7 Best Video Hosting Sites for Bloggers, Marketers, and Businesses

Are you looking for the best video hosting sites for bloggers, marketers, and business websites?

Uploading videos directly to your website requires a lot of server resources. This is why smart business owners use video hosting sites to upload videos and then easily embed those videos in WordPress without affecting performance.

In this article, we will share some of the best video hosting sites for bloggers, marketers, and business owners.

Why Use Video Hosting Sites?

Videos are the most engaging form of content, and they are highly effective for conversions. However, they also take a lot of space and bandwidth.

WordPress allows you to upload videos to your website. However, it is not really optimized to serve videos. This affects video playback and creates a bad user experience.

Apart from that, videos consume more WordPress hosting resources, which slows down your website. If you are on shared hosting, then your hosting provider may even terminate your account to stop it from affecting other sites.

Due to these issues, we recommend using a video hosting site to add videos in WordPress. They have more server resources to serve video files, and you don’t have to worry about WordPress performance.

More importantly, they automatically adjust video quality to provide a better viewing experience based on your visitors’ internet speed.

To learn more, see our guide on why you should never upload videos to WordPress.

WordPress makes it super easy to embed videos on your website. See our guide on how to easily embed videos in WordPress for detailed instructions.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best video hosting sites that you can use.

1. YouTube

YouTube is the most popular video hosting website on the internet. It allows you to upload videos, create channels, and build a following.

As a marketer and business owner, you would want to capitalize on YouTube’s huge potential. It is also the world’s second most popular search engine and the second biggest social media website with 1.9 billion active users.

You can build a YouTube following with your channel, find a new audience, get featured in video search results, and grow your business.

YouTube has a Partners Program that you can join to earn money online from your videos. This program also offers you more benefits like analytics, longer videos, and video editing tools.

At WPBeginner we use YouTube to upload our WordPress video tutorials. Check out WPBeginner channel on YouTube to see how we use YouTube to get more subscribers and visitors to our website.

2. Vimeo

Vimeo is an excellent video hosting and streaming site for bloggers, marketers, and businesses. It gives you a limited hosting space to upload videos for free. However, the unlimited bandwidth and ad-free display are the key perks for all the videos.

To upload large videos, you’ll need to buy a premium plan which is very affordable ($84 per year). The paid plans also include privacy options, video editing tools, customer support, password protection, related videos, and Google Analytics.

The premium members can also sell or rent videos to earn money online from your Vimeo video.

We use Vimeo to host private videos for our exclusive members only area. If you have a membership site or you want to create and sell online courses, then Vimeo is an excellent option.

3. Jetpack Video

Jetpack is a popular plugin suite which also includes a video hosting feature. Jetpack video is a premium video hosting service and requires a paid Jetpack subscription plan.

It is completely ad-free and does not show related videos from other websites on your videos.

It uses the same content delivery network used by Jetpack photos for faster delivery and streaming experience. It also includes privacy settings, analytics, multiple video formats, and more.

4. Wistia

Wistia is a professional video hosting site for marketers and businesses. The free account has a limit of 3 videos with features like custom thumbnail, Wistia branded video player, password protection, privacy settings, and more.

You’ll need their premium plan to upload more videos. The paid version allows you to remove Wistia’s branding from the video player. It also comes with viewer history, trend graphs, call-to-action buttons, related videos, and annotations.

It has powerful integrations with email marketing services and CRM software like Constant Contact, Drip, AWeber, Hubspot, Google Analytics, and others.

5. Vidyard

Vidyard is a high-end video hosting site for large businesses and professionals. It includes premium content marketing tools to promote your videos.

It comes with multiple video player styles and custom editing options. You can upload videos with call-to-action buttons, and perform A/B test against video thumbnails to see which one works best.

Vidyard offers powerful and detailed analytics, including viewer history, engagement, and more to improve your videos.

6. Dailymotion

Dailymotion is another popular video hosting site that you can use to upload your marketing and business videos. It has a free partner account with features like unlimited bandwidth and storage, featured videos, privacy settings, video player, and more.

It allows you to upload several videos in a day and you can also use the drag and drop feature to upload complete playlists. You can optimize your videos for SEO by adding title, description, and tags.

DailyMotion also offers a monetization program where you can earn money and get more features as a partner.

7. SproutVideo

SproutVideo is a paid video hosting site for bloggers, marketers, and businesses. It has a free trial account where you can test the video player and its features. Though the free version has limited options and you’ll need to upgrade to access all the settings.

Some of the notable features include video themes, layouts, video analytics, social sharing buttons, call-to-action placement, and viewer engagement history.

You will need to get the embed code for each video and use the Custom HTML block to add video code.

We hope this article helped you find the best video hosting sites for your blog or business website. You may also want to see our step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners, and our expert pick of the best WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best Video Hosting Sites for Bloggers, Marketers, and Businesses appeared first on WPBeginner.

November 01, 2019 at 05:47PM

How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress (Step by Step)

Everyone agrees that broken links are bad for user experience. But did you know that broken links can significantly hurt your WordPress SEO rankings?

Yes, it’s proven that having broken internal links on your website negatively impacts SEO rankings.

In this article, we will show you how to easily find and fix broken links in WordPress, so you can improve your user experience and SEO rankings.

What is a Broken Link?

A broken link, also known as dead link, is a link that no longer works. Broken links can happen for many reasons, but the most common reason is when a page is either deleted or moved to a different location which causes the server to show a 404 not found error.

On WordPress sites, broken links typically occur when moving a site to new domain name, or when deleting a post or page without proper redirection.

Sometimes broken links can also happen due to a typo, and they can go unnoticed for months if not years.

This is why it’s extremely important to regularly monitor broken links on your site and fix them, so you can keep them from hurting your SEO rankings.

In this guide, we will share top four methods to find broken links in WordPress. After that, we will show you an easy way to fix those broken links.

Here’s a table of content for easy navigation:

• Finding Broken Links using SEMRush
• Finding Broken Links using Ahrefs
• Finding Broken Links using Google Search Console
• Finding Broken Links using Broken Link Checker Plugin
• How to Fix Broken Links in WordPress

Ready? Let’s get started.

Method 1. Finding Broken Links using SEMRush

SEMRush is one of the best SEO tool on the market. It allows you to easily monitor your website’s SEO rankings and overall health.

It also includes a powerful site audit tool that crawls your website to find common errors and prepare a detailed report for you.

First, you’ll need to sign up for a SEMRush account.

It is a paid service, but they do offer a limited free account which allows you to crawl up to 100 pages on one domain name. Paid plan limits start from 100,000 pages a month.

Once you are logged in, you need to click on the ‘Site Audit’ link from the left menu.

This will bring you to the Site Audit page. From here, click on the ‘New Site Audit’ button at the top to add your website.

You will be asked to enter your domain name. After that, you will be asked to configure site audit settings. You can select the number of pages to crawl and choose a crawl source.

Click on the start crawling button to continue.

SEMRush will now begin crawling your website for the site audit. This may take a few minutes depending on how many pages you selected for the crawl.

Once finished, you can click on your domain Under the Site Audit section to view your report.

To see the broken links on your site, you will need to click on the ‘Broken’ link under the report overview.

You can now click on the Export button at the top right corner of the screen to download your crawl report. You will need it when fixing broken links on your website (more on this later in the article).

Method 2. Finding Broken Links using Ahrefs

Ahrefs is an excellent all-in-one SEO tool for marketers, businesses, and SEO professionals. It offers detailed SEO insights into your own website or any of your competitors.

You can use it for keyword research, competition analysis, organic and paid keyword ideas, and site health monitoring including broken links.

First, you’ll need to sign up for an Ahrefs account. It is a paid service with plans starting from $99 per month. They also offer a full featured 7 day trial for $7.

Once you are logged into your Ahref’s dashboard, you need to enter your domain name under the Site Explorer tool.

Site explorer tool will now crawl your website to prepare reports. This may take some time depending on how much content you have on your website.

Once finished, you’ll see an overview of your site explorer results. From here, you need to click on the Pages » Best by Links menu and then sort your report by 404 status.

You can now export your report in CSV format to fix the broken links on your WordPress site.

Method 3. Finding Broken Links in WordPress using Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help webmasters manage their site’s visibility in search results. It also notifies you about errors including 404 errors which are caused by a broken link.

For more details, see our ultimate Google Search Console guide with step by step set up instructions.

After you have logged in to your Google Search Console account, click on the ‘Coverage’ link from the left menu.

You’ll find 404 errors either under Errors or Excluded tabs. Clicking on them will show you a list of errors or issues Google encountered while visiting your website.

Clicking on the 404 error will show you all the links on your website that are broken links and return a 404 error.

You can now click on the download button to get the list of all 404 errors on your website. You’ll need this to fix broken links on your website.

Method 4. Finding Broken Links in WordPress using Broken Link Checker

For this method, we’ll be using the Broken Link Checker plugin. However, this method is not recommended because it is resource-intensive and will slow down your website. Managed WordPress hosting companies like WP Engine already block users from installing this plugin on their servers.

The plugin checks for broken links on your website including both internal and external links that are resulting in a 404 error.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Broken Link Checker plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, the plugin will start working in the background to find links in your posts, pages, and comments. You can now go to Tools » Broken Links page to view the full report.

If you have been running your WordPress blog for a long time, then this report will include broken links to third-party websites as well.

You will have to manually sort the list to find broken links on your website.

You will need to keep Broken Link Checker active on your website until you fix broken links. After that, you can deactivate the plugin because it will keep checking for broken links which will slow down your server.

How to Properly Fix Broken Links in WordPress

We have shown you four different methods to find broken links in WordPress. Now let’s talk about how to easily fix broken links in WordPress.

The best way to fix a broken link is to redirect it to another page. For example, if you moved the contents of an article to a different address, then you will need to redirect it to the newer article.

Similarly, if an article does not exist anymore, then you would want to point users to a similar page that is closely related to the contents of the old article.

You can do this by setting up 301 redirects.

First, you will need to install and activate the Redirection plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Tools » Redirection page to set up redirects. You need to add the old broken link in the ‘Source URL’ field and the new URL in the ‘Target URL’ field.

After that, click on the ‘Add redirect’ button to save your changes.

You can now test this by visiting the old broken link, and you’ll be redirected to the new page.

Repeat the process for all broken links on your website.

For more information, see our guide on how to set up redirects in WordPress for beginners.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily find and fix broken links in WordPress. You may also want to see our actionable tips on how to optimize your images for web, and our pick of the best WordPress membership plugins to create a membership site.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Find and Fix Broken Links in WordPress (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.

October 31, 2019 at 04:30PM

How to Stop and Prevent a DDoS Attack on WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular website builder in the world because it offers powerful features and a secure codebase. However, that does not protect WordPress or any other software from malicious DDoS attacks, which are common on the internet.

DDoS attacks can slow down websites and eventually make them inaccessible to users. These attacks can be targeted towards both small and large websites.

Now, you may be wondering how can a small business website using WordPress prevent such DDoS attacks with limited resources?

In this guide, we will show you how to effectively stop and prevent a DDoS attack on WordPress. Our goal is to help you learn how to manage your website security against a DDoS attack like a total pro.

What is a DDoS Attack?

DDoS attack, short for Distributed Denial of Service attack, is a type of cyber attack that uses compromised computers and devices to send or request data from a WordPress hosting server. The purpose of these requests is to slow down and eventually crash the targeted server.

DDoS attacks are an evolved form of DoS (Denial of Service) attacks. Unlike a DoS attack, they take advantage of multiple compromised machines or servers spread across different regions.

These compromised machines form a network, which is sometimes called a botnet. Each affected machine acts as a bot and launches attacks on the targeted system or server.

This allows them to go unnoticed for a while and cause maximum damage before they are being blocked.

Even the largest internet companies are vulnerable to DDoS attacks.

In 2018, GitHub, a popular code hosting platform, witnessed a massive DDoS attack that sent 1.3 terabytes per second traffic to their servers.

You may also remember the notorious 2016 attack on DYN (a DNS service provider). This attack got worldwide news coverage as it affected many popular websites like Amazon, Netflix, PayPal, Visa, AirBnB, The New York Times, Reddit, and thousands of other websites.

Why DDoS Attacks Happen?

There are several motivations behind DDoS attacks. Below are some common ones:

• Technically savvy people who are just bored and find it adventurous
• People and groups trying to make a political point
• Groups targeting websites and services of a particular country or region
• Targeted attacks on a specific business or service provider to cause them monetary harm
• To blackmail and collect ransom money

What is the difference between a Brute Force Attack and a DDoS Attack?

Brute Force Attacks are usually trying to break into a system by guessing passwords or trying random combinations to gain unauthorized access to a system.

DDoS attacks are purely used to simply crash the targetted system making it inaccessible or slowing it down.

For details see our guide on how to block brute force attacks on WordPress with step by step instructions.

What damages can be caused by a DDoS attack?

DDoS attacks can make a website inaccessible or reduce performance. This may cause bad user experience, loss of business, and the costs of mitigating the attack can be in thousands of dollars.

Here is a breakdown of these costs:

• Loss of business due to inaccessibility of website
• Cost of customer support to answer service disruption related queries
• Cost of mitigating attack by hiring security services or support
• The biggest cost is the bad user experience and brand reputation

How to Stop and Prevent DDoS Attack on WordPress

DDoS attacks can be cleverly disguised and difficult to deal with. However, with some basic security best practices, you can prevent and easily stop DDoS attacks from affecting your WordPress website.

Here are the steps you need to take to prevent and stop DDoS attacks on your WordPress site.

Remove DDoS / Brute Force Attack Verticals

The best thing about WordPress is that it is highly flexible. WordPress allows third-party plugins and tools to integrate into your website and add new features.

To do that WordPress makes several APIs available to programmers. These APIs are methods in which third-party WordPress plugins and services can interact with WordPress.

However, some of these APIs can also be exploited during a DDoS attack by sending a ton of requests. You can safely disable them to reduce those requests.

Disable XML RPC in WordPress

XML-RPC allows third-party apps to interact with your WordPress website. For example, you need XML-RPC to use the WordPress app on your mobile device.

If you’re like a vast majority of users who don’t use the mobile app, then you can disable XML-RPC by simply adding the following code to your website’s .htaccess file.

# Block WordPress xmlrpc.php requests
<Files xmlrpc.php>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Files>

For alternate methods, see our guide on how to easily disable XML-RPC in WordPress.

Disable REST API in WordPress

The WordPress JSON REST API allow plugins and tools the ability to access WordPress data, update content, and/or even delete it. Here is how you can disable REST API in WordPress.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Disable WP Rest API plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

The plugin works out of the box, and it will simply disable the REST API for all non-logged in users.

Activate WAF (Website Application Firewall)

Disabling attack vectors like REST API and XML-RPC provides limited protection against DDoS attacks. Your website is still vulnerable to normal HTTP requests.

While you can mitigate a small DOS attack by trying to catch the bad machine IPs and blocking them manually, this approach is not very effective when dealing with a large DDoS attack.

The easiest way to block suspicious requests is by activating a website application firewall.

A website application firewall acts as a proxy between your website and all incoming traffic. It uses smart algorithm to catch all suspicious requests and block them before they reach your website server.

We recommend using Sucuri because it is the best WordPress security plugin and website firewall. It runs on a DNS level which means they can catch a DDoS attack before it can make a request to your website.

Pricing for Sucuri starts from $20 per month (paid yearly).

We use Sucuri on WPBeginner. See our case study on how they help block hundreds of thousands of attacks on our website.

Alternately, you can also use Cloudflare. However, Cloudflare’s free service only gives limited DDoS protection. You’ll need to signup for at least their business plan for layer 7 DDoS protection which costs around $200 per month.

See our article on Sucuri vs Cloudflare for a detailed side-by-side comparison.

Note: Website Application Firewalls (WAFs) that run on an application-level are less effective during a DDoS attack. They block the traffic once it has already reached your web server, so it still affects your overall website performance.

Finding Out Whether it’s Brute Force or DDoS Attack

Both brute force and DDoS attacks intensively use server resources, which means their symptoms look quite similar. Your website will get slower and may crash.

You can easily find out whether it is a brute force attack or a DDoS attack by simply looking at Sucuri plugin’s login reports.

Simply, install and activate the free Sucuri plugin and then go to Sucuri Security » Last Logins page.

If you are seeing a large number of random login requests, then this means your wp-admin is under a brute force attack. To mitigate it, you can see our guide on how to block brute force attacks in WordPress.

Things to Do During a DDoS Attack

DDoS attacks can happen even if you have a web application firewall and other protections in place. Companies like CloudFlare and Sucuri deal with these attacks on regular basis, and most of the time you will never hear about it since they can easily mitigate it.

However in some cases, when these attacks are large, it can still impact you. In that case, it’s best to be prepared to mitigate the problems that may arise during and after the DDoS attack.

Following are a few things you can do to minimize the impact of a DDoS attack.

1. Alert your team members

If you have a team, then you need to inform co-workers about the issue. This will help them prepare for customer support queries, look out for possible issues, and help out during or after the attack.

2. Inform customers about the inconvience

A DDoS attack can affect user experience on your website. If you run a WooCommerce store, then your customers may not be able to place an order or login to their account.

You can announce through your social media accounts that your website is having technical difficulties and everything will be back to normal soon.

If the attack is large, then you can also use your email marketing service to communicate with customers and ask them to follow your social media updates.

If you have VIP customers, then you might want to use your business phone service to make individual phone calls and let them know how you’re working to restore the services.

Communication during these tough times make a huge difference in keeping your brand’s reputation strong.

3. Contact Hosting and Security Support

Get in touch with your WordPress hosting provider. The attack you may be witnessing could be part of a larger attack targetting their systems. In that case, they will be able to provide you latest updates about the situation.

Contact your Firewall service and let them know that your website is under a DDoS attack. They may be able to mitigate the situation even faster and can provide you with more information.

In firewall providers like Sucuri, you can also set your settings to be in Paranoid mode which helps block a lot of requests and make your website accessible for normal users.

Keeping Your WordPress Website Secure

WordPress is quite secure out of the box. However, as the world’s most popular website builder it is often targeted by hackers.

Luckily, there are many security best practices that you can apply on your website to make it even more secure.

We have compiled a complete step by step WordPress security guide for beginners. It will walk you through the best WordPress security settings to protect your website, and its data against common threats.

We hope this article helped you learn how to block and prevent a DDoS attack on WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Stop and Prevent a DDoS Attack on WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

October 30, 2019 at 01:47PM