Homepage? Nah. You grab a template, drop in a hero section, add some testimonials. Done in an afternoon. Portfolio? That’s just arranging screenshots in a grid. Pricing page? A table and a CTA button. Not that hard.

The about page, though. That’s the one that breaks people.

I’ve built hundreds of websites over 16 years. And I can tell you, the about page is the only one where clients go silent for weeks. They’ll approve a homepage in two days. The about page? Three rounds of revisions, two existential crises, and one “can we just skip this page?” conversation. Every single time.

Here’s why it’s so hard. And what to do about it.

It demands clarity you probably don’t have yet

Every other page has a formula. Hero, features, testimonials, CTA. You can follow the template and get a B+ result. But the about page asks a fundamentally different question: who are you, and why should anyone care?

That’s not a design problem. That’s an identity problem.

Most people dodge it. They write something generic about “passion” and “excellence” and “our mission is to empower.” The result? A page that sounds like every other about page on the internet. Which means it says nothing. I’ve seen this pattern on literally hundreds of client sites. The homepage gets a custom illustration and three rounds of copywriting. The about page gets a stock paragraph and a team grid.

Here’s the thing... the about page is often the second or third most visited page on any website. On my own site, it gets more traffic than my blog index. People who land on your homepage and find you interesting? Their next click is your about page. And that’s where you’re serving them a template.

The five elements that actually work

I rebuilt my own about page recently. It’s not perfect (I’ll be the first to say that), but here’s what I’ve learned works across my own site and client projects:

1. Lead with what you solve, not who you are. Your visitor doesn’t care about your journey. Not yet. They care about their problem. Open with that. “I help WordPress agencies ship faster” beats “I’m a passionate developer with 16 years of experience” every time. The first one answers their question. The second one answers yours.

2. One photo. Real. Recent. Not a stock photo of someone in a blazer shaking hands. Not a headshot from 2019 when you had different hair. People want to see who they’re dealing with. A genuine, recent photo builds more trust in 0.3 seconds than 500 words of copy. I’ve A/B tested this on client sites. Pages with real photos convert 15-25% better on contact form submissions than pages without.

3. Specifics over adjectives. “I’ve worked with 90+ brands including IBM, Adobe, and HubSpot” hits differently than “I’ve worked with leading companies.” Name them. Numbers and names are what people remember. “Built 800+ websites” is a fact. “Extensive experience” is noise.

4. Match the page to your scale. This is where most people get it wrong. A solo freelancer’s about page shouldn’t read like a Fortune 500 “Our Team” section. And a 50-person agency shouldn’t have a page that says “Hi, I’m Dave.” Your about page needs to match who you actually are right now.

Here’s a rough framework:

• Solo freelancer/creator: First person. One photo. Your story, your process, your values. Keep it under 500 words.

• Small agency (2-10 people): “We” voice. Founder story plus team highlights. Show your process. 500-800 words.

• Larger company (10+): Mission-driven. Team grid with real bios (not “John loves hiking and coffee”). Culture section. 800-1,200 words.

• Personal brand/educator: This is the hardest one. You need vulnerability without oversharing. Professional credibility without resume-dropping. The trick? Lead with one specific story that shows why you care about what you teach.

5. Personal, but calibrated. Share your work philosophy. Share what frustrates you about your industry. Maybe mention what you do outside work in one sentence. But don’t write your autobiography. This isn’t therapy. It’s a trust signal.

The line is: would you say this to someone at a conference who just asked what you do? If yes, it belongs on your about page. If it’s something you’d only tell a close friend, it doesn’t.

What to skip entirely

A few things I see on about pages that actively hurt trust:

• Timeline/milestone sections. “2010: Founded company. 2012: First client. 2015: Moved to bigger office.” Nobody reads these. They’re filler.

• Generic values. “Innovation. Integrity. Excellence.” If your competitors could copy-paste the same values, they aren’t values. They’re wallpaper.

• The team photo where everyone is laughing. You know the one. Arms crossed or staged laughter in front of a white wall. Get candid shots from actual work sessions.

• Mission statements written by committee. “We strive to deliver best-in-class solutions that empower businesses to achieve their full potential.” I fell asleep writing that.

The real test

Read your about page out loud. If it sounds like it could belong to anyone in your field, rewrite it. The whole point of an about page is that it could only belong to you.

If you swap the name and photo and it still works for your competitor... you’ve written a template, not an about page.

WordCamp Asia 2026 in Mumbai

WordCamp Asia is happening right now in Mumbai (April 9-11) at the Jio World Convention Centre in Bandra-Kurla Complex. 3,000+ attendees. Matt Mullenweg keynoting. Rahul Bansal from rtCamp, Himani Kankaria, and a bunch of other speakers I respect are presenting across tracks on AI, enterprise WordPress, and developer workflows.

I had plans to go. Genuinely wanted to be there. But prior commitments meant I couldn’t make it, and I’m honestly a bit gutted about that. Mumbai is one of my favorite cities, and WordPress events in India have a different energy. The conversations that happen over chai breaks are often more valuable than the talks themselves.

If you’re there, enjoy it. Take it in. Talk to people you wouldn’t normally talk to. And if someone does a good talk on block theme development or the Interactivity API, tell me about it.

The rupee at 92+, and what it means for us

OK, I need to talk about this. Because it’s affecting every Indian freelancer and developer I know, and nobody’s discussing it openly.

The numbers. The US dollar is at Rs 92.72 against the Indian rupee as of today. In July 2025, it was Rs 85. It reached an all time high of INR 95.27 on 23rd-24th March 2026. That’s a 12% depreciation in 8 months. The rupee was Asia’s worst-performing currency in 2025, sliding from 85 to 91 by December.

While it is now under Rs. 93/USD - analysts are projecting fixed 95+ by late 2026.

What drove it here. Three forces, all hitting at the same time:

1. US tariffs on Indian goods. The Trump administration slapped 50% tariffs on Indian imports. That crushed export competitiveness and widened the trade deficit.

2. Foreign investor exit. FIIs pulled out $18 billion from Indian equities in 2025. Rs 1,70,940 crore worth of selling. When foreign money leaves, it converts rupees back to dollars. More dollar demand, weaker rupee.

3. RBI policy shift. The new RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra took a “restrained approach” to defending the rupee in late 2025. Markets read that as a green light. The controlled slide became an uncontrolled one.

Add oil prices to this (India imports 85% of its crude in USD), and you’ve got a currency under pressure from every direction.

Why this matters if you’re a freelancer. Here’s the math. A $100/month SaaS subscription cost you Rs 8500 in July 2025. In March? Rs 9527. That’s Rs 1027 more per month. Rs 12,324 more per year. For the exact same product. Same features. Same support. Nothing changed except the currency math.

Stack that across 5-10 tools (hosting, email, analytics, SEO, design, project management), and you’re looking at Rs 80,000-100,000 extra per year just from the exchange rate. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a year’s rent in many Indian cities.

And most SaaS companies? They don’t care. A $99/year WordPress plugin costs the same whether you’re in San Francisco or Jaipur. The PPP factor for India vs the US is roughly 0.3, meaning a $100 product should theoretically cost about $30 in purchasing power terms. Some indie SaaS companies get this (tools like Parity Deals and Dodo Payments are making PPP pricing easier to implement). But the big players? Claude, GitHub, Figma, AWS? They price globally and don’t look back.

What I’m doing about it. I’ve stopped buying products priced in US dollars unless there’s genuinely no alternative. I’m going local where I can. Open source where I can. And being a lot more deliberate about what I actually need versus what’s just nice to have.

This isn’t just frugality. It’s a strategy. The Indian freelance platform market is projected to grow from $265 million in 2025 to $1.54 billion by 2033. That’s a 25% CAGR. The opportunity is real. But the people who’ll capture it are the ones who figure out how to reduce their USD-denominated costs while maintaining output quality. That’s the competitive edge nobody’s talking about.

For those of us earning in dollars from international clients, there’s a silver lining. The same $1,000/month that converted to Rs 83,000 in 2023 now (at the time of writing) converts to Rs 92,720.

But if you’re earning in rupees and paying in dollars... you’re getting squeezed from both sides. And that squeeze is going to get worse before it gets better.

In the next issue, I'll be breaking down the exact structure of my about page, element by element, and what I'd change if I rebuilt it today. Reply if you've got an about page you're stuck on. I'll take a look.

Until next time.

GT Link Manager: Heading to WordPress.org

This is a big one for me. GT Link Manager is now in the WordPress.org plugin review pipeline. If you’ve followed my work, you know this plugin. It’s the affiliate link management system I built and have been running on gauravtiwari.org for years. Tracks clicks, manages redirects, handles nofollow/sponsored attributes, and gives you a clean /go/product-slug/ structure for every affiliate link.

The WordPress.org submission means a free version will be publicly available. The review process takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on the queue, but the plugin is ready. I’ve been using it in production across multiple sites, so the codebase is battle-tested.

Why submit now? Two reasons. First, the plugin is mature enough that I’m confident in its stability for a wider audience. Second, having a WordPress.org presence matters for discoverability. Most people find plugins through the repository, not through blog posts. If GT Link Manager is going to grow beyond my own sites and clients, it needs to be where people look.

I’ll share the listing link as soon as it’s approved.

Dynamic Functionalities 1.3.0: WordPress 7 Editor Compatibility

Shipped Functionalities 1.3.0 this week with a significant under-the-hood update: full WordPress 7 editor iframe compatibility.

Here’s the technical context. WordPress 7 moved the block editor into an iframe for better style isolation. Good for the editor. Bad for plugins that were injecting CSS or JavaScript directly into the editor page. My Fonts module, SVG Icons, Content Negotiations, and Custom Preferences all broke because they were enqueuing assets the old way.

The fix: added enqueue_block_assets handlers so editor CSS loads inside the WP 7 editor iframe correctly. Also fixed a query string issue that was causing cache-busting problems.

This is the kind of invisible maintenance work that doesn’t get blog posts but determines whether a plugin survives a major WordPress release. If you’re running Functionalities on a WordPress 7 site, update to 1.3.0. Everything should work seamlessly now.

WordPress TT7: My Plans for a Community Theme

WordPress announced TT7 (Twenty Twenty-Seven) as the next default theme. I’d been working on TT6 designs that never shipped, and I’m pivoting that work into TT7 contributions.

My design direction for the community theme fork: bold, opinionated, and minimal. The mockup I shared on X had three principles: bold billboard layouts for the homepage, nine theme variations with the right features for each, and fine blocks with zero bloat.

The repo is live at wpgaurav/TT7. It’s early. But the idea is to build a version of TT7 that leans into what block themes do best: lightweight, fast, configurable through the Site Editor, and visually distinctive without requiring a page builder or fifty custom blocks.

If you’re interested in contributing or just watching the progress, the repo is public. I’ll be pushing design iterations over the next few weeks as the official TT7 spec solidifies.

Why I Built Core Forms

Published the origin story of Core Forms this week. It’s part product announcement, part rant about the state of WordPress form plugins.

The thesis: a contact form shouldn’t need 47 JavaScript files, a drag-and-drop builder with 200 field types, and a $199/year subscription. That’s not a form plugin. That’s a SaaS product wearing a WordPress costume.

Core Forms is my answer. $59, once. Lifetime updates. Every feature included. v3.5.0 now ships with theme-native design, polls, fullscreen Typeform-like forms, submission workflows, conditional actions, and a REST API. It started as a fork years ago and evolved into something I use on every site I build.

The post covers the technical decisions (why one-time pricing instead of recurring, why native blocks instead of a custom builder, what I learned from using it across 800+ client projects), and it seems to have resonated. The response on X was strong.

The Content Refresh Machine

This was the quiet background work consuming most of my week. I refreshed four major articles for SEO, AEO and GEO:

GeneratePress Free vs Premium vs One — Complete rewrite with 2026 pricing, GeneratePress One tier comparison, new “What’s New in GeneratePress” section covering Navigation Block, Site Header Block, Carousel Block, and the Conditions system. Updated CrUX performance data: LCP 2.2s, INP 110ms, CLS 0.04. Added 5 images from the media library. Moved from position ~26 to (too early to tell, but the content is dramatically better now).

WordPress vs Blogger — Full rewrite, reframed as “Why Blogger Lost.” Added WordPress.com vs WordPress.org vs Blogger triple comparison table. Blogger hasn’t had a significant update since 2020. The article reflects that reality now instead of treating it as a legitimate competitor.

Putlocker Alternatives — Expanded from 1,200 to 3,000+ words. Split into legal alternatives (Tubi, Pluto TV, Plex, Crackle) and unofficial sites. Added two comparison tables, safety guide, VPN product boxes (NordVPN, Surfshark), “What Is Putlocker’s New Site” section targeting long-tail queries. Monetization went from one affiliate placement to five.

Insert AdSense Ads in WordPress Loop — Rewritten from scratch. Added four PHP code variations (single position, multiple positions, every Nth post, the_post hook method), three no-code alternatives (Ad Inserter, WPCode, Google Auto Ads), block theme considerations, performance impact section, and a comparison table. Went from 800 words to 2,400+.

Every refresh follows the same pattern: answer-first sections, entity-dense writing, comparison tables, FAQ schema, updated Rank Math meta, and [year] shortcodes from Dynamic Month & Year into Posts. The system is getting faster with every article.

Hostinger vs Namecheap

Published Hostinger vs Namecheap this week. A proper comparison page following my comparison-page format: quick verdict, feature comparison table, dimension-by-dimension breakdown, pricing comparison, “who should use which” sections, and a clear recommendation.

This is one of those pieces that exists because people search for it (thousands of monthly searches for “hostinger vs namecheap”) and the existing results are either thin affiliate bait or outdated. I tested both hosting services, benchmarked performance, and documented the actual experience.

MacBook Pro M5 Pro: First Impressions

It’s here. The 16” MacBook Pro in Space Black with M5 Pro.

First impressions after five days of daily use: the Neural Engine improvement is noticeable for AI workflows. Claude Code sessions feel snappier. Local model inference is faster. Docker containers spin up with less wait. The 24GB unified memory handles my typical workload (browser with 30+ tabs, VS Code, Docker, Terminal with multiple SSH sessions, Figma) without any memory pressure warnings.

The display is the same brilliant panel as the M4 Pro generation. Keyboard, trackpad, speakers, all excellent and unchanged. Battery life is genuinely all-day for my workflow.

The honest take: if you’re on an M3 Pro or M4 Pro, the upgrade is incremental. If you’re on an M1 or M2, the jump is significant enough to justify the cost. I came from a setup that was struggling with my AI-heavy workflows, so for me, the upgrade was worth it.

I’ll write a proper developer workflow comparison (build times, Docker benchmarks, AI tool responsiveness) once I’ve had a few more weeks with it.

WordPress Ecosystem Notes

A few things happening in the WordPress world worth mentioning:

I was featured in the WP Weekly and WP Week Newsletter #263. These two are probably the best newsletters in WordPress ecosystems.

WordPress live preview is getting painful. I posted about this on X and it resonated. The live preview experience in the block editor, especially on sites with complex block configurations, has become noticeably slower. More iframes, more re-renders, more waiting. It’s a real workflow issue for content creators who need to see their changes in real-time.

What’s Coming Next Week

GT Link Manager approval (hopefully). The WordPress.org review queue moves at its own pace, but I’m optimistic.

More content refreshes. I have a ranked list of 25+ articles from the GSC audit that need attention. Position 15-40 with decent impressions is the sweet spot for refresh ROI.

TT7 community theme progress. Pushing the first real design iteration to the repo.

Substack paid tier planning. The behind-the-scenes posts and revenue breakdowns will go behind the paywall soon. Still working out the structure.

That’s the week. Shipping plugins to WordPress.org, making things WordPress 7 compatible, cleaning up AI mess, refreshing old content, and adjusting to a new machine. The common thread: maintenance and infrastructure work that doesn’t get headlines but keeps everything running.

If you’re submitting plugins to WordPress.org, running AI content audits, or building block theme variations, I’d love to compare notes. Reply anytime.

The AI Search Formatting Guide

This one consumed most of Monday and Tuesday. I spent two weeks before that searching my own articles across Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. Testing which ones got cited. Tracking the patterns.

The uncomfortable finding: my highest-traffic post on Google, a 4,800-word guide with strong backlinks, didn’t get cited once by any AI search engine. Meanwhile a 1,900-word post I almost didn’t publish? Cited by Perplexity eleven times in one month.

The difference wasn’t quality. It was structure.

I wrote the whole system up: How to Format Your Blog Posts for AI Search. Covers answer-first paragraphs, entity-dense writing, which schema types actually matter (only three: FAQ, HowTo, Article), and a comparison table showing how each AI engine handles citations differently.

The article has six custom SVG graphics, a formatting checklist block, and a comparison table across all five AI platforms. It’s the kind of piece that takes days to build properly. But I’ve already applied the formatting changes to my top 20 articles, and early results show AI citations jumping from about 4 per month to 31. Small numbers. Clear trend.

442ms to 38ms: The Performance Win

This one felt good. I’ve been working with WP Multitool by @MythThrazz on optimizing the backend performance of gauravtiwari.org, and the numbers this week were something else.

The homepage went from 442.8ms slowest callback to 38.4ms. The about page dropped from a 2,849ms total to under 1,200ms. That’s not a CDN trick or a caching layer masking the problem. That’s actual server-side execution time dropping by over 90%.

The fix involved cleaning up expensive database queries, optimizing hook execution order, and removing redundant callbacks that were firing on every page load. WordPress sites accumulate this kind of cruft over years, especially when you’ve got 2,000+ posts and dozens of active plugins.

I posted the before/after on X and the response was immediate. People want to know how. I’ll write it up properly once we’ve finished the remaining pages.

Docanban: MCP Server and REST API

I love this little product. Docanban is a Kanban board I built for editorial workflows, designed specifically for Markdown documents. This week, I got the MCP server and REST API done.

What this means: you can now manage your Docanban boards through AI assistants. Move cards between columns, create documents, update statuses, all through natural language. The REST API opens it up to any automation tool. It is under limited beta. Send me a message to get access.

I also shipped UX improvements this week. The Writing System board now tracks 364 documents across 4 columns with tag filtering. It sounds simple, but getting the board to feel like a real workspace (not a fragile demo) took serious iteration. Stable board URLs, refresh-safe state, drag-to-reorder, keyboard shortcuts for search and new docs.

Again, Docanban is still in free invite-only beta. If you work with Markdown documents and want a visual way to track them, reply and I’ll send you access.

FlyingPress vs WP Rocket: The Real Benchmark

This comparison had been sitting in my drafts for months. I finally ran it properly: FlyingPress vs WP Rocket.

Not a feature-list comparison. Real benchmark data across 12 test sites. Time to First Byte, Largest Contentful Paint, Total Blocking Time, the full Core Web Vitals panel. Same hosting (Cloudways), same theme, same content. Just the caching plugin swapped.

FlyingPress won by a meaningful margin. Not on every single metric, but on the ones that actually affect your PageSpeed score and user experience. The critical CSS generation is noticeably better, and the automatic unused CSS removal works more aggressively.

I’ve used WP Rocket since 2014. Writing that FlyingPress is better now wasn’t easy. But the numbers are the numbers.

GEO vs SEO: The Playbook Nobody’s Writing

Published GEO vs SEO: The Complete Playbook on Sunday. GEO is Generative Engine Optimization. The practice of making your content visible to AI search engines, not just Google.

The key insight from writing this: GEO and traditional SEO overlap about 40%. That’s less than most people assume. The 60% that doesn’t overlap is where the opportunity lives. Things like answer-first formatting, entity density, and FAQ schema have a bigger impact on AI citations than they do on Google rankings. Conversely, backlink building and keyword clustering matter way more for Google than for any AI engine.

The playbook covers both channels without doubling your workload. One content strategy that feeds both discovery channels.

The Internal Linking Project

Two related guides dropped this week: Internal Linking for WordPress and How to Fix Orphan Pages.

These came out of a project I ran on my own site. I audited all 2,100+ posts and found 679 that had zero internal links pointing to them. Orphan pages. Google can find them through the sitemap, but the site architecture treats them like they don’t exist.

I built a Python script that crawled my site’s internal link graph, identified every orphan, and automatically injected contextual links from related articles. 679 posts went from 0 internal links to 3-5 each. The script analyzed content similarity to pick the right anchor text and placement.

Early signals: crawl depth improved across the board, and several orphaned pages that had been stuck on page 3-4 of Google started climbing within two weeks.

Functionalities Plugin: The Meta Module

Quick one, but it got good engagement on X. The Functionalities plugin now handles full copyright and Dublin Core metadata injection automatically. Author attribution, content licensing, creation dates, modification dates, syndication sources, all through clean meta tags.

You need Functionalities plugin solely for this. One lightweight plugin replacing the five or six separate ones most people use for metadata, redirects, schema, and SEO cleanup. It’s the kind of invisible infrastructure that makes a site properly machine-readable without any manual work.

Cloudflare R2 for WordPress Assets

Published this one a couple weeks ago but it’s been generating steady traffic: How I Serve WordPress Assets from Cloudflare R2.

The setup: all static assets (images, SVGs, PDFs) served from Cloudflare R2 instead of the origin server. The cost difference is absurd. I was paying roughly $25/month in bandwidth through my hosting. R2’s free tier covers the first 10 GB of storage and the first 10 million requests. My total R2 bill last month was $0.47.

TTFB for images dropped from 180-220ms to 40-60ms. Every image on this blog now loads from an edge server within 50ms of wherever you are.

Speaking of Cloudflare, they quietly bumped Workflows step limits to 25,000 this week. If you’re building anything on Workers, that’s a significant upgrade for complex logic without recursion workarounds.

New Hardware: MacBook Pro M5 Pro

The 16” MacBook Pro in Space Black with M5 Pro is arriving March 13th. 18-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, 24GB unified memory, 1TB SSD. With AppleCare+ because I don’t take chances with work machines.

The timing is deliberate. My current setup handles everything fine, but the AI-heavy workflows I’m running now (Claude Code sessions, local model testing, heavy Playwright automation, multiple Docker containers) are pushing it. The M5 Pro’s Neural Engine should make a real difference for on-device inference.

I’ll share the migration process and first impressions once it’s set up. The developer workflow comparison (build times, Docker performance, AI tool responsiveness) is what I’m most curious about.

The Rupee Situation

Couldn’t ignore this one. The Indian Rupee fell to an all-time low against the US Dollar this week. For anyone running an international business from India, this is a double-edged sword. My revenue is mostly in USD, so the conversion helps on paper. But hosting costs, tool subscriptions, and hardware (hello, MacBook at Rs 2,99,900) all get more expensive.

The practical takeaway for creators and freelancers billing in INR: reduce spending, increase sales. Not profound advice, but it’s what I’m doing. Audit every subscription, cut what isn’t earning its keep, and focus energy on the revenue-generating work.

What’s Coming Next Week

Content consolidation. About 25 articles in the merge-or-redirect queue. Thin pages that should either be combined into stronger guides or redirected to better content.

SEO vs AI search data update. The existing piece needs real citation tracking data now that I’ve been monitoring for six weeks.

MacBook Pro M5 setup. Arriving March 13th. Full migration and developer workflow comparison incoming.

Substack Notes. Starting this week: 3-5 notes (not newsletters) per week minimum. Short observations, behind-the-scenes moments, and teasers for upcoming guides.

That’s the week. Heavy on content infrastructure, product development, and backend performance.

If you’re working on anything similar, especially the AI search formatting, the performance optimization, or editorial Kanban workflows, I’d love to compare notes. Reply anytime.

Both Sites Got a Complete Redesign

gauravtiwari.org now has a reworked homepage that actually shows what I do instead of just being a blog feed. You’ll see my services, open-source plugins, tools, calculators, more that I have been working on.

gatilab.com got an even bigger overhaul. It’s the agency side of my work, and it finally looks like it. The old site was doing the work a disservice.

Both sites run on my usual stack: Marketers Delight, custom blocks, FlyingPress, Cloudflare. Sub-second load times on both.

New Products in the Shop

I’ve added several products to the gauravtiwari.org shop. Most are free:

Easy Affiliate Marketing Guide — A new free guide covering the fundamentals of affiliate marketing. No fluff, just what actually works based on years of running affiliate sites.

Trigonometric Identities — For the math nerds (and students) among you. A comprehensive reference sheet, free to download.

The Affiliate Bloggers System — This one’s been around for a while, but I’ve kept it updated. Currently $4.99 (down from $9.99). It’s the exact system I use for affiliate content on gauravtiwari.org.

Plus free ebooks on Cell Biology, Overcoming Student Anxiety, and more. I’m building this into a proper resource library. Browse the full shop here.

🛠️ GitHub and Open Source Updates

ACF Blocks Plugin v2.0

This is the project I’m most excited about right now. Premium ACF Blocks is a free, open-source collection of 28+ custom blocks for WordPress, built on ACF Pro’s Block API v3.

What makes it different from the dozens of block plugins out there: zero configuration, very low effort, LLM friendly markup and full marketing toolkit. Field groups auto-register from JSON. No manual imports, no admin setup. Activate the plugin, install ACF Pro or Secure Custom Fields plugin and every block is immediately available in your editor.

It replaced several plugins for me and I am regularly updating it.

The block library covers the stuff I actually needed across client sites: accordions with FAQ schema, testimonials, hero sections, CTAs, product review boxes, comparison tables, coupon codes, pros/cons blocks, video embeds, and more. Each block conditionally loads its CSS and JS only when used on a page, so it doesn’t bloat sites that only use a few blocks.

I built this because I was tired of installing five different block plugins on every project. One plugin. 28+ blocks. Free forever.

Download it from GitHub or check out the landing page.

Functionalities — My modular site-specific plugin framework got 1.0.0 update. Refactored with modern WordPress coding standards and a clean dashboard. Replaces 10+ single-purpose plugins with one.

97 public repositories on GitHub (159 total). 5,000+ commits. 20+ free plugins. 10,000+ combined active installs.

🔥 How I’m Using OpenClaw + Claude to Publish Faster

I’ve been using OpenClaw with Claude as my publishing co-pilot, and it’s changed how I approach content production.

The setup: OpenClaw running locally, connected to my writing system (voice DNA, affiliate product database, published article index, WordPress block syntaxes). It’s not a chatbot wrapper. It’s a workflow automation platform with persistent memory, SSH access to my servers, WP-CLI integration, and browser automation.

Here’s what this actually looks like in practice:

Content creation: I brief it on a topic, angle, and audience. It references my voice DNA, uses the correct affiliate links from my database, outputs WordPress block markup ready to paste into Gutenberg, and includes proper ACF blocks (FAQ accordions, comparison tables). What used to take 3-4 hours per article now takes a fraction of that.

Image generation: Every article needs a featured image. OpenClaw generates SVG graphics matching my brand style, converts them to PNG using Inkscape CLI, and uploads via the WordPress REST API. Custom, on-brand images with zero stock photo vibes.

WordPress deployment: Instead of manually copying content, formatting, uploading images, setting categories, writing meta descriptions, and configuring Rank Math for each post, OpenClaw handles the entire pipeline via WP REST API and WP-CLI. Batch uploading dozens of properly formatted, SEO-optimized drafts across multiple sites takes hours instead of days.

Multi-site management: I run several content sites. OpenClaw tracks what’s published where, avoids duplicate topics, and handles cross-site content distribution. One workflow, multiple sites, zero confusion.

The key ingredient isn’t the AI itself. It’s the reference file system: voice DNA, affiliate links, published content index, 29 ACF block syntaxes, business profile. Without those files, output would be generic. With them, it’s indistinguishable from my own writing.

I’m not on autopilot. I review everything, make edits, maintain final control. But the time savings are real. Content creation, image generation, WordPress deployment, and SEO optimization are all dramatically faster. That freed-up time goes into client work, strategy, and building new tools.

💡 Industry Pulse

WordPress 6.9.1 dropped February 3. 49 bug fixes. Nothing exciting, but update your sites.

WordPress 7.0 is coming April 9, 2026. Beta 1 scheduled for February 19. Timed with WordCamp Asia. Three major releases planned for 2026 (7.0, 7.1, 7.2). The admin redesign is being discussed, though it’s more “fresh coat of paint” than full overhaul.

Google rolled out a Discover core update this week. Updated documentation to call out clickbait and sensationalism. Also testing ads in AI Mode. Search revenue hit $63 billion, up 17%.

The big SEO story for 2026: Experience-based content from real practitioners is outranking generic corporate content. E-E-A-T isn’t just a framework anymore. Niche bloggers writing from actual experience have a genuine edge over brands pumping out AI filler. If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you know I’ve been saying this for years.

📝 From the Blog

Rank Math Review — Nearly eight years of daily use. My exact configuration, code snippets, and honest frustrations. 436 active redirects on gauravtiwari.org alone.

Perfmatters Review — My full exported configuration as of February 2026. Every toggle explained, including my self-hosted Umami analytics setup.

Best WordPress Page Builders in 2026 — Actual opinions. Clear recommendations. Not the “they’re all great” approach.

Content Decay: How to Find and Fix Pages Losing Traffic — Your best articles are quietly dying. How to spot and reverse the decline.

That’s everything for this issue. I’m heads-down on client work, new articles, and expanding the shop over the next few weeks. If you’ve visited the redesigned sites or tried the ACF Blocks plugin, I’d love to hear what you think.

Just reply to this.

Tutorials. Guides. WordPress plugins. Math textbooks I spent months writing. All of it, free, scattered across blog posts and GitHub repos where maybe 5% of the people who could use them would ever find them.

That changes today. I built a proper shop on gauravtiwari.org.

Before you close this tab/email: most of it is still free. This isn’t a pivot to “premium everything.” It’s me finally organizing years of work into one place where people can actually find it.

What’s in the shop

Two types of products right now: books and guides. WordPress plugins are coming next.

The math books

This is the part I’m most excited about. I have an M.Sc. in Mathematics. I was an INSPIRE Scholar (top 1% nationally). I’ve written serious academic material that’s been sitting in LaTeX files on my computer, doing nothing for anyone.

Not anymore. These are now free downloads:

• A Trip to Mathematics: From Logic to Equations - a walk through mathematical reasoning from the ground up

• Bhaskaracharya’s Lilavati - ancient Indian mathematics, translated and annotated for modern readers

• Elements of Integral Equations - exactly what it says

• Foundations of Analysis - real analysis, built carefully from first principles

• Number Theory Explorations - prime numbers, divisibility, congruences

• Proofs of Irrationality - because proving something can’t be rational is more interesting than people think

• Elementary Analysis on Ramanujan’s Nested Radicals - if you know, you know

• Real Sequences: Definitions, Theorems, and Examples - a compact reference

• Statistical Physics: From Microstates to Ensembles - bridging physics and probability

• The Raman Effect - theory, discovery, and applications of one of India’s greatest scientific contributions

• Trigonometric Identities - the reference sheet I wished existed when I was studying

• Cell Biology - a clean, focused primer

That’s 12 books. All free PDFs. No email gates. No “enter your phone number first.” Just download them.

I wrote these because India produces brilliant students who often lack access to well-organized reference material in English. If even one UPSC aspirant or B.Sc. student finds these useful, they’ve done their job.

The guides

Two marketing guides for people building online businesses:

• Easy Affiliate Marketing Guide - what I’ve learned from earning $650K+ in affiliate revenue

• The Affiliate Bloggers System - the actual system behind building sites that generate passive income

These aren’t fluffy “10 tips to get started” PDFs. They’re based on 17 years of doing this professionally, across 850+ clients, with real numbers behind the advice.

Why now

Honestly? Because I kept building things and never had a single place to put them.

The math books were in a TeX folder. The guides were attached to random blog posts. The plugins (ACF Blocks, Core Forms, Dynamic Month & Year, Functionalities, SyncPoint CRM) live on GitHub with no proper distribution.

I wanted one URL where someone could see everything I’ve made and grab what they need. That’s gauravtiwari.org/shop.

What’s coming next

WordPress plugins with proper licensing and auto-updates. I’ve been building the infrastructure for this (FluentCart on the backend, license managers in every plugin). When a plugin update drops, your site will know about it automatically. No more manually downloading zips from GitHub.

The plugin lineup:

• ACF Blocks - 30+ blocks for ACF Pro users (currently free, may add a Pro tier)

• Core Forms - lightweight form plugin, no bloat

• Dynamic Month & Year into Posts - auto-updating date references (used by 9,000+ sites) - will be completely free.

• Functionalities / Dynamic Functionalities - modular site-specific plugins - will be completely free.

• SyncPoint CRM - lightweight WordPress CRM with PayPal and Stripe sync

Some will stay free. Some will have paid tiers. All of them are tools I built because I needed them on real projects and nothing else did the job properly.

The philosophy

No subscriptions. No recurring fees. No “but wait there’s more” nonsense.

If something is free, it’s free. If something is priced, it’s because I spent serious time on it and think it’s worth what I’m asking. That’s it.

I’ve been on both sides of the “everything should be free” debate. Free is great for distribution. But free also means the creator eats the cost of support, updates, and maintenance forever. That’s not sustainable, and anyone who’s maintained an open-source project knows it.

So the model is simple: give away the stuff that should be free (reference material, educational content), charge fairly for the stuff that saves people real time and money (professional tools), and never lock basic functionality behind a paywall.

Browse the shop at gauravtiwari.org/shop. Grab what’s useful. Tell me what’s missing.

And if you’re an SETM student anywhere in the world reading this: those books are for you. Take them.

Every project, I’d rebuild the same accordion. The same testimonial block. The same product review with schema markup. Copy, paste, tweak, repeat. Tedious isn’t a strong enough word.

So I did what any frustrated developer does. I built a plugin to solve my own problem.

What This Plugin Actually Does

ACF Blocks Plugin is a free, open-source collection of 28+ ready-to-use blocks for the WordPress block editor. Think of it as a starter kit for ACF Pro users who are tired of reinventing the wheel.

Here’s the thing that makes it different: automatic field group registration.

Most ACF block tutorials tell you to export your field groups as JSON, then import them on every site. That’s fine for one block. But for 28? That’s 28 imports. Every. Single. Time. (By the time you are reading this, the number of blocks have increases to 30+.)

This plugin handles it automatically. Drop it in your plugins folder or install the usual way, activate, and everything just works. No imports. No configuration. No friction.

The Blocks You Actually Need

I didn’t build blocks that look impressive in demos. I built blocks I use on real client sites. Here’s what’s included:

Content Blocks:

• Accordion with native HTML <details>/<summary> (zero JavaScript required)

• FAQ schema support built-in for better SEO

• Testimonials with star ratings

• Hero sections with CTA buttons

• Callout boxes for highlighted content

• Opinion boxes for editorial content

Product & E-Commerce:

• Product Review block with Google-friendly schema markup

• Product Cards for showcasing multiple items

• Coupon Code display with copy-to-clipboard

• Pros & Cons comparison blocks

• Side-by-side Compare blocks

Utility Blocks:

• Table of Contents with multiple styles

• Tabs with accessible keyboard navigation

• Feature grids for pricing pages

• Stats displays with animations

• Star rating collection with AJAX submission

Why Native HTML Accordions Matter

Let me explain why I’m particularly proud of the accordion implementation.

Most accordion plugins load jQuery, initialize event handlers, manage state, and add 15-30KB to your page weight. For an accordion. Something browsers can do natively.

The ACF Blocks accordion uses <details> and <summary> elements. That’s it. Native HTML. Works in every modern browser. Built-in keyboard accessibility. Zero JavaScript.

The result? Faster page loads. Better Core Web Vitals. One less thing that can break.

Here’s what the output looks like:

<details class="acf-accordion-item" open>
    <summary class="acf-accordion-title">
        Your Question Here
        <span class="acf-accordion-icon" aria-hidden="true"></span>
    </summary>
    <div class="acf-accordion-content">
        <p>Your answer here.</p>
    </div>
</details>

Clean. Semantic. Accessible. No dependencies.

Schema Markup That Actually Works

SEO is table stakes now. If your blocks don’t support structured data, you’re leaving traffic on the table.

The Accordion block includes optional FAQ schema. Toggle it on, and the plugin automatically generates valid FAQPage schema:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "Your question",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Your answer"
      }
    }
  ]
}

The Product Review block generates proper Review schema with ratings. The Table of Contents generates navigation schema. This isn’t afterthought SEO. It’s built into the core of each relevant block.

Conditional Asset Loading (Performance Matters)

Every block has its own CSS file. But here’s the key: they only load when the block is actually used on the page.

If you’re displaying a testimonial but not a product review, you don’t load the product review CSS. Simple concept. Surprisingly rare in practice.

Most block plugins bundle everything into one giant stylesheet. Your homepage loads accordion styles even if you’ll never use an accordion there. That’s wasted bandwidth.

This plugin checks which blocks are on the page and enqueues only what’s needed. Your page weight stays lean.

The Architecture: Why It’s Built Like This

Each block follows a consistent structure:

blocks/
  accordion-block/
    ├── block.json          # Block metadata (ACF v3)
    ├── accordion-block.php # Render template
    ├── block-data.json     # ACF field group (auto-registered)
    ├── accordion.css       # Styles (conditionally loaded)
    └── extra.php           # Additional hooks (optional)

This isn’t clever. It’s boring. And that’s intentional.

When every block follows the same pattern, you can:

• Quickly understand any block in the collection

• Copy the structure to create new blocks

• Maintain consistency across your projects

• Debug issues without hunting through spaghetti code

Creating Your Own Blocks

The plugin is designed for extension. Here’s how to add a custom block:

1. Create a folder: blocks/my-custom-block/

2. Add your block.json:

{
  "apiVersion": 3,
  "name": "acf/my-custom-block",
  "title": "My Custom Block",
  "description": "What it does",
  "category": "acf-blocks",
  "acf": {
    "renderTemplate": "my-custom-block.php",
    "blockVersion": 3
  }
}

3. Create block-data.json with your ACF field configuration

4. Build your my-custom-block.php render template

5. Add my-custom-block.css for styles

Done. The plugin discovers and registers your block automatically. No hook modifications. No filter hunting. Just follow the pattern.

Requirements (The Fine Print)

• WordPress 6.0+

• PHP 7.4+

• ACF Pro 6.0+

Yes, this requires ACF Pro. It uses ACF Block Version 3 features that aren’t available in the free version. If you’re doing serious WordPress development, ACF Pro is already on your stack. If not, it should be.

What’s Not Included

This plugin doesn’t try to do everything. It’s not:

• A page builder replacement

• A theme framework

• A comprehensive design system

It’s a focused collection of blocks that solve specific problems. Use it alongside your existing workflow. Extend it with your own blocks. Modify the CSS to match your client’s brand.

Installation

1. Download from GitHub

2. Upload to wp-content/plugins/

3. Activate in WordPress admin

4. Ensure ACF Pro is active

5. Start using blocks

No wizard. No onboarding flow. No settings page. Just blocks that work.

The Bottom Line

I built this plugin because I was tired of repetitive work. After using it on dozens of client projects, I’m releasing it for free because it solves a problem that shouldn’t exist.

If you’re an ACF Pro user who builds custom WordPress sites, this saves you time. Real-time. Hours per project that you’d otherwise spend recreating blocks you’ve built before.

The code is on GitHub. It’s GPL licensed. Fork it, modify it, use it however you want.

Download ACF Blocks Plugin on GitHub or Learn More at My Website

Questions? I’m on Twitter/X as @wpgaurav. Drop me a message.

This plugin requires ACF Pro 6.0+ and WordPress 6.0+. It’s free, open-source, and maintained as part of my ongoing WordPress development work. View more plugins

I want to share what I’ve been working on because, honestly, I’m excited about these pieces. They span WordPress development, SaaS economics, mathematics, and content strategy. That’s the range I operate in. Always has been.

Let me walk you through each one.

126 Tangible Loops & Logic Templates I Actually Use

Here’s the big one.

I’ve been building WordPress sites for over 16 years. Hundreds of them. And somewhere along the way, I discovered a plugin called Tangible Loops & Logic that completely changed how I approach layouts and dynamic content.

No PHP wrestling. No page builder bloat. Just clean, readable templates that pull content automatically.

So I documented everything. All 126 templates I’ve built and refined over the years. Hero sections. Blog layouts. Testimonial grids. Pricing tables. FAQ accordions. Complete footers. Schema markup. Author bio boxes. The works.

The syntax is almost embarrassingly simple. Want to loop through your latest six posts? It looks like this:

<Loop type=post count=6>
    <h2><Field title /></h2>
    <p><Field excerpt /></p>
</Loop>

That’s it. No WP_Query. No while have_posts(). No theme file edits.

I use Tangible for my entire homepage. My service pages. My calculators and tools. Even the deal compilation pages. Once you understand the pattern, you can build almost anything.

The article includes complete code for every template. Hero sections with multiple variations. Blog grids. Masonry layouts. Magazine-style layouts. Each one with the CSS baked in, using BEM naming conventions so nothing conflicts.

If you build WordPress sites, this might be the most useful resource I’ve ever published.

📖 Read it: 126 Cool Tangible Loops & Logic Templates I Use in My Projects

The SaaS Blogs That Actually Help You Grow

I’ve been reading SaaS content for years. Most of it is garbage. Recycled advice from people who’ve never shipped a product. Corporate content farms churning out keyword-stuffed articles.

But some publications consistently deliver insights that move the needle. So I put together a curated list.

SaaStr for raw honesty about the hard parts of building. Lenny’s Newsletter for research-backed product strategy. First Round Review for deeply tactical founder advice. Tomasz Tunguz for data-driven benchmarks. ChartMogul for understanding subscription metrics properly.

The piece isn’t just a list though. I explain why each publication matters and who should read it. I share which articles changed how I approach problems. I even included a section on how to actually use these blogs without drowning in content.

Here’s my approach: Pick three blogs that match your current challenge. Subscribe to their newsletters. Ignore the rest. Information overload kills execution.

When you read something useful, implement it within 48 hours. Even a small test beats passive consumption.

📖 Read it: Best SaaS Blogs to Follow in 2026 for Real Growth

Interesting Math Articles and Research Papers

This one’s personal.

I studied mathematics. I still love it. And over the years, I’ve collected dozens of papers and articles that made me see the subject differently.

Timothy Gowers on the two cultures of mathematics. Terence Tao on what makes good math. Paul Lockhart’s Mathematician’s Lament (which critiques traditional math education better than anything I’ve read). Alan Turing’s foundational paper on computable numbers. Freeman Dyson’s “Birds and Frogs” essay.

The list spans career advice, philosophical perspectives, famous proofs, and practical problem-solving approaches. Each entry includes a brief description and direct link.

If you’re a student, a teacher, or just someone who finds mathematics beautiful, this collection will keep you reading for weeks.

📖 Read it: Interesting Math Articles and Must Read Research Papers for Students

CAC Payback: The Metric Most Founders Ignore

Most founders obsess over the wrong metrics. They track MRR. They celebrate new logos. They watch revenue climb. Meanwhile, they’re quietly bleeding cash on customer acquisition that won’t pay off for years.

Revenue is vanity. CAC payback is sanity.

I wrote a comprehensive piece breaking down this metric. What it is. Why gross margin matters (hint: using revenue instead of gross margin makes your payback look artificially short). What “good” looks like for different business models. How payback and churn interact.

I also built an interactive calculator right into the article. Plug in your CAC, ARPA, and gross margin. Get your payback period with benchmarks and explanations.

The key insight: Your customer lifetime should be at least 3x your payback period. If payback is 12 months but average customer life is 14 months, you’re making roughly 2 months of profit per customer. Paper thin.

Most founders focus on lowering CAC through optimization. But pricing changes are the fastest lever. A 20% price increase improves payback by 20% instantly. No campaign testing required.

📖 Read it: CAC Payback: The SaaS Metric That Tells You If You Can Actually Afford to Grow

New Tool: HTML to GenerateBlocks Converter

I built something useful this week.

GenerateBlocks is one of my favorite WordPress plugins. But converting HTML to GenerateBlocks format? Tedious. Manual. Error-prone.

So I created a converter. Paste any HTML. Get GenerateBlocks V2 output. Copy it into WordPress’s code editor. Done.

The tool handles element blocks, text blocks, media blocks, and even shapes. It preserves inline styles, converts classes, and maintains proper nesting. It supports both V1 and V2 output formats.

The workflow is simple. You paste HTML. Click convert. Copy the output. Switch to code editor in WordPress. Paste. Switch back to visual editor. Your blocks are ready.

I’ve been using this constantly for converting layouts from design tools. It saves hours of manual block creation.

🔧 Use it: HTML to GenerateBlocks Converter

Why I Create Free Tools

A quick aside.

People sometimes ask why I build free tools when I could monetize them. Calculators. Converters. Code snippets.

The honest answer: These tools solve problems I actually have. And sharing them brings people to my site who might need my services later. It’s not altruism. It’s strategy that happens to help people.

Also, building tools is fun. It scratches an itch that writing articles doesn’t. Different part of the brain.

What I’m Working On Next

The Tangible templates article is part of a larger project. I’m documenting my entire WordPress development workflow. The tools I use. The patterns I follow. The systems that let me ship sites faster without sacrificing quality.

I’m also working on more calculators for SaaS founders. MRR forecasting. Churn analysis. Pricing optimization. Each one will include the calculator plus a detailed explanation of the underlying concepts.

If there’s a specific tool or topic you want me to cover, reply to this email. I read every response.

Thanks for being here.

I’ll be back next Friday with more practical stuff. WordPress development techniques. SaaS economics. Tools that save time. The occasional math tangent.

If you found this useful, share it with someone who builds things online. The best way this newsletter grows is through word of mouth.

Talk soon,

Gaurav

I’ve built and maintained enough WordPress sites to know the pattern. You start with “just one small tweak.” Then you add another. Then another. Soon you have five plugins for things that should have been one clean, sane toolkit.

I got tired of that mess. So I built my own.

It’s called “Functionalities”. You can check it out at both:

• https://functionalities.dev

• https://github.com/wpgaurav/functionalities

This is a module-based plugin that lets you switch features on or off like Lego blocks. No forced bundles. No “buy the pro version to disable the things we shouldn’t have enabled in the first place.”

What “Functionalities” Is

“Functionalities” is my attempt at a better “site toolkit” plugin. The kind you install once and keep for years. It’s built for people who care about clean output, performance, editor sanity, and SEO details that actually matter.

Most utility plugins either do too little or try to become a full operating system. I wanted the middle path. Practical modules. Tight scope. Strong defaults. Clear docs.

And yes, I built it for me. But I’m shipping it for you.

The Core Idea

Each feature lives inside its own module, and each module can be enabled or disabled independently. That means:

• You can run only what you need.

• You avoid feature overlap with other plugins.

• You keep your dashboard clean.

• You reduce the “mystery meat” effect where you don’t know what’s changing your site.

I love this approach because it respects reality. Every site has a different stack. Every site has different baggage.

What Makes It Special

Let me walk you through the modules. Some are “finally, one place for this.” A few are the kind of features I honestly haven’t seen done properly elsewhere.

Link Management

This is one of the modules I’m proudest of because link handling is usually half-baked. Most tools treat it like a checkbox. Real sites are messier than that.

With Link Management, you get:

• Complete nofollow implementation

• Automatic external link handling

• Exception lists (because you will always have exceptions)

• Pattern-based domain matching (because rules beat manual cleanup)

If you publish a lot, this saves you from the slow death of auditing links one by one. It’s also safer, because rules are consistent and humans are… well, humans.

Block Cleanup

WordPress blocks output a lot of markup. Some of it is useful. A lot of it is noise. That noise adds up, especially when you’re trying to keep CSS lean and predictable.

Block Cleanup strips unnecessary wp-block-* classes from frontend output so your HTML stays cleaner and your CSS doesn’t turn into a junk drawer.

Less clutter. Less bloat. Fewer weird styling edge cases.

Bloat Control

This module is simple, but it matters. WordPress ships with a bunch of features that many sites never use, and some that actively become liabilities.

Bloat Control helps disable things like:

• Emojis

• Embeds

• XML-RPC

• Other unnecessary bits

This is the boring stuff that improves performance and reduces attack surface. I like boring when it makes sites faster. It also allows you to add useful enhancements like PrismJS and fullscreen textareas.

Header & Footer

Every site eventually needs to inject something. Analytics, verification tags, meta, scripts, styles, random client requests you didn’t ask for. You know the pain.

This module includes:

• Google Analytics 4 integration

• Custom code injection for scripts, styles, and meta tags

It’s clean, predictable, and doesn’t force you to install another plugin that tries to upsell you while you’re just trying to add one tag.

Schema Settings

This one is unique, and it exists because schema is a mess in the real world. Themes output schema. SEO plugins output schema. Sometimes both. Sometimes neither does it right.

Schema Settings adds microdata aimed at improving SEO and rich snippet support. The goal is not “more schema.” The goal is “less broken schema.”

If you’ve ever had that moment where you think your structured data is fine, then Search Console tells you it’s not, you get why I built this.

Components

This is another module I love because it solves a real workflow problem: reusable UI patterns that don’t require a page builder or a giant design system.

Components lets you define reusable CSS components with:

• A grid-based UI

• Preset components like cards, buttons, badges, and more

• A cleaner way to standardize UI across pages without reinventing everything

If you care about consistency, this saves time. If you care about speed, it also reduces the temptation to pile on more CSS “just this once.”

Custom Fonts

Fonts are one of the easiest ways to destroy performance without realizing it. People upload random files, load five weights, and wonder why pages feel heavy.

This module helps you register custom font families with proper @font-face rules, including:

• WOFF2 support

• Variable fonts

• font-display control

This is the “do it properly” path, without needing to hand-code font stacks every time.

Icon Manager

I’ve seen sites load Font Awesome for three icons. That’s like ordering a moving truck to bring you a toothbrush.

Icon Manager helps replace Font Awesome with SVG sprites so you reduce page weight and keep icons fast.

Cleaner payload. Faster rendering. Less dependency bloat.

Editor Links

This module is Beta and unique, because the editor experience is where WordPress can feel noisy.

Editor Links filters link suggestions inside the block editor for a cleaner experience. If you’ve ever typed in a link search and got a chaotic list of irrelevant stuff, you know why this matters.

It’s a small quality-of-life improvement that makes writing feel smoother.

GitHub Updates

If you ship plugins outside the repo, updates become annoying fast.

GitHub Updates enables automatic updates directly from GitHub releases. That means you can treat releases like releases, not like “download zip, upload zip, hope nothing breaks.”

This is especially useful if you run multiple sites and want a clean deployment routine.

Content Regression Detection

This is where things get spicy.

Most tools tell you if a page is “published.” They don’t tell you if you accidentally broke the content structure while editing. And that’s how regressions sneak in.

Content Regression Detection can alert you when:

• Internal links drop sharply after an update

• Heading structure breaks (missing H1, multiple H1s)

• Word count falls below historical average

I like this module because it catches silent damage. The kind that doesn’t throw an error but still hurts your site over time.

Assumption Detection

This is my favorite “smart but not AI nonsense” module.

Instead of adding more settings, it watches for technical assumptions that quietly break, like:

• Schema collisions (theme schema vs SEO plugin schema)

• Duplicate analytics scripts

• Redundant fonts loading the same family

• Inline CSS growing beyond a threshold, turning into performance debt

These issues rarely get noticed until rankings dip, speed scores drop, or the site just feels heavier. I wanted a module that taps you on the shoulder and says: “Hey, something changed. Look here.”

Who This Plugin Is For

If you build one site a year, you might not need this. If you build and maintain sites constantly, it starts to feel like a “why didn’t I have this earlier” tool.

“Functionalities” is for you if:

• You hate bloated stacks.

• You like modular control.

• You love SEO.

• You don’t want to pass unnecessary link juice to others.

• You care about clean markup and performance.

• You want better guardrails for content edits.

• You ship work for clients and need consistency.

Basically: it’s for people who don’t want their WordPress setup to turn into a haunted house.

How I Use It

On my own sites, I’ll typically enable:

• Link Management (because link hygiene is everything)

• Bloat Control (because default WP behavior is not sacred)

• Header & Footer (because injection requests never stop)

• Custom Fonts and Icon Manager (because performance matters)

• Content Regression Detection (because edits can be destructive)

• Assumption Detection (because plugins love stepping on each other’s toes)

Then I keep everything else optional based on the site. That’s the point.

Where To Get It

You can learn more and download the plugin from functionalities official website.

And the code lives at https://github.com/wpgaurav/functionalities

If you’re the kind of person who likes reading changelogs and peeking under the hood, you’ll feel at home.

What’s Next

I’m going to keep polishing the modules, tightening UX, and expanding the areas where WordPress tends to “silently fail.” That’s the real theme of this plugin.

Not more features for the sake of it. More protection from the subtle stuff that costs you traffic, speed, and sanity.

If you try it, I’d love to hear what module you ended up enabling first. My bet is Link Management or Assumption Detection. Those two tend to expose problems fast, and WordPress has a talent for hiding problems like a cat hides a dead cockroach.

• Regional SEO in India isn’t optional anymore. In my new guide on SEO for regional languages in India, I break down how to structure Hindi, Tamil, and other vernacular content so it actually ranks, converts, and doesn’t look like a bolted-on translation project.

• Cash flow looks very different when you stop winging your invoices. In-House vs. Outsourced Accounts Receivable: A Cost Comparison digs into when it makes sense to keep AR in-house, when to outsource, and how to read the real cost beyond salary vs. agency fees.

• Classic themes are not dead; they’re just overdue for a smarter config layer. In Improving Classic Themes with theme.json in WordPress, I show how you can keep your existing theme but still get global styles, sane typography, and less CSS trash.

• Students and lifelong learners: Ultimate AI Study Toolkit for Students – 2026 Edition is a deep dive into using AI tools for note-taking, practice questions, spaced repetition, and writing help without turning your brain off.

WordPress, blogging, and SEO shifts

• WordPress 6.9 shipped upgrades that change workflows for both creators and developers. What’s new for site owners and what’s new for developers both hit the same theme: WordPress is becoming more of an application platform than just a CMS.

• Google has confirmed it now releases many small, unannounced core updates continuously. Here’s the rundown: Smaller core updates confirmed.

• A clear breakdown of the December 2025 Helpful Content update reveals stronger emphasis on on-page usefulness and punishing filler content harder.

• The December 2025 Google Webmaster Report sums up the month’s SEO turbulence, from AI-overview experiments to SERP layout changes.

Education and edtech moves

• AI in K–12 is now mainstream. Indian edtech company Uolo just raised $7M to expand AI-driven learning tools in schools: Uolo funding news.

• A roundup of the best edtech startups of 2025 shows the shift toward AI tutors, adaptive systems, and hybrid learning models.

• A great overview of 11 EdTech trends for 2025 highlights multilingual content, personalization, and teacher-assistive AI.

• For narrative-style updates, EdTechReview and EdTech Digest are consistently solid reads.

• My own Ultimate AI Study Toolkit matches these trends perfectly and is a ready-made recommendation for students and educators.

Business, startups, and finance

• StartupTalky’s daily Indian funding roundup shows fintech, AI, and SME tools raising confidently even in a disciplined funding climate.

• Entrackr’s reports (entrackr.com) reveal funding stabilizing around the $1B mark with a focus on sustainable businesses rather than hype.

• Fintech highlight: LenDenClub’s parent company is preparing for an IPO after hitting ₹240 crore in revenue. Details here: LenDenClub IPO news.

• Lightspeed launched India Ascends, an accelerator for under-25 deeptech founders. Story here: India Ascends details.

• For your finance readers, ULIP Benefits and Monthly Income Schemes is a helpful explainer on pairing long-term investments with stable income plans.

AI, tools, and the bigger tech picture

• AI software startup Harness just hit a $5.5B valuation after a major round led by Goldman Sachs: Harness funding.

• Electronic design startup Elecbits raised $5.5M to bring automation and AI deeper into hardware workflows: Elecbits Series A.

• Business Insider covered why dealmaking in AI is getting trickier, using Scale AI and Meta as a case study: Dealmaking in the AI era.

• AI HR startup Shapes raised $24M to expand its modular “PeopleOS” platform: Shapes funding.

• For devs, my recent pieces on Hetzner vs Vultr vs RackNerd and 4G proxies for multi-profile management give a practical look at performance and cost control across multiple online brands.

Are you an artist or designer looking for cutting-edge tools to enhance your creativity? Check out my latest article on the top 10 alternatives to Midjourney for AI-driven art and design in 2024. From OpenAI's DALL-E 3 to Adobe Firefly and more, I’ve got you covered with the best tools to bring your artistic visions to life.

🔗 Explore the Top Midjourney Alternatives

Stay ahead of the curve with the most innovative tools in AI art!

Other AI Related Articles that can be of interest:

• Best Free AI Image Enhancer Apps and Websites in 2024

• How to Earn $398/Day Using Imagine AI Art Generator?

• 10 Best Online Image Background Remover Tools for Flawless Results

• 10 Best AI Video Generators to Convert Text to Videos Online
  

I use WPX — a managed WordPress hosting service that allows me to host 10 websites for $49.99 per month. (There is a 5 websites plan that costs $24.99 per month.)

Considering $5 per month per website, it is not that costly, but overall, the pricing is way higher than the shared hosting services offered by Hostinger, Bluehost and others.

Hostinger, for example, allows you to host unlimited websites (terms apply) for a meager $4 per month.

Why is WPX hosting costly and Hostinger is not?

This is one of the frequent questions my readers ask.

When you first look at the price of most Managed WordPress Hosting plans, and not only WPX, you will find the starting prices 4-5 times that of Shared.

WPX is, to be honest, one of the cheapest managed hosting solutions.

So why are Managed hosts so expensive?

Did they slap WordPress to the beginning of their name and start charging more money?

Well, not really.

Managed WordPress Hosts actually offer a ton of value with additional features which do not come standard on Shared Hosting plans.

Here are a few of the major upgrades a Managed Hosts offers for free at one-off monthly/yearly charges.

• Daily Backups

• Top-level Security

• Built-in or Server Side Caching

• Content Delivery Network

• The most updated Server Software.

Looking at that list, you probably think, “So what, that doesn’t look like 4x the value.” But let’s break those items down a little more.

If you choose a Shared Host, and you follow all the best practices out there, you will have a backup system in place. That feature costs money. If you use the Jetpack plugin, it will cost you $5 per month for a backup once every day.

Then you will need to figure out where to store your backups because you do not want to leave them on the same server as your website.

Why? If your website server gets infected, chances are your backups will go down with it. And they won’t be much help to you at that point. Some cheap choices would be Dropbox or some other cloud storage provider. But top-level WordPress Managed Hosts use Amazon S3.

Amazon S3 is a cloud storage service offered by Amazon, and is billed monthly based on three criteria:

• The total amount of data stored,

• The total amount of data transferred in and out of S3 per month,

• The number of requests made to S3 per month.

Next, you will want some type of security in place. There are a number of reasons to have added security in place. Primarily because of the popularity of WordPress, it is prone to being hacked. And if you are running an e-commerce site, any downtime is money you’re not making.

Additionally, once your site is hacked, it will take even more money, to hire someone to clean it up. Which again means more downtime. So even if you go the cheaper shared hosting route, you will want some level of security.

A Managed WordPress Host like WPX uses custom security software, and if, for some reason, your website is infected, they will personally clean up your WordPress install for free. If you were to buy that same level of protection from Sucuri, it would cost you $89.99 per year.

Additionally, if your website becomes infected with malware, and Google detects this, your website could become “blacklisted” by Google, which is like a death sentence.

Google pretty much acts as if your website doesn’t even exist. It will also display the following, if people try to reach your website.

That is not the kind of PR you want to be sent to potential customers, especially if you’re running an e-commerce site. People are not going to trust you with their credit card information anytime soon. Other than the monthly cost of top-level security from Sucuri, it is hard to put a price tag on the hidden costs that you could incur, if your website is hacked or infected.

Next up is another very important aspect of a successful WordPress website.

Speed.

If you choose a Shared Host, you will want to use some type of Cache plugin, to increase your website page load times.

Why? Page load speeds are #SEO101, folks. The faster your pages load, the better you do in the rankings.

Lucky, if you choose a Shared Host, you can install a number of cache plugins that will really speed up your website.

But it will require you to set them up and the best one like WP Rocket may need you to pay for them.

And cache plugins are not the easiest things to mess with. But, if you go with a WordPress Managed Host, they have cache software and physical server hardware to do the job.

And on top of that, they actually do this for a living, and they personally optimize your website to run as fast as possible.

Additionally, most managed hosts have Content Delivery Networks (CDN), as part of their packages.

What is a CDN? A CDN is the process of having your website pre loaded on multiple servers worldwide. That way when people access your website, it will be served up to them from multiple locations, and it will use the locations closest to them.

That again increases speed, and is usually free with a WordPress Managed Host. But if you are on a Shared hosting, you will have to CDNs which start from $5 per month onwards.

I could talk all day about why Managed WordPress Hosting is worth the extra cost, and I kinda feel like I’ve been typing all day, but here is the deal.

Managed WordPress Hosting is built and designed from the ground up to do one thing.

Delivery of fast, reliable, and safe hosting for WordPress sites and WordPress websites only.

But to finish, let's look at the numbers. Below I am going to compare my two favorite hosting companies. For Shared Hosting, I will take SiteGround — one of the best out there, and for WordPress Managed Hosting, I am picking WPX — the one that I use. The numbers don’t lie.

All of these prices are as of this date and are based on the lowest-priced comparable options.

So, in the end, you could spend a little less for Shared Hosting and personally configure all the above features.

Or you could write a check each month, and let some of the best people in the business, do it for you.

So I would go with a WordPress Managed Host because you and your business will be better for it.

There are two WordPress-managed hosting options that I recommend: WPX and Rocket.net

Which hosting services are you using? And are you satisfied with what you are getting?

While it is still in the design process, you can ask me for the PDF version of this guide by replying to this email.

Back to School Deals

It’s time for the Back to School sales, and brands are already up and running heavy discounts to students and teachers. If you are a student or a teacher looking to save on learning & teaching materials, these Back to School deals can help you a lot.

I have gathered and verified some of the best back to school deals that are live right now.

👉 Learn more about Back to School sale here

Best Back to School Deals and Offers Live Now (Save ~70%)

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Updates

• The all new blogging deals page is live now.

• In case you haven’t explored, here are thousands of free videos available for commercial license.

• Here are 15 Best Gaming Headsets Under $50 For Perfect Gaming Experience

• 8 Must-have Chrome Extensions for Personal Productivity

• Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: A Feature by Feature Showdown – Who Wins?

Today I’m announcing a brand new addition to my Substack publication: the Gaurav Tiwari's Substack subscriber chat.

This is a conversation space in the Substack app that I set up exclusively for my subscribers — kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

To join our chat, you’ll need to download the Substack app, now available for both iOS and Android. Chats are sent via the app, not email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens.

How to get started

1. Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Substack Chat is now available on both iOS and Android.

Get app

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

Join chat

Gaurav Tiwari

@wpgaurav

This week I finished by compilation of the best content marketing tools, polished the ebooks page, redesigned the homepage and added new awesome deals.

Content is what makes me shine. And as a blogger and content marketer, I use dozens of content marketing tools daily.

I have felt that if the content is king, the content marketing tools are the kingmakers. Companies increasingly rely on content marketing tools and strategies to boost their businesses.

If you own a business, especially a small business or a blog, it can be very difficult to place your footing in the world of content marketing at first. The competition is very tough.

Everyone wants to reach their customer base as much as they can. So if you don’t make things right and plan a perfect content marketing strategy, your whole business may fail.

And to plan and execute your content marketing strategy, you need what?

The content marketing tools like these 👇

45+ Best Content Marketing Tools in 2022 That You Must Use

gauravtiwari.org

I also polished my ebooks landing page and improved layouts of old ebooks. If you haven’t, feel free to grab an ebook from my Gumroad page. Everything is free there.

I also redesigned my homepage and remove a lot of unnecessary content, tidied up the homepage. I’ll be glad if you could pay my blog a visit once again and offer me some feedback on the layout.

Deals time.

Education Deals

Here are the latest and probably the best deals on education and online courses that you can try:

• Skillshare has launched the Summer Sale - Limited Time Only: 50% Off Your First Year with code: SUMMER50

• Need to create some videos for your school projects? Animoto is offering a 30% discount on all their plans in their Back to School Offer - Save 30% on ALL Plans with coupon code: SCHOOL30AP

• Get 70% OFF all Udacity courses. Offer until 22nd August.

• Guess what? Datacamp is offering $1500 in rewards that you can get by learning data and earning points.

• Want to learn logo design & branding for free? Skillshare has 30-days free to try their latest branding course.

• Get 20% off up to $3 on Chegg Study and Chegg Study Pack products! Click here to get the offer.

WordPress Deals

• QuotesDLX is available on AppSumo for a one-time purchase of $55 instead of $449.97.

• Save 65% on MonsterInsights - the popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

• Save 60% on AIOSEO – the popular SEO toolkit and plugin. Now with redirection manager and image SEO. Limited Time Deal! Or looking for my personal favorite? Get Rank Math Pro at $59

• Get 50% off on Ninja Forms - a powerful drag-and-drop WordPress form builder.

• Get Perfmatters for as low as $19.95/year using coupon code GAURAVTIWARI

• Get 20% + 10% off on OMGF Pro using promo code GAURAVTIWARI. 14-day money-back guarantee. OMGF Pro helps you self-host Google Fonts (even variable fonts), leverage browser cache, reduce DNS lookups/requests, and reduce cumulative layout shift to make your Google Fonts 100% Core Web Vitals and GDPR compliant!

• Get more leads and conversions from your WordPress site with OptinMonster. Get 60% off the first year.

• Astra has reached version 3.9 and is celebrating a 30% discount using promo code ASTRA39

• Marketers Delight, the theme that I use, now offers a single site license at just $58. 

• GeneratePress Premium doesn’t have an offer going on but even at $59 for 500 sites, it is a steal deal.

VPN Deals

• Now get 83% off on Atlas VPN (which is just $1.83 per month).

• Namecheap’s FastVPN can be tried at just $0.99 per month.

• Looking for the VPN that I always use? It is NordVPN - the best but not the cheapest.

Until next time.

Also, thank you so much for your email replies. It’s always great to chat with you, awesome folks. I am still learning this weekly newsletter, but your appreciation makes my day.

Gaurav Tiwari

@wpgaurav

Memory, in human reference, is the ability to store, retain and recall information when needed. Without hammering the mind in the definitions, let us look into the ten methods of boosting our memory: 

Well, what was that thing?

1. Simple Repetition Method

The classical method is very popular in committing poems to memory by reading them repeatedly. This works in other types of learning as well.

2. Full Concentration Method

Concentrate on the topic content while learning. Do not allow your mind to wander. Focus on names and numbers. Try deliberately to remember. Your approach should not be casual. Review soon after you learn, lest memory should fade away.

3. Visual Encoding Method

Translate information into visual formats like pictures, charts, diagrams, tables and graphs.

4. Logical Organization

The matter that is logically organized is retained better than the disjointed floating bits of information. Infuse meaning into whatever you learn. No “Nonsense Syllables.”

5. Mnemonics Method

Few good people try this method to learn some complicated series.

There is no harm in using memory crutches like it after grasping the spirit of the lesson.

VIBGYOR is the most famous mnemonic that helps to list the seven rainbow colors in their appropriate order.

Once, I remembered the name of the planets in the order of their distances from the sum by the acrostics.

“My very enlightened mother just served us noodles-in plates”.

It tells me the names of nine planets (off-course, now they are eight, but I learned it earlier than the removal of pluto), in the order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

There are many more mnemonics that you can try. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mnemonics

6. Mock Teaching Method

If you find a particular portion of a chapter difficult to digest, imagine that you are teaching to a student sitting before you.

Explain virtually the content of the lessen. The idea will get hammered into your brain.

7. Rhyming Method

Scholars say that verses are better than prose in memorizing.

Change any definition into verse and try to rhyme that.

8. Chunking Method

Very popular method. You can divide a big list into a number of bits or chunks.

For example, to remember a mobile number of ten digits, people usually split it into three or more chunks.

9. Pegging

This involves the principle of association/connection.

Find a connection and make a list of ten or twenty convenient pegs or keywords you can easily recall in the right sequence.

For example, in alphabetical order, ant, butterfly, cat, dog, elephant, fox, and so on (Living beings are arranged). Cartoons also help in pegging.

10. Writing

This is the best method for that students who want to learn very complicated topics. When you write about any topic, you use all the nine methods listed above.

Free Ebooks are here.

Now download all my ebooks for free.

Step up your game with the best eBooks. Get a range of free downloadable guides and books in PDF format to help broaden your knowledge and improve your skills.

Available only for a limited time.

Get my ebooks here

Until next time,

Gaurav Tiwari

Gaurav Tiwari

@wpgaurav

Most of those who have opted for professional blogging or even blogging as a career go for free hosted blogging platforms such as WordPress.com or Blogspot.com where they don’t have to invest anything at all.

However, the biggest misunderstanding that they have is that with those subdomains, their blogs will be still able to garner enough internet traffic. Nevertheless, this will certainly take a lot of time and eventually, it will be too late. Therefore, it is utmost necessary that they are investing at least $2.51 to $11 in subscribing to a custom domain name on an annual basis. You can certainly not compromise on the custom-made domain for your blog.

If you don’t buy a domain that is custom-made for you right from the start, then you will have to face some disadvantages. Such as:

• When you blog for a year or so and are successful in drawing enough traffic towards your blog, then that will certainly increase your page rank and authority. However, if you give up the subdomain and go for a custom one of your own, the ranking is not going to stay the way it was. Unfortunately, you will have to start from the beginning.

• After transferring to a custom domain, Google will not show the current blog site, but the one that used to be on the subdomain.

• If you have an account with Google Analytics Tools, it is very necessary that you will have to update it. If you use the old analytics for the new domain; it would show the stats under the old name.

• If you have already submitted the site map of your website to the top search engines, you will have to do it again.

Now let us look at the main advantages of having your own custom domain.

• Your blog gets good search engine exposure – better than the sub-domains on platforms such as blogspot.com or WordPress.com.

• You stand a good chance of your AdSense account is approved. There are people who got their account approved with a month-old domain.

• You can also have your e-mail ID based on your own domain such as username@yourdomainname.com instead of having one for Gmail or Yahoo. You can do so by using Google apps.

• The publicity of your site name becomes much easier now with your own custom name, rather than publicizing it with a subdomain.

It is always better to go for a shorter domain name rather than opting for a longer one since people usually recollect smaller names. Also, buy a domain that is easier to spell as it becomes easier for visitors to access your website or else they may go to some other website. Also, never change the complete name when making the transition from a subdomain to a custom one. When changing your preferences, select the 301 redirection option so that you do not lose any traffic.

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sf ma

Gaurav Tiwari

@wpgaurav

Albert Einstein

This name need not be explained. Albert Einstein is considered to be one of the best minds in human history.

The twentieth century had undoubtedly been the most significant for the advance of science, in general, and Physics, in particular. And Einstein was the most illuminated star of the 20th century.

He literally created an upheaval in quick succession, in the year 1905, by the publication of two epoch-making papers, on the concept of the photon and on the Electrodynamics of moving bodies respectively, with yet another on the Mathematical analysis of Brownian Motion thrown in, in between.

The Electrodynamics of moving bodies was the biggest sensation and it demolished at one stroke some of the most cherished and supposedly infallible laws and concepts and gave the breathtaking new idea of the relativity of space and time.

Truly it may be said that just as the enunciation of Newton’s laws of motion heralded emancipation from the age-old Aristotelian ideas of motion, so also did Einstein’s Theory of relativity make a proclamation, loud and clear, of emancipation from the crippling bondage to luminiferous ether and the confused notions of absolute space and time.

Einstein's Words on Relativity

As to an Introduction to the Theory of Relativity - one must read this statement that Einstein self-made to introduce to the world:

Turning to the theory of relativity itself, I am anxious to draw attention to the fact that this theory is not speculative in origin; it owes its invention entirely to the desire to make physical theory fit observed fact as well as possible. We have here no revolutionary act but the natural continuation of a line that can be traced through centuries. The abandonment of certain notions connected with space, time, and motion hitherto treated as fundamentals must not be regarded as arbitrary, but only as conditioned by observed facts.

He continued,

The law of the constant velocity of light in empty space, which has been confirmed by the development of electro-dynamics and optics, and the equal legitimacy of all inertial systems (special principle of relativity), which was proved in a particularly incisive manner by Michelson’s famous experiment, between them made it necessary, to begin with, that the concept of time should be made relative, each inertial system being given its own special time.

As this notion was developed, it became clear that the connection between immediate experience on one side and coordinates and time on the other had hitherto not been thought out with sufficient precision. It is in general one of the essential features of the theory of relativity that it is at pains to work out the relations between general concepts and empirical facts more precisely. The fundamental principle here is that the justification for a physical concept lies exclusively in its clear and unambiguous relation to facts that can be experienced.

According to the special theory of relativity, spatial coordinates and time still have an absolute character in so far as they are directly measurable by stationary clocks and bodies. But they are relative in so far as they depend on the state of motion of the selected inertial system. According to the special theory of relativity, the four-dimensional continuum formed by the union of space and time (Minkowski) retains the absolute character which, according to the earlier theory, belonged to both space and time separately. The influence of motion (relative to the coordinate system) on the form of bodies and on the motion of clocks, also the equivalence of energy and inert mass, follow from the interpretation of coordinates and time as products of measurement.

The general theory of relativity owes its existence in the first place to the empirical fact of the numerical equality of the inertial and gravitational mass of bodies, for which fundamental fact classical mechanics provided no interpretation. Such an interpretation is arrived at by an extension of the principle of relativity to coordinate systems accelerated relatively to one another. The introduction of coordinate systems accelerated relatively to inertial systems involves the appearance of gravitational fields relative to the latter. As a result of this, the general theory of relativity, which is based on the equality of inertia and weight, provides a theory of the gravitational field.

The introduction of coordinate systems accelerated relatively to each other as equally legitimate systems, such as they appear conditioned by the identity of inertia and weight, leads, in conjunction with the results of the special theory of relativity, to the conclusion that the laws governing the arrangement of solid bodies in space, when gravitational fields are present, do not correspond to the laws of Euclidean geometry. An analogous result follows for the motion of clocks. This brings us to the necessity for yet another generalization of the theory of space and time because the direct interpretation of spatial and temporal coordinates by means of measurements obtainable with measuring rods and clocks now breaks down. . That generalization of metric, which had already been accomplished in the sphere of pure mathematics through the researches of Gauss and Riemann, is essentially based on the fact that the metric of the special theory of relativity can still claim validity for small regions in the general case as well.

The process of development here sketched strips the space-time coordinates of all independent reality. The metrically real is now only given through the combination of the space-time coordinates with the mathematical quantities which describe the gravitational field.

There is yet another factor underlying the evolution- of the general theory of relativity. As Ernst Mach insistently pointed out, the Newtonian theory is unsatisfactory in the following respect: if one considers motion from the purely descriptive, not from the causal, point of view, it only exists as a relative motion of things with respect to one another. But the acceleration which figures in Newton’s equations of motion is unintelligible if one starts with the concept of relative motion. It compelled Newton to invent a physical space in relation to which acceleration was supposed to exist. This introduction ad hoc of the concept of absolute space, while logically unexceptionable, nevertheless seems unsatisfactory. Hence Mach’s attempt to alter the mechanical equations in such a way that the inertia of bodies is traced back to relative motion on their part not as against absolute space but as against the totality of other ponder-able bodies. In the state of knowledge then existing, his attempt was bound to fail.

The posing of the problem seems, however, entirely reasonable. This line of argument imposes itself with considerably enhanced force in relation to the general theory of relativity, since, according to that theory, the physical properties of space are affected by the ponderable matter. In my opinion, the general theory of relativity can solve this problem satisfactorily only if it regards the world as spatially closed. The mathematical results of the theory force one to this view, if one believes that the mean density of ponderable matter in the world possesses some finite value, however small.

sf ma.

Gaurav Tiwari

@wpgaurav

Envato Market Mid-Year Sale that offers up to 50% discount on popular items from ThemeForest, CodeCanyon, VideoHive, AudioJungle and GraphicRiver is live now.

2022’s selected items will be available on sale from 12PM of 20th June 2022 and until 12PM of 25th June 2022 (Australian Eastern Daylight Time) — a total of 5 days.

If you are looking to save on themes, plugins, templates, graphics and other creative assets, now is a good time.

Click here to see items currently on sale

New Store

I am working on a new store at https://store.gauravtiwari.org . As of now this store only has freebies listed but with time I will be adding some paid work as well.

Some motivation

Folks at AuthorityHacker, Gael and Mark, recently sold VPNMentor (a VPN affiliate site) for a whopping $150 million dollars.

How did they do that? Read in this Twitter thread:

Recommended readings

1. How to Set up a VPN for the Best Speed and Performance?

2. Best Directory WordPress Themes for High-Quality Sites

3. WordPress.org Strongly Urges Theme Authors to Switch to Locally Hosted Webfonts

4. 9 Best Work from Home Online Business Ideas to Try

Until next time,

Gaurav Tiwari

For you to get reliable organic traffic to your website, then it means that the content that you put on the website should attract traffic to your website always, and in the future. This does not sound like an easy task, does it? Well, we have some solutions for that, of which we’d be sharing the key elements.

Here are 3 key elements that can help you to grow your website organically:

1. High-quality content creation

For you to attract organic traffic to your website, you need to create real content for the website. Do not just publish an article on your website for the sake. It won’t work. You could, in fact, cause quite some damage to your website as the search engines will easily punish you. You should create content that is relevant to your website and indeed your business. Have pictures, videos and all other items that can help attract reliable and serious traffic to your website.

When your website is regularly updated, your customers are happy with it and they will always visit the website. You will definitely be getting organic traffic to the site.

2. Identifying target keywords

Before you can do a search engine optimization of your website, you need to identify the right keywords to target. Your keywords should be related to the products that you sell. Don’t just target keywords based on their search volumes as this could for sure bring in traffic to your website, but rather a kind of traffic that is not helpful. Don’t try to rank keywords that could be too difficult to move up.

Your keywords should be based on your buyers. Are they searching for the kind of items or goods that you deal with? You should target keywords that are kind of localized and not just general keywords. Target precise keywords that also have your name and location as a way of bringing in valuable target traffic to your website.

3. Monitoring performance and SEO

It is imperative that you keep monitoring your website performance to ensure that your strategies are working. Get to know your keyword rankings and if your efforts are not paying off, then you can make improvements where necessary.

Dive into your analytics and determine the kind of “buyer” keywords that you need to target more. Think about the links. One of the best ways to ensure you rank highly is by getting the services of SEO companies. These experts will analyze your website’s needs and ensure that you are following the rules of SEO. You should definitely be better off.

Think about your on-page SEO and whether it is working or needs improvements. Your local SEO companies should help you do this.

Along with my team at Gatilab, I plan, research and write conversion first articles to make them rank and convert better online. But there comes a time when hundreds of thousand words in the content are needed.

Such content is not entirely dedicated to making something exceptional and even generic content can work if properly presented.

For such needs, I suggest my clients to use AI writing tools (instead of wasting time and money on content writers).

AI writing is a trend nowadays. Ever-growing applications of Artificial Intelligence and GPT-3 have made AI writing tools near-perfect.

While they cannot reach the humanistic experience, AI writing tools can analyze your writing styles, all sorts of content available online and suggest you (and even write) some great content in bulk.

There are various AI writing tools available for different needs. I have already compared the writing assistants (Grammarly, ProWritingAid and Sapling) – which you can use to improve your writing style and grammar. Almost everyone uses such a writing assistant. But AI writing tools are a league different.

These use the GPT-3 model by OpenAI which is an AI algorithm for natural languages that has gathered a portion of the content available on the internet and helps generate text when specific text phrases or sentences are provided as model content.

See the Best AI Content Writing Tools

(Fun note, 50% of this article was written by an AI writing tool called LeadScripts+)