Dan Mall has my favorite post on picking a typeface. I’m no master typographer, but I know enough that I don’t want to be talked to like an absolute beginner where you teach me what a serif is. Dan gets into more realistic decision making steps, like intentionally not picking something ultra popular, admitting that you have to be around a lot of type to make good type decisions, and that ultimately choosing is akin to improvising in jazz: it’s just gotta feel right.
If you are a beginner, or really just like type, you’d do well carving out half an hour to watch the 6 parts of Practicing Typography Basics from Tim Brown who sounds like he’s at absolute zen at all times. Each of these videos only has a few thousand views which feels like a damn shame to me as they are super good and hit all the most important stuff about typography.
Now let’s have more fun and just look at some actual typefaces I’ve bookmarked lately.
Jgs Font glyphs can be combined from one character to another, from one line to another. Thus from single characters it is possible to draw continuous lines, frames and patterns.
An exploration by Rob en Robin about using the axes of variable fonts to control illustrations. Wild!
Oh and kinda just for myself, I want to remember two fonts Dan mentioned. He said he doesn’t pick these as they are almost too popular, but I don’t know them well and that popularity kinda intrigues me honestly.
Two of the most popular typefaces on Typewolf are Grilli Type’s GT America and Lineto’s Circular. You can’t go wrong with those. They look great and they won’t offend anyone.
Today Woo's engineering team deployed an important update for WooCommerce. The update addresses a vulnerability that could allow bad actors to inject malicious content in the browser. The Woo team has also contacted WooCommerce merchants whose stores may be vulnerable.
Are you include images in your web pages? Visual Studio Code (VS Code), a powerful and popular editor, makes this task seamless. Whether you’re a beginner or just need a quick refresher, this step-by-step guide will walk you through the...
Organizations globally are leveraging the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance their chatbot functionalities. These advanced chatbots are envisioned not just as tools for basic interaction but as sophisticated systems capable of intelligently accessing and processing a diverse array of internal organizational assets. These assets include detailed knowledge bases, frequently asked questions (FAQs), Confluence pages, and a myriad of other organizational documents and communications.
This strategy is aimed at tapping into the rich vein of internal knowledge, ensuring more accurate, relevant, and secure interactions. However, this ambitious integration faces significant hurdles, notably in the realms of data security, privacy, and the avoidance of erroneous or "hallucinated" information, which are common challenges in AI-driven systems. Moreover, the practical difficulties of retraining expansive LLMs, considering the associated high costs and computational requirements, further complicate the situation. This article delves into a strategic solution to these challenges: the implementation of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) models in conjunction with LLMs, complemented by the innovative use of session-based context management through Redis cache.
Recommender systems have become indispensable tools for users seeking relevant and personalized content in today's information-saturated landscape. Generative AI, a rapidly advancing subfield of artificial intelligence, holds the potential to revolutionize recommender systems by overcoming their limitations and enhancing their capabilities. This article delves into the various ways generative AI can contribute to more efficient, versatile, and accurate recommender systems.
1. Background: Generative AI and Recommender Systems
Generative AI models, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs), excel at generating novel, high-quality data by learning from existing samples. Their ability to create new data can significantly benefit recommender systems, which rely on data to understand user preferences and make accurate suggestions.
So, you have written a new API, maybe as much as doing the CRUD endpoints, maybe even some unit tests to boot.
Now, to gain a little more confidence, integration tests are required to test slices of the new logic. This requires the developer to create a client to access and call the endpoints, as you would in Postman, for instance, and call the new functionality with one's all-encompassing test criteria.
The special occasion is that the lead organizers of WordCamp Europe 2024 recently announced the teams that will help make next year’s event happen. This news made us curious about what’s behind the scenes in organizing such a big event.
Are you worried that you’ve stuffed too many keywords into your content?
When it comes to optimizing your site for search engines, many new users have a tendency to stuff their content with keywords. However, this is not a good practice and could lead to over-optimization, which can then lead to being penalized by search engines like Google.
In this article, we will show you how to avoid keyword stuffing and fix over-optimization in SEO.
What is Keyword Stuffing?
Keyword stuffing is filling a web page with keywords to manipulate search engines in the hopes of getting higher rankings.
In the early days of search engine optimization (SEO), it was easy to exploit search engines and use keyword stuffing to boost ranking. However, search engines like Google have become a lot smarter and can penalize sites that use this as an exploit.
There are different ways you can do keyword stuffing in your content. For instance, repeating words and phrases unnecessarily, listing or grouping text together unnaturally, or inserting blocks of keywords that appear out of context.
Here’s an example of how using the same keyphrase repeatedly in a single paragraph can lead to keyword stuffing.
Another way site owners can stuff search terms is by adding hidden text to the source code of the page. Users won’t be able to see this, but search engine crawlers will. Google does not like this practice.
That said, let’s look at how keyword stuffing can impact your site’s SEO.
Why is Keyword Stuffing Bad for SEO?
If you’re starting out with WordPress SEO, then it can be easy to get carried away and add the same keyword lots of times in the content. However, you should know that it goes against the web search policies of Google.
This could lead to a penalty from Google, where your site can be demoted in rankings. In worst cases, Google can also remove your page from its search engine results.
Besides that, keyword stuffing also leads to poor user experience because the content can be come hard to read. People might not find your content useful and exit the website. As a result, your site might look spammy and you won’t be able to build a healthy relationship with your audience.
Having said that, let’s look at different ways you can fix over-optimization and avoid keyword stuffing.
1. Measure Your Content’s Keyword Density
The easiest way of avoiding keyword stuffing is by measuring the keyword density of your content. Keyword density checks how many times a search term is used within the content.
You can use WPBeginner Keyword Density Checker to get started. It is a free tool that doesn’t require signup, registration, or installation.
Simply enter the URL or text of your content into the tool and click the ‘Check’ button.
Next, the tool will analyze your content and show you the results.
You can then see how many times a keyword is being used on the web page. For instance, in the screenshot below, you can see the word ‘parrotfish’ occurs 28 times or has a 13.66% density.
After finding the density of the search term, you can then edit your content and remove words and phrases that are repeated multiple times.
A best SEO practice suggests that keyword density should be around 2%. You can use this as a guideline and ensure your content isn’t over-optimized.
2. Assign a Primary Keyword to Each Content
Another way you can fix over-optimization for SEO is by assigning a primary keyword or phrase to each blog post and page.
You should conduct keyword research and pick a search term that best represents the main topic of your content. This way, your content will focus on a specific issue and you’ll be better able to fulfill the search intent
If you try to optimize a web page with multiple keywords with different intent, then you’ll leave your site in a big mess. It will confuse search engines from understanding your content and who it is for, which will prevent your page from ranking for the right keyword.
There are different keyword research tools you can use to find the primary search term for your content. We recommend using Semrush, as it is a complete SEO tool that offers powerful features.
You get a detailed overview of the keyword along with other valuable information. For instance, Semrush shows search volume, intent, keyword difficulty, and more for the search term.
Once you’ve found a primary keyword, you can use the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin to optimize your content for the search term. AIOSEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress that lets you add focus keyphrases to each post and page.
The plugin analyzes your content for the keyphrase, shows a score, and provides tips to improve keyword optimization. AIOSEO also integrates with Semrush to help you find more related keywords.
You can avoid keyword stuffing by using LSI (latent semantic indexing) or related keywords for your content.
These are search terms that are closely related to the primary keyword. Related keywords also help search engines better understand your content.
Using different variations of keywords, synonyms, or long tail phrases can also help avoid keyword stuffing. It gives you more flexibility in incorporating different topics into your article.
You can find related keywords using the WPBeginner’s Keyword Generator tool. Simply enter your main search term or topic in the search bar and click the ‘Analyze’ button.
The tool is 100% free to use and generates over 300 keyword ideas.
You can then use different variations in your article to avoid keyword stuffing.
Besides that, you can also search the primary keyword on Google and then scroll down to see related searches.
This will give you even more keyword variations to use in your content and fix over-optimization issues.
4. Add Value by Extending the Word Count
Next, you can create long-format content to cover the topic in detail and help achieve higher rankings.
Extending the word count gives you the opportunity to cover multiple sub-topics, answer different questions users might have, and easily use keyword variations to avoid stuffing.
This also helps you use different search terms naturally instead of forcing them in every sentence. Plus, it offers a better reading experience for users.
While extending the word count will help avoid keyword stuffing, you should also focus on content quality. Google and other search engines emphasize creating content that’s valuable. So, we recommend writing for your users instead of focusing on keyword placement.
One way of extending the word count and diversifying the use of keywords is by adding a FAQ section at the bottom of the post.
5. Include Keywords in On-Page SEO Optimization
You can also avoid keyword stuffing and fix over optimization by placing the target search term in different places during the on-page SEO process.
On-page SEO is optimizing a webpage for search engines and users. It refers to anything you do on the page itself to boost its rankings in search engine page results (SERP).
By spreading the placement of keywords across different page elements, you can easily fix keyword stuffing issues. For instance, there are different page elements where you can add the main keyword. These include the title, meta description, subheadings, permalink, and more.
With AIOSEO, it is very easy to perform on-page SEO and ensure your content is properly optimized. You can add meta descriptions, focus keyphrases, build internal links, and get suggestions for improvement.
Similarly, adding keywords to image alt text lets you rank for image search and allows you to diversify the use of primary search terms across the content.
It can help show screenshots from your blog post as featured snippets, helping you get more traffic.
Over the past few years, many new frontend frameworks have been released, offering developers a wide range of options to choose the one that best fits their projects. In this article, we will analyze Astro, an open-source project released with an MIT license. The first version, v1.0, was released in August 2022 as a web framework tailored for high-speed and content-focused websites.
One year later, in August 2023, they released Astro 3.0 with a lot of new features like view transitions, faster-rendering performance, SSR enhancements for serverless, and optimized build output, which we will cover later in the article. On October 12, 2023, they announced Astro 3.3 with exciting updates, such as the <Picture/> component for image handling.
We all have mastered the science of maximizing outputs from the given data in the last decade. However, converting that data into meaningful insights is the real challenge and opportunity! Over the years, a swaddle of 3rd party products has claimed higher ROI, either by optimizing ad spending, improving data analysis strategies, or overhauling the backend. And yet, the website conversion rates across all sectors haven’t crossed 2.5% in 2023
If the average user appetite to purchase has increased and the internet bandwidths have improved, why have the conversion rate numbers not improved? This post discusses often-overlooked strategies to improve website conversion rates and how data professionals can help.
Artificial Intelligence is advancing rapidly, and ChatGPT is one of the most talked-about AI tools right now. But what is ChatGPT, and how does it work? Read on to learn more. What Is Artificial Intelligence? Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is...
A sticky header can improve your site experience, as well as help increase conversions. Let's take a closer look at sticky headers and discuss some best practices. Then we’ll show you four ways to create a WordPress sticky header.
Working in technology for over three decades, I have found myself in a position of getting up to speed on something new at least 100 times. For about half of my career, I have worked in a consulting role, which is where I faced the challenge of understanding a new project the most.
Over time, I established a personal goal to be productive on a new project in half the time it took for the average team member. I often called this the time to first commit or TTFC. The problem with my approach to setting a TTFC record was the unexpected levels of stress that I endured in those time periods. Family members and friends always knew when I was in the early stages of a brand-new project.
The special occasion is that the lead organizers of WordCamp Europe 2024 recently announced the teams that will help make next year’s event happen. This news made us curious about what’s behind the scenes in organizing such a big event. 
A sticky header can improve your site experience, as well as help increase conversions. Let's take a closer look at sticky headers and discuss some best practices. Then we’ll show you four ways to create a WordPress sticky header.