Archives for 2015

The life of an entrepreneur. Sounds good doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the stuff we read about the multi-millionaire, uber-successful entrepreneurs is a bit of an illusion—it bears no resemblance to the experiences of your average entrepreneur. I recently wrote about how WordPress and entrepreneurship are naturally aligned, but, perhaps because of some common misconceptions, many people are still afraid to jump aboard the entrepreneur train. Today I want to debunk four common myths about entrepreneurs. 1. Entrepreneurs are lucky A few years ago, I remember sitting around with a group of friends smack talking our day jobs—specifically, about how we’d all […]

Every freelancer has had to deal with a client from hell. One that, as The Oatmeal describes, makes you “begin to fantasize about other careers, like someone who digs ditches for a living or gives baths to the elderly.” While most clients are great to work with, clients from hell can throw our lives into complete disarray, causing anxiety, problems sleeping, and frustration. So much so that freelancers needed to find a way to vent about it on ClientsFromHell.net. It can be hard to admit that you are dealing with a client from hell, and even harder to fire them. […]

When it comes to SEO, most people have a decent understanding of the basics. They know about keywords, and how they should show up in different places throughout their content. They have heard of on-page SEO, and have maybe even given WordPress SEO plugins a whirl. If you dive down into the nitty gritty of search engine optimization, however, there are a few rather obscure pieces of the puzzle that not everyone knows about—one of them being robots.txt files. What are robots.txt files and what are they used for? A robots.txt file is a text file that resides on your server. It contains […]

So you’ve got an online business. Maybe it’s been up and running for a while or maybe it’s brand spankin’ new. Regardless, running your company is hard work. But did you know it’s possible to lighten your load by utilizing a (hopefully) abundant resource right at your fingertips? I’m talking about your brand advocates. Your biggest fans. The people who want to see you succeed. There’s perhaps no bigger franchise attracting pop culture attention right now than Game of Thrones. And with season 5 of the phenomena having just started on April 12, I thought it might be fun to […]

WordPress is growing in size and stature at an ever-increasing rate. In fact, the headline figures show that around a quarter of the web is powered by our favorite CMS. But, why are people drawn to WordPress? Who are its users? Today I want to look specifically at one of the most prominent groups of WordPress users: entrepreneurs. Why are aspiring money-makers, perhaps more than any other group, choosing to power their business with WordPress? Here are five reasons why WordPress and entrepreneurs are a perfect fit. 1. Like-minded people There’s a well-known saying: “like attracts like”; this certainly applies here. WordPress […]

“Plugged in” is a reoccurring feature on Torque that aims to take a closer look at different plugins each week. If you have any suggestions for plugins you’d like to see reviewed, write us at [email protected]. When WordPress users think of caching, W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache usually spring to mind. These plugins have a combined 11.7 million downloads and are the go-to caching plugins for most of us. That’s not to say they’re perfect, though. In fact, all caching solutions suffer from one specific caching blind spot: caching pages for logged in WordPress users. In March, Cache Buddy was […]