How to Take Your WordPress Site to the Next Level

There’s no doubt that WordPress is one of the best web design and development platforms, right?  It’s great for search engine optimization, it’s easy to install and use, and – oh yeah – did we mention that it’s totally free?!
All of these factors make a self-hosted WordPress installation a great choice for casino affiliates, but you can’t just load the basic platform and hope for the best— instead, read on to find out how to take WordPress to the next level for your casino affiliate website.
Choose the Best Theme for Your Casino Site
Let’s face it – design matters.  The average website visitor spends no more than seven seconds analyzing your website before deciding whether to read more of your content or click the back button and look for something else.  Eye catching design is one of the few things that’ll increase your site’s ability to convert these browsers to readers.
Fortunately, when it comes to WordPress designs, there are thousands and thousands to choose from.  Some are basic templates that will give you a spot for your content and your affiliate banners, while others are more full-featured and include everything from versatile page layouts to enhanced SEO features.
For more tips on picking the best WordPress theme for your site, check out CAP’s “WordPress Themes for Casino Affiliates” article.
Add Functionality with WordPress Plugins
Plugins are mini-programs that can add extra features and functionality to your WordPress installation.  They’re a great way to improve the user experience on your website beyond the elements included in the default WordPress platform.
So what kinds of things can these plugins do?  Well, the sky’s the limit!  You can find WordPress plugins online that will do everything from improve your SEO to manage membership areas to increase the security of your website, which is a vital concern for casino affiliates.
To learn about the WordPress plugins you absolutely must have on your site, check out our “Essential WordPress Plugins” article.
Enhance Your WordPress Site’s Security
The fact that WordPress is an open-source piece of software is what makes it both free and open to developers to create functionality-expanding plugins.  Unfortunately, this also makes the basic WordPress installation vulnerable to hackers.
Just a few of the security risks inherent to WordPress sites include brute force login attacks, SQL database insertion attacks, attacks via plugins and more.  Even the fact that each WordPress update publishes the current version installed on your site opens the program up to attacks based on exploiting the known vulnerabilities of each new version that’s released.
To ensure that all of the hard work you put into your casino affiliate website isn’t erased overnight by a malicious hacker, you need to tighten up your WordPress site’s security with specially designed plugins.  For the CAP-recommended WordPress security plugins, be sure to check out our article, “Lock Down Your Casino Website with WordPress Plugins.”
Put Your WordPress Backup Plan in Place
The sad thing is that it isn’t just hackers that can cause massive data loss or shut down casino affiliate sites.  Frequently, it’s our own human errors that can result in serious productivity losses.
Need an example?  Consider the February 2011 glitch that wiped out nearly 150,000 Gmail accounts.  Even if you’re religious about updating your WordPress installation and installing the necessary security plugins, what would happen if your web hosting company was suddenly shut down?  Can you say for sure that your site would be backed up and protected?
If you can’t, it’s time to put some effort into coming up with a backup plan for your casino affiliate website.  For more information on how to do this, check out CAP’s “Backup for Your WordPress Site” outline.
Improve Your Site’s Mobile Experience
There’s no doubt that the number of users accessing websites via smartphone has increased, as worldwide penetration of these enhanced feature phones continues to skyrocket worldwide.  But if you’ve ever used a smartphone to attempt to navigate a static website, you know how frustrating it can be to zoom in and out of a page, trying to find the information you’re looking for.
That’s why smart casino affiliate website owners are creating mobile-ready versions of their websites that are easy to access via smartphone.  Putting a little extra effort into drafting these new versions of your site can pay off big time, as you’ll have access to a piece of the market that many of your competitors are ignoring.
Fortunately, creating a mobile-friendly version of your site doesn’t have to be complicated.  If your site is built on the WordPress, Joomla or Drupal platforms, there are several options out there that allow you to quickly and easily publish a mobile version of your casino affiliate site.
To find out how to do this, check out CAP’s “2 Easy Options for Mobile-Friendly WordPress Sites” tutorial.