10 tech predictions from the staff of Android Authority

2018 is almost at an end and it’s undoubtedly been an excellent year for smartphones. We’re already quickly gearing up for 2019’s early high profile releases, and — leaks aside — we’re pretty confident that our veteran industry status gives us a pretty good idea about what to expect.

Here are ten of the Android Authority staff’s best and most out-there predictions for what 2019 will hold.

Gaming phones become more competitive

If you hadn’t noticed, mobile gaming is a big thing, especially in China. So big in fact that we now have a number of dedicated gaming smartphones on the market, including the Razer Phone 2, Asus ROG Phone, and Xiaomi Black Shark.

See also

Cutting-edge processor specs alone aren’t going to be enough next year though, predicts our Luka Mlinar. Gaming phones need to offer more. That’s certainly true when you consider that every other flagship smartphone will be using the same chipset next year: the Snapdragon 855.

We could see better cooling systems, but gimmicks like “speed boost” gaming modes aren’t fooling anyone. Instead, gaming phones may morph to offer superior controllers, even higher screen refresh rates, better audio and feedback features, and perhaps even some more useful gaming software and ecosystem tools. Personally, I’m still waiting on a Sony Xperia Play reboot to gift us an awesome PlayStation phone.

Facebook will (unfortunately) be fine

2018 hasn’t been a good year for Facebook, nor for the privacy of its users. Scandal after scandal has hit the social network throughout 2018, yet it’s still standing firm. Facebook will keep on doing creepy things in 2019, so foresees Sam Moore.

I probably don’t need to remind you about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the U.S. Senate hearing50 million accounts hacked, the further data theft of 29 million users, exposing private photos, and recent revelations about granting message access to third-party companies. But I will. Honestly, it’s miraculous that the company hasn’t succumbed to any of this. I can only fathom that Facebook is so deeply integrated into people’s lives that they can’t bring themselves to rid of it.

If you’re looking for a healthy New Year’s resolution, at least give less of your precious personal data to Mark.

Also read: The biggest tech and mobile blunders of 2018

MOAR CAMERAS

The back of the Nokia 9. 91Mobiles/OnLeaks

If 2018 was the year of the triple camera, 2019 will be the year of the quad or even quintuple camera monster. Or so Android Authority’s Joe Hindy and Williams Pelegrin predict.

Related

The introduction of telephoto, wide-angle, monochrome, and depth sensor camera combinations pushed smartphone photography capabilities up another notch this year. It certainly wouldn’t be a surprise to see manufacturers throw everything they can at both front and rear camera setups in 2019. Samsung already has a quad-camera phone with its Galaxy A9 2018 edition, and flagship models could go even further.

Heck, if that crazy Nokia 9 leak turns out to be true we could be looking at our first penta-camera sometime next year. That would make triple cameras look positively pedestrian. But will it be better than a Pixel?

Farewell bezels, hello holes

Honor View20 selfie camera

Display holes (is that seriously what we’re calling them?) are a safe bet for 2019, so it’s not surprising that a few of our staff suggested this one. We all know Samsung’s Infinity-O display is in production and have already had our first look at the Honor View 20 and its display hole. Expect a number of 2019 smartphones to come sporting this new look.

These advances in display slicing technology open the door for some cool new technological tricks to replace the notch. In-display cameras are a given, but manufacturers could also hide many more sensors, such as 3D facial scanning, into these holes.

We’ve also seen our first in-display fingerprint scanners hit the market this year and Samsung’s UPS display technology suggests it has found a way to embed cameras inside panels too. Perhaps manufacturers will hide other bits of front-facing technology seamlessly into the display in 2019. All in all, these trends probably mean even thinner bezels for 2019’s smartphones too.

Cryptocurrency finally gets a useful dApp, or it dies

I think this was a serious suggestion from Tristan Rayner, but who can be sure when it comes to the apparently infinite, reality-defying possibilities of blockchain?

Despite this year’s major setbacks for the valuations of popular cryptocurrencies, the fundamentals of secure open ledgers and decentralized applications remain appealing. 2019 could finally be the year that a breakthrough application (dApp) that relies on blockchain appears. Perhaps complete with its own currency to keep the data crunching ticking over.

Luka isn’t so optimistic about cryptocurrencies, and who can blame him after the Bitcoin bubble appeared to burst early last year. $17.1k to just $3.7k over the last twelve months certainly looks like curtains for the coin’s mainstream popularity. 2019 could well be the year that decides the fate of cryptocurrencies. Either a breakthrough dApp appears to renew faith, or the idea continues its gradual decline into irrelevance.

Just please, no more attempts at a blockchain phone. OK, everyone?

Battery life won’t get any better (sadly)

Adam Molina points out that we’re probably not looking at longer battery life next year. A disappointing prediction given that this is consistently one of the most requested updates to phones each year.

But with battery sizes gradually increasing and smartphone processors moving on to more efficiency 7nm processes, you’re probably wondering why we’re not predicting a revolution in battery life.

First is that manufacturers keep finding new ways to consume these power savings. Be that a higher performing processor and higher quality gaming, brighter and higher resolution displays, new power consuming content like HDR video, more power hungry multi-camera setups, and 5G. Secondly, because even a generous 20-percent boost to battery life might only add an hour of screen on time to many phones. That’s obviously a good thing, but even for the best phones that last a whole day that extra hour or even two isn’t going to make up the difference to the next milestone: multi-day battery life.

Sorry about this one.

We’ll still be waiting for Android Pie updates

Hadlee Simons is similarly pessimistic in his expectations for 2019 — many of us are going to be sat hammering that refresh button for our Android Pie update.

Hadlee has a pretty good point. Despite the introduction of Project Treble for Oreo-based devices, we haven’t seen the biggest manufacturers offer vastly faster update times to Android Pie. Huawei might just squeeze in its updates before the end of the year, but Samsung, LG, HTC, and others haven’t pushed out their updates to many customers yet, with the exception of a few preview programs.

Instead, the lesser known OEMs with a smaller number of handsets to support have been doing a better job. Essential and OnePlus being notably quick adopters, along with other stock-like OS manufacturers. Unfortunately even Treble doesn’t appear to have encouraged big manufacturers to put the necessary resources into pushing out faster software updates for their phones. Mid-range handsets also appear to still be forgotten about too.

We’ll find at least two more ways to complain about the notch

Hopefully, 2018 won’t be remembered as the year of the notch. Although not universally loathed, it’s definitely one of the more contentious adoptions in the smartphone space this year — so much so that the notch has spawned more than its share of memes and jokes over the last year and a bit.

We’ve heard it all this year, from it’s downright ugly (I’m looking at you Pixel 3 XL) to that it makes phones look like shameless iPhone clones. There have also been plenty of complaints about some of the software the tweaks made to Android Pie, such as the clock position, to accommodate the notch. You folks certainly know what you don’t like.

Our Executive Editor Kris Carlon reckons that we’ll find at least two new things to hate about the notch next year. Better get cracking.

Phones with 16GB of RAM

Our own Feliks Mangus predicts that we could see smartphones packing in a whopping 16GB of RAM hit shelves in 2019. This would undoubtedly be overkill, but is it possible?

The swanky OnePlus 6T McLaren edition comes in a crazy 10GB RAM variant. The newly announced Lenovo Z5 Pro GT already promises 12GB of RAM paired up with a brand new Snapdragon 855 SoC and we’re still not even into 2019’s major smartphone announcements.

While 8GB probably seems like a sensible limit for most flagship smartphones, we’ll surely see some manufacturers push the RAM count even higher. If only to grab headlines rather than offer up revolutionary performance.

5G signal on Galaxy Note 8

5G doesn’t live up to the hype

Both Tristan and I are calling this one now: 5G isn’t going to be the game changer for smartphones that many companies are eagerly hyping up.

Editor’s Pick

If you recall the rollout of 4G LTE, you already know what to expect. Only certain cities will see the technology first and even then coverage will be spotty at best. Couple this with the unknowns about smartphone form factors and, more importantly, battery life and those first 5G smartphones might not be so appealing either.

That said, 5G works. It’s going to have some interesting use cases for home and business internet access, and eventually mass IoT and all that other jargon too. But for smartphones, 2019’s 5G wireless rollout will probably be a muted experience for most of us. Unless you’re that crazy person streaming 4K HDR video to your tiny 6-inch display outside a mmWave base station in downtown New York.

What about your predictions?

That’s enough from us, what are your biggest predictions for smartphones, and tech in general, in 2019?

Next: 2019 will be a great year for smartwatches and fitness trackers — here’s why

Source: Android Zone

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How to Optimize Your WordPress Robots.txt for SEO

Recently one of our readers asked us for tips on how to optimize the robots.txt file to improve SEO. Robots.txt file tells search engines how to crawl your website which makes it an incredibly powerful SEO tool. In this article, we will show you how to create a perfect robots.txt file for SEO.

Using WordPress robots.txt file to improve SEO

What is robots.txt file?

Robots.txt is a text file that website owners can create to tell search engine bots how to crawl and index pages on their site.

It is typically stored in the root directory also known as the main folder of your website. The basic format for a robots.txt file looks like this:

User-agent: [user-agent name]
Disallow: [URL string not to be crawled]

User-agent: [user-agent name]
Allow: [URL string to be crawled]


Sitemap: [URL of your XML Sitemap]

You can have multiple lines of instructions to allow or disallow specific URLs and add multiple sitemaps. If you do not disallow a URL, then search engine bots assume that they are allowed to crawl it.

Here is what a robots.txt example file can look like:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml

In the above robots.txt example, we have allowed search engines to crawl and index files in our WordPress uploads folder.

After that, we have disallowed search bots from crawling and indexing plugins and WordPress admin folders.

Lastly, we have provided the URL of our XML sitemap.

Do You Need a Robots.txt File for Your WordPress Site?

If you don’t have a robots.txt file, then search engines will still crawl and index your website. However, you will not be able to tell search engines which pages or folders they should not crawl.

This will not have much of an impact when you’re first starting a blog and do not have a lot of content.

However as your website grows and you have a lot of content, then you would likely want to have better control over how your website is crawled and indexed.

Here is why.

Search bots have a crawl quota for each website.

This means that they crawl a certain number of pages during a crawl session. If they don’t finish crawling all pages on your site, then they will come back and resume crawl in the next session.

This can slow down your website indexing rate.

You can fix this by disallowing search bots from attempting to crawl unnecessary pages like your WordPress admin pages, plugin files, and themes folder.

By disallowing unnecessary pages, you save your crawl quota. This helps search engines crawl even more pages on your site and index them as quickly as possible.

Another good reason to use robots.txt file is when you want to stop search engines from indexing a post or page on your website.

It is not the safest way to hide content from the general public, but it will help you prevent them from appearing in search results.

What Does an Ideal Robots.txt File Should Look Like?

Many popular blogs use a very simple robots.txt file. Their content may vary, depending on the needs of the specific site:

User-agent: *
Disallow:
 
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/page-sitemap.xml

This robots.txt file allows all bots to index all content and provides them a link to the website’s XML sitemaps.

For WordPress sites, we recommend the following rules in the robots.txt file:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /readme.html
Disallow: /refer/

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/page-sitemap.xml

This tell search bots to index all WordPress images and files. It disallows search bots from indexing WordPress plugin files, WordPress admin area, the WordPress readme file, and affiliate links.

By adding sitemaps to robots.txt file, you make it easy for Google bots to find all the pages on your site.

Now that you know what an ideal robots.txt file look like, let’s take a look at how you can create a robots.txt file in WordPress.

How to Create a Robots.txt File in WordPress?

There are two ways to create a robots.txt file in WordPress. You can choose the method that works best for you.

Method 1: Editing Robots.txt File Using Yoast SEO

If you are using the Yoast SEO plugin, then it comes with a robots.txt file generator.

You can use it to create and edit a robots.txt file directly from your WordPress admin area.

Simply go to SEO » Tools page in your WordPress admin and click on the File Editor link.

File editor tool in Yoast SEO

On the next page, Yoast SEO page will show your existing robots.txt file.

If you don’t have a robots.txt file, then Yoast SEO will generate a robots.txt file for you.

Create robots.txt file using Yoast SEO

By default, Yoast SEO’s robots.txt file generator will add the following rules to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

It is important that you delete this text because it blocks all search engines from crawling your website.

After deleting the default text, you can go ahead and add your own robots.txt rules. We recommend using the ideal robots.txt format we shared above.

Once you’re done, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save robots.txt file’ button to store your changes.

Method 2. Edit Robots.txt file Manually Using FTP

For this method, you will need to use an FTP client to edit robots.txt file.

Simply connect to your WordPress hosting account using an FTP client.

Once inside, you will be able to see the robots.txt file in your website’s root folder.

Editing WordPress robots.txt file using FTP

If you don’t see one, then you likely don’t have a robots.txt file. In that case, you can just go ahead and create one.

Create robots.txt file using FTP

Robots.txt is a plain text file, which means you can download it to your computer and edit it using any plain text editor like Notepad or TextEdit.

After saving your changes, you can upload it back to your website’s root folder.

How to Test Your Robots.txt File?

Once you have created your robots.txt file, it’s always a good idea to test it using a robots.txt tester tool.

There are many robots.txt tester tools out there, but we recommend using the one inside Google Search Console.

Simply login to your Google Search Console account, and then switch to the old Google search console website.

Switch to old Google Search Console

This will take you to the old Google Search Console interface. From here you need to launch the robots.txt tester tool located under ‘Crawl’ menu.

Robots.txt tester tool

The tool will automatically fetch your website’s robots.txt file and highlight the errors and warnings if it found any.

Final Thoughts

The goal of optimizing your robots.txt file is to prevent search engines from crawling pages that are not publicly available. For example, pages in your wp-plugins folder or pages in your WordPress admin folder.

A common myth among SEO experts is that blocking WordPress category, tags, and archive pages will improve crawl rate and result in faster indexing and higher rankings.

This is not true. It’s also against Google’s webmaster guidelines.

We recommend that you follow the above robots.txt format to create a robots.txt file for your website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to optimize your WordPress robots.txt file for SEO. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide and the best WordPress SEO tools to grow your website.

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

The post How to Optimize Your WordPress Robots.txt for SEO appeared first on WPBeginner.

Source: Wordpres

The post How to Optimize Your WordPress Robots.txt for SEO appeared first on TuneMaster.ml.

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) review: The rise of the mid-range

To a lot of people, Samsung just makes flagship devices like the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy Note 9. However, it also makes a range of mid-tier devices with its “J” and “A” series. The “J” phones are the more competitively priced and the “A” range is designed to be more premium. I recently got hold of a Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) because I wanted to run Speed Test G on it and its Exynos processor. I was so impressed, I thought it warranted a full written review!

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) design

The first things you may notice about the A7 are the bezels. In an age where flagship devices are all about edge-to-edge displays and getting the highest screen-t0-body ratio possible, the A7 (2018) might seem a little jarring. When I showed the device to a teenager in my family, the first reaction was, “wow, look at the bezels.”

The A7 (2018) has a 10 percent lower screen-to-body ratio than a device like the Galaxy S9 Plus, which is one of the reasons it’s cheaper. Making all those curved edges costs money in the manufacturing process. That doesn’t mean the A7 (2018) is ugly — it isn’t. In fact, if you can see past the bezels, it has a certain elegance, even a premium look and feel.

The device has a 2.5D rear glass back, which means it is a glass sandwich with some kind of toughened plastic frame acting as the filling. The glass on the back can be a fingerprint magnet, or more precisely a finger-smear magnet, but that is par for the course nowadays.

The buttons are fine but the volume keys may be a bit too far up. All the buttons are on the right side and the SIM tray is on the left. My biggest gripe is with the power key — not as a power key, but as a fingerprint reader. It works well as a power button, but it is quite narrow, which means using it for authentication or unlocking isn’t as seamless as other Samsung experiences. Yes, you can wake and unlock the phone using your registered finger on the power button, but not 100 percent of the time. Once it in while it will glitch and you need to try again (or even a third time). I guess we have been spoiled by the high accuracy of existing fingerprint reader technology.

On the bottom edge of the device, there is a headphone jack (hooray), a MicroUSB port (not so much hooray), and a single speaker. The audio is clear and loud and doesn’t suffer from distortion at higher levels.

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) display

The A7 (2018) has a 6.0-inch FHD+ Super AMOLED Infinity Display. It is bright, clear, and vivid. The colors are rich, and as usual with AMOLED the blacks are deep. Once you have grown accustomed to the bezels, the vibrancy of the display makes using the Galaxy A7 a pleasure. You might even catch yourself wondering why you need to spend so much money on a flagship, when devices like this exist in the mid-range.

There is no physical home button, so on-screen navigation is the order of the day, something that’s been the Samsung way for quite a while now. The 6.0-inch display offers a screen resolution of 2,220 x 1,080 (FHD+), which is actually the default resolution for flagship devices like the S9 and Note 9 (although they can go higher). The display has a 18.5:9 aspect ratio, and a 411ppi density.

Overall the display is certainly a strong plus point for the A7 (2018).

See also: The best displays of 2018

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) software

The A7 (2018) comes with Android 8.0 Oreo and Samsung Experience 9.0. If you are familiar with Samsung’s skin and UI then you will feel right at home here. Because of the unifying nature of the Samsung Experience, the UI looks and responds exactly like a bigger flagship. When I put the Note 9 next to the A7 it is hard to tell them apart from a UI perspective. The settings menu is the same, the Samsung icons are the same, and the theme is the same.

Editor’s Pick

One thing missing compared to its bigger siblings is Bixby Voice. While Bixby Home is present (swiping left from the home screen) the voice assistant isn’t included and there is no dedicated Bixby button. I guess Samsung considers Bixby a luxury for flagship owners. The snarky side of me is tempted to say the lack of Bixby voice is another reason to buy the A7 (2018), but I shall resist! The device still has AI functionality, though — you can access Google Assistant by long pressing on the home key.

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) performance

The A7 (2018) uses the 14nm Exynos 7885 processor. It has an octa-core CPU with two 2.2GHz Cortex-A73 CPU cores and six 1.6GHz Cortex-A53 cores. For gaming, there is good news and bad news. The 7885 features an Arm Mali-G71 GPU. The G71 is an advanced GPU using Arm’s latest Bifrost GPU architecture.

Unfortunately the G71 can be configured by chipmakers like Samsung to including anything from 1 to 32 shader cores. The Exynos 8895 in the Galaxy S8 and Note 8, has a G71 GPU with 20 shader codes. The Exynos 7885 has two. That said, I tested the device with both Asphalt 9 and PUBG Mobile (using the Medium graphics settings) and found the gameplay to be smooth.

The Exynos 7885 also has a built-in LTE modem which supports 2G, 3G and 4G, with LTE download speeds reaching 600Mbps. There is also a nifty Image Signal Processor (more on that in the camera section). On board, there is also 4GB of RAM (6GB on some models), 64GB of internal storage (128GB models available) and a microSD card slot.

For those who like benchmark numbers, the A7 (2018) scored 1524 on Geekbench’s single-core tests and 4379 on its multi-core tests. That puts in into the same ballpark as a Galaxy S7 with a Snapdragon 820 processor. For AnTuTu, which also tests the GPU, the score was 123,302. The AnTuTu score puts the A7 (2018) in the same general area as a flagship device from early 2016.

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) battery

The 3,300mAh battery in the A7 (2018) is larger than the battery in the Samsung Galaxy S9 and certainly big enough to give you all-day battery life. According to my testing, you should get at least six hours of screen-on time per charge. That number will increase if you mainly do less demanding tasks like watching YouTube. If you enjoy a bit of 3D gaming, then no fear, five hours minimum. Remember, screen brightness can dramatically change the battery life. If you bump up the brightness to max, expect to shave at least an hour off of all those numbers.

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) camera

The camera on the A7 (2018) is a story of simultaneous brilliance and woeful inadequacy. It is brilliant in that it has three cameras — one for normal photos, one for wide-angle shots, and one for depth information. It is brilliant in that the depth camera adds the ability to alter the depth of field while taking a shot, and afterwards. It is brilliant in that the main camera has a 24MP sensor and an f/1.7 aperture, which is great for low-light.

It is woefully inadequate in that the wide-angle camera is just 8MP. It is inadequate because it lacks OIS. It is inadequate because it can only record FHD at 30fps.

Related: Best of Android 2018: The best cameras

Maybe “woefully inadequate” is harsh — this isn’t a premium device — but Samsung has managed to raise the standard with the A7 to a tantalizing level, only to fumble the details. For daily use, there is little bad to say about the main 24MP camera. The colors are true, the dynamic range is good, and the HDR functions work well.

However, the 8MP wide-angle camera is just a little too wide. The pictures often suffer from barrel distortion and the slower f/2.4 aperture isn’t as good in low light.


The third camera is for depth information. It uses a 5MP sensor and an aperture of f/2.2. Those numbers aren’t so important as the purpose of this camera is to enable the depth-of-field functions. The inclusion of a bokeh mode is certainly a plus for the A7, as it is often a feature reserved for more premium devices. While the effect isn’t as precise or advanced as flagship devices, it is nonetheless useful and fun to play with.


Having opted for an 8MP wide-angle camera on the back, there is some redemption for selfie lovers. The A7 (2018) has a 24MP front-facing camera! There is a f/2.0 lens and lots of computational photography options, including bokeh selfies, beauty mode, pro-lighting (for “a more glamorous look and feel”), AR emoji, and wide-selfie, which is basically a panorama mode for the front-facing camera.

It’s not like the 8MP sensor and the occasional barrel distortion on the wide-angle camera ruins the camera experience. Overall the A7 (2018) packs a solid setup backed by lots of interesting trickery from the software.

Here are some more sample photos so you can judge for yourself. If you want to see the full resolutions images you can find them here.

Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) specs

  Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018)
Display 6.0-inch Super AMOLED
2,220 x 1,080 (FHD+) resolution
SoC Exynos 7885 Octa (14 nm), 64-bit
CPU Octa-core (2 x 2.2GHz Cortex-A73 & 6 x 1.6GHz Cortex-A53)
GPU GPU Mali-G71MP2
RAM 4 or 6GB
Storage 64 or 128GB
MicroSD card slot
Cameras Rear cameras:
Triple camera: 24MP (F1.7) + 5MP (F2.2) + 8MP (F.24)
Flash

Front camera:
24MP sensor, f/2.0 aperture, LED flash

Battery 3,300mAh
Network 2G:
– GSM850, GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900
3G UMTS
– B1(2100), B2(1900), B4(AWS), B5(850), B8(900)
4G FDD LTE
– B1(2100), B2(1900), B3(1800), B4(AWS), B5(850), B7(2600), B8(900), B12(700), B13(700), B17(700), B20(800), B28(700), B66(AWS-3)
4G TDD LTE
– B38(2600), B40(2300), B41(2500)
Connectivity MicroUSB
3.5mm headphone jack
Bluetooth 5 (LE up to 2 Mbps)
Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac 2.4G+5GHz, VHT80
GPS, Glonass, Beidou
Software Android 8.0
Samsung Experience 9.0
Dimensions and weight 159.8 x 76.8 x 7.5mm
168g
Colors blue, black, gold

Pricing and final thoughts

Overall the Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) is a better than average mid-range device. It has a great Super AMOLED screen and an intriguing triple camera setup. The battery life is good and it has a headphone jack! The dual-core GPU could potentially be worrisome to gamers, but if you are more of Candy Crush kind of person, you have nothing to worry about.

If the A7 (2018) doesn’t tempt you, plenty of other mid-range phones have solid chipsets and good cameras, including the Xiaomi Mi A2, Nokia 7.1 Plus, Honor Play, Asus Zenfone 5Z, Moto G6 Plus, or of course the flagship spec’d Pocophone F1.

The Samsung Galaxy A7 (2018) is available in blue, black, and gold for 279 euros (~$317) in Europe and 249 pounds (~$315) in the U.K. Those prices are dependent on various seasonal discounts. It won’t be coming officially to the U.S. but you can find it on Amazon!

Source: Android Zone

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How to Properly Move Your Blog from Tumblr to WordPress

Do you want to move your Tumblr blog to WordPress? WordPress is the most powerful website builder and blogging platform in the world. I gives you complete freedom to build any type of website that you want. In this article, we will show you how to properly move your blog from Tumblr to WordPress.

Moving from Tumblr to WordPress

Why You Should Move Your Tumblr Blog to WordPress?

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world. It powers more than 32% of all websites on the internet.

To learn more about WordPress and what you can do with it, please see our complete WordPress review with pros and cons.

There are two types of WordPress. First, there is WordPress.com which is a hosted platform, and then there is WordPress.org also called self-hosted WordPress. To understand the difference, please see our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

We recommend using WordPress.org because it gives you the freedom to build any kind of website. It also gives you access to all powerful WordPress features out of the box.

Things You’ll Need to Move Tumblr to WordPress

To start with WordPress.org, you’ll need a domain name and a web hosting account.

We recommend using Bluehost. They are an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider, and one of the largest hosting companies in the world.

They are offering WPBeginner users a free domain name, free SSL Certificate, and discount on hosting. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 / month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

If you can spend a little more, then we recommend SiteGround. They are also an officially recommended WordPress hosting service.

Note: Both Bluehost and SiteGround don’t allow hosting of adult content on their servers.

If your Tumblr blog contains adult content, then we recommend HostGator. They are also in our list of the top WordPress hosting companies.

Once you have purchased hosting, the next step is to install WordPress. Most hosting providers offer 1-click WordPress installation. If you cannot find the option, then ask your hosting company, and they will install WordPress for you.

Alternately, you can follow our step by step guide on how to install WordPress to do it yourself.

After installation, you’ll reach the WordPress dashboard screen which looks like this:

WordPress dashboard

Moving Your Content from Tumblr to WordPress

First, you need to visit Tools » Import page and click on the ‘Install Now’ button below Tumblr.

Installing Tumblr importer

WordPress will now fetch and install the Tumblr Importer tool for you. Once it is done, click on the ‘Run Importer’ link to continue.

Run Tumblr importer

On the next screen, you’ll need to provide OAuth Consumer and Secret keys. These keys allow your WordPress site to connect and import your content from Tumblr servers.

To get these keys, you need to click on the URL shown on the screen, which will take you to Tumblr website where you need to click on the ‘Register Application’ button.

Register app

Next, you need to fill in the ‘Application Name’, ‘Application Website’, ‘Application Description, and ‘Default Callback URL’ fields. All the rest can be left blank.

For the website and default callback URL fields, you need to your WordPress site’s full URL. You can use anything you want for the Application name and description.

Register application

Once you are done, click on the Register button at the bottom to continue.

Tumblr will now register the application and return you to the application dashboard. From here you can copy the consumer key. You need to click on the ‘Show Secret’ to reveal and copy the secret key.

Copy keys

You now need to go back to your WordPress admin area and go to Toools » Import page and run the importer again.

You can enter the keys you copied earlier in the importer settings and click on ‘Connect to Tumblr’ button.

On the next screen, you need to click on the ‘Authorize this application’ button.

Authorize application

This will take you to Tumblr where you will be asked to allow the app to connect with your account. Click on the Allow button to continue.

Allow app

Next, you’ll be redirected back to your WordPress site, and the importer will now show your Tumblr blogs. Simply click on the ‘Import this blog’ button next to the blog you want to import.

Import your Tumblr blog

The importer will now start importing your content from Tumblr to WordPress. This may take some time depending on how much content you have.

Once finished, you will see the success message.

Import finished

You can now visit the Posts and Pages sections of your WordPress blog to see your imported content.

You can also visit your WordPress website to see how the posts are displayed on your live website.

Redirecting Tumblr Visitors to Your New WordPress Blog

Now that you have imported the content, you would want your Tumblr visitors to be able to find your new blog.

To do this, you need to edit your Tumblr blog’s theme. First, go to the Tumblr settings page.

Tumblr Settings

After that click on your blog name to open its settings.

Select your blog

This will open your blog settings. On this screen, you need to click on the ‘Edit theme’ button to continue.

Edit theme

Next, you need to click on the ‘Edit HTML’ option under theme name. This will allow you to edit the HTML code of your Tumblr theme.

Edit HTML of your Tumblr theme

Tumblr will now show you the HTML code of the theme.

First, you need to paste this code snippet right after the <head> tag.

<!-- Inside head -->
<meta name="description" content="this is a legacy blog page, and will redirect to the same post on my new blog">
<script type='text/javascript'>
   var new_slug = window.location.pathname;
   var new_root = "http://example.com";
   var new_url = new_root + new_slug;
   document.write("<link rel="canonical" href="" + new_url + "">");
</script>

Don’t forget to replace the example.com with the actual URL of your new WordPress blog.

After that, you need to paste this second piece of code right after the <body> tag.

<!--Inside of <body> -->
<script type='text/javascript'>
    window.location = new_url;
</script>

You can now click on the ‘Update Preview’ button and then click on the ‘Save’ to store your settings.

This code will send your Tumblr visitors to your WordPress site. However, users coming to a specific page or post will see a 404 error. That’s because the URL format of Tumblr and your WordPress site are different, so you will need to redirect users to correct posts.

Setting up Redirects in WordPress for Your Tumblr Posts

To set up redirects in WordPress, first, you need to install and activate the Redirection plugn. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Tools » Redirection page to configure settings. Under the ‘Add new redirection’ section, you need to add redirection using regular expressions like this:

Source URL: .*/post/d+/(.*)

Target URL: /$1

After that check the ‘Regex’ checkbox and then click on the ‘Add Redirect’ button to save your settings.

Setting redirection

That’s all, your Tumblr blog posts will now redirect to the correct article on your new WordPress blog.

Congratulations! You have successfully moved your blog from Tumblr to WordPress.

Things to do After Moving from Tumblr to WordPress

Now that you have moved your content from Tumblr to WordPress, you may want to explore WordPress, learn the basics, and take advantage of this powerful platform.

Following are a few pointers to help you get going.

Set up a WordPress theme

The first thing most users want to do after moving to WordPress is to change their blog’s design. WordPress comes with thousands of free and paid WordPress themes to choose from.

Here are some of our expert picks of the best WordPress themes for different kind of blogs.

Need help setting up a new theme? See our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress theme.

Installing WordPress plugins

Next, you would want to take advantage of WordPress plugins. WordPress plugins are like apps for your WordPress site and allow you add new features to your website like adding a contact form, installing Google Analytics, adding membership features, and more.

However, choosing the right plugins can be a bit overwhelming for new users. That’s why we have compiled a list of essential WordPress plugins that you can install.

Learning WordPress

WordPress is quite easy to use and manage. However, there is a learning curve involved whenever you start with a new platform. This is where WPBeginner can help.

WPBeginner is the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners. We have lots of helpful content which is created specifically for beginners, business owners, and bloggers.

Following are few of the helpful resources you will find on WPBeginner (all of them are completely free).

  • WPBeginner Blog – The central place for all our WordPress tutorials and guides.
  • WPBeginner Dictionary – Our WordPress glossary will help you quickly familiarize yourself with the WordPress lingo
  • WPBeginner Videos – New WordPress users can start with these 23 videos to master WordPress.
  • WPBeginner on YouTube – Need more video instructions? Subscribe to our YouTube channel with more than 120,000 subscribers and 11 Million+ views.
  • WPBeginner Blueprint – Check out plugins, tools, and services we use on WPBeginner.
  • WPBeginner Deals – Exclusive discounts on WordPress products and services for WPBeginner users.

Many of our users use Google to find answers on WPBeginner by simply adding ‘wpbeginner’ at the end of their search term.

We hope this article helped you move your blog from Tumblr to WordPress. You may also want to see our actionable tips to drive traffic to your new WordPress blog.

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

The post How to Properly Move Your Blog from Tumblr to WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

Source: Wordpres

The post How to Properly Move Your Blog from Tumblr to WordPress appeared first on TuneMaster.ml.

Xiaomi’s UK Mi Store is like a crazier Apple Store where you can actually afford stuff

Xiaomi logo Mi Store UK

Xiaomi’s recent U.K. launch was something of a mixed bag, but between the arrival of mega-affordable flagship phones, electric scooters you can’t ride in public, and a ‘Flash Sale’ that went terribly wrong, there was one intriguing announcement that went a little under the radar.

Editor’s Pick

Unlike other Android OEMs — including other Chinese imports in the U.K. like Huawei, Honor, and OnePlus — Xiaomi didn’t just go through the usual motions of signing deals with carriers and opening a regional e-store.

Instead, the Beijing firm announced plans to open a brick-and-mortar Mi Store in the U.K on November 18.

Less than a week after a successful opening day where hundreds of Mi fans rocked up to grab themselves a bargain, Xiaomi brought me along to see the Mi Store in all its sparkly new glory and browse the company’s first wave of products for the U.K. — here’s what I saw.

Xiaomi Mi 8

Apples and oranges

Xiaomi’s new store is located in London’s Westfield shopping center in Shepard’s Bush — a gargantuan palace of shops and restaurants that stretches out over 1.6 million square feet and houses U.K. high street mainstays like Marks & Spencers, Boots, and Next, as well as luxury brands like De Beers, Mulberry, and Versace.

The Mi Store, which proudly stands out among the rest thanks to Xiaomi’s bright orange logo, sits on level one of the main interior, just a few shops down and across from another enormous store occupied by a certain tech industry giant from Cupertino, California.

Funnily enough, after strolling into the Mi Store and taking a quick glance at the layout and color palette, you can’t help but think of Apple either.

Xiaomi wireless earphones

The light beige tones punctuated by lit-up landscape advertisements with simple product renders adoring the walls. The adjacent wooden tables with multiple demo products to play with at your leisure. The checkout counter at the rear sandwiched between two wall racks of accessories. It all reeks of Apple Store.

As if product design similarities weren’t enough (just check out those AirPods-esque earphones pictured above), it seems Xiaomi can’t help but mimic the iPhone maker in its stores too… bar a few significant caveats.

Pocophone F1

Bargain hunting

Xiaomi has built a solid reputation for delivering phones with insanely high price-performance ratios, culminating in the uber cheap, Snapdragon 845-powered Pocophone F1, which just so happens to dominate the entire front table of London’s Mi Store.

Editor’s Pick

This ethos extends far beyond the company’s phones, however — a fact that becomes immediately clear when you look at the sheer scope and diversity of products on sale, particularly those without any touchscreens.

You could as easily walk out of the Mi Store with a new phone as you could a new bit of smart tech to play with like a sonic toothbrush, a self-dimming desk lamp, a 60 pound Android TV box, or a torch (that’s also a portable charger), or even a set of bathroom towels, precision screwdrivers, a pair of UV protected glasses, or an umbrella. That’s without even mentioning those eye-catching electric scooters that greet you as you first enter the door.


Perusing any aisle that isn’t covered in smartphones is like being dragged on a dizzying journey through the scattershot minds of Xiaomi’s product team. Think of a mini Ikea (or almost any other scandinavian-style design) and you’re about there.

Confusing or not, it’s a nice change of pace from the rigid phones-computers-watches-accessories tech store blueprint popularized by Apple, and it’s quite easy to find something you probably don’t need but find yourself incredibly tempted to buy — a feeling that’s even harder to deny when you see the price tags.


Most reading this article here on Android Authority will be acutely aware of the corners Xiaomi has necessarily (and understandably) had to cut to offer iPhone-lookalikes at less than half the price.

Almost every single one of Xiaomi’s products is carries a price tag that belies its stylish design and solid build quality.

However, for anyone walking in cold, unaware of those caveats, the allure of a phone that looks, mostly feels, and undoubtedly performs like an elite, 800+ pound flagship may be hard to deny. In fact, almost every single one of Xiaomi’s smorgasbord of products is accompanied by a price tag that belies its stylish design and generally solid build quality.

Accessories like USB-C cables and dongles are less than half the price of their identical equivalents at other major electronics stores. Likewise, if you don’t care about sound quality and just want the cheapest way to listen to podcasts on the go, you can grab a mega-cheap pair of earbuds for only five pounds.

Related: Best earbuds you can buy

Xiaomi Redmi Note 6 Pro

Mixing it up

The downside of Xiaomi’s bit-of-everything approach to its Mi Stores is that the phones almost get lost among the many fun distractions. What chance does another rectangular slab with a display on it have against a swanky smart kettle that can keep water fully boiled for up to 12 hours?

It’s a shame, because as well as the Pocophone F1 and the Mi 8 series — which includes the newly released Mi 8 Pro — Xiaomi has an impressive selection of Android handsets on display.

Be it the Redmi Note 6 Pro, the Android One-powered Mi A2 Lite, or the aforementioned Pocophone F1, these are phones Xiaomi neglected to mention on its U.K. launch livestream, but thankfully get their time to shine face-to-face with the public.

The Mi Mix 3, Black Shark gaming phone, and Xiaomi’s Mi Notebook laptops should all arrive in 2019.

There are some notable absentees, however. The most obvious is the Mi Mix 3 bezel-less slider phone, which Xiaomi hasn’t confirmed for a U.K. release, but seems likely to make its way over early next year.

There’s also the Black Shark gaming phone and Xiaomi’s Mi Notebook Air and Mi Notebook Pro laptops. The former I was told will launch sometime in 2019, while the Mi Notebook family (which I can’t wait to get my hands on) will apparently start making its way to the U.K. in Q1/Q2 2019.

Xiaomi Mi Store headphones

Despite these omissions and the store’s unashamed Apple knock-off aesthetic, I came away fairly impressed by Xiaomi’s new store.

It’ll certainly surprise those who only see Xiaomi as a smartphone maker, which is an image the company seems far more keen on retaining for its online business than it does in the physical retail space.

I initially had my doubts about this approach, but the store staff say on a good day they can shift up to 20 of those hilariously impractical electric scooters. As for the best seller overall, that goes to the automatic folding umbrellas.

I have to say, after giving one a feel… those are some damn fine umbrellas.

Source: Android Zone

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