your own needs and maybe be more in line with what’s in your primary IDE.
Check out the page for yourself and toggle the “Sticky Preview” to “On” to view any changes in real-time.
For now, this Editor Settings area is the one place you can change your editor font and syntax highlighting theme (we have lots of both of them), and do things like set up your preferred defaults.
You know what I think the most important one is?
Format on Save
Having Prettier format your code on each save is a very satisfying experience and I have a hard time coding without it now.
Incident severity levels and priority are invaluable to solving infrastructural problems faster. This blog helps you understand levels of severity and how they can enhance your incident response process.
Major outages are bound to occur in even the most well-maintained infrastructure and systems. Being able to quickly classify the severity level also allows your on-call team to respond more effectively.
“Idea is great, but the app is very poor. UI is not at all user-friendly. I am deleting it right away.”
How disheartening it would be to see such a review on your app, which you made with blood and sweat. It is not a new discovery that a classy and user-friendly UI is necessary to complete your great idea into a successful app. Every developer knew this struggle until 2011, when Facebook first used React for its newsfeed. Or is there something else?
Do you want to know how much revenue you’re generating from Google Ads on your website?
Setting up Google Ads conversion tracking will help you uncover insights about your ad campaign’s performance. You can find out which campaign is performing the best, how users interact with your ads, and how you can improve conversions.
In this article, we’ll show you how to properly set up eCommerce Google Ads conversion tracking in WordPress. This is the exact same method that we use on our own websites.
Why Set Up Google Ads Conversion Tracking in WordPress?
If you’re running Google Ads for your WordPress blog, eCommerce store, or membership site, then it is important to know how they’re performing. You can’t improve, what you can’t measure.
Tracking Google Ads conversions helps you see how much revenue you earned from users who clicked on your ad campaigns. It also helps you see which paid keywords and ad groups drive the most conversions. This way, you can optimize your campaigns and budget for more profitable search terms.
Besides that, Google Ads conversion tracking also uncovers how users behave on your WordPress site after clicking an ad. For instance, you might see a lot of users arrive on a landing page, but abandon it after adding products to the cart.
You can use this information to improve the checkout process, offer discounts and incentives as users are about to leave your site, and provide a better user experience.
That said, let’s see how you can add Google Ads conversion tracking in WordPress.
MonsterInsights offers an Ads addon that lets you setup comprehensive conversion tracking without touching a single line of code or hiring a developer.
We will use the MonsterInsights Pro license for this tutorial because it includes the Ads addon. There is also a MonsterInsights Lite version you can use for free.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you will be redirected to the welcome screen in your WordPress dashboard. Go ahead and click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button.
Next, you can follow the onscreen instructions to connect Google Analytics to your site. For more details, you can see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.
With MonsterInsights, you can also use dual tracking to set up a Google Analytics 4 property. It is the latest analytics version and will soon replace Universal Analytics. You can learn more by following our guide on how to switch to Google Analytics 4 in WordPress.
Once you’ve connected Google Analytics with WordPress, the next step is to install the Ads addon. Simply go to Insights » Addons from your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the ‘Ads’ addon.
Go ahead and click the ‘Install’ button. The addon will now automatically install and activate on your site.
Creating a Conversion Action in Google Ads
Next, you’ll need to create a conversion action in Google Ads.
After that, go ahead and click the ‘Tools and settings’ option at the top. Under the ‘Measurement’ column, simply select the Conversions option.
On the next screen, you’ll need to create a conversion action.
You can click the ‘New conversion action’ button to get started.
Next, Google Ads will ask you to select the type of conversions you want to track. It will show you 4 options, including a website, app, phone call, or import.
For this tutorial, we’ll choose the ‘Website’ option for tracking ad conversions.
After that, you’ll need to enter the website URL where you’d like to measure conversions.
Once that’s done, simply click the ‘Scan’ button.
Google Ads will now show 2 options to create conversion actions, including an automatic and manual method. In the automatic method, you’ll need to select the conversion goal, choose a match type, and enter the URL. This way is suitable if you know which events to count as conversions.
However, we recommend selecting the manual method. Simply scroll down and click the ‘+ Add a conversion action manually’ option.
Next, you’ll need to enter the Conversion action details.
First, you can select the ‘Goal and action optimization’ for your conversion. This is the action you’d like to track. For example, when a user subscribes to your newsletter, makes a purchase, adds a product to a cart, submits a contact form, and more.
For the sake of this tutorial, we will select ‘Subscribe’ as the goal. After that, you can enter the Conversion name.
You can now scroll down and select a Value for your conversion. Google Ads lets you choose the same value for each conversion, assign different values for conversions, or don’t use a value for conversion action.
We will select the ‘Use the same for each conversion’ option, select the currency, and enter a value for this tutorial.
Besides that, you can also choose how many conversions to count per click.
If you’re tracking email newsletter signups, then we recommend selecting the ‘One’ option. This way, each subscriber is counted once. However, you can use the ‘Every’ option in an eCommerce store and count each purchase as a conversion.
After selecting these options, simply click the ‘Done’ button at the bottom.
You can now see your conversion action under the ‘Create conversion actions manually using code’ section.
Go ahead and click the ‘Save and continue’ button to get instructions for adding the tracking tags for conversion action to your site.
On the next screen, you’ll see 3 options to add the conversion action to your site.
Simply select the ‘Use Google Tag Manager’ option. You should see the Conversion ID and Conversion Label. Copy these to a notepad file or keep the browser window/tab open.
To finish the setup process, you’ll need to head to your WordPress website dashboard and view the MonsterInsights settings.
From here, go to Insights » Settings and click on the ‘Publisher’ tab.
After that, you can scroll down to the ‘Ads Tracking’ section.
Go ahead and enter the Conversion ID. Make sure you follow the format, which will look like this: AW-123456789.
That’s it. You’ve successfully set up Google Ads conversion tracking on your WordPress website.
View Google Ads Conversion Tracking Data in Google Analytics
You can take it a step further and connect Google Ads with Google Analytics to get more insights about how people use your website after clicking on an ad.
For instance, you can see the number of visitors from paid search and find out which pages they view after landing on your site. You can also use different filters and create custom reports in Google Analytics.
Let’s see how you can link your Google Ads account with Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics.
Connect Google Ads with Google Analytics 4
First, you’ll need to log in to your GA4 account and then go to the ‘Admin’ settings.
After that, you can click the ‘Google Ads Links’ option.
It is located under the Property column.
A new window will now slide in from the right.
Go ahead and click the ‘Link’ button in the top right corner.
Next, you will see different options for Link setup.
First, you can click the ‘Choose Google Ads accounts’ option.
On the next screen, you’ll need to select the Google Ads account you wish to connect.
Once that’s done, simply click the ‘Confirm’ button at the top.
You will now see the Google Ads account that you want to link.
Go ahead and click the ‘Next’ button.
In the next step, Google Analytics will give you options to enable personalized advertising and enable auto-tagging.
You can use the default settings and click the ‘Next’ button.
After that, you’ll see a summary of your Link setup settings.
If everything checks out, then go ahead and click the ‘Submit’ button.
You should now see a ‘Link Created’ notification in front of your Google Ads account. This means that you’ve successfully connected Google Ads with Google Analytics.
Do note that it can take up to 24 hours for your Google Ads data to appear in Analytics reports.
Next, you can view the Google Ads conversion tracking report in Google Analytics 4.
First, you can head to Acquisition » Traffic acquisition from the menu on your left and scroll down to see how many visitors came from the Paid Search channel.
After that, you can go to Acquisition » Acquisition overview and view the Session Google Ads campaign report. This will show which campaign got the most traffic.
You can also click the ‘View Google Ads campaigns’ option at the bottom to view more details.
For each campaign, you can see the total number of users, sessions, number of Google Ads clicks, cost per click (CPC), conversions, and more.
Using the information from this report, you can see which campaigns perform the best.
Connect Google Ads with Universal Analytics
If you’re using Universal Analytics, then you can first log in to your account.
After that, head to the ‘Admin’ settings.
Next, you’ll need to go to the Google Ads Links option.
You can find the option under the Property column.
On the next screen, you’ll need to select the Google Ads account you want to connect.
After selecting your account, simply click the ‘Continue’ button.
Next, you will need to enter a Link group title.
You can then select the Views to link with your Google Ads account. Simply click the toggle to ON for the correct Views.
Once that’s done, simply click the ‘Link accounts’ button.
Google Analytics will now show a summary of your settings. Simply scroll down and click the ‘Done’ button.
That’s it. Your Google Ads account will now be linked to the Universal Analytics property.
To view data from your ad campaigns, head to Acquisition » Google Ads » Campaigns from the menu on your left. You can see the number of clicks, cost, CPC, and more for each campaign.
Final Thoughts on Google Ads Conversion Tracking in WordPress
When it comes to setting up any conversion tracking, the most important thing you want to make sure is that the setup is done properly. This is why we use and recommend MonsterInsights because it just does everything for you behind the scenes without touching any code.
However if you prefer to add code directly on your WordPress site, then you can do that as well by using a plugin like WPCode. This will help future-proof your customizations. There’s a free version of WPCode that you can use by following our tutorial on adding custom code in WordPress.
Notice that some HTML attributes have been added to the link, rel="noopener" and rel="noreferrer". These attributes are added to address a security vulnerability.
The problem is that JavaScript code can be used to allow a new tab to get control of its referring window. If you link to an external website affected by the malicious code, then that website can use the window.opener property in JavaScript to change the original page (your website) to steal information and spread malicious code.
WordPress adds rel="noopener" to prevent the new tab from taking advantage of this JavaScript feature. Similarly, the rel="noreferrer" attribute prevents passing the referrer information onto the new tab.
How Does rel=”noopener” Affect Your WordPress SEO?
It doesn’t.
Even though the rel="noopener" attribute improves WordPress security, some users avoid using it because they think it will impact their WordPress SEO.
What’s the Difference Between “noopener” and “nofollow”?
It’s easy to confuse rel="noopener" with rel="nofollow". However, they are completely separate attributes.
The noopener attribute prevents your website from cross-site hacking and improves WordPress security.
On the other hand, the nofollow attribute prevents your website from passing on SEO link-juice to the linked website.
Search engines look for and consider the nofollow attribute when following a link on your website. However, they do not give any consideration to the noopener tag.
By default, WordPress does not allow you to add nofollow to your external links. If you want to add nofollow in WordPress, then you will need to use a plugin.
Does rel=”noreferrer” Affect Affiliate Links in WordPress?
The rel="noreferrer" does not affect affiliate links in WordPress. Some users believe that it does because rel="noreferrer" prevents the referrer information passing to the new tab.
However, most affiliate programs provide you with a unique URL that has your affiliate ID. This means your affiliate ID is passed along as a URL parameter for the other website to track.
Secondly, most affiliate marketers use a link cloaking plugin for their affiliate links.
With link cloaking, the affiliate link that your users click on is actually your website’s own URL, which then redirects users to the destination URL.
How Do You Disable rel=”noopener” in WordPress?
There is no need to remove rel="noopener" from links on your website. It is good for your website’s security and has no performance or SEO impact on your website.
Simply copy the following code into a new PHP snippet:
add_filter('tiny_mce_before_init','wpb_disable_noopener');
function wpb_disable_noopener( $mceInit ) {
$mceInit['allow_unsafe_link_target']=true;
return $mceInit;
}
Make sure you change the ‘Active’ toggle on and then click the ‘Save Snippet’ button.
This will stop WordPress from adding rel="noopener" to new links. You will also need to manually edit any old links to remove the attribute.
Want even more control over which rel attributes get added to your links in WordPress? We recommend using the AIOSEO plugin because it lets you add title, nofollow, and other link attributes right inside the WordPress editor.
When it comes to managing multi-tenancy, there are a number of architectural routes you can take. A couple of the most popular are:
Create a database per tenant.
Use a single database but with tenant IDs to separate out data.
Both of these options have pros and cons, but getting into that is not the intention of this blog. Today we'll be exploring what option 1 may look like on a single CockroachDB cluster.
Graphic design is a highly creative and visually-driven career that offers a wide range of opportunities for those who possess the necessary skills and talents. Whether you are looking to create beautiful and engaging designs for print materials, digital media, or other types of communications, a career in graphic design can be both challenging and […]
Expedia Group™️ acts as a booking agent for all sorts of travel. An issue we’ve wrestled with is when a hotel (or vacation rental, activity, etc.) shares public contact information through our platform that allows for direct booking. This act violates our service agreements, and we must detect if it happens. Furthermore, this mechanism needs to scale to review an ongoing stream of data generated by bookings, website updates, client updates, etc.
This is not a unique problem in the travel industry. It can be generalized to verify a whole class of financial and legal agreements on an ongoing basis. Speed is of the essence; quickly detecting violations protects the platform’s viability and stops possible fraud.
I also finished recording and editing the entire course. There are 50 total videos which total seven hours... I also recorded additional videos for the two other free courses for beginners and for modern Java. So keep an eye on those.
At some point, you begin to lead. This is very different than managing. The difference can be summed up with the phrase, “Leaders make their own problems." I’ll explain that in a bit, but first, let me tell you a story.
When I First Realized I Was Missing Something
When I first became a director, I had a conversation with another director named Jim.
Customer service is one of the most important Aspects of any business. In fact, many consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. When you’re looking for solutions to improve how your...
Is it worth coding your own e-signature API, or is purchasing a ready-made solution a better option? Electronic signatures have become a popular way to verify one’s identity without signing printed forms. They have many benefits over written signatures, such as higher security.
What’s the best way to implement an API for using e-signatures: buying an API or building one?
Happy New Year and welcome to Season 3 of Dev Interrupted!
