#click the images for higher quality i BEG you
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...Holy shit, Arya Myers actually being social? And making friends? And having actual human(ish) connection? Impossible!
jokes aside this might actually be one of my favourite things i've ever drawn. angst always hits but gawdamm this was fun as fuck to make and its like holy shit my girl actually has a friend?! I went incredibly giggly when their creator accepted them as canon friends before i'd even drawn 'em yet I was very happy.
and also a version with their masks too bcuz they deserve it
Slasher belongs to @slasherflicks999 go give 'em love because they're cool and they make great stuff and because i said so
rambles underneath the cut because my mind was RACING with headcannons while making this (TW for mentions of gore, death, and creepypasta typical violence)
These could be completely inaccurate (i hope not) and I apologise in advance if they are
I like to think their friendship probably formed as the result or them forming a "truce". "truce" in quotations because its closer to a stalemate than anything. they literally can't kill each other (Slasher is immortal and Arya is kept alive by Slenderman to torment her) what other choice do they have? if they can't murder they may as well vibe. They do vibe though they'd get along great, I can see their types of humour complimenting one another well. they seem to have a shared habit of taking the piss out of the very dangerous situations they get into which together makes them both hilarious and incredibly frustrating to anyone around them.
Honestly i can see Arya bonking him in the head with her shovel upon first seeing him and leaving him on the forest floor thinking nothing of it only to freak the fuck out seeing him back on his feet days later. like she knew she was losing it but she didn't think she'd reach the level of seeing things just yet. Theres literally still traces of his blood on her shovel he should be dead.
So, she tries again, which would probably go one of two ways:
1. She somehow (probably luck) manages to take him out a second time and is then further confused by the fact she has, in fact, now killed this guy twice. Yup, thats brain matter on her shovel, he is real and he is very much dead, so what the hell? This time she doesn't leave him, instead choosing to stay and investigate (after a five minute breather because jeez thats a lot of blood-). She watches him for who knows how long, going back and forth on whether or not she really is crazy because he definitely looks dead but theres something off about his body that she can't put a name to, and eventually stays long enough to see his skull slowly stitching it back together with her own eyes.
2. the likelier of the two possibilities and the one i personally prefer, Slasher is prepared for her this time and avoids a second death, now knowing that he has to keep an eye out for a crazy blonde girl with a shovel and murderous intent, and now theres a similar situation in reverse where Aryas the one full of injuries but just not dropping and Slasher is the one confused. He knows first hand how easy it is for someone to die and she is covered in blood, she should be long dead. Stab wounds? yeahhh give her a couple days she'll be fine...probably. idk the thought makes me giggle
Slashers affinity for blood and gore combined with Aryas squeamishness and hatred for blood would also probably be pretty funny at times; like Slashers just sat there caked in blood casually chewing on a handful of raw meat while Arya sits next to him and watches like 😦🫣 ("..." "...what?" "Dude."). Shes fine handling her own blood but she anyone (or anything) elses blood is still a huge no-go.
That being said, if she were to ever come across Slashers dead body in the woods she'd stay by him until he regenerated, no matter how brutal the sight is. She doesn't know if "keeping his body safe" if really necessary in his case but she'll do it anyway. just in case, y'know?
(pls lmk how accurate these actually are I really don't wanna mischaracterise him by accident)
#click the images for higher quality i BEG you#creepypasta#slenderverse#creepypasta oc#oc#arya myers#creepypasta arya myers#slasher#creepypasta slasher#my baby made a friend im so proud of her#i really like these two together the vibes are high#something about them gives me zombie apocalypse vibes idk#i like it though#okay i'll shut up now#i drew this instead of sleeping#usually i tag that as a joke but i actually mean it this time#i finished this at like 5am lmao
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I SPENT 3 HOURS ON THIS BUT WHO CARES ITS FIREEEEEEEE

please click on the image to see it in higher quality im genuinely begging you
EDIT: WHY DOES IT LOOK WORSE WHEN YOU ZOOM IN......... NOOOOO RAAAHHH THE QUALIGY........ CRIES
EDIT 2: I FORGOT MULTIPLE MAJOR DETAILS ON LIAMS WINGS ABORT MISSION ABORT MISSION EVACTUATE RAAAHHHHH CRIES CRIES RAAAHHH SOBS PROFUSELY,,,,,,,
im so proud of this silly little drawing of mine..... originally i wanted this to be like. a quick little thing but whoops, all effort!
i didnt wanna give liam a shadow because magical butterfly ghosts dont have them and this is technically from bryces pov so if he looks behind him liam wont be there but he looked weird without a shadow and i just like it when he has one
there are many many teeny tiny imperfections but like!!!! im not gonna fix allat!!!!!!!!! i like it how it is!!!!!
i KNOW that butterfly liam au takes place in the plane but the plane doesnt have a mirror and its a cool concept to have it so whenever bryce looks in a mirror butterfly liam is just. there. watching him. and hes not going away until you forgive yourself damn it bryce /silly
"bloody liam bloody liam bloody liam"
liam shows up
"are you literally just doing the bloody mary thing but with me instead"
also uh. stands awkwardly. twiddles fingers. if you like the art then,,, maybe reblog mayhaps? i want people to see my art and im really happy when they do, thanks!!!!
#butterfly liam#butterfly liam au#liam the beyootiful butterfly#hfjone#hfjone art#hfjone fanart#hfjone liam#liam plecak#hfjone bryce#bryce hansen#osc#osc art#osc community#object show art#object shows
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Essek’s warming orb (plus some wizard angst. We love wizard angst...) for @artists-guild-of-exandria‘s SpellsnStuff project! :D
#critical role#criticalrolefanart#spellsnstuff#essek thelyss#caleb widogast#shadowgast#aeor#my art#essek has freckles you cannot deny it i will fight you#also the elvish embroidery on his cloak reads redeemed#or as close as i could get to redeemed on elfdict lol#elfdict my beloved#mighty nein#the mighty nein#i am also begging you to click the image for higher quality why does tumblr do this
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My art for this year's @deancasbigbang Check out the beautiful fic by @seidenapfel here. Some details under the cut.
Click for higher quality
[Image ID: Acrylic painting of a back wearing a red shirt with outstretched wings. The feathers are green and get darker towards the edges. They have golden specks throughout. /.End ID]
[Image ID: Acrylic painting of a log cabin by a lake. The cabin is two stories with a bed visible through large windows on the second story. The cabin is surrounded by pine trees. Behind the trees are the rocky mountains. /.End ID]

Here's a photo of the feathers closer up with the flash on so you can (kind of) see the sparkles. I used an iridescent medium to paint this, so it's super sparkly in person. I also used a metallic gold paint for the specks.

Here's a close up of the cabin where you can see the big beg for Dean and Cas and the bookshelf lining the wall.
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Wait For Me (M)
Pairing: Jimin x Reader
Genre: smut, pwp
Word Count: 6k
Warnings: yikes switch!reader, switch!Jimin (but mostly dom), needy!Jimin, horny-ass-mf!Jimin, masturbation, dirty talk, ruined orgasm, post-orgasm torture, dirty talk, overstimulation, 69(?), multiple orgasms, unprotected sex, dirty talk, creampie, pet names, begging, dirty talk, omg so much dirty talk I’m going crazy
(A/N): Am I the only one that’s into dirty talk like this? Maybe. But did I enjoy writing this? Absolutely. Kinda for Jimin’s birthday but really just me needing an excuse to be a sl*t in writing.
“Please, (Y/n)?” Your boyfriend whines from his spot on the bed, the tent in his boxers already pitched to full height behind you.
“No! Wait until I’m finished.” You huff in frustration, trying your hardest to focus on the words in front of you. It’s a stuffy Sunday night like any other, you sitting at your desk doing your homework at the last minute and Jimin reclining on your shared mattress doing whatever the hell he wants. Except, tonight all he wants to do is you. You’ve been prancing around the house in nothing but his shirt and a pair of panties all day, teasing him playfully and laughing whenever he would get worked up. You thought it was funny how easily you could get him hard without trying, but it doesn’t seem so funny now when he keeps begging to fuck you while you’re desperately trying to complete your homework.
“You promised we would fuck tonight!” His pout is evident in the tone of his voice but you refuse to look at him. If you do, you just might give in.
“We will, but I have to finish this assignment first. It’s due at midnight, so I really need to get it done right now.” It’s your fault for waiting until the night of to work on this, but you wrongfully assumed that Jimin would understand and let you work in peace. All you have to do is complete a short reading and take a 10 question quiz and then you’re free, but what should have been a 15 minute endeavor has now turned into an hour and a half of arguing and rereading the same 3 sentences over and over. It’s getting ridiculous.
“You said you wouldn’t take long, but I’ve been sitting here ALL NIGHT waiting for you.”
“That’s because you won’t shut up!” You snap, glaring at him from the corner of your eye. His mouth falls open before he frowns, puffing his cheeks out cutely for no one to see. You think you hear him mutter something under his breath, but you don’t question it and instead take his momentary silence to speed through a page.
The silence continues for a couple of minutes and you swear you can feel his eyes burning into the back of your seat. There’s some shuffling on the bed, more silence, and just when you begin to think he’s found something useful to do instead of bothering you, you hear a groan. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
He’s closer than he was before— probably sitting on the edge of the bed facing you now— and it almost feels like he’s breathing down your neck with how clear his voice sounds now. You scoot your chair up slightly to escape him. The sound of friction fills the space of the room, the image of his hand wrapped around his dick floating around your mind even when you refuse to look at him. He pumps fairly slowly, his eyes still glued to your back.
“Mmm, I’m so fucking hard, baby.” Jimin moans to you, trying to coax you into turning your head to see him. “I’ve been hard all day because of you and now you won’t even look at me? Such a bad girl.” You roll your eyes, tuning him out as best you can. Yet, you can’t seem to ignore the wet squelch that fills your ears when he rolls over his head. He moans louder this time. “Since you won’t look at me, I guess I’ll just have to tell you what I’m doing. Wouldn’t want you to miss out on anything.”
At your sigh, he chuckles, the sound dark and mischievous in a way that makes you ball up your fists. “Jimin,” You warn, but he knows the threat holds no real substance.
“My cock is so red right now, just aching to fuck your tight little pussy, princess. It’s leaking already, can you hear it? All that precum just for you.” You close your eyes, envisioning the sight you’ve seen so many times, but your eyes snap open when you remember your objective and turn the page of your book. “I want you so bad, want you to lick it all up and take me into your throat. Fuck. My hand feels nothing like that hot mouth of yours.” His strokes are longer now, dragging breathy, rhythmic pants from him.
You’d be lying if you said his voice wasn’t making you wet, but you won’t let him know that. He’ll be at this for a while, you know how much he likes to tease himself, so you try your hardest to get used to his rhythm and make it background noise as you progress through the reading. But the words on the pages don’t seem nearly as interesting as the words he feeds you from his plump lips.
“My head is so sensitive, princess, I can barely even touch it without almost cumming.” He grunts, gasping every time his hand nears his tip. You lick your lips, shifting in your seat, an action he catches onto. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Seeing me cum all over myself while fucking my hand? Calling your name as I make a mess all over myself and our bedsheets?” The bed squeaks and you can only imagine that it’s from his hips bucking into his fist, picking up speed as he speaks. Your clit throbs annoyingly, and before you can stop yourself, your hand slips between your legs to rub over your panties. Thankfully, he doesn’t see this, probably because his head is thrown back as he lets out a series of moans.
You’re sensitive. More sensitive than you realized. And you almost let out a sound of your own when he curses. And for a brief moment— a split second— you contemplate abandoning your work and indulging him just to end your suffering. But no, you can’t give in that easily, you have less than a half hour to do your assignment. You’ll keep your hand where it is, however.
“Feels so fucking good,” Jimin lets out a drawn out moan, slowing his pace and working his hand again so you can hear it slapping against the skin of his abdomen. It’s loud and wetter than before, making you gush in your underwear at the thought of how worked up he’s getting. “I know how much you like playing with my balls,” You hear the grin in his voice. “So I’ll play with them a little for you, baby.” The obscene moan that falls from his mouth makes your eyes roll, the material of your panties completely soaked now at how desperate he sounds. You can’t help but to rub yourself to him, willing yourself not to turn around. “I wanna feel that tight little pussy bouncing on my cock, princess. So wet that you drip and cream down my balls as you ride this big cock til you cum, and beg me to cum deep inside your hot cunt. Will- oh shit- will you let me cum inside you tonight, baby? Let me cum deep inside and fill you up so you’re dripping me for days?” His voice is heavy with lust, it’s tone dipping deeper as his moans pitch higher. You assume it’s a rhetorical question so you don’t respond. “Hmm? Are you wet thinking about my cock and cum filling you up, (Y/n)?”
“No.” You lie through your teeth, voice surprisingly stable despite how your fingers move rapidly over your clothed clit. You can feel your wetness through the fabric now, and you just know there will be a stain on your chair when you get up, but you can’t bring yourself to care.
“No?” He asks teasingly. “You okay over there? You haven’t turned a page in a while.” Damn him for being so observant. You almost forgot you were reading, the words all jumbled up on the page as your focus is pulled away by the pleasure. Fuck it, you’ll just take the quiz now to get it over with and accept whatever score you get. Jimin watches in amusement as you turn to your laptop, clicking open the quiz hurriedly and starting the questions, zooming through the first 5. He lets out a short laugh at that. “You better hurry, I’m getting close.”
Sucking in through his teeth, you hear him speed up again, spitting onto himself to make the glide smoother, and your core clenches in want. You read question #6 four times before you comprehend what it’s asking, your body betraying you as it yearns for you to look over at your stubborn boyfriend who curses out your name.
“Listen to that sound, princess. That’s what it would sound like if I was fucking you right now. God, I should just bend you over that desk and take you right here for making me wait like this. Make you take every inch of this cock and see if you can ignore me then.” He nearly growls this, an inaudible whimper squeezing from your throat. You would love that. He’s done it before, pushed you up against the desk and had his way with you when you thought it would be funny to give him a strip tease after he ordered you to get on the bed one wine-laced night. But he doesn’t deserve to have you like that after torturing you like this.
Only 3 more questions left and he’s getting more needy, the whiny quality of his voice letting you know how close he is before his words. A noise that you’re all too familiar with fills the air and you freeze. It’s quick and sloppy, the sound of his hand focusing directly on his tip at an inhuman speed that not even you could reproduce. His moans follow the pace, each one getting longer and pitchier, and you can almost hear how his hips lift off the sheets.
“You better not cum.”
“You want me to edge? But I’ve been on edge all day, baby.” He complains. Against your better judgment, you whip your head around to look at him. There, he sits naked on the edge of the bed, legs spread wide as he leans back on one elbow, one hand tangled in the sheets, the other stroking slowly at his thick cock upon your request. It’s red and leaking just like he said, the glistening tip causing your mouth to water. Jimin’s head is thrown back to expose his sweaty neck, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows, eyes shut in pleasure. But once he realizes that you’re looking at him, he snaps his head up to meet your gaze and sends you a shit-eating grin at the flushed look on your face. Then, he resumes working at his head, arching his hips up in the most erotic sight you’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing. That’s the last straw.
“Don’t you dare fucking cum!” You growl.
You click random answers on the last few quiz questions, hitting submit and slamming your laptop shut before stomping over to him, slapping his hand away as you clamber up onto the bed, pushing him down aggressively and throwing a leg over his chest to face his erection. It jumps at you, so painfully hard that you almost feel bad for him. But Jimin doesn’t deserve your pity right now. Not long after your hand finds him, your mouth fits over the soft tip.
“Fuuuuuck.” He grunts, hands finding your ass instantly. The crotch of your panties are soaked all the way through, the dark spot causing a smirk to cross his lips. “Why did you lie to me, princess? I thought you said you weren’t wet?” For some reason, hearing him say this makes you even wetter, and you suck in a breath through your nose when his fingers come up to touch your core, a deep hum vibrating through his body that ends in a chuckle. “Absolutely drenched, baby. Were you touching yourself over there? Your clit is so swollen I can see it through your panties.”
His voice hitches at the end of his sentence as you sink all the way down on him, pushing yourself to take him all the way into your throat just like he wanted, the tip of your nose resting at his balls. It’s partially payback for his teasing, but you adore the response you get from him as he nearly chokes on air from the sudden stimulation. You bob a few times, a delightful lightheaded feeling overtaking you as you hold your breath and force yourself to keep him in your throat. Your reward is that you finally shut him up, Jimin now at a loss of words beneath you and shaking with the effort it takes to not fuck into your mouth. Smirking, you pull off of him, dropping your ass down a bit until your core grazes his lips, and he gets the hint immediately. Always the eager lover, he pulls the crotch of your underwear to the side, groaning at the strings of arousal that cling to it. The sight makes his mouth water, his tongue lurching forward to lick a long stripe up your slit, gliding back down to suck at your engorged clit.
Your moan is muffled around him, working the top half of his shaft while one hand accommodates the rest, and your jaw is already starting to hurt from his size. Although he’s generally a small person, Jimin’s cock is anything but. Your jaw fell to the floor the first time he dropped his pants, the girth surprising you pleasantly. He’s got an impressive width that left you sore for a few days and a length that is well above average. His balls always seem plump and heavy, ready for you to milk them dry, and you can’t stop yourself from reaching up and grabbing them, massaging the plush sacs for your own amusement.
“Oh f- you’re so good at this.” He cuts himself off with a gasp, kissing the inside of your thighs and biting hickies into them as his mind becomes cloudy. He’s close— if the slight movement of his hips is any indication— and an evil idea pops into your mind. His hips thrust upwards at a particularly hard suck at his tip and you gag at the sudden depth, Jimin nearly yelling out at how your throat closes around him. “Yesss, baby girl, choke on my dick.” You preen at his praise, but keep your composure.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.” Your hips push back into him, covering his mouth with your lower lips, and he continues his work enthusiastically to distract himself. You’ve switched to using just your tongue now, licking up and down the solid shaft and circling around the head, providing just enough stimulation to inch him closer to the edge but no longer giving him what he wants. What he wants is a hard and fast orgasm. You’ll make sure that’s not what he gets. His groans increase in volume and frequency as you work your magic tongue, flicking over that sensitive fold of skin where his tip attaches to the rest of him, and it’s not long before he’s trembling.
“(Y/n),” He mumbles out a shaky warning, and you have to push down his hips with one hand when they begin to lift off the bed, your other hand jerking steadily at his base while you tease over his slit with the tip of your tongue. The pressure builds, his balls lifting in preparation for his release, and you coax it out of him with a few gentle sucks. “Ah!”
Jimin lets out a high pitched groan sounding almost in pain when you pull off of him, squeezing at his base so hard that only a few short spurts of cum make it out. Your mouth has been completely removed from him, it’s only connection being the long strand of saliva hanging from your lips, and he bucks up frantically in search of stimulation to complete his orgasm. Still rock hard, he practically begs you to move your hand, to give him anything as the few lonely globs of semen sadly skid down onto your hand like tears from his one-eyed monster. His mouth is covered by your pussy so you can’t hear his pleas, but the vibrations they send to your core are absolutely delightful. Once you’re sure he’s finished cumming, you begin your evil plan.
It starts with a few slow pumps, lubed by his own semen from his length that’s still twitching in your hand, but it quickly escalates to firm and steady strokes that have him squirming under you. You aren’t even going that fast, but the sensitivity makes him thrash and cry out prettily as you hold him down with your body weight. Jimin’s into all kinds of freaky shit, so this isn’t the first time you’ve indulged in post orgasm torture, but it’s somehow very different when he’s not expecting it. Your hand moves at an unyielding pace, unbothered by the way his legs open and close only to be smacked apart by the hand that still holds his balls.
“I’ll stop when you make me cum.” You state, unsure if he can even hear you. But his tongue dives in with renewed vigor, flicking relentlessly at your clit as you grind down on him. It won’t take long to reach your peak, his technique is flawless, licking wide circles around your bud with the flat of his tongue and then raising up to plunge his long muscle between your walls. Your essence dribbles down onto his face, wetting his chin and cheeks as he eats you like a man starved. You haven’t been this turned on in a long while, you didn’t think you’d be so into seeing him suffer in pleasure like this— his body writhing under yours and cock still so insanely hard in your hand just from the light hold you have on him. His hands claw at your ass, pulling you down and spreading your cheeks apart, fingers bruising the flesh in his haze of sweet agony.
You moan for him and bite your lip, closing your eyes as he edges you closer to your peak, your hand starting to stutter on him. It’s easy to get lost in him and grind down into his mouth, the feeling of his tongue between your folds heavenly, the feeling of his lips even better. But what sets you over the top is when his fingers snake into your opening, first two, then three. The stretch causes you to throw your head back, and you go flying head first into your orgasm when he curls into that one spot, tongue still on your clit and fingers wiggling inside you as your walls spasm around him. With one last groan, you lift away from him, finally moving your hands to his thighs to grip the muscles as you try to catch your breath. Jimin does the same, relaxing into the mattress as a few more ticklish waves flow through him.
“Was that okay?” You spin around until you’re laid on top of him, chin on his chest looking up into his dark chocolate eyes. He cracks a brief smile at your cuteness before flipping you over, capturing your lips sweetly. But the sweetness ends before you can even enjoy it when he bites down on your lip, a whimper falling from you.
“You can’t ask for my consent after it’s over.” He points out, trying to hide his giggle in the crook of your neck as he sucks dark marks there. “But, yeah, that was fucking hot.” The tip of his erection prods at your ass cheek, nudging the fabric of your soiled underwear. Without pulling away, Jimin hooks his fingers into your waistband, snatching them off and chucking them across the room, next comes your shirt, which he damn near rips in his haste to get it over your head. He growls. “So fucking sexy. And all mine. Right, princess?”
“Yes, Jimin, I’m all yours. Do whatever you want with me.” In an instant you switch roles, dropping the momentary dominance to cower in his presence. There’s a hunger in your boyfriend’s eyes that you provoked, the product of the teasing he faced all day, and you drip down your ass at the thought of him taking you however he wants. You suspect he’ll be eager to finally fuck you, but you underestimate how petty he can be. The tip of his cock runs through your wetness, but when he sees the way you jump when it rolls over your sensitive clit, his eyes narrow, seeing an opportunity to get his revenge. Dipping down briefly to collect more of your wetness, he glides the slick underside of him over your bundle of nerves, using his thumb to press down and add pressure, then he grinds his hips ever so slowly back and forth over you, forcing you to feel every ridge of him bump against you. “Oh fuck!” You gasp out, spreading your legs wider and lifting your hips into him. His length is hot, still burning and hard from not getting a full orgasm.
“You like this, baby? You like how my cock feels between these soft lips, rubbing that cute little clit?” He grins when your eyes roll back, thighs already starting to tremble. “Maybe I should just fuck you like this. Make you cum without ever even entering you.”
“No! No, please, Jimin.” Your eyes pop open in alarm at the thought of him not fucking you tonight, though you know he’s far too wound up to deny both of you that. Still, he persists his humping, groaning along with you as you feel another orgasm creeping up embarrassingly fast.
“Hmm, seems like you’d like that though? I mean, you look like you’re about to cum again already.” The patronizing tone of voice he uses would piss you off in any other situation, but you’re not in your right mind currently. As he picks up pace you feel your mind slipping away, your clit throbbing and your empty walls clenching almost painfully around nothing. You try to hold back and prove him wrong, you really do, but your body betrays you and with every nudge of his tip you can feel yourself falling. The most you can let out is a desperate whine. “If you want something, use your words and tell me.”
“P-please...”
“Please what?” You can feel his eyes on your face, but your eyelids are sealed shut and your head is tossed back into the pillows. It takes everything in you to muster the strength to form a coherent sentence and push it past your lips.
“P-please fuck me, baby.” Your voice hiccups at a particular stroke, the hood of your bud now pushed back for more direct stimulation. You aren’t sure how long you’ll last like this.
“You want me to fuck you?” He coos, twitching against your lower lips.
“Yes please, I need your cock.” Asking in the sweetest voice you can, you peel your eyes open to bat your lashes at him, but they snap shut once again when he suddenly pushes inside your velvet walls, shoving you off the edge unexpectedly.
“That’s my good girl,” Jimin sighs once he’s bottomed out, hands roaming your torso as you shake uncontrollably. “So desperate for my cock that you came right when I put it in.” He clicks his tongue, but if you were cognizant at the moment you would have noticed his satisfied tone. You clamp down on him as your orgasm washes through you, and he rides the waves with shallow pumps of his hips and his fingers tweaking your nipples, grunting at the way you pulse around him.
He pushes in deeper as you start coming down, the sensitivity kicking in with every drag of his member inside you. He pays no mind to your whimpering and reaches around your back to lift you up, seating you in his lap with your heels on the tops of his ass. And your hips start moving immediately despite the tingling that shoots up your spine.
Though his body screams for release after his incomplete high, Jimin can’t help but guide you into a sensual pace of grinding and rocking, the intimacy soothing him. With your arms around his neck, you fall into a comfortable rhythm as you slide back and forth against his length, adding a swivel of your hips just to hear him groan. Your weight on top of his feels like the most natural thing in the world and he wishes you could stay like this forever. Running his hands up and down your back, he allows you to mark up his neck and collarbones for everyone to see. He always wears your love bites so proudly. Relishes in the slight tickle of your tongue and nip of your teeth that whisper to him ‘you are mine’. Rose petals bloom on the surface of his skin all the way up to his ear lobe where you nibble.
“Your cock feels fucking amazing, babe.” You whisper in that sultry tone of yours, noting how his hips twitch beneath yours. You’d never say it out loud but you’ve been thinking of this all day. Waiting to hold him close and just love one another. His lips plant a few stray kisses to the side of your neck before trailing downwards, capturing a pert bud between them. You lean back on your hands to give him more access, grinding down just a bit harder when his hips lift to meet yours to make sure you get every inch he has to offer. With your head thrown back like this Jimin can reach that delicate spot deep inside you with ease, humming at the shaky moan you let out. His lips curl into a grin when you begin to bounce with desperation, planting your feet behind him for leverage.
Jimin’s eyes peer up at you as you ride his dick, your breast bouncing in his mouth as he switches to the other to suck. Sweat has now accumulated on your forehead and neck, the droplets glittering against your complexion. Your eyes are screwed shut and the prettiest flush has overtaken your cheeks and chest as you work for your next high, lips bitten and eyebrows squinted together. Truly, you are gorgeous. It makes him impossibly harder to see you like this, his length already throbbing within you, but he holds back as much as he can simply because seeing you fall apart is almost more satisfying than experiencing it himself. It should be surprising that you’re getting close already, but it’s always been easy for you to cum quickly after your first orgasm, the sensitivity and connection you have with your lover making you as explosive as a lit firecracker.
“You’re so needy tonight, princess, is it because of how much you teased me all day? Did you like watching me suffer?” You don’t answer because, frankly, yes. You loved it. And it’s too embarrassing to admit, but Jimin already knows. “Well, let’s see how much you like it when I destroy this cunt until you can’t walk.” The gruffness of his voice makes your eyes roll, the tenderness he’d shown not even a minute ago gone completely as he lets his teeth scrape over your nipple.
Bringing you flush against his chest again, he hooks his elbows under your knees and starts pounding into you in earnest, your hands flying to his shoulders for stability. His core strength is a sight to behold, supporting almost all of your weight while sitting upright, pulling you onto his cock as though you weigh nothing. And all you can do is hang on for the ride, gasping and crying out at the way he repeatedly slams into your spot. Tangling your hands in his hair, you pull him closer and rest your face on the crown of his head, feeling your limbs go weak from the pleasure.
He grunts below you when you tug, bucking up harder when your walls start to squeeze. Wetness streaks down your ass, a string of curses tumble out of your mouth to accompany the lewd sounds of him pushing through your arousal. Each stroke is calculated, and you find yourself teetering very close to the edge.
“Please, Jimin, I’m so close. Please can I cum?” You mumble, barely coherent.
“My baby girl wants to cum again?” He coos into your collarbone, the ticklish skim of his lips sending a shiver through you. ‘My baby girl.’ That one word has you shaking.
“Yes!” You wail as his hands tighten on your ass, palming the globes harshly to slam you down on his length. You can just imagine how sexy his arms look right now, the muscles and veins bulging in his forearms and hands from how tightly he holds you, his biceps and shoulders on full display and glimmering with perspiration. His voice rumbles against you in that thick Busan accent and you almost cream right there.
“Beg for it.” He looks up into your eyes and you see something dark, a heady lust that lowers his eyelids and makes you feel like you’re looking at the definition of sex itself.
“Please please please let me cum, baby!” Your voice shakes with each jolt of your body against his. “I’m so greedy for your cock, I wanna cum for you. You make me feel so good!” Pleased, Jimin gives you permission and moves a little faster, pressing you down against him so your clit rubs against him every time, and you nearly scream from the feeling. You sing your praises into the room knowing how it motivates him, but you couldn’t stop even if you tried. Skin slicked with sweat, you let yourself fall into another breathtaking high, clinging onto your boyfriend who grinds you on top of him to savor the way you clench and throb around his tip when it’s buried deep inside you.
“Fuck,” You both swear at the same time, taking a brief moment to catch your breath as Jimin kisses his way up your neck, releasing your legs and squeezing you close with his arms wrapped tight around your back. Exhaustion dances through you and you sit limply in his hold, eyes closed and basking in his sticky heat. But the moment is soon over when you feel him twitch within your sensitive walls, growling as he shifts his weight until your back is pressed into the mattress with him kneeling over you.
“Keep those eyes open, baby, I’m not done with you yet.” You gasp when his hips begin to move again, your nerves rubbed raw and swollen from the three highs he’s already pulled from you. Still, your eyes roll in delight when he starts ramming into you again, pushing your legs as far apart as they will go and holding you open. “You didn’t think I would let you off that easy, did you, princess? You still need to be punished for today.” He coos, voice gentle despite his hard thrusts. You whine loudly and attempt to close your legs when he touches a sweet spot deep within you, the pleasure almost too much, but it’s like you’re addicted to him, unable to get enough even when your body begs for reprieve. “Shhh, I know you can take it, baby. I know how much you love it when I overstimulate this greedy pussy, so be a good girl and take it.”
He’s absolutely correct, you love the overstimulation and the twinge of pain and overwhelming pleasure that comes with it. And you know this is his payback for the post-orgasm torture you gave him earlier. You’re still incredibly wet, new arousal dripping out of your entrance every time he plunges in, the mess of your juices and his precum dripping down the crack of your ass and onto your bedsheets. Looking up at Jimin’s face, you see how entranced he is by the sight before him, eyes trained between your legs as he watches himself disappear inside you and re-emerge with a new coating of slick covering his shaft. Smirking, you reach your hands down around your ass and pull your lips open wider for him, biting your lip at the way his eyebrows crease together and his mouth drops open at the sight. His pace slows slightly, his breathing labored as he begins to slowly unravel for you.
“Fuck, that’s so sexy! God, you always take my cock so well, princess.” He hisses, licking his full lips when your clit throbs at his praise. He can see and feel when you tighten, his tip finding that spot again that makes your back arch off the bed.
“Jimin,” You mewl, your thighs shaking in his grip and fingers clawing the sheets. Tears build in your beautiful eyes. It feels so good, but would you be able to handle a fourth orgasm tonight? Your body feels pushed to the limit, but your lover says otherwise.
“C’mon, baby girl, cum for me one more time.” You shake your head in desperation, pleading with him with your watery eyes. “Yes you can. Just relax for me, baby, I got you. I want you to cum one last time, just one more, and then I’m gonna fill you up.” He encourages softly, yet you don’t miss the dominant undertones that tell that this is a command. With a huff from his nostrils, he pounds into you harder while fighting off his own release, staying deep right up against that spot making you cry out. His hands reach for your breast and you place your hands over his for comfort, moaning as he squeezes the bouncing mounds as you toss your head back.
“I- I don’t think I can...” You whimper, unsure if you can get there with your nerves feeling numb and worn like this. But Park Jimin is nothing if not determined, so he takes your statement as a challenge. Slipping one hand away from you, he presses his thumb to your lips, staring down at you intensely before you open.
“Suck.” On command, you swirl your tongue around his digit, coating it in your spit before he slides it out with a pop. Suddenly, he’s pressing against your swollen clit in tight circles and those special tingles shoot up and down your spine at the feeling. He hums at the sounds you make, eyes sealed shut because of the blinding waves of bliss coursing through your veins, building you up almost frighteningly fast. He feels you pulse, your jelly legs trembling on either side of him as they attempt to close, but his praises fall on deaf ears as you chase the sensations of his skillful hips and fingers, rocking into him with the last of your energy until you reach the brink.
“Oh my god-!” You shudder and shriek as you finally tense up around him. Your walls clamp down repeatedly as Jimin continues flicking your sensitive nub, and the tears that had been welling up finally spill over. He stops only when your breathing turns to pitiful snivels, wiping away your tears with caring hands and loving eyes. His hips are still fucking you through the aftershocks as he kisses his way around your face, planting his lips firmly on yours until your breathing evens out.
“I’m gonna cum soon,” He whispers out, resting his forehead against yours. “Will you let me cum in this pretty little pussy, baby?” You nod against him, staring right into his coffee colored eyes. “Mm, I want you to keep it inside all night, okay princess? So I can fuck it out of you in the morning. Will you do that for me?”
“Fuck, yes.” You moan. You can feel the way he gets just a bit harder, how his muscles start to shake just slightly, and you know exactly how to push him over the edge. Your fingers lightly caress the velvety skin of his balls, causing a surprised moan to leave his lips. “I want your cum so bad, Jimin. I promise I’ll keep it inside, I’ll be a good girl for you. Please fill me up.” Knowing how much your words would affect him, you use your sweetest voice and lock your heels around his back. His head swims with desire and his voice strains.
Sitting up a bit, his hands clamp onto your hips to stroke into you in earnest, face contorted in the sexiest of expressions. You want to shy away from his intense gaze but you can’t pull your eyes away from him, drinking up the sight of his clenching abs, sweaty chest and neck, and the pure hunger that overtakes his features. “Good girl. Don’t move. Enjoy the feeling of my cum filling you up.” With a few more grunts and groans, he allows himself to release into you, shuddering almost as hard as you were from the feeling of the full orgasm he had been waiting for all day. Spurt after spurt of his release covers your walls, and your inner muscles suck it in as if on instinct, throbbing around him to milk every last drop. You let him collapse onto you as he finishes, cock still throbbing while he gasps and pants into the crook of your neck. You can feel it already starting to leak out around him, but he won’t be too upset about it since he’ll likely have fun fingering it back into you later.
There’s a comfortable silence as you both catch your breath, pressing sleepy kisses to each other’s damp skin with rosy cheeks and smiles on your faces. Jimin moves first, groaning when his muscles scream out in soreness when he sits at the side of the bed to pull on his boxers. You giggle, commenting about how you were supposed to be the one unable to walk, not the other way around. He snorts passing you a pair of panties and helping you stand so you can make it to the bathroom.
Once you’re both cleaned up, you get ready for bed, grumbling about having an early class tomorrow morning. Which reminds you of the homework quiz you took tonight. Opening your laptop again, you check your score, only to have your face drop at what you see.
“50 PERCENT?!” You whip around to face your boyfriend, who was back to reclining against the headboard, the scene similar to the beginning of your night. “You owe me for this, Jimin.”
He waves you off. “Those quizzes aren’t even worth that much, you’ll be fine.” But you disagree because you’ve already missed 2 of them and only the lowest 2 scores are dropped at the end of the semester. He rolls his eyes when you tell him this, cutting you off with a dramatic groan. “Babyyyyyy, stop talking about school and come to bed.” His pout is unmatched, so you easily relent and shut down your laptop, huffing and puffing the entire time.
“You owe me cuddles and breakfast tomorrow morning.” You grumble as you climb in next to him, fitting your body with his.
“And shower sex.” He winks at you and you snort, turning out the bedside lamp.
“Goodnight, Jimin.” You laugh, snuggling up to his chest in the quiet of your stuffy room.
...
“So no shower sex?”
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Separating the Boys from the Men
Yes, that title is click bait, and if you keep reading, you’ve been warned. I’ve got a lot to get off my chest, and it’s going to involve defending masculinity, femininity, and our right to BEHAVE LIKE CHILDREN FOR THE REST OF OUR LIVES because in many ways, we already do.
Let’s get straight to the point. As Millennials, regardless of our age, financial status, or level of “success” (air quotes 100% intentional) we have been accused of being lazy, entitled, and way too enthusiastic about avocado toast. At the same time, we have been described as having enough power to decimate the napkin industry, the diamond industry, and the concept of traditional marriage. We have been accused of a collective “Peter Pan” syndrome, because we “refuse” to cut off papa’s apron strings and get off the proverbial mama’s teats.
Wonderful to know.
Let’s unpack the “lazy” bit. Supposedly, this is tied to the fact that we have access to higher education, we [often, not always] have parents who financially support or house us well into adulthood.
So now, my question is, Gen X (the entitled ones, ironically) and Salty Boomers, YOU DIDN’T?
What do you call that “inheritance” you received? What do you call that education your parents paid for that was less than 1/3 what we have to pay? For Boomers, how do you explain the lavish weddings, cheap [and apparently nuke proof] home appliances, and “nights out on the town” that you were able to afford by working at whatever passed for a McDonald’s back in the day? Working on a farm, at a grocery store, or in retail used to ACTUALLY provide a livable wage; for us, those are a “side hustle” and we still have to get a “big boy job” that usually requires an education that can put us over $100,000 in debt by age 30.
Hate to say it, but if you hadn’t made most of your income “during the War” or in the absolute economic boom that followed it, you wouldn’t survive 24 hours in our shoes before having an emotional collapse.
Despite the disastrous living conditions of the U.S. in the 21st Century, not much has changed in how men define their level of “manliness.”
Financial gains (stocks, bonds, portfolio, bank account)
Bro “gains” (a.k.a. “gym gains”, how “Gaston” they are, including whether they want to go for the Adonis, Apollo, or Brawny boi look, or just how far they can throw something or how “boyish” they look if strength isn’t an option and they suffer from femme-levels of body dysmorphia)
Body count (since we’re in a time of peace and not literally war, this is LITERALLY a modern term describing how many people you’ve slept with, and I have never heard an adult man, regardless of sexual orientation, who isn’t a little concerned about putting those notches in the bed post, and if not that, VERY concerned about his bedroom performance: it’s quality vs. quantity)
Kill death Ratio (I know this is a video game term now, but did you know that before video games, men in England used to regularly get on horseback, get a bunch of hounds together, and chase down tiny foxes and rabbits? FOR FUN?!?!? Did you know, that before modern sports ((including Esports)), men used to just fight to the death, regularly, even if an official war wasn’t going on? It was known as “dueling”, and in less socially developed societies, men still behave like this. So the next time you complain about “male rage” and how heartless it is to make live chickens fight, note that even though we’ve quelled male anger and hostility on some level, you will NEVER be able to take away man’s urge to destroy. Boys and men will always like knocking things over, building things from the rubble, and ruling shit. It’s what they do-- and we women can and do, too, but we have a LOT more risk-aversion and self-preservation, which is a blessing and a curse for our species-- but we just need to make sure humanity as a whole stays...chill)
So what, say ye, has changed about how WOMEN define themselves now vs. in the past. I would say that very little has changed, but the level of internalized misogyny, insecurity, and good-old fashioned denial has SKYROCKETED.
Let’s look at some terms of how the majority of women value themselves.
Financial Security (few women will admit to “wanting to be rich”, because that sounds kind of “Trump”, but plenty will talk about having minimum income requirements for their partner(s), wanting to retire at a young age so they can “travel the world”, wanting to eliminate their debts, etc. It’s different language but essentially it translates to: I want to work so hard or marry into so much wealth that I never want to worry about money after age 35. #Hustle)
Looks (it doesn’t matter if you want a Kardashian butt, you’re in the body positivity movement, or you just want to “dress like a bawse” women are just as obsessed with clothes, image, and body weight/shape/size as they ever were, it is just that now that we’ve “slain the patriarchy” we have more fashion options than ever before, because “boy clothes” are just as “in” as femme ones)
Ability to attract a partner (some women, like me, “chase”, but thanks to biology, most women, regardless of sexual orientation, seem to enjoy being pursued more than being Artemis-style hunters. This is evidenced by the fact that when the feminist owner of Bumble changed the rules of the dating website to where women had to start conversations with men rather than vice versa ((a move that had ostensibly zero effect on lesbian matching)) 72% of women that she later surveyed stated that they liked it better when men were approaching them rather than the other way around. I am sure Bumble’s female CEO was shook ((as was I)), especially because she made the change to empower women, and apparently 72% of women didn’t want the power because it meant they now had the power to face rejection, and it made them uncomfortable. Big yikes. So much for #EndPatriarchy and #ChivalryisDead ?)
Playing house (this is probably going to get me some unfollows, but I’ll take my chances. Women, regardless of sexual orientation, often seem to be REALLY into having babies or just “playing house.” There’s also men like this, too, “Family men” as they’re aptly called, men in love with fatherhood ((or just being called “daddy”, and that will never not be weird)). So many women who never want to pop out a baby describe being taken by an OVERWHELMING urge to fuck during their “fertile window” ((or is that just me?)) and seeing every baby alive as the cutest human being ever once we pass the tender age of 25. The biological clock is REAL, and I learned the hard way that being bisexual and having immense fear of pregnancy and childbirth didn’t spare me from the awful truth of my biology.
I really don’t want to keep making references to modern video games, but they seem to serve the dual purpose of being deeply satisfying and helping us to quell “problematic” urges, including that one to dominate and destroy the world. For a lot of women gamers, though, our choices ((on a broad scale, every #girlgamer is different)) deviate from men’s in some interesting ways.
#1: We still love The Sims Franchise way more than guys do
Not only do we love it, but while a lot of men (again, #notallmen) tend to build elaborate neighborhoods to extensively mod and destroy them in terrifying ways, I still see women gamers taking obscene amounts of time to design homes, raise happy little families, and cause TERRIFYING blood feuds by having Sims marry Sims from rival families ((I guess we’re more Shakespeare than we thought, eh ladies?))
#2: We make up most of mobile gaming
Most male gamers think mobile games “aren’t real” and I tend to agree, but a mobile game is invaluable for when I, a woman, have time to kill between the 3 jobs I hypothetically have and I and don’t want to whip out something like a Nintendo 2DS that is both unwieldly and attracts the eyes of every impoverished, thieving human being in a .5 mile radius. #RiskAversion. These games are often low-quality, mindless, and insanely easy, but that is WHY WE LIKE THEM. Our entire life is a job. #Hustle
#3 We also love farming sims and RPGs
While we-- and most male Millennials-- beg god to not have to birth calves, milk cows, or labor in the tomato fields under the hot sun, most of us have no objection to having our virtual avatars perform the same back-breaking tasks to the tune of cheerful chiptune music. Also, even though men definitely enjoy them, too, I have never met a woman gamer who didn’t enjoy a nice RPG; why do you think we’re such avid readers of fantasy/romance YA?
We want to be transported to a different world, and if you won’t take us there, we’re happy to go there virtually ((because we probably can’t afford travel; we’re still millennials)).
Ability to murder people who threaten our young or our partner(s) (Okay this one is a bit more complicated, but I’m just going to tell you a bit about female animals. DON’T MESS WITH THEIR BABIES IF YOU WANT TO LIVE. Human females, are, in that regard, just as savage, if not more so, than our male counterparts.
I’ve never heard of any woman ((outside of prison, maybe)) who killed another woman for “looking at her weird” or saying “your mama” too many times. I’ve heard plenty of women threaten literal murder because another woman ((or man, we’re #progressive)) came too close to her romantic/sexual partner, or another human being threatened harm on our kids or our “squad.”
I don’t know where the meme truly originated from, but “Don’t talk to me or my son ever again” is SUCH a Mom thing to say. So much misandry is wrapped up in the idea that men are predators, and that is true, but not in the excessively sexually deviant ways you think ((that’s only sometimes true)). They just like hunting things, including people, but if you give them a toy to play with ((I MEAN ACTUAL TOY OMG)) they seem alright. Let them go play with their cars, Xbox, [insert whatever] or something. They’re men, okay, they’re easily distracted/impressed/occupied.
Women, on the other hand, have seemed to be having an EXTREME amount of trouble curbing that baby-making urge, or the Excessive Nurturing Urge, that one that makes you ask your grown husband if he’s remembered to pack lunch for work or if he remembered to pack money for his playdate with his bros, because he’s gonna need money at Six Flags and you aren’t going to bring it to him because he should’ve remembered, you reminded him 30093390 times.
THAT’S NOT HIS FAULT. HE HAS MANAGED BY SOME MIRACLE TO STAY ALIVE FOR 33 YEARS. THAT’S YOU, SWEETIE. STOP BEING SUCH A MOM. GO BE A NURSE, DOCTOR, OR SOCIAL WORKER OR SOMETHING OMG.
In summary...
What separates the “men from the boys” or the “women from the girls” isn’t the era that we were born in to, our economic status, or whether we’ve been able to “conquer” our biology. That’s definitely not possible yet, chiefly because transhumanism involves a lengthy, ethics-guided process, and even if we all turn into cyborgs, the goal is to become BETTER humans, not LESS humane. Societal advancements have done more in terms of making us healthier, less destructive citizens of planet earth than raw technology ever can and ever will. Rapid technological advancement, when not combined with respect for morality, ethical standards of living for humans and all other life forms, almost always leads to human slavery, widespread abuse of animals, sex trafficking, and environmental destruction, because the “rules of supply and demand”, when not governed by strong international trade laws, dictate that consumers should be supplied with whatever they demand, because the suppliers can profit, and their right to profit should be defended at any cost.
So, in summary, I believe that “adulting” involves giving up on entitlement. What separates a truly childish human being-- regardless of their actual age-- from someone who is, in essence, “adulting” is experience, and how much those experiences serve to broaden that person’s perspective. It is an extremely childish, self-centered view, to think that you “deserve” anything for being “a good person” or, in the case of many a “woman child” or “man child” in media and in real life, just being “not so bad.”
Grown-ups are able and willing to do something that is known as “delaying gratification” which is the simple ability to delay a temporary pleasure for a long-term gain. Grown-ups are also able to perform true “cost-benefit analyses” to determine if a course of action, business deal, or even relationship is worth their time and effort. Finally, grown-ups are able and willing and able to make an informed choice and stick to it; in essence, we don’t try to “have our cake and eat it too” we understand that once we’ve eaten that cake, the cake is gone, but we also realize that if we are willing to work hard and make sacrifices, we can earn the ingredients to make ourselves another cake to eat, even if we might need a lot of help from other adults in getting those ingredients (we call this teamwork and cooperation).
Children, on the other hand (in literal and metaphorical terms), are very impatient. They get angry when things don’t go their way, and instead of taking the steps needed to improve their situation, they storm off and return home. It doesn’t matter if their home is with their parents, with their 3 roommates, or with their husband or wife, these people throw tantrums, refuse to communicate/cooperate, and stew in their displeasure until someone feels sorry for them and fixes their problem for them. They lack the ability to work through daily life problems and refuse to take any responsibility for how their actions or inaction contributed to their dilemma.
There is one difference with an actual human child or teen, though, is that they have an excuse. Their brains are still developing, and they haven’t had the chance to live through these situations yet; these are new challenges to them. Even if they do have a “bad attitude”, with help from peers and patients, principled adult mentors and teachers, these cantankerous kids can grow into well-adjusted, able adults. The high levels of neuroplasticity in their brains actually make it so that it is easier for them to accept large amounts of sensory data and to learn from processing and practicing using it.
An “adult child” is someone who, more often than not, has been coddled instead of challenged. These people have often faced no significant hardships in life. There is a reason why, even after we have recognized the immense downsides of authoritarian parenting and have demonstrated psychological harms of corporal punishment for kids, we still call “bad kids” and “irresponsible adults” spoiled.
Authoritarianism produces rigid, scared people who often struggle with critical thinking and self-esteem or end up being authoritarian parents themselves, but that last one is actually one of the less likely options. Children of authoritarian parents often develop Borderline Personality Disorder or become defiant against authority (shocker). Overly permissive or overly neglectful parenting, though, are parental styles most associated with producing narcissists, who often become authoritarian parents, because when their kids challenge them, they completely lack the patience or emotional capacity to deal with it and resort to “because I said so”, stonewalling and/or physical abuse as forms of “character-building.”
The reason why overly permissive parents spoil their kids is because kids actually do need discipline and guidance, and so these kinds of parents produce kids who are outwardly capable and confident but completely lack any of the life skills to justify it, and when they ask their parents for advice they are just met with a bunch of hippie mumbo jumbo or told to just avoid the conflict rather than resolve it. These kids grow into adults who are still sad little kids inside, because they never grew up, but now they’re sad little kids who are articulate and well-spoken and now can-- and often have no choice-- but to con their way through adult life because they’ve maxed out Charisma and they have almost no points in Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Dexterity.
The only parenting style worse than Authoritarian and Neglectful/Permissive is Mixed, in which a child grows up in a COMPLETELY unpredictable environment where the rules of the game change from day to day, and parents either give their children no attention at all, or they practically lock them up and throw away the key. Being raised like this is associated with the worse outcomes for the child throughout life.
So, why am I now talking about parenting styles? Because, for all that we love to trash Boomers and large swaths of Gen X on this page, we can’t forget where they came from, so we cannot allow them to forget WHO THEY MADE. It isn’t an accident that even though we live in the times of incredible economic hardship, WE are the generation (and Gen Z, to some extent) that got hooked on reality TV, video games, and social media in incredibly unhealthy ways. A lot of us 30+ millennials are growing out of it, and a lot of us have realized that it is an invaluable (and damn near unavoidable) way of marketing our products and talents. We’re often self-employed because that’s our only option in most cases.
The issue with Gen Z (who, while we called “Zoomers” now just all themselves “Doomers” and I think we should be a bit concerned about that) is that unlike us, they have no memory of “Before the Internet.” We remember dial up, we remember before that when you played outside untl the sun went down. They don’t have the privilege of being linked to that history.
Now, we have to be the Bigger Person. It’s our time to be Grown-Ups. Gen Z feels really fucking lost right now, and hearing us whine about our parents probably makes them pretty pissed off, when some of us older millennials are the parents, aunts/uncles, and older siblings to Gen Z kids. Even if we can’t be mentors, we have to lead by example, because we have a responsibility to these kids. A lot of them aren’t stupid, they see exactly what’s happening and they feel incredibly hopeless about it. Greta Thunberg is still 16 years old. She shouldn’t be out there doing that; I mean seriously, climate change is accelerating, but it isn’t even as bad as Al Gore said, it’s still reversible, but the fact that SHE FELT SHE HAD TO makes us shitty people. ALL OF US.
So you know, we all need to stop being hypocrites. We need to stop being entitled. We need to stop thinking this is about us. It isn’t. Not even close. We’re not important, even if our videos go viral or if we’re swimming in cash next to hot models by a huge swimming pool. America’s fucked up. I hate to sound Republican, but it’s because of our values. We suck at valuing what’s important, and if we don’t change that soon, it’s really going to suck to live in America.
It already does.
#american exceptionalism#woman child#man child#we're all just taller children#god bless America#we are neither brave nor free#make it all stop#roasting millennials#roasting women#roasting men#Gen Z is our last hope#we have failed our kids#father forgive them#goddess forgive them#what will we do#look what we've done#my world's on fire how bout yours#fourth industrial revolution#end neoliberal capitalism#climate change deniers#rant
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Thief’s Apprentice: Fashion of Various Classes of the Living and Dead
IN GENERAL
Buttons don’t exist in Veilheim because they haven’t been invented. There is no need for buttons because the living tend to first lose their fingers to the plague and aren’t dextrous enough to use buttons. Revenants are sewn into their clothes and never take them off unless they get totally destroyed, so they have no need for buttons either.
Revenants and the living have different attitudes towards metal. For the living, gold-plated things and gold alloys look the same as pure gold. Revenants can sense substances, so if they wear gold, they prefer to wear pure gold. The alternatives are just sad.
Some professions wear an unofficial uniform, to be easily recognised, and also because these clothes are practical for how they work, and also because I can’t be assed to make a custom model for everyone. For example, shepherds never have prosthetics to advertise their ready supply of meat. Judges wear tall crowned helmets because they are literally and metaphorically higher up than anyone else in court. Reapers heavily armor their ankles to prevent accidental dismemberments and are shirtless, to show that their terrifying metal tools are for farming, not fighting, and also to prevent living reapers from suffering from heat, and also because reaping is an awesome and sexy job.
Revenants move their prosthetics by imbuing them with their souls, and the same happens with clothes. Since fabric is organic and made to store the original being’s, whether it be a silk worm or a flax plant, soul, human souls can’t make a good enough foothold in the material to move it. Still, revenant clothing is integral for sensing and personal esteem, so changing is more like a surgical procedure. Wearing a new outfit feels like nerve damage. Your skin and subcutaneous fat has died, so you were peeled and replaced with more skin and fat, and you can’t feel anything until your nerves heal.
The debutante penchant for inventing new fashions and constantly changing clothes is similar to plastic surgery. There is the same impression of frivolous spending and vanity, but also advertising the size of your soul that enables you to be comfortable with your new outfit within hours, and also the strength of your resolve to have your skin replaced over and over. The debutantes may be capricious and wasteful, but they are not cowards.
THE DEAD
The dead in Veilheim like to wear wool heavily dyed in bright colors with metal, such as Mercury Red and Cobalt Blue. This is because revenants don’t see and instead send out tiny pieces of their souls to feel distance and substances. Their impression of color is based off how concentrated various substances are, so while the living may see fabric as too saturated with dirt to identify color, revenants can feel the copper in the fabric and know how green it is.
Wool, as the hair of sheep, carries plague so it’s considered unsafe for the living to wear. Revenants wearing plant-based fabrics is seen as selfish. It’s also considered rude for revenants to wear multiple colors or patterns, because it forces people to expend more of their soul to see all the colors and recognise you. The long ribbons, while stylish, also serve a practical purpose. Since revenants don’t feel or have a sense of balance, if the ribbons are pointing in a direction, that’s probably where down is, and if they are waving a lot, there might be wind.
Quail Racer
As our exemplar of revenant poverty in Veilheim, Quail Racer doesn’t wear clothes, has no remaining flesh, and her prosthetics barely keep her together. Based off how tall she is and how healthy and unwarped her bones are, Quail Racer must have caught the plague late in life and died soon after. Her memory and mental faculties are so bad that she can’t obey orders or find any gainful employment. Instead, she devotes herself to taking care of, racing, and betting on quails. Quail Racer is seen as a cautionary tale of what happens if you die before your time, but she has more money than it may seem. Instead of spending it on herself, she spends it on quails.
You can argue that revenants with poor mental faculties and a stunted understanding of the world are more carefree and can devote their time and energy to their own happiness instead of the well-being of the city as a whole without guilt, but they can only live so long like this before wearing down into senseless bones, and are often victims of crimes, ranging from petty robbery to being kidnapped for secret illegal slavery to being taken apart for raw materials. Quail Racer is much beloved by the quail racing community, so nothing too bad has happened to her yet.
Practical Cartographer
Practical Cartographer tries to present as the average Veilheimer in order to spread news of the great city to other travellers. His prosthetics are better than most can afford up front, but some revenants purposefully put themselves into debt to get a better body. Since Practical Cartographer scrounges his map materials from garbage, his business has almost no operational cost and he is no longer in debt. Most revenants of average means died before before the plague rendered them bedridden and were not rich enough in life to learn an intellectual craft, and so have a clear career path in manual or industrial labor. Although somewhat skilled and artistic, Practical Cartographer’s maps are so obviously mass-produced at low quality that for census reasons he counts as a common industrial laborer instead of an artisan, something that other people mock him for, but he doesn’t care about.
Often poorer revenants wear more pieces of clothing, so that if one piece gets destroyed, they don’t have to replace their whole outfit. Conversely, richer revenants often wear clothes in a single piece so they can flex on replacing an entire outfit. This is not an ironclad rule, so whenever Practical Cartographer gets hit with, “Why do you dress like a laborer?”, he can hit back with, “I dress like the Veiled Goddess. Are you calling our Goddess a laborer?”
Master Computer
Master Computer was spoiled in life and given the best education in finance and math, and after she died, it would be a terrible waste if she didn’t make a name for herself. Although she was not severely infected before she died, she has worked around her terrible short-term memory via prosthetic devices and communicating mostly via writing. Computers are hired to do a lot of math and take detailed records, and can be identified by the abacuses, plumb bobs, clocks, and other devices attached to their heads. Since Master Computer sends out her subordinates and apprentices to measure and record things, she has no measuring devices and is instead rigged with a huge opulent abacus with gold beads to do calculations as quickly as possible.
She is rich, but not monumentally rich. She can afford to wear lots of gold, but not as much gold as turbo plutocrats like the civil servant triumvirate. Instead of spending on fine materials, she instead spends on prosthetics. Most cities in Surenia rarely have revenants deciding to look much different from a regular living human, but in Veilheim, where death is normalised and the finest prosthetics are made, revenants can be gigantic and/or recast in bizarre inhuman shapes if they can afford it. Master Computer can be seen and heard from far away, towering over most people and clicking and clacking her gold abacus beads and her 11 metal legs.
THE LIVING
To avoid excess plague and toxic metal exposure, the living in Veilheim tend to wear undyed plant-based fabrics. It’s fine for the living to wear patterns because they can see. Some late stage plaguebearers decide to wear metal dyes anyway because they figure they will die of the plague before they get metal poisoning. Organic dyes are also worn, but revenants can’t see light, so the finest of murex purple dyes comes across to them as a nasty greenish brown. If revenants are bad at differentiating organic substances, how do they see hair and skin color? Revenants can sense the souls of others and can get an impression of how a living being looks based off their own self image.
It’s good to keep track of your bones as they fall out. After you die, you can get them reattached. People heavily ravaged by the plague used to plait them together with ribbons, but as painkillers, health care, and prosthetics for the living improved, previously bedridden people could walk around, so the new fashion is to wear your bones wired to a ring for convenience.
Kaolin
It’s very tragic when a child gets the plague. Some children are born to plaguebearing mothers, and are guaranteed to die within a year. Some children get infected on their own and can no longer live with their family in the plague-free district. They lack the strength to endure years of being consumed by plague, and are guaranteed to go mad after they die, so plaguebearing children are allowed to go wherever they want and do whatever they want within reason. Since the children aren’t expected to live long enough to grow taller, they get one new outfit and that’s it. What remains of their lives is devoted to fun. A special hollow tower was made for them to throw themselves into when they can’t stand it anymore. Sometimes children who are too far gone to climb the tower will beg for passerby to kill them. This is horrible, but the alternative is to wait for children to slowly die in agony on their own, and then the resulting mad revenants will wreak havoc. Another alternative is rounding up plaguebearing children and killing them, which nobody wants to do.
Kaolin is smart enough to understand how precarious it is to be a plaguebearing child and has plans to return to sanity after dying. This is one reason why Kaolin is so interested in the bros: two of them have child-sized skeletons, but they are mostly not mad. Someone cared about them enough to raise them after they died.
Kios
Kios was lucky enough for the plague to first affect her spine, so she is guaranteed some level of sanity after she dies. After a life of working in breweries, farms, and distilleries, Kios has a very good understanding of plant fermentation and preservation and now spends most of her time on street corners in the market district smoking outrageous amounts of opium, playing board games, and giving fairly good perfume mixing and vegetable pickling advice. There’s no guarantee how she will turn out after dying, but Kios assumes she will become a farmer or reaper or small-time distiller or working in Agriculture Scientist’s office.
The living want to show off how infected they are, but at the same time want to stay otherwise healthy. Hands and feet are often bandaged because they are most easily damaged. Heads are also bandaged because the thin skin of the scalp is always sloughing off and ears are leaking infectious fluids. It’s a point of pride to get the plague in a more unusual place. Kios thus has a very good reason to wear a backless dress. She lost a fair amount of her hands and feet, so she has a pretty decent ring of bones.
Astragalus Rambush
Rambush owns most of the aforementioned breweries and distilleries. As the first living person to owe taxes under the new law, he maintains an air of superiority over revenants complaining about getting stabbed through the ribcage because he got away with paying one third of what he owed by getting stabbed through the hand that was already lost to plague. His nose and lips have rotted off, but he can’t cover them otherwise he will suffocate and drown in infectious fluids, so everyone just has to deal with that.
Rambush expects to have some level of control over the family business after he dies, and uses his status as a plaguebearer to negotiate favorable deals with revenants for his family, even though he hasn’t seen most of them since he got the plague. By wearing a cloak that is purple to the living and patterns visible to revenants, Rambush hopes to be at least partially purple to everyone, even though it’s technically an assholish thing to do. Although metal prosthetics are starting to be made for the living, they were designed for revenants and are very hard to use. Since Rambush lost an arm and a leg, his ring of bones is impressive and frightening to behold.
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How To Build A Profitable E-Mail List
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How to start generating affiliate commissions on autopilot Using Passive Profit Builder
What is the best way you can draw attention of your audience?
OFFER GIFTS... But the problem is, gifts won't make you money.
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But if you follow the steps shown in training and case studies, your campaigns will be more profitable and scalable
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=> *********************************************** Article Source Here: How to start generating affiliate commissions on autopilot Using Passive Profit Builder ************************************ =>
How to start generating affiliate commissions on autopilot Using Passive Profit Builder was originally posted by 11 VA Viral News
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Text
How to start generating affiliate commissions on autopilot Using Passive Profit Builder
What is the best way you can draw attention of your audience?
OFFER GIFTS... But the problem is, gifts won't make you money.
The best way to make money from affiliate marketing is to do product reviews..
Top marketers like Sam Bakker, Todd Gross, Brett Rutecky, Mike from Maine make thousands of dollars every single day by doing product reviews
BUT THIS UNIQUE, PROVEN, CLOUD BASED SOFTWARE CREATES GIFT EBOOKS THAT DO THE SELLING FOR YOU...
Just take a closer look and see for yourself :
vimeo
Passive ProfitBuilder builds PDF ebooks with your affiliate link embedded inside
It helps you create product reviews in PDF ebook format just by copying and pasting free info
Add images, sales page previews, product previews and bonuses easily and directly from any URL or from your dropbox folder
Host the pdf ebooks for you ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS give these ebooks away...
But if you follow the steps shown in training and case studies, your campaigns will be more profitable and scalable
What about bonus? ================
Interestingly, there are built in high quality bonuses inside the app for you to use and offer your customers when you run a campaign.
So ….
Passive ProfitBuilder is the best of the best Money making software ever…
Why?
++ It’s cloudbased. Nothing to download. Just use your purchase transaction ID To sign up and your account is automatically Created. Then, simply follow the steps Shown in the training and case study and enjoy Making money.
++ 100% Newbie friendly. No learning curve, No skill or prior experience required to get result. ++ It generates high demand product review PDF Reports from copying and pasting free information
++ Generates ebooks that your audience Love. Everytime we run a campaign, we’ve Seen people begging to get access to The pdf ebooks
++ You don’t need to sell. The PDF Ebook Does the selling for you. We’ve used this Particular format over and over again And made money everytime.
++ Built in traffic generation system. You can syndicate your Review PDF URL With top social media from inside the dashboard.
++ Bonus Library for you to offer your customers. To make more money, you must offer bonuses To your customers. We have a built in library Of top quality bonuses that you can offer to Your customers. Bonus delivery page is Also automatically generated…
This might be your last chance to finally Start making money online. Don’t wait till the price goes higher Get access at the launch price now
IF you want more info i have another video and of course the webpage :)
vimeo
So do yourself a favor click and get your Copy today :)
=> *********************************************** Originally Published Here: How to start generating affiliate commissions on autopilot Using Passive Profit Builder ************************************ =>
How to start generating affiliate commissions on autopilot Using Passive Profit Builder was originally posted by 16 MP Just news
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Best WordPress Theme for Bloggers and Writers | Templified
New Post has been published on https://templified.com/best-wordpress-theme-for-bloggers-and-writers/
Best WordPress Theme for Bloggers and Writers
WordPress is an ideal platform for blogging, I mean, that’s what it was built for. As the years go by, WordPress gets more and more refined and amazing features keep getting added to make WordPress a perfect solution if you want to get an incredible blog up and running quickly and without being a coding genius. If you’re in the market for a new blog theme, we’re here to help. We’ve gathered up some of the very best WordPress personal blog themes around and we know you’ll love each and every one of them.
We’ve gathered up all of the best WordPress blog themes around, so if you’re looking at spreading your blogging wings, it really doesn’t matter what topic grabs your interest or what kind of readers you’re targeting. If you want to express yourself in an online journal or if you want to blog about your travels, we’ve found some pretty great options for you. If you’re trying to make money or if you’re a budding novelist, well, we’ve found some themes that are ideal for you as well. This is a list of the best WordPress personal blog websites and these amazing blogging themes offer amazing reader experience and a wide variety of features for the blogger too, so you can build an audience and keep them coming back for more. Each one of these blog templates is well designed and has enough features to let you spend more time writing posts and less time trying to make your site work the way you want it to work. Sounds pretty cool.
We’ve aimed to find the absolute best WordPress blog themes on the market, from the best theme providers. We hope you enjoy it.
Nouveau
The Nouveau WordPress theme’s innate style translates well too many different creative applications. With the retina-ready quality, fully responsive design, and ultimate layouts and structure flexibility, it allows people from many different industries or specialties to build and attention-grabbing website with ease. Nouveau is especially amazing for creative professionals like artists, photographers, graphic designers, and people in the film, fashion, or design groups. All changes, updates, and edits are handled on the highly intuitive admin control panel that uses the premium plug-in Visual Composer for even more accessibility by people with no development or coding knowledge.
Begin designing your website with this WP theme by assigning a layout to your one-page site. The header style comes first, and then you can move on to choosing the navigation menu, such as one in a left sidebar perfect for drawing attention to different content blocks. Nouveau comes with multiple demo pages and layouts that can be loaded with a simple click. Using the Visual Composer plug-in, anyone can drag and drop different page elements into place. Some options include graphic and video sliders, black and white style, shortcodes to expand your options, a masonry post layouts and structure, and many other imaginative tweaks and inclusions. If you wish to sell your art or design from your website, the Nouveau WordPress theme integrates smoothly with WooCommerce, the most popular e-commerce solution available.
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Mallow
Minimalist, polished and always attractive, Mallow is a personal blog theme that’s at the top of it’s game. This theme could be perfect for a lifestyle blogand with the lovely typography, I think it fits with what a lot of folks are looking for, which is why I recommend it in this collection. There are so many features included, your readers will be begging for more. Mallow is a wonderful lifestyle blog and magazine theme, ideal for blogs about the latest fashion trends, gift giving, jewelry or watches and more. Express your personal thoughts and tell your story, with Mallow, it’s going to be easy and enjoyable. Your images will seem to leap off the page with an incredibly, stylish design and the features that you need to make your blogging experience a fun and lucrative one. For marketers who want to develop a giant following, a great looking blogging template is the most important thing that you will need.
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Global
Welcome to the Global WordPress theme. This elegant professional looking blog theme may be used for any variety of website you might need. With a first class design and a large array of amenities, it would work great as a fashion blog site, a news magazine blog or perhaps a personal blog. With an exquisite, effective structure and tons of options to make blogging and site-building simple. In case you are not a WordPress coding specialist, you are able to modify this great looking theme to provide it with the features you would like your blog to offer. Your subscribers will like the the style and features offered by your blog, the straightforward navigation, the trendy and well coded design, the clean code, the general arrangement and much more.
WordPress is easily the most prevalent blogging solution around, since it is quite easy to make use of, it is wonderfully adaptable and it offers quite a few potent functions. You can find a whole lot you can modify with any blog theme, so it’s vital that you go for an exquisite theme that provides the features that you need. A well crafted WordPress personal blog theme really helps to attract visitors and with a quality theme, the code is clear so your website loads up very quickly which will help you rank higher on the search engines. This excellent weblog theme includes everything you could need create an attractive, high quality blog on whatever topic such as travel destinations, cuisine, apps, business, your personal blog, fashion and plenty more.
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Collecto
Minimalist, easy to use, feature filled, that’s what the Collecto WordPress theme brings to the table. With a clean, modern and minimalist design, Collecto is ideal for all kinds of blogs, from travel blogs to lifestyle blogs, personal blogs to recipe sites. This Collecto theme has it all. Built with all kinds of bloggers in mind, Collecto is well crafted, flexible, well designed and incredibly user friendly. Themes Kingdom didn’t forget to add the features in either, it’s loaded with stuff that will help engage your readers and keep them coming back for more. Best of all, you don’t need to be an expert programmer to make this theme look just the way you want it to look. Collecto includes a drag and drop page builder so you can craft pages and posts visually, which happens to be the fastest way to make a truly custom look for your site. Fonts, colors and layouts can all be changed any time you want and your content will still look amazing.
Collecto is responsive, it’s enjoyable to use for both webmaster and reader alike since the navigation is so simple and intuitive. Premium support and loads of documentation are included and it’s really easy to get started with. Social media integration helps your readers find the content and interact too, which is always a nice bonus. With Collecto, there’s no end to what you can do and you’re going to find it simple and fun to create more content and find more readers.
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Extra
Extra is a fantastic blog theme for any sort of website, from personal blogs to professional or corporate blogs, the site design is so clean and simple, it works for a wide variety of sites. I think that Extra could be just what any webmaster needs for a well designed, feature filled blogging template. Elegant Themes stands behind all of their templates and Extra is no exception. Elegant Themes makes great stuff, they keep the code updated and these themes run well and they’re well documented too. Run into issues setting up or customizing an Elegant Theme like Extra? They’ve got a long history of some of the best support in the business. Need to add eCommerce to your blog? Easily done with Extra. Post and page builder, as well as a category builder, allows you to make a fully responsive layout that looks precisely the way you want it to look. Add, remove, tweak various content modules that add the functionality your blog needs.
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Adventure
Adventure calls. This sweet looking, well designed blog theme could be just what you need to create a fantastic website, no matter what you’re blogging about. the simple, modern design lends itself to almost any subject matter, from travel to lifestyle, writing to art criticism. I have no idea! Whatever you want to use Adventure for, it’s a great fit. With tons of features included, you can display your content in any number of ways. There’s featured videos, WooCommerce support for selling products, tons of page templates, short codes and more. This responsive theme is Retina ready, which makes the images on your site really pop. Full width featured slideshows can truly make a big impact on your readers. There’s nothing better than a great blog theme and Adventure certainly is that.
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Suarez
The Suarez WordPress theme is absolutely perfect for bloggers of all kinds. Why? The features, the usability and the style are all a big part of it, not to mention the support offered by Tesla Themes. Suarez is optimized for rapid loading times, there are tons of built in short codes, high-end support and Suarez is updated frequently, so you’ll never run into compatibility issues. Suarez is perfectly responsive, compatible with nearly any sort of browser. There are great social media integration tools, which can be a big bonus for any blog. Tons of documentation and localization support and much more. The Suarez theme has a built in drag & drop page builder included, so finding the perfect layout is a snap. Suarez has category sliders, sidebar filters for showing the exact content you want to highlight, there’s a subscribe box and even advertising banner shortcodes. Colors and fonts are simple to adjust in this modern, clean and crisp blog theme. It’s really important to make a big impact on all of your readers, which is why Suarez is such a great all around blog theme. I know you’re going to love this one.
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Foodica
This is flat out delicious. If you’re trying to start a food blog, or you’re just into talking about your own culinary exploits, Foodica could be a fine pick. This theme is stunningly intuitive, making it simple enough to get started immediately, but powerful enough to fit with any kind of website. The demo is set up to give an example of what a food blog would look, perfect for caterers, foodies, aspiring culinary marvels, food critics and restaurant reviewers and related sites, but there’s no reason you can’t use it for a personal blog page too. Foodica can please a lot of different people, with a stylish home page and a number of different blog post styles, your posts are really going to stand out from everybody else on the market.
The layouts are designed to get you up and posting relatively quickly, because the design of posts and pages is ready to go, allowing you to create attractive and interesting content with customized shortcodes, specifically made for the Foodica blog, the directions and ingredient codes let you create mouth watering recipes to keep your readers coming back time and time again. We like the variety of color schemes to choose from, they let you skin the site any way you see fit and then there are the incredibly powerful widgets that add features that help your site stand out. These include an Instagram picture widget, a Twitter feed and more. Those social networking features are important to help you rank your site quickly and easily, because Google wants to ranks sites that are interactive and sticky.
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Create
Looking for the perfect personal blog theme? Well, why not have a look at Create, from Theme Trust. This theme is simple enough to look at but it’s infinitely flexible, combining multiple widgetized areas with a flexible page builder plugin from Site Origin. That all combines to make for a theme that can offer any sort of functionality to any sort of blog site. Portfolios, attractive blogs and WooCommerce are all there, making it a one-stop shopping center of a blog template. Create is from Theme Trust and it’s their best seller, with great support, a year of updates for free and more, you’re really going to be satisfied with the functionality of this theme.
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Aesthetic
Aesthetic is a WordPress theme for different kinds of bloggers who wish to have make their website look beautiful and trendy. It’s a responsive in every way design which enables your site adapt to various kinds of devices and display sizes. This theme is simple to use and is 100% customizable, enabling you to design and structure your site in any manner you want it, with just a couple clicks. It gives different color choices, article listing styles, a choice of fonts, unlimited sidebars, and far more. All your editing can be performed without touching any code via the theme’s visual page builder, which enables you to drag and drop elements to create your own designs. It offers contact form modules to allow you to create different contact forms to meet your needs.
Aesthetic, made by ThemeFuse, is a well thought out, nicely featured premium personal blog theme for WordPress, it’s beautiful and stylish with a really nice typography style. Aesthetic is responsive, it’s easy to use and it’s totally customizable, so your site can look precisely the way you want it to look. With a massive amount of different options like color schemes, article listing styles, a wide variety of fonts and more structural options, this theme is completely adaptable to almost any style, though I think it’s probably best as a lifestyle blog. Don’t bother learning how to code either, Aesthetic can be tweaked and perfected all from the handy Admin panel and you’ll be able to create the layout you want with the included drag and drop style page builder. Aesthetic is also SEO ready and streamlined for rapid load times.
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Divi
Divi, a multi-purpose theme from Elegant Themes, is just one of the post powerful, impressive and feature rich blogging platforms we have seen in the past couple of years. I have personally test driven this theme and it is really, really remarkable the number of things it could get done. Divi is a complete multipurpose site theme, with many designs, features and tools that provide the flexibility to do whatever you want with your site. The performance, the layout, the support from Elegant Themes and on top of that, the cost are all things you are likely to love about this theme. Divi includes the Divi Builder, making it possible to drag and drop new designs whenever you want. If you wish to get started faster, the them includes 18 pre-made designs to begin with. They all are, of course, responsive in every way too, so it adjusts to any device or display resolution. You can get access to each one of Elegant Themes offerings for only $69 for a private license, $89 for a developer license and $249 for a lifetime supply of amazing themes and remarkable support.
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Cooperative
The Cooperative Theme is firstly aimed towards groups of people who wants one spot to exhibit all their work and attract customers. The theme accomplishes this goal since it helps the art, design piece, or picture to shine through rather than the site’s theme to overpower it. The Cooperative Theme is easy to customize with the various header, menu, widget, and text options packed into the theme. The theme can be responsive in every way to match all types of display screen including cellular phones. With this theme, you can add pictures into slideshows with a built-in drag and drop tool. Images can also be showcased in boundless galleries.
Post formats for quotations, blog posts, audio articles, image and video articles, galleries, and links are fully supported in the Cooperative Theme. You could even add texts, forms, added codes, and pictures in various widget regions on the theme. Active members of Graph Paper Press are eligible for automatic theme updates. Subscription to the Cooperative theme also lets you get translation prepared documents, HTML5 markup, built-in theme customizer, and availability choices. These features are useful if you would like to change the theme’s code and then customize it.
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Amadeus
One really cool thing to bear in mind, there is a free version of the theme that might help you determine if this theme is ideal for you, so check that out first. Compatible with every browser out there, readily customized with a powerful and robust theme options panel, localization support and loads of fonts using infinite color combos you can pick from, that all provides the flexibility to produce a web site that’s truly unique and ground breaking. Amadeus is responsive in every way in design, it is design adapts to all display sizes, you will find widgetized areas for extra content, an optional homepage slider keeps things interesting and fun too.
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Brittany
Your readers will adore the immediate engagement to this theme, because the plan is simple, clean and straightforward. Choose from among the pre-built designs for your site; select either left or right sidebar, full width and no sidebar narrow. Then, slect the amount of columns you need and whether or not you need excerpts, plain style, fixed columns and much more. There area really a great deal of options to create the site flexible and responsive in every way to your needs. Brittany is also WooCommerce prepared, so that you can set up a store to go alongside your own blog. Add a slider up top and you are all set to go.
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Oblique
ThemeIsle’s new theme, called Oblique, is a brand new spin on a blogging theme, using a special layout and design that utilizes angled images to make a fun, different way to frame your own content. Oblique is a simple theme to use and it can definitely help to make your website unique and appealing, plus it is very easy to customize, so you can make it look exactly like you want it to look. It is user friendly and works well for almost any kind of website that requires a new look and a completely modern design.
The responsive in every way design ensures that your visitors will see the website as it is supposed to be seen, using a mobile friendly design that looks great on each device, regardless of what screen resolution. Craft a home page which has every feature you want it to have, with articles right where you need it. That’s possible due to this SiteOrigin drag-and-drop plugin, which comes equipped in this theme. This is just the best free rag-and-drop page builder addon around, perfect for creating a unique and engaging WordPress site.
Oblique is translation prepared, together with RTL competent, so you can use this theme with any language you require. SEO friendly layouts like Oblique, which load quickly and have clean code, really help make for a user friendly experience on bot the front and rear end. Place Oblique up in under a minute with presentation content and in case you should happen to need some help installing, you will find video tutorials and extensive documentation too.
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Underwood
This theme is called Underwood, it’s a great looking, somewhat masculine WordPress blog theme. Themeshift really took their time crafting this blog theme and the attention to detail really shows. The design is similar to many others you might see on the internet, but this theme is a really solid choice for it’s fast loading times, the easy customization process, great support and amazingly detailed documentation. Underwood is a modern blog theme, so it can work for a wide variety of purposes from personal blogs to travel or recipe blogs, lifestyle blogs and plenty more. I’ll tell you, this theme is priced right too at just $39, it’s a really great value. If you have multiple sites, you may want to consider ThemeShift’s deal of $99 for all four of their themes.
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Lucid
Lucid might be a great choice for a personal blog site, depending on your needs. The demo shows it as a clean and modern theme, perfect for technology or science blogs, but there’s a lot more to it than just that. Lucid is a safe and secure way to give birth to a great looking, bouncing baby WordPress site. Unique color schemes, typography and other basic style features can easily be altered without having to get into the CSS. Maybe the best thing about Elegant Themes is the effort they put into providing the absolute best tech support to all of their customers. They have a dedicated support staff who are always available to answer any questions you might have and you can be sure that you will have your blog up and running quickly, no matter what your experience level is from beginner to expert. This theme is compatible with any browser, it’s updated consistently, giving your users a wonderful responsive experience on any browser, not matter when WordPress updates. Page templates, short codes and theme options also add power and flexibility to this truly one of a kind theme.
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Yosemite
Yosemite is a clean and modern WP blog theme that takes it’s design inspiration from Apple’s Yosemite OSX. It’s fun, stylish and state-of-the-art design, coupled with the latest in well coded plugins, MegaMenu and WP Review Pro compatibility, Adsense optimization and more, all make this theme a powerful selection for blogging. Speedy is one way to describe how this theme loads, Yosemite possesses advanced SEO features to establish your website as a fast loading, high ranking site, which makes a difference in the SERPs. Every one of you readers will see the elegant, chic, polished and graceful design, with the appropriate amount of simple yet refined features, and they’ll be engaged with your content, because the clean and bold layout makes it easier for readers to get into the content without distraction. Yosemite is WP Review Pro compatible, allows for mega menus and it’s perfectly optimized for high levels of readability.
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Moment
Moment is a unique looking WordPress blog theme that will keep your readers engaged with a unique look and layout, bold images and fantastic typography are really eye-catching with this theme. Moment uses a unique layout, that’s for sure, and your audience will notice the difference between your site and others in your niche. The masonry layout smartly adapts to the surrounding images, perfectly fitting together like a puzzle. Pretty cool. There are more than one article layouts in Moment too, four of them to be exact. Put your content on either side of your gorgeous featured image, center it with a rock-solid fixed image or even set it up to be centered with a bold full-width image. No matter what, your content will look stunning. Jetpack support, incredibly detailed documentation and dedicated support all help this responsive theme to be one of the best blog themes you can find.
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Webly
Webly is a classically designed portfolio theme for videos, brought to you by the original WordPress experts, Elegant Themes. They’re the leading developer of WordPress themes for a reason, great design, fantastic support and a wide range of stylish options. Elegant Themes offers perpetual code updates, so this theme will never go out of style. They also offer guaranteed browser compatibility, localization, custom color schemes and more. Webly has a charming design, full of elements that help separate it from the others. It’s fun, the multimedia slider really helps show off your videos and we think you’re going to love it.
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AGM X3: If You Thought Rugged Meant Bad Performance, Think Again
Our verdict of the AGM X3: The AGM X3 is a rugged and waterproof phone that holds its own as a premium Android device. It takes a beating without breaking a sweat and performs better than any other rugged phone. The main downside is its price, which puts it in the firing line of name brand flagship phones.910
Budget Rugged Smartphones give a decent performance in a solid build, usually at a wallet-friendly price. But have you ever wondered what happens if you up the budget?
At $729.99 the AGM X3 is a premium rugged smartphone at a premium price, but is it worth the extra cash? On paper this phone competes with some brand name flagship handsets, and that kind of power in a tough shell is something rare. Today we’ll see if this phone is all hype, or a solid powerhouse.
youtube
In the Box
Alongside the phone, the box contains a quick charger which connects to the phone via a 1 meter USB Type C (USB-C) cable and provides charging at 5 and 9 volts at two amps and 12 volts at 1.5 amps.
The box also contains a USB-C to headphone jack, two rubber bungs to protect the phone’s USB port, a sim extraction tool, and a manual.
Separate from the box we found a mystery object which looked somewhat like a protective case–which seems redundant on a rugged smartphone. This turned out to be a flotation case (which we’ll test later), an optional extra available from AGM.
The Specs
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 845
RAM: Up to 8GB
Storage: 64, 128, or 256 GB and optional microSD
Screen: 5.99 Inch 2160 X 1080 FHD+ Gorilla Glass screen
Cameras: 20MP Selfie Cam, 12MP Primary, 24MP Secondary rear Camera
Audio: Dual JBL speakers with Smart PA audio chip
Charging: USB-C, Quick Charge 3.0, Wireless up to 10W
Battery: 4,100mAh Li-On
Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.0, Dual Sim, Dual VoLTE, 802.11ac 2×2 MIMO Wi-Fi
Dimensions: 167.5 x 81.5 x 10.5mm
The phone features an “Armoured Madman Design”, which means it has an IP68 rating and is yet another phone claiming the MIL-STD-810G military certification.
In short, it should be waterproof up to a depth of 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes, can operate from -30 to 60 degrees Celsius (22-140 Fahrenheit. It should take a lot of punishment without suffering a loss of functionality.
How It Feels to Use
Now that the specs are over let’s talk about what is actually important—how it feels in the hand. In use, the X3 feels like a premium phone. The FHD+ screen is bright and doesn’t have a notch. The bezels are small for a rugged phone, and it feels good to hold.
It is big, but given this is a rugged phone it felt much closer to a typical flagship smartphone than something designed to take a beating. It weighs just over 200 grams (7 ounces), which puts it only a few grams heavier than the OnePlus 6T or the Google Pixel 3 XL. That said, the slightly larger screen might be difficult for those with smaller hands to use one-handed.
The phone supports face unlock, which worked perfectly throughout our testing, and if you wear gloves a lot, there is a glove mode which works up to a certain thickness. This phone joins the many without a headphone jack—which I’m still totally not OK with—but in rugged phones this is forgivable. Fewer ports mean fewer points of failure, and the provided USB to 3.5mm converter works fine.
The phone feels great, but aesthetics are a little more subjective. I found the silver metal back and black sides to be clean, understated, and stylish. If it wasn’t for the hardened rubber on the corners, I could forget this is meant to be a rugged smartphone at all.
Performance and Battery
Given that the X3 has a Snapdragon 845 octa-core chipset, the current fastest in production phones, the device flies along. I tested the version with 8GB of RAM and noticed no slowdown at any point.
Games like Need for Speed and PUBG worked on the highest settings without issue. Geekbench scored the multi-core at 8670—that’s up there with the Galaxy Note 9, OnePlus 6T, and higher than the Google Pixel 3.
In terms of battery management, I used the standard settings the X3 ships with. The battery got me through my day with regular usage and much of the night, despite my propensity to watch videos before bed. In a Geekbench battery test, the x3 scored 5182.
For a high-performance rugged smartphone with a large display, it is impressive, especially at just 10.5mm thick.
The Camera
The AI-powered dual back cameras are great for taking point and click photos, and I found that I got decent pictures in a variety of light settings. The all-important Bokeh mode works well, providing good images, and is quite forgiving about the subject distance.
The front-facing selfie camera takes good pictures, with or without “face beauty,” but that’s about all it does.
This phone isn’t going to be going toe to toe with flagship camera-oriented handsets. It doesn’t even compete particularly well with other phones in this price range like the OnePlus 6T.
That said, it doesn’t have to. Good photos in places you’d usually be scared to take a phone are likely more appropriate to this phone’s target audience.
Other Stuff
The speakers on this phone are the best speakers I have heard on any smartphone. Even at loud volumes, they don’t distort, and the onboard smart PA chip adjusts the mix to stop things getting shrill. Of course, even a cheap Bluetooth speaker will blow any phone out of the water, but the dual JBL tuned speakers are above and beyond most smartphones and tablets.
Speaking of water, perhaps the most important question:
Is the AGM X3 Actually Waterproof?
The X3 has an IP68 rating, which means it is happy underwater up to 1,5m deep for up to half an hour – but this doesn’t help much if you drop it in a lake, or the sea. This is where the tailor-made floatation device comes in so handy.
Floatation aids for phones are not new, but this is designed to clip to it without obscuring any buttons, the speakers, or the camera. This completely wipes clear one of the most significant flaws of all waterproof phones—if it drops in deep water, it isn’t just gone. Note that you’ll likely have to buy this separate from the phone, but if you are frequently near or on water it’s a no brainer.
However, the waterproofing does have one small quirk. The tiny rubber bung that covers the USB port truly is tiny, and possibly the most easily misplaced item I’ve ever come across in tech. I understand aesthetics were important here, but attaching it to the phone may have been a better option.
Some other phones don’t bother with covers for their charging ports at all. This does beg the question—what are other phones doing to protect their connectors in the long term?
Can It Take a Beating?
AGM is yet another company to claim MIL-STD-810G military certification. The military does not certify consumer phones, but it does sound fancy.
I hate breaking tech, but this is a rugged phone, so we’ve got to mistreat it to see if it holds up to it’s claimed toughness.
I dropped the X3 on to asphalt a total of 6 times from 1 meter up to 3 meters, and it just didn’t care. Despite the phone having a flat front and mostly flat back, the rubber corners protected it at all angles. The back and sides are “military grade metal” whatever that means, and the phone’s innards are sprung to resist shock damage.
Whatever they’ve done, this phone, surprisingly, feels as tough as they are claiming.
I used it for over two weeks every day, and I treated it in a most terrible manner. It was dropped many more times (not on purpose), thrown in a lake, left in dust, dirt, and face down on floors. Perhaps the worst crime: the X3 was in the same pocket as my keys for the entire test.
Beyond a few scratches to the screen protector and surface scratches to the metallic back, the X3 didn’t even flinch.
Should You Get One?
I came into this review skeptical. My first impressions weren’t actually so great. I’d heard of AGM before but wasn’t really expecting anything from the name, and with so many exciting things happening with Android devices now I wasn’t expecting much.
I have been won over in every respect—this is truly a premium rugged smartphone.
Premium comes at a price, and that may be one of the phone’s significant issues. The 8GB of RAM, 64GB storage version is available from AGM for $729.99, which is high for a relatively unknown Chinese brand. Given the number of popular phones with similar performance specs at this price, it may seem quite a gamble, especially when there are budget rugged Android phones, also from China, for less than half the amount.
However, none of them offer what the X3 does. This is the first rugged phone I’ve mistaken for a regular smartphone.
If you are looking for a premium quality Android phone which will take whatever abuse you can throw at it, I can’t think of anything available that can beat the AGM X3
Enter the Competition!
AGM X3: The Premium AND Rugged Smartphone
Read the full article: AGM X3: If You Thought Rugged Meant Bad Performance, Think Again
AGM X3: If You Thought Rugged Meant Bad Performance, Think Again published first on http://droneseco.tumblr.com/
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AGM X3: If You Thought Rugged Meant Bad Performance, Think Again
Our verdict of the AGM X3: The AGM X3 is a rugged and waterproof phone that holds its own as a premium Android device. It takes a beating without breaking a sweat and performs better than any other rugged phone. The main downside is its price, which puts it in the firing line of name brand flagship phones.910
Budget Rugged Smartphones give a decent performance in a solid build, usually at a wallet-friendly price. But have you ever wondered what happens if you up the budget?
At $729.99 the AGM X3 is a premium rugged smartphone at a premium price, but is it worth the extra cash? On paper this phone competes with some brand name flagship handsets, and that kind of power in a tough shell is something rare. Today we’ll see if this phone is all hype, or a solid powerhouse.
youtube
In the Box
Alongside the phone, the box contains a quick charger which connects to the phone via a 1 meter USB Type C (USB-C) cable and provides charging at 5 and 9 volts at two amps and 12 volts at 1.5 amps.
The box also contains a USB-C to headphone jack, two rubber bungs to protect the phone’s USB port, a sim extraction tool, and a manual.
Separate from the box we found a mystery object which looked somewhat like a protective case–which seems redundant on a rugged smartphone. This turned out to be a flotation case (which we’ll test later), an optional extra available from AGM.
The Specs
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 845
RAM: Up to 8GB
Storage: 64, 128, or 256 GB and optional microSD
Screen: 5.99 Inch 2160 X 1080 FHD+ Gorilla Glass screen
Cameras: 20MP Selfie Cam, 12MP Primary, 24MP Secondary rear Camera
Audio: Dual JBL speakers with Smart PA audio chip
Charging: USB-C, Quick Charge 3.0, Wireless up to 10W
Battery: 4,100mAh Li-On
Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.0, Dual Sim, Dual VoLTE, 802.11ac 2×2 MIMO Wi-Fi
Dimensions: 167.5 x 81.5 x 10.5mm
The phone features an “Armoured Madman Design”, which means it has an IP68 rating and is yet another phone claiming the MIL-STD-810G military certification.
In short, it should be waterproof up to a depth of 1.5 meters for up to 30 minutes, can operate from -30 to 60 degrees Celsius (22-140 Fahrenheit. It should take a lot of punishment without suffering a loss of functionality.
How It Feels to Use
Now that the specs are over let’s talk about what is actually important—how it feels in the hand. In use, the X3 feels like a premium phone. The FHD+ screen is bright and doesn’t have a notch. The bezels are small for a rugged phone, and it feels good to hold.
It is big, but given this is a rugged phone it felt much closer to a typical flagship smartphone than something designed to take a beating. It weighs just over 200 grams (7 ounces), which puts it only a few grams heavier than the OnePlus 6T or the Google Pixel 3 XL. That said, the slightly larger screen might be difficult for those with smaller hands to use one-handed.
The phone supports face unlock, which worked perfectly throughout our testing, and if you wear gloves a lot, there is a glove mode which works up to a certain thickness. This phone joins the many without a headphone jack—which I’m still totally not OK with—but in rugged phones this is forgivable. Fewer ports mean fewer points of failure, and the provided USB to 3.5mm converter works fine.
The phone feels great, but aesthetics are a little more subjective. I found the silver metal back and black sides to be clean, understated, and stylish. If it wasn’t for the hardened rubber on the corners, I could forget this is meant to be a rugged smartphone at all.
Performance and Battery
Given that the X3 has a Snapdragon 845 octa-core chipset, the current fastest in production phones, the device flies along. I tested the version with 8GB of RAM and noticed no slowdown at any point.
Games like Need for Speed and PUBG worked on the highest settings without issue. Geekbench scored the multi-core at 8670—that’s up there with the Galaxy Note 9, OnePlus 6T, and higher than the Google Pixel 3.
In terms of battery management, I used the standard settings the X3 ships with. The battery got me through my day with regular usage and much of the night, despite my propensity to watch videos before bed. In a Geekbench battery test, the x3 scored 5182.
For a high-performance rugged smartphone with a large display, it is impressive, especially at just 10.5mm thick.
The Camera
The AI-powered dual back cameras are great for taking point and click photos, and I found that I got decent pictures in a variety of light settings. The all-important Bokeh mode works well, providing good images, and is quite forgiving about the subject distance.
The front-facing selfie camera takes good pictures, with or without “face beauty,” but that’s about all it does.
This phone isn’t going to be going toe to toe with flagship camera-oriented handsets. It doesn’t even compete particularly well with other phones in this price range like the OnePlus 6T.
That said, it doesn’t have to. Good photos in places you’d usually be scared to take a phone are likely more appropriate to this phone’s target audience.
Other Stuff
The speakers on this phone are the best speakers I have heard on any smartphone. Even at loud volumes, they don’t distort, and the onboard smart PA chip adjusts the mix to stop things getting shrill. Of course, even a cheap Bluetooth speaker will blow any phone out of the water, but the dual JBL tuned speakers are above and beyond most smartphones and tablets.
Speaking of water, perhaps the most important question:
Is the AGM X3 Actually Waterproof?
The X3 has an IP68 rating, which means it is happy underwater up to 1,5m deep for up to half an hour – but this doesn’t help much if you drop it in a lake, or the sea. This is where the tailor-made floatation device comes in so handy.
Floatation aids for phones are not new, but this is designed to clip to it without obscuring any buttons, the speakers, or the camera. This completely wipes clear one of the most significant flaws of all waterproof phones—if it drops in deep water, it isn’t just gone. Note that you’ll likely have to buy this separate from the phone, but if you are frequently near or on water it’s a no brainer.
However, the waterproofing does have one small quirk. The tiny rubber bung that covers the USB port truly is tiny, and possibly the most easily misplaced item I’ve ever come across in tech. I understand aesthetics were important here, but attaching it to the phone may have been a better option.
Some other phones don’t bother with covers for their charging ports at all. This does beg the question—what are other phones doing to protect their connectors in the long term?
Can It Take a Beating?
AGM is yet another company to claim MIL-STD-810G military certification. The military does not certify consumer phones, but it does sound fancy.
I hate breaking tech, but this is a rugged phone, so we’ve got to mistreat it to see if it holds up to it’s claimed toughness.
I dropped the X3 on to asphalt a total of 6 times from 1 meter up to 3 meters, and it just didn’t care. Despite the phone having a flat front and mostly flat back, the rubber corners protected it at all angles. The back and sides are “military grade metal” whatever that means, and the phone’s innards are sprung to resist shock damage.
Whatever they’ve done, this phone, surprisingly, feels as tough as they are claiming.
I used it for over two weeks every day, and I treated it in a most terrible manner. It was dropped many more times (not on purpose), thrown in a lake, left in dust, dirt, and face down on floors. Perhaps the worst crime: the X3 was in the same pocket as my keys for the entire test.
Beyond a few scratches to the screen protector and surface scratches to the metallic back, the X3 didn’t even flinch.
Should You Get One?
I came into this review skeptical. My first impressions weren’t actually so great. I’d heard of AGM before but wasn’t really expecting anything from the name, and with so many exciting things happening with Android devices now I wasn’t expecting much.
I have been won over in every respect—this is truly a premium rugged smartphone.
Premium comes at a price, and that may be one of the phone’s significant issues. The 8GB of RAM, 64GB storage version is available from AGM for $729.99, which is high for a relatively unknown Chinese brand. Given the number of popular phones with similar performance specs at this price, it may seem quite a gamble, especially when there are budget rugged Android phones, also from China, for less than half the amount.
However, none of them offer what the X3 does. This is the first rugged phone I’ve mistaken for a regular smartphone.
If you are looking for a premium quality Android phone which will take whatever abuse you can throw at it, I can’t think of anything available that can beat the AGM X3
Enter the Competition!
AGM X3: The Premium AND Rugged Smartphone
Read the full article: AGM X3: If You Thought Rugged Meant Bad Performance, Think Again
AGM X3: If You Thought Rugged Meant Bad Performance, Think Again posted first on grassroutespage.blogspot.com
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Increase Your Landing Page Speed (By Stealing Our Homework)
If you’ve read Unbounce’s 2019 Page Speed Report (and you really should), then you already know why speed is so important this year. Slow-loading landing pages have always been an obstacle to higher conversions, and now Google is punishing poor mobile load times in its search rankings. To be successful in 2019, we—marketers—need to be thinking fast. But are we?
To find out, we polled almost 400 marketers on their attitudes around page speed and asked what (if anything) they were doing to get faster.
Just 56% of marketers are happy with their mobile load times, according to the 2019 Page Speed Report.
Almost three of every four respondents said they had taken steps to improve their page speeds over the last year, and that’s pretty good. Alarmingly, though, only half of marketers we surveyed are satisfied with their load times on mobile.
So most marketers are trying to get faster, but many aren’t where they want to be. Which begs the question: what are people doing to speed up their landing page load times?
Computer, enhance!
Only 39% of marketers have bothered to find out how fast their pages are actually loading. Not great.
Here, we start to see why marketers are somewhat pessimistic about their page speed progress. Just over half have optimized their landing page images—ostensibly one of the simplest ways to speed up your load times—and even fewer have done any of the real technical-sounding things they need to get faster. (I mean, fair, they sound pretty boring to us, too.)
Here’s a doozy, though: just one in three marketers have run a website speed test to find out whether their load times are impacting their conversions. That’s the easiest one!
And hey, we get it. Marketers are being asked to do more than ever before, often with fewer resources. If you’re a small team (or a single person, the smallest of the teams), you might feel you don’t have the time or expertise to meaningfully improve your page speed.
But I’ve gone and done the hard work for you—me, a film school graduate who, until recently, believed that his Apple computer was impervious to viruses. (Hoo boy, it is not.) I’ve spent hours talking to Unbounce developers, reading how-to guides, and generally just bombarding my brain with the most dull, technical page speed information I could get ahold of. (Apologies to said developers.) And if I can get my head around it, there’s no excuse for the rest of you.
Below, I’ve simplified some of the most effective ways to increase your landing page loading times in a guide. For each fix, I’ve indicated the technical difficulty and the estimated time it’ll take, so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself in to. Use the table of contents below to jump to what’s relevant to you, or go ahead and do it all in order.
Jump to a Landing Page Speed Fix
How to Check Your Landing Page Speed
Run a Google Speed Test (5 Minutes)
Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer (5 Minutes)
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes
Reduce Your Page Content (15 Minutes)
Optimize Your Images (30 Minutes)
Host Your Videos Elsewhere (30 Minutes)
Audit Your Hosting Solution (30 Minutes)
Implement a CDN (30 Minutes)
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes
Minify HTML, JS, and CSS (15 Minutes)
Enable Browser Caching (15 Minutes)
Set Up GZIP Compression (15 Minutes)
Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins (30 Minutes)
Convert Images to Sprites (30 Minutes)
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes
Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS (45 Minutes)
Start Hand-Coding with AMP
Final note: If you’ve built your page with Unbounce, you can skip a lot of this stuff—we make many speed fixes on the back-end automatically. In this post, look for the ‘Building Pages in Unbounce?‘ callout boxes to see if a given fix is something you need to implement.
Look for these callout boxes throughout this post to get Unbounce-specific tips and learn how we automatically optimize your landing pages to make them load super fast.
How to Check Your Landing Page Speed
First things first.
Before you throw on your hard hat and start hitting things with a hammer (both figuratively and literally), it’s important to have some idea of what’s working—and what’s not—on your landing page. That means running a speed audit.
It’s important to point out that, regardless of which speed test you use, you don’t want to get too hung up on your score. Achieving a perfect score is not always technically possible (and it might not even be desirable). Instead, use your results as a general guideline to improve page speed and implement the fixes that make sense for you.
Okay—let’s test them pages.
Run a Google Speed Test
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes
There are a bunch of great tools for testing your page speed, but why not start with the big dog itself? Google’s PageSpeed Insights is an awesome way to do a quick performance check-up with at-a-glance recommendations. (Ryan Engley, Unbounce’s VP of Product Marketing, explains how to interpret and act on your PageSpeed Insights results in this must-read blog post.) Then there’s Lighthouse, a newer tool from Google that provides a comprehensive analysis of your how your page presents to end users.
You’ll also want to run your page through Google’s Test My Site tool, which will check your speed from a mobile perspective.
Clicking on individual results in PageSpeed Insights will reveal your problematic page elements.
Running a Google speed test should only take a couple of minutes, and the results will help you identify some of the top opportunities to boost your landing page load times.
Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes
Running a speed test with Google should be your top priority, but PageSpeed Insights doesn’t give results tailored to landing pages. For that, you’ll want to run your page through the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which not only provides feedback on page performance but includes a bunch of advice on creating more effective campaigns and kicking your conversions into overdrive.
Unbounce’s Landing Page Analyzer provides feedback on page speed, but also actionable advice on things like SEO, message match, and mobile-friendliness.
Building Pages in Unbounce? Then you’ll definitely want to give our Landing Page Analyzer a shot. Get best-practice recommendations for conversion optimization and see how your landing pages stack up against others in your industry.
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes
With your results from both Google and Unbounce, you’ll be well-equipped to move onto the actual work of making your page perform better. It’s time to pick up that hammer.
These fixes should be simple enough for anyone to tackle, regardless of their technical expertise.
Reduce Your Page Content
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
We’ve marked this as an easy opportunity to increase your page speed, but it probably won’t feel like that when you start thinking about which elements on your page you can junk. Marketers love big hero shots, beautiful supporting imagery, and fun, animated explainer videos. But how much of that content is actually helping you drive conversions?
Visual content accounts for a huge portion of the size of an average web page—images account for over 20% of web page weight, as pointed out by Kinsta—and each element creates an HTTP request. That’s when your visitor’s browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the elements of your page. Too many calls can be a serious drag on your load time, so one of the simplest ways to improve your page speed is cutting down the number of elements you include.
Look at each piece of content on your page critically, then ask yourself: “Does this spark joy?” “Does this increase conversions?” If you don’t think there are pieces you can toss, try running an A/B test with a slimmed-down version of the page. The results might surprise you.
Bottom line: stick to the fundamentals of good landing page design and try to keep the number of elements (and thus HTTP requests) to a minimum.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We recommend that you keep things pretty lean, but we’d never remove content from your landing page. (Must resist… desire… to do best practices…) This is one optimization that you’ll have to tackle on your own.
Optimize Your Images
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Once you’ve trimmed some elements from your page, you’ll want to optimize the content that made the cut. Poor image optimization is the most common reason for slow page loads, especially for mobile visitors. Fortunately, it’s also one of the easiest issues to fix.
These are some quick tips for shrinking your images and improving your page speed. The goal here should be getting images at least under 800kb, but the smaller we can make them, the better.
Resize your images
It’s easy to chuck a larger image onto your page and rely on your content management system (CMS) to compress it to the appropriate size, but it’ll still be loading at least some of those extra pixels on the back end, and your visitors are going to feel it in the load. When you add an image, make sure it’s the same dimensions that your page will be rendering it.*
*This doesn’t necessarily apply to Unbounce’s retina image support—read up on that here.
Choose the right file type
Most people don’t think too much about the format of the image they’re uploading, but it can have a dramatic effect on page performance. The file types you’re probably most familiar with are JPEG and PNG—and, yes, there are differences.
JPEG is a ‘lossy’ format, which means it’ll lose some data during compression. That typically gives you a smaller file, but it can come at the expense of visual fidelity. Generally, images with significant color variation (say, photographs) perform better as JPEGs, and any dip in quality can usually go undetected.
PNG is ‘lossless,’ so the image’s appearance won’t change when resized, but it tends to make for larger files if there’s significant color variation. PNG is ideal for simple images with defined shapes, like those with text. Saving PNGs in 8-bit (rather than 24-bit, which has a broader color palette) can help shave off some extra bites.
Here are some optimization tips for JPEG and PNG (and GIF, that villain) from Google itself.
Use compression tools
Before your weigh-in, it’s good to run images through a final round of compression. There are plenty of image compression tools on WordPress, as well as some free, standalone ones like TinyPNG. These shrinky gizmos offer a simple way to cut down your image sizes without braving the cursed labyrinth that is Adobe’s export settings. (Hey, I’m a words guy.)
Your takeaways here are:
Ensure your image dimensions match how they’ll actually be displayed
Use JPEG when a slight dip in visual fidelity isn’t the end of the world (like photography), but PNG when it is (images with text and sharp lines)
Compress images to keep the file size as tiny as possible
If you want to take a deeper dive into image optimization, we recommend that you check out this post from Search Engine Land, which goes into detail on making images smaller while keeping them beautiful.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got you covered. Unbounce’s Auto Image Optimizer shrinks your images as soon as they’re uploaded so you can focus on making the best landing page possible.
Host Your Videos Elsewhere
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Why carry something yourself when you can make someone else carry it for you? That’s my motto for landing pages and life, and it’s why I’m no longer welcome on Unbounce’s company hiking trips.
Hosting videos on your own domain can be great for SEO purposes, but that’s not usually our goal with landing pages. We want everything to load in a flash and give our visitors the best chance to convert. Depending on your hosting solution, though, your videos might be slowing down your page speed, suffering from playback issues, and taking up an uncomfortable amount of server space.
Done properly, transferring videos to a third-party platform can shed some extra load time and help your pages render faster. Consider moving video content to Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo, then using a light embed technique so that your videos only load heavier playback elements when your visitors actually click on them.
Building Pages in Unbounce? As a disclaimer: Using light embed codes with Unbounce (or any custom code, for that matter) will require some technical knowledge to implement and could, in rare cases, cause issues. Check out this Unbounce community post for more information.
Audit Your Hosting Solution
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Loading speed isn’t just determined by what’s on your landing page. Your web host also has a major influence in how quickly your page rolls out to potential customers.
There are three common models for web hosting:
Shared hosting Generally the most affordable solution, shared hosting is when your website is hosted alongside other sites on a single web server. Everyone draws from common resources (like storage space and processing power), which means—you guessed it—you need to share.
Virtual private server (VPS) hosting This is essentially a mix of both shared and dedicated hosting. With VPS, your website still shares server space with others, but you’ll have dedicated resources that no one else can dip into. The result is more power and flexibility, but it tends to come with a higher price tag.
Dedicated hosting For those who’ve had a traumatic roommate experience (who hasn’t?), dedicated hosting means your website has the server all to itself. More resources, no sharing. That’s great if you’re heavy on digital content and get a ton of traffic, but dedicated hosting is also the most expensive option and requires the technical know-how to set up and maintain your server.
Low-volume websites can generally get by with the cost-effective shared solution, but once your traffic starts to rise, you might not be getting enough juice from your web host to deliver content quickly—and that’s when load times start to suffer. (Give this post from Search Engine Journal a read for a more comprehensive explanation.)
It’s also important to note that the whereabouts of your web server can have a significant impact on your page speed. If you’re not using a content delivery network (CDN; more on this below), you’ll want to make sure that traffic from foreign countries isn’t encountering too much latency.
Think your hosting solution might be impacting your page speed? Run your site through a server speed test like this one from Bitcatcha, and use WebPageTest or Pingdom to see how your quickly your landing page loads in other countries. Depending on the results, you might decide it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan (or change web hosts altogether).
Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to worry about this one—Unbounce’s global hosting solution boasts 99.95% uptime and ensures that your landing pages always have the necessary resources to load super fast.
Implement a CDN
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
When your landing page gets a visitor, their web browser pings your server to get the content necessary to build out the page. Simple, right? Everyone downloads your website information from the same place, regardless of their location around the world. Well, that’s usually fine if the visitor is in or close to the country that your web server is located, but when they’re halfway around the globe, chances are they’re going to encounter some latency.
To avoid that, you should look into deploying a CDN, which caches your website across a network of data centers and proxy servers all over the planet. Say your own server is in the United States and someone from Lithuania is trying to visit your landing page. Instead of downloading your content from across the Atlantic, that visitor can pull a cached version from a server nearby.
Setting your website up with a CDN is pretty straightforward and—depending on your traffic—generally affordable. Here’s a list of some popular CDN providers from Mashable.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got five global data centers supporting the Unbounce CDN, which means your landing pages will load in a flash regardless of where they’re being accessed from.
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes
These next speed fixes are a little trickier, but they should be manageable for marketers with a little technical know-how. Still, a mistake here could mean actual damage to your landing page.
Our recommendation? Do some research, make a backup, and—if you can—consult briefly with a developer on your team. It never hurts to have an experienced colleague to turn to if you get in over your head.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We talk a lot about WordPress through this next section. If you’re using our plugin to publish Unbounce landing pages to a WordPress domain, some of these recommended speed fixes can actually cause technical issues. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for clarification if you’re ever unsure.
Minify HTML, CSS, and JS
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
All those lines of HTML, CSS, and JS code that make up your landing page? They’re packed with spaces, line breaks, and other bits of formatting that make it more legible and easier for us to interpret, but each makes your load time just an eensy bit slower—and the web browsers your visitors are using to render your page don’t particularly need them.
With minification, the goal is to cut out all of that extra junk and condense your code so that browsers can read it faster. Here’s an example snippet of Javascript code from Wikipedia:
var array = []; for (var i = 0; i < 20; i++) { array[i] = i; }
After minifying, that code would look something like this:
for(var a=[i=0];++i<20;a[i]=i);
There are plenty of free online tools that will do this for your landing page, like Minify Code, as well as a bunch of WordPress plugins. Be sure to check out this post from Elegant Themes, which is an awesome resource that dives into the many options at your disposal.
Building Pages in Unbounce? Do we minify? We practically invented minifying. (Editor’s note: We did not.) Unbounce compresses all of your code automatically, making your landing page as slim as can be. No coding your pages from scratch and no minifying that code in the background? We’re making this too easy for you.
Enable Browser Caching
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
The goal with any landing page should be getting prospects to convert the first time they visit, but the reality is that not everyone will. Sometimes, visitors will need some time to think about it: they’ll bounce, do more research, check out some competitors, then come back to your original offer. Browser caching ensures that when they return, your page will load even faster—and that’ll make them more likely to convert.
Not sure if you’ve already got caching enabled? Before you start, run a quick caching check using a tool like this one from GiftOfSpeed.
If your site is built on WordPress, enabling caching is as easy as adding a plugin.* (WordPress is almost too easy, huh?) Check out this list of caching plugins, most of which include quick instructions for getting set up.
*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these caching recommendations could create big problems. Check with us first.
For those not on WordPress, enabling browser caching on your own is pretty simple if you’re willing to get your hands dirty. For example, on Apache web servers, it comes down to inserting a little bit of code into the .htaccess file on your web host or server: <IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year” ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month” ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year” ExpiresDefault “access 1 month” </IfModule>
This article from Varvy provides a great how-to, as does this one from WinningWP (which discusses enabling browser caching from a WordPress perspective but is applicable more broadly).
If all of this makes you nervous, there’s likely a simpler method for you to set up browser caching. Most web hosts will enable caching for you if you ask. Depending on your hosting solution, it might be as easy as making a phone call. (Although, now that I think about it, that might be more daunting for some of us.)
Building Pages in Unbounce? Seven-day browser caching is enabled on all Unbounce-built landing pages, so this is a speed fix you can comfortably skip. Maybe use this free time to treat yourself to some self-care? You’ve earned it.
Set Up GZIP Compression
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
When a visitor reaches your landing page, their browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the page and the server transmits them back. Naturally, that process moves faster if the information being sent is compressed to be as small as possible. Here’s where GZIP compression comes in.
(You’ll want to check to see if GZIP compression is already enabled before you get started.)
As with browser caching, the difficulty of setting up GZIP compression is going to be determined by how your website was built. If you use WordPress, you’re in luck: many WordPress plugins will enable GZIP compression for you almost automatically. If you don’t use WordPress, well, we’re headed back into your server.
This article from GTmetrix provides a quick overview of the importance of GZIP compression and how to enable it. With Apache web servers, you’ll need to add this chunk of code to your .htaccess file. <IfModule mod_deflate.c> # Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
# Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers) BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html Header append Vary User-Agent </IfModule>
And again, if this is beyond your comfort zone, your web host will probably help you set up GZIP compression if you ask nicely.
Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to ask us nicely, because we’ve already done it. All Unbounce landing pages are automatically compressed during data transfer. (But be nice to us anyway, alright?)
Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
WordPress is wonderful in its simplicity. As we’ve seen throughout this article, page speed fixes that might require a front-end developer on a static website can often be achieved by simply installing a WordPress plugin. Want to enable browser caching? Boom, W3 Total Cache.* Need to minify your scripts? Pow, Autoptomize.* Developer, shmeveloper.
But because it’s so easy to add functionality through plugins, WordPress websites have a habit of collecting a lot of them—along with all the of the bits and bites of code that make them work. Those add up.
Take a look at the scripts and plugins you’ve added to your website and decide whether they’re essential to your visitor experience. If they’re not, junking them could help cut some extra seconds off of your load time. (And guess what? There’s a plugin for that.) You can also disable plugins one at a time, then retest your page speed to determine which ones are problematic.
*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these plugins in particular might start a fire.
Building Pages in Unbounce? This is more of WordPress fix, but it also applies to Unbounce customers that have inserted a bunch of custom scripts onto their landing pages. Learn how the Unbounce Script Manager helps you keep things tidy.
Convert Images to Sprites
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
If your landing page includes a series of similar-sized images (say, for a client logo bar), you can shorten your load time by combining them into an image sprite, then use CSS to display specific chunks of that sprite at a time. This post from WebFX provides a great step-by-step guide for creating CSS sprites.
Joining smaller images into a larger file might seem counterintuitive, but again, the idea here is to reduce the number of HTTP requests on your page and ultimately make it faster. Each individual image requires its own call—combining images into a single CSS sprite means your page only needs to make one.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We don’t build CSS sprites for you, but you can certainly use them on your Unbounce-built landing pages. Check out our documentation on custom JS and CSS with Unbounce.
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes
We’re into the scary stuff now.
These are fixes you should absolutely not attempt unless you know what you’re doing or you’ve consulted extensively with a front-end developer. (We even had one of the Unbounce devs fact-check this article, and we’ve never felt smaller.) Proceed with caution.
Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS
Difficulty: Hard / Estimated Time: 45 Minutes
Those CSS and JS scripts that make your landing page beautiful and enable cool, dynamic functionality? They could be one of the major reasons that your page is loading so slowly. (Bad news for my flashing, neon visitor counter.)
When a web browser runs into CSS or JS in the head of your document, it’ll wait to download and process that content before continuing to render your page’s HTML. That might sound like a good thing from a user experience perspective—after all, we want people to see our landing page as it was intended—but it actually means that visitors can be left waiting on a blank screen while everything loads in the background.
To avoid this, we need to implement techniques for preventing render-blocking CSS and JS on our landing page. (Refer back to your Google PageSpeed Insights results to check if any scripts are slowing down your page load.)
Reduce render-blocking CSS
There are a couple of ways that we can neutralize render-blocking CSS. One option is to defer all CSS until after the HTML has loaded. That’ll certainly improve page speed, but it will also present non-styled content when the visitor first reaches our page. Not ideal.
The other, more preferable option is to defer most style rules until the HTML has been rendered, but inline the CSS necessary to correctly display content above the fold within the HTML. That way, visitors will see the properly-styled content as soon as they hit the page while the rest will load out of view. Pretty sneaky. This is a great tutorial using a real-life example from codeburst.io.
Another page speed opportunity for you here is combining your CSS files. By moving your style rules from several files to just one (or maybe two, tops), you can reduce the number of times that visitors need to ping your web server and improve your landing page load time. Here’s a good resource from GiftOfSpeed on combining and compressing you CSS scripts.
Eliminate render-blocking JS
Like CSS, JS scripts can prevent your landing page from rendering as quickly as you might like. We can avoid that by deploying the defer and async attributes. The former tells the browser to wait until your HTML is rendered before it begins pulling in JS scripts, while the latter asks that JS be downloaded simultaneously without interrupting the HTML download.
An important note is that not all JS scripts are equal: some are critical to the rendering of your page and need to be addressed right out of the gate, so they’ll have to stay at the top. Dareboost does a good job of explaining how to distinguish between critical and non-critical JS, as well as how to implement deferred and asynchronous loading.
Building Pages in Unbounce? Unbounce optimizes for most Google PageSpeed Insights recommendations, including the removal of render-blocking elements. That means you can skip this one.
Start Hand-Coding with AMP
Difficulty: Very Hard / Estimated Time: ∞ Hours
Alright, “∞ hours” is an overstatement, but implementing AMP is no small task. Developed by Google, the AMP project is an entirely new framework with which to build your web pages. The goal? Dramatically improve page speed, especially for mobile users.
AMP is made up of three core components: AMP HTML, AMP JS, and AMP Cache. That means you’ll need to learn new markup, as well as understand the framework well enough to get your landing pages validated and make sure they actually work.
We won’t get into the nitty-gritty of building with AMP here, but the AMP website has a bunch of resources (including tutorials) to help you get started.
Building Pages in Unbounce? No hand-coding AMP pages for you—Unbounce makes it easy to drag and drop together AMP experiences. Choose one of our AMP-optimized templates, load your content, get validated, and start publishing lightning-fast landing pages right away.
Improving your landing page speed can sound intimidating, but even small tweaks will make a big difference for your load times. Tackle the easy stuff first, then move onto more challenging fixes as you get comfortable. And above all, keep testing: seeing your improved speed results after each undertaking will give you the confidence and motivation to move forward.
Or, you know, just build with Unbounce. We automatically handle most of the speed fixes listed (or at least makes them super easy), which saves a ton of time. That means you can focus on what matters: getting more conversions and improving ROI.
from Digital https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/increase-landing-page-speed/ via http://www.rssmix.com/
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Increase Your Landing Page Speed (By Stealing Our Homework)
If you’ve read Unbounce’s 2019 Page Speed Report (and you really should), then you already know why speed is so important this year. Slow-loading landing pages have always been an obstacle to higher conversions, and now Google is punishing poor mobile load times in its search rankings. To be successful in 2019, we—marketers—need to be thinking fast. But are we?
To find out, we polled almost 400 marketers on their attitudes around page speed and asked what (if anything) they were doing to get faster.
Just 56% of marketers are happy with their mobile load times, according to the 2019 Page Speed Report.
Almost three of every four respondents said they had taken steps to improve their page speeds over the last year, and that’s pretty good. Alarmingly, though, only half of marketers we surveyed are satisfied with their load times on mobile.
So most marketers are trying to get faster, but many aren’t where they want to be. Which begs the question: what are people doing to speed up their landing page load times?
Computer, enhance!
Only 39% of marketers have bothered to find out how fast their pages are actually loading. Not great.
Here, we start to see why marketers are somewhat pessimistic about their page speed progress. Just over half have optimized their landing page images—ostensibly one of the simplest ways to speed up your load times—and even fewer have done any of the real technical-sounding things they need to get faster. (I mean, fair, they sound pretty boring to us, too.)
Here’s a doozy, though: just one in three marketers have run a website speed test to find out whether their load times are impacting their conversions. That’s the easiest one!
And hey, we get it. Marketers are being asked to do more than ever before, often with fewer resources. If you’re a small team (or a single person, the smallest of the teams), you might feel you don’t have the time or expertise to meaningfully improve your page speed.
But I’ve gone and done the hard work for you—me, a film school graduate who, until recently, believed that his Apple computer was impervious to viruses. (Hoo boy, it is not.) I’ve spent hours talking to Unbounce developers, reading how-to guides, and generally just bombarding my brain with the most dull, technical page speed information I could get ahold of. (Apologies to said developers.) And if I can get my head around it, there’s no excuse for the rest of you.
Below, I’ve simplified some of the most effective ways to increase your landing page loading times in a guide. For each fix, I’ve indicated the technical difficulty and the estimated time it’ll take, so you know exactly what you’re getting yourself in to. Use the table of contents below to jump to what’s relevant to you, or go ahead and do it all in order.
Jump to a Landing Page Speed Fix
How to Check Your Landing Page Speed
Run a Google Speed Test (5 Minutes)
Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer (5 Minutes)
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes
Reduce Your Page Content (15 Minutes)
Optimize Your Images (30 Minutes)
Host Your Videos Elsewhere (30 Minutes)
Audit Your Hosting Solution (30 Minutes)
Implement a CDN (30 Minutes)
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes
Minify HTML, JS, and CSS (15 Minutes)
Enable Browser Caching (15 Minutes)
Set Up GZIP Compression (15 Minutes)
Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins (30 Minutes)
Convert Images to Sprites (30 Minutes)
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes
Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS (45 Minutes)
Start Hand-Coding with AMP
Final note: If you’ve built your page with Unbounce, you can skip a lot of this stuff—we make many speed fixes on the back-end automatically. In this post, look for the ‘Building Pages in Unbounce?‘ callout boxes to see if a given fix is something you need to implement.
Look for these callout boxes throughout this post to get Unbounce-specific tips and learn how we automatically optimize your landing pages to make them load super fast.
How to Check Your Landing Page Speed
First things first.
Before you throw on your hard hat and start hitting things with a hammer (both figuratively and literally), it’s important to have some idea of what’s working—and what’s not—on your landing page. That means running a speed audit.
It’s important to point out that, regardless of which speed test you use, you don’t want to get too hung up on your score. Achieving a perfect score is not always technically possible (and it might not even be desirable). Instead, use your results as a general guideline to improve page speed and implement the fixes that make sense for you.
Okay—let’s test them pages.
Run a Google Speed Test
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes
There are a bunch of great tools for testing your page speed, but why not start with the big dog itself? Google’s PageSpeed Insights is an awesome way to do a quick performance check-up with at-a-glance recommendations. (Ryan Engley, Unbounce’s VP of Product Marketing, explains how to interpret and act on your PageSpeed Insights results in this must-read blog post.) Then there’s Lighthouse, a newer tool from Google that provides a comprehensive analysis of your how your page presents to end users.
You’ll also want to run your page through Google’s Test My Site tool, which will check your speed from a mobile perspective.
Clicking on individual results in PageSpeed Insights will reveal your problematic page elements.
Running a Google speed test should only take a couple of minutes, and the results will help you identify some of the top opportunities to boost your landing page load times.
Try the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 5 Minutes
Running a speed test with Google should be your top priority, but PageSpeed Insights doesn’t give results tailored to landing pages. For that, you’ll want to run your page through the Unbounce Landing Page Analyzer, which not only provides feedback on page performance but includes a bunch of advice on creating more effective campaigns and kicking your conversions into overdrive.
Unbounce’s Landing Page Analyzer provides feedback on page speed, but also actionable advice on things like SEO, message match, and mobile-friendliness.
Building Pages in Unbounce? Then you’ll definitely want to give our Landing Page Analyzer a shot. Get best-practice recommendations for conversion optimization and see how your landing pages stack up against others in your industry.
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Easy Fixes
With your results from both Google and Unbounce, you’ll be well-equipped to move onto the actual work of making your page perform better. It’s time to pick up that hammer.
These fixes should be simple enough for anyone to tackle, regardless of their technical expertise.
Reduce Your Page Content
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
We’ve marked this as an easy opportunity to increase your page speed, but it probably won’t feel like that when you start thinking about which elements on your page you can junk. Marketers love big hero shots, beautiful supporting imagery, and fun, animated explainer videos. But how much of that content is actually helping you drive conversions?
Visual content accounts for a huge portion of the size of an average web page—images account for over 20% of web page weight, as pointed out by Kinsta—and each element creates an HTTP request. That’s when your visitor’s browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the elements of your page. Too many calls can be a serious drag on your load time, so one of the simplest ways to improve your page speed is cutting down the number of elements you include.
Look at each piece of content on your page critically, then ask yourself: “Does this spark joy?” “Does this increase conversions?” If you don’t think there are pieces you can toss, try running an A/B test with a slimmed-down version of the page. The results might surprise you.
Bottom line: stick to the fundamentals of good landing page design and try to keep the number of elements (and thus HTTP requests) to a minimum.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We recommend that you keep things pretty lean, but we’d never remove content from your landing page. (Must resist… desire… to do best practices…) This is one optimization that you’ll have to tackle on your own.
Optimize Your Images
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Once you’ve trimmed some elements from your page, you’ll want to optimize the content that made the cut. Poor image optimization is the most common reason for slow page loads, especially for mobile visitors. Fortunately, it’s also one of the easiest issues to fix.
These are some quick tips for shrinking your images and improving your page speed. The goal here should be getting images at least under 800kb, but the smaller we can make them, the better.
Resize your images
It’s easy to chuck a larger image onto your page and rely on your content management system (CMS) to compress it to the appropriate size, but it’ll still be loading at least some of those extra pixels on the back end, and your visitors are going to feel it in the load. When you add an image, make sure it’s the same dimensions that your page will be rendering it.*
*This doesn’t necessarily apply to Unbounce’s retina image support—read up on that here.
Choose the right file type
Most people don’t think too much about the format of the image they’re uploading, but it can have a dramatic effect on page performance. The file types you’re probably most familiar with are JPEG and PNG—and, yes, there are differences.
JPEG is a ‘lossy’ format, which means it’ll lose some data during compression. That typically gives you a smaller file, but it can come at the expense of visual fidelity. Generally, images with significant color variation (say, photographs) perform better as JPEGs, and any dip in quality can usually go undetected.
PNG is ‘lossless,’ so the image’s appearance won’t change when resized, but it tends to make for larger files if there’s significant color variation. PNG is ideal for simple images with defined shapes, like those with text. Saving PNGs in 8-bit (rather than 24-bit, which has a broader color palette) can help shave off some extra bites.
Here are some optimization tips for JPEG and PNG (and GIF, that villain) from Google itself.
Use compression tools
Before your weigh-in, it’s good to run images through a final round of compression. There are plenty of image compression tools on WordPress, as well as some free, standalone ones like TinyPNG. These shrinky gizmos offer a simple way to cut down your image sizes without braving the cursed labyrinth that is Adobe’s export settings. (Hey, I’m a words guy.)
Your takeaways here are:
Ensure your image dimensions match how they’ll actually be displayed
Use JPEG when a slight dip in visual fidelity isn’t the end of the world (like photography), but PNG when it is (images with text and sharp lines)
Compress images to keep the file size as tiny as possible
If you want to take a deeper dive into image optimization, we recommend that you check out this post from Search Engine Land, which goes into detail on making images smaller while keeping them beautiful.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got you covered. Unbounce’s Auto Image Optimizer shrinks your images as soon as they’re uploaded so you can focus on making the best landing page possible.
Host Your Videos Elsewhere
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Why carry something yourself when you can make someone else carry it for you? That’s my motto for landing pages and life, and it’s why I’m no longer welcome on Unbounce’s company hiking trips.
Hosting videos on your own domain can be great for SEO purposes, but that’s not usually our goal with landing pages. We want everything to load in a flash and give our visitors the best chance to convert. Depending on your hosting solution, though, your videos might be slowing down your page speed, suffering from playback issues, and taking up an uncomfortable amount of server space.
Done properly, transferring videos to a third-party platform can shed some extra load time and help your pages render faster. Consider moving video content to Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo, then using a light embed technique so that your videos only load heavier playback elements when your visitors actually click on them.
Building Pages in Unbounce? As a disclaimer: Using light embed codes with Unbounce (or any custom code, for that matter) will require some technical knowledge to implement and could, in rare cases, cause issues. Check out this Unbounce community post for more information.
Audit Your Hosting Solution
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
Loading speed isn’t just determined by what’s on your landing page. Your web host also has a major influence in how quickly your page rolls out to potential customers.
There are three common models for web hosting:
Shared hosting Generally the most affordable solution, shared hosting is when your website is hosted alongside other sites on a single web server. Everyone draws from common resources (like storage space and processing power), which means—you guessed it—you need to share.
Virtual private server (VPS) hosting This is essentially a mix of both shared and dedicated hosting. With VPS, your website still shares server space with others, but you’ll have dedicated resources that no one else can dip into. The result is more power and flexibility, but it tends to come with a higher price tag.
Dedicated hosting For those who’ve had a traumatic roommate experience (who hasn’t?), dedicated hosting means your website has the server all to itself. More resources, no sharing. That’s great if you’re heavy on digital content and get a ton of traffic, but dedicated hosting is also the most expensive option and requires the technical know-how to set up and maintain your server.
Low-volume websites can generally get by with the cost-effective shared solution, but once your traffic starts to rise, you might not be getting enough juice from your web host to deliver content quickly—and that’s when load times start to suffer. (Give this post from Search Engine Journal a read for a more comprehensive explanation.)
It’s also important to note that the whereabouts of your web server can have a significant impact on your page speed. If you’re not using a content delivery network (CDN; more on this below), you’ll want to make sure that traffic from foreign countries isn’t encountering too much latency.
Think your hosting solution might be impacting your page speed? Run your site through a server speed test like this one from Bitcatcha, and use WebPageTest or Pingdom to see how your quickly your landing page loads in other countries. Depending on the results, you might decide it’s time to upgrade your hosting plan (or change web hosts altogether).
Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to worry about this one—Unbounce’s global hosting solution boasts 99.95% uptime and ensures that your landing pages always have the necessary resources to load super fast.
Implement a CDN
Difficulty: Easy / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
When your landing page gets a visitor, their web browser pings your server to get the content necessary to build out the page. Simple, right? Everyone downloads your website information from the same place, regardless of their location around the world. Well, that’s usually fine if the visitor is in or close to the country that your web server is located, but when they’re halfway around the globe, chances are they’re going to encounter some latency.
To avoid that, you should look into deploying a CDN, which caches your website across a network of data centers and proxy servers all over the planet. Say your own server is in the United States and someone from Lithuania is trying to visit your landing page. Instead of downloading your content from across the Atlantic, that visitor can pull a cached version from a server nearby.
Setting your website up with a CDN is pretty straightforward and—depending on your traffic—generally affordable. Here’s a list of some popular CDN providers from Mashable.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We’ve got five global data centers supporting the Unbounce CDN, which means your landing pages will load in a flash regardless of where they’re being accessed from.
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Intermediate Fixes
These next speed fixes are a little trickier, but they should be manageable for marketers with a little technical know-how. Still, a mistake here could mean actual damage to your landing page.
Our recommendation? Do some research, make a backup, and—if you can—consult briefly with a developer on your team. It never hurts to have an experienced colleague to turn to if you get in over your head.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We talk a lot about WordPress through this next section. If you’re using our plugin to publish Unbounce landing pages to a WordPress domain, some of these recommended speed fixes can actually cause technical issues. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us for clarification if you’re ever unsure.
Minify HTML, CSS, and JS
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
All those lines of HTML, CSS, and JS code that make up your landing page? They’re packed with spaces, line breaks, and other bits of formatting that make it more legible and easier for us to interpret, but each makes your load time just an eensy bit slower—and the web browsers your visitors are using to render your page don’t particularly need them.
With minification, the goal is to cut out all of that extra junk and condense your code so that browsers can read it faster. Here’s an example snippet of Javascript code from Wikipedia:
var array = []; for (var i = 0; i < 20; i++) { array[i] = i; }
After minifying, that code would look something like this:
for(var a=[i=0];++i<20;a[i]=i);
There are plenty of free online tools that will do this for your landing page, like Minify Code, as well as a bunch of WordPress plugins. Be sure to check out this post from Elegant Themes, which is an awesome resource that dives into the many options at your disposal.
Building Pages in Unbounce? Do we minify? We practically invented minifying. (Editor’s note: We did not.) Unbounce compresses all of your code automatically, making your landing page as slim as can be. No coding your pages from scratch and no minifying that code in the background? We’re making this too easy for you.
Enable Browser Caching
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
The goal with any landing page should be getting prospects to convert the first time they visit, but the reality is that not everyone will. Sometimes, visitors will need some time to think about it: they’ll bounce, do more research, check out some competitors, then come back to your original offer. Browser caching ensures that when they return, your page will load even faster—and that’ll make them more likely to convert.
Not sure if you’ve already got caching enabled? Before you start, run a quick caching check using a tool like this one from GiftOfSpeed.
If your site is built on WordPress, enabling caching is as easy as adding a plugin.* (WordPress is almost too easy, huh?) Check out this list of caching plugins, most of which include quick instructions for getting set up.
*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these caching recommendations could create big problems. Check with us first.
For those not on WordPress, enabling browser caching on your own is pretty simple if you’re willing to get your hands dirty. For example, on Apache web servers, it comes down to inserting a little bit of code into the .htaccess file on your web host or server: <IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive On ExpiresByType image/jpg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/gif “access 1 year” ExpiresByType image/png “access 1 year” ExpiresByType text/css “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/html “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/pdf “access 1 month” ExpiresByType text/x-javascript “access 1 month” ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access 1 month” ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access 1 year” ExpiresDefault “access 1 month” </IfModule>
This article from Varvy provides a great how-to, as does this one from WinningWP (which discusses enabling browser caching from a WordPress perspective but is applicable more broadly).
If all of this makes you nervous, there’s likely a simpler method for you to set up browser caching. Most web hosts will enable caching for you if you ask. Depending on your hosting solution, it might be as easy as making a phone call. (Although, now that I think about it, that might be more daunting for some of us.)
Building Pages in Unbounce? Seven-day browser caching is enabled on all Unbounce-built landing pages, so this is a speed fix you can comfortably skip. Maybe use this free time to treat yourself to some self-care? You’ve earned it.
Set Up GZIP Compression
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 15 Minutes
When a visitor reaches your landing page, their browser pings your web server to request the files that make up the page and the server transmits them back. Naturally, that process moves faster if the information being sent is compressed to be as small as possible. Here’s where GZIP compression comes in.
(You’ll want to check to see if GZIP compression is already enabled before you get started.)
As with browser caching, the difficulty of setting up GZIP compression is going to be determined by how your website was built. If you use WordPress, you’re in luck: many WordPress plugins will enable GZIP compression for you almost automatically. If you don’t use WordPress, well, we’re headed back into your server.
This article from GTmetrix provides a quick overview of the importance of GZIP compression and how to enable it. With Apache web servers, you’ll need to add this chunk of code to your .htaccess file. <IfModule mod_deflate.c> # Compress HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Text, XML and fonts AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/vnd.ms-fontobject AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-truetype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-font-ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/opentype AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/otf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE font/ttf AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/svg+xml AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/javascript AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
# Remove browser bugs (only needed for really old browsers) BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html Header append Vary User-Agent </IfModule>
And again, if this is beyond your comfort zone, your web host will probably help you set up GZIP compression if you ask nicely.
Building Pages in Unbounce? You don’t have to ask us nicely, because we’ve already done it. All Unbounce landing pages are automatically compressed during data transfer. (But be nice to us anyway, alright?)
Kill Needless Scripts and Plugins
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
WordPress is wonderful in its simplicity. As we’ve seen throughout this article, page speed fixes that might require a front-end developer on a static website can often be achieved by simply installing a WordPress plugin. Want to enable browser caching? Boom, W3 Total Cache.* Need to minify your scripts? Pow, Autoptomize.* Developer, shmeveloper.
But because it’s so easy to add functionality through plugins, WordPress websites have a habit of collecting a lot of them—along with all the of the bits and bites of code that make them work. Those add up.
Take a look at the scripts and plugins you’ve added to your website and decide whether they’re essential to your visitor experience. If they’re not, junking them could help cut some extra seconds off of your load time. (And guess what? There’s a plugin for that.) You can also disable plugins one at a time, then retest your page speed to determine which ones are problematic.
*If you’re publishing Unbounce pages to a WordPress domain, these plugins in particular might start a fire.
Building Pages in Unbounce? This is more of WordPress fix, but it also applies to Unbounce customers that have inserted a bunch of custom scripts onto their landing pages. Learn how the Unbounce Script Manager helps you keep things tidy.
Convert Images to Sprites
Difficulty: Intermediate / Estimated Time: 30 Minutes
If your landing page includes a series of similar-sized images (say, for a client logo bar), you can shorten your load time by combining them into an image sprite, then use CSS to display specific chunks of that sprite at a time. This post from WebFX provides a great step-by-step guide for creating CSS sprites.
Joining smaller images into a larger file might seem counterintuitive, but again, the idea here is to reduce the number of HTTP requests on your page and ultimately make it faster. Each individual image requires its own call—combining images into a single CSS sprite means your page only needs to make one.
Building Pages in Unbounce? We don’t build CSS sprites for you, but you can certainly use them on your Unbounce-built landing pages. Check out our documentation on custom JS and CSS with Unbounce.
Improve Your Landing Page Speed: Hard Fixes
We’re into the scary stuff now.
These are fixes you should absolutely not attempt unless you know what you’re doing or you’ve consulted extensively with a front-end developer. (We even had one of the Unbounce devs fact-check this article, and we’ve never felt smaller.) Proceed with caution.
Remove Render-Blocking JS and CSS
Difficulty: Hard / Estimated Time: 45 Minutes
Those CSS and JS scripts that make your landing page beautiful and enable cool, dynamic functionality? They could be one of the major reasons that your page is loading so slowly. (Bad news for my flashing, neon visitor counter.)
When a web browser runs into CSS or JS in the head of your document, it’ll wait to download and process that content before continuing to render your page’s HTML. That might sound like a good thing from a user experience perspective—after all, we want people to see our landing page as it was intended—but it actually means that visitors can be left waiting on a blank screen while everything loads in the background.
To avoid this, we need to implement techniques for preventing render-blocking CSS and JS on our landing page. (Refer back to your Google PageSpeed Insights results to check if any scripts are slowing down your page load.)
Reduce render-blocking CSS
There are a couple of ways that we can neutralize render-blocking CSS. One option is to defer all CSS until after the HTML has loaded. That’ll certainly improve page speed, but it will also present non-styled content when the visitor first reaches our page. Not ideal.
The other, more preferable option is to defer most style rules until the HTML has been rendered, but inline the CSS necessary to correctly display content above the fold within the HTML. That way, visitors will see the properly-styled content as soon as they hit the page while the rest will load out of view. Pretty sneaky. This is a great tutorial using a real-life example from codeburst.io.
Another page speed opportunity for you here is combining your CSS files. By moving your style rules from several files to just one (or maybe two, tops), you can reduce the number of times that visitors need to ping your web server and improve your landing page load time. Here’s a good resource from GiftOfSpeed on combining and compressing you CSS scripts.
Eliminate render-blocking JS
Like CSS, JS scripts can prevent your landing page from rendering as quickly as you might like. We can avoid that by deploying the defer and async attributes. The former tells the browser to wait until your HTML is rendered before it begins pulling in JS scripts, while the latter asks that JS be downloaded simultaneously without interrupting the HTML download.
An important note is that not all JS scripts are equal: some are critical to the rendering of your page and need to be addressed right out of the gate, so they’ll have to stay at the top. Dareboost does a good job of explaining how to distinguish between critical and non-critical JS, as well as how to implement deferred and asynchronous loading.
Building Pages in Unbounce? Unbounce optimizes for most Google PageSpeed Insights recommendations, including the removal of render-blocking elements. That means you can skip this one.
Start Hand-Coding with AMP
Difficulty: Very Hard / Estimated Time: ∞ Hours
Alright, “∞ hours” is an overstatement, but implementing AMP is no small task. Developed by Google, the AMP project is an entirely new framework with which to build your web pages. The goal? Dramatically improve page speed, especially for mobile users.
AMP is made up of three core components: AMP HTML, AMP JS, and AMP Cache. That means you’ll need to learn new markup, as well as understand the framework well enough to get your landing pages validated and make sure they actually work.
We won’t get into the nitty-gritty of building with AMP here, but the AMP website has a bunch of resources (including tutorials) to help you get started.
Building Pages in Unbounce? No hand-coding AMP pages for you—Unbounce makes it easy to drag and drop together AMP experiences. Choose one of our AMP-optimized templates, load your content, get validated, and start publishing lightning-fast landing pages right away.
Improving your landing page speed can sound intimidating, but even small tweaks will make a big difference for your load times. Tackle the easy stuff first, then move onto more challenging fixes as you get comfortable. And above all, keep testing: seeing your improved speed results after each undertaking will give you the confidence and motivation to move forward.
Or, you know, just build with Unbounce. We automatically handle most of the speed fixes listed (or at least makes them super easy), which saves a ton of time. That means you can focus on what matters: getting more conversions and improving ROI.
from Marketing https://unbounce.com/landing-pages/increase-landing-page-speed/ via http://www.rssmix.com/
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Future Proof Your Business: Marketing That Expands Your Brand’s Future
So, what do I mean when I say you should future proof your business? Future-proofing means creating a business that anticipates future changes by building products and brands that don’t become obsolete. A company striving to survive far into the future plans for that future today, rather than facing the stresses and shocks that come when the future overwhelms that business.
The twin economic and health crises facing businesses today caught many businesses unaware, leaving them vulnerable and forcing many to close their doors forever. Brands like Lord and Taylor, Chuck E. Cheese, and many other businesses in the retail and entertainment space now find themselves with few options other than declaring bankruptcy and closing the doors in many locations. And, while the times we face today are highly unusual, such economic challenges are far from unique. Instead, the problems underpinning this crisis have been building for decades, ignored by managers and investors who buried their collective heads in the sand, when they should have anticipated changes in the status quo.
A cautionary tale
The US auto industry is a cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t future proof your business. In the 1970s, US automakers ran the game and turned tremendous profits. But, the winds of change were coming and they did nothing to change the business model that brought vast wealth to everyone in the supply chain.
The Japanese, a long-standing joke in the industry for the poor quality of their automobiles embraced the strictures of TQM (total quality management) and not only vastly improved their quality but used early precursors of lean to cut down the time needed to produce a new model from 7 years to 3. This was the first of the triple threats that brought down the mighty.
Next, the oil embargo from OPEC leaders who learned about supply and demand in Western universities brought gas shortages resulting in long lines (some areas resorted to rationing gas) and huge spikes in prices from about 23 cents/ gallon to 75 cents/ gallon almost overnight.
Finally, politics raised its ugly head by endorsing free trade, which lowered tariffs and quotas on foreign products, including cars.
In response to these threats, Detroit (the seat of the US auto industry) did virtually nothing. They shook their fists at politicians to restrict imports of cars while continuing to manufacture large land crafts that got gallons/ mile in contrast to Japanese small cars with their fuel efficiency. Plus, Japanese cars began surpassing the quality of American-made cars. The net result of this failure to recognize the future was devastating. Detriot became a ghost town and the American auto industry never regained its prominence as the car of choice in the US — a 50-year mistake.
Why managers don’t future proof
Failure to future proof your business doesn’t show up right away. Your business goes chugging along, whether you future-proofed or not but if you didn’t future proof your business, you might hit a wall when external conditions change. Thus, rather than facing an uphill ramp over a longer period of time during which you future-proofed your business, you stop dead in your tracks. Climbing the wall in front of you requires a massive amount of resources (time, money, effort, focus) and may be impossible. Hence, rather than spread the pain over a long period of time, you experience it all at once.
Immediate problems
When you future proof your business, the results don’t show up for years, maybe decades. Sometimes, gains from future-proofing never show up. In the meantime, your business faces a series of immediate challenges, such as delivery delays, administrative issues such as employee relations and equipment failure, or cash flow problems. Failure to fix these problems damages your reputation with customers, partners, and employees, resulting in lower profits now and in the near future.
In addition, running the day-to-day operations of the business takes time and focus. Sometimes you feel the daily demands of your business drain you of everything you’ve got.
And, face it. You have a limited amount of bandwidth and, as the saying goes, the “squeaky wheel gets greased”. Hence, you spend all your energy on just surviving every day.
Short-sightedness
Here’s a great article from Forbes on the dangers of sacrificing long-term success for short-term gains and, more important, how to avoid this common pitfall. This begs the question of why this negative management style continues to dominate. Here are some factors driving short-sightedness in businesses:
Too busy to think long-run
Lack of data necessary for long-term planning
More pressing priorities, including short-run profits
Demands from external parties, such as investors and board members
Restrictive employment contracts
Lack of imagination
Compensation plans that reward short-term profits
Underpinning all these factors contributing to the short-sightedness experienced in a number of businesses is a lack of leadership and poorly constructed reward structures. For example, if you’re a manager and your compensation plan rewards profits earned by your unit, you work very hard to optimize your profits. Since many efforts to future proof your business involve expenses, you know your paycheck goes down when you spend money to future proof rather than carrying that money as a profit. Under those conditions, almost no manager dedicates money toward the future.
But, the future eventually becomes the present, bringing with it the challenges mentioned earlier that reduce profits. That should change your motivation toward planning for the future, right? No, because if you did a great job producing profits, you moved on to a higher-level position within your company or you took your ability to produce profits to another company where you take the same short-sighted approach. In fact, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average worker stays with their current employer for just over 4 years and may hold several titles within that time. Hence, by the time the business ends up paying for their short-sightedness, managers responsible for those poor decisions are long gone and another poor guy/ gal takes the blame.
Steps to future proof your business
1. Market sensing
Market-sensing is “a broad generation of market intelligence by an organization relating to present and future needs of customers, distribution of these knowledge across the organisation’s functional unit, and the organization’s responsiveness/reaction to the market” (Jaworski & Kohli, 1993). Below is a graphical depiction of market sensing data showing how a firm uses the probability of an event happening and the effect of that event on the business’s performance.
Effective market sensing goes beyond simply understanding changing consumer needs to investigate the potential impact of other elements of the external environment, including the competition, economy, technology, and legal/regulatory environments. Of course, there’s often an overlap between changes in these elements of the environment, including changes in consumer tastes. Here are just a few changes facing companies today:
Consumers increasingly choose products based on a firm’s commitment to sustainable business practices such as protecting the environment, social justice, animal welfare, and charitable contributions
Technology is changing with:
increased use and ability of robots, AI (artificial intelligence), and ML(machine learning)
use of sensors to optimize performance in manufacturing and logistics
sophisticated digital options such as virtual dressing rooms allowing customers to purchase a wider range of products online
drones that reduce delivery time
reduced cost of data storage allowing the collection of massive amounts of data to fuel new industries
nanotechnology
virtual reality to let you go anywhere without leaving the room
blockchain and other distributed ledger technology
quantum computers that make today’s supercomputers look like toys
Telehealth increasingly fueled by AI to make diagnosis more accurate and faster.
Cryptocurrency and decreased use of money as more consumers choose to pay using apps like Apple Pay.
Mobile technology allowing users to do everything with a click of a key from managing their homes, to unlocking their cars, to monitoring their health, reminding them of events, storing and taking pictures/ videos with better quality than cameras did a few years ago, oh, and making phone calls and texts.
2. Brainstorming
Gathering information about the environment is only the first step in the process to future proof your business. Next, firms must disseminate information through the organization to diverse people throughout the organization. The more diverse your team in terms of demographics (age, gender, race) as well as job function, the better ideas you get.
There’s a concept from communication called weak ties, referring to relationships between people beyond a group hence the rationale behind using diverse members in your brainstorming sessions. Hiring folks with experiences outside your company or even your industry brings in more weak ties that benefit your firm by introducing novel ideas and solutions. Using people with similar backgrounds and experiences leads to anemic brainstorming that simply rehashes old ideas.
The main rule of brainstorming is that anything goes. Ideas don’t have to be practical or even possible at this point. An impossible idea often generates a related idea that is doable. Take Leonardo DiVinci. He drew realistic images of machines like helicopters and submarines in a time long before the internal combustion engine. His ideas had no place in his time, but motivated others to produce his imagination once technology caught up.
3. Building a business case
Of course, after brainstorming ideas, it’s time to get down to business. Now ideas are weighed against reality to build a business case for a solution. Be careful that you don’t settle on a single idea too soon or discard an idea because it isn’t easy to build a business case for the solution. Consider a number of your ideas at this step in the process.
4. Building consensus
As you work toward building a business case for your best ideas, start the winnowing process until a single idea remains. Now, strong ties (the opposite of weak ties) become important as the strong relationships developed within a group help build a coalition to see the idea come to life.
A word of warning here. Strong ties, built on reciprocity and respect allow individuals to build social capital they then spend to build consensus behind an idea that drives everyone toward a single goal. That’s a good thing. However, using coercion, promising personal gain, or other tactics to subvert the process lead to unpleasant outcomes and don’t contribute toward future-proofing your business.
5. Rinse and repeat
When you future proof your business it isn’t a one-time event. Future-proofing is an ongoing process of continual market sensing.
Future Proof Your Business: Marketing That Expands Your Brand’s Future published first on https://wabusinessapi.tumblr.com/
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