wordpress plugins News - SiteProNews https://www.sitepronews.com/tag/wordpress-plugins/ Breaking News, Technology News, and Social Media News Tue, 13 Aug 2024 20:07:14 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.9.10 8 Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Your Website to Boost Conversions https://www.sitepronews.com/2022/03/02/8-must-have-wordpress-plugins-for-your-website-to-boost-conversions/ Wed, 02 Mar 2022 05:05:00 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=120530 Looking for the best WordPress Plugins for your website to boost conversions in 2022? This post is for you.  WordPress is a content management system (CMS) with a market share of 64.7%.  Indeed, WordPress is the most popular website platform in the world, with most CMS users choosing it as their platform of choice.  To […]

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Looking for the best WordPress Plugins for your website to boost conversions in 2022? This post is for you. 

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) with a market share of 64.7%. 

Indeed, WordPress is the most popular website platform in the world, with most CMS users choosing it as their platform of choice. 

To gain a comprehensive understanding of WordPress? Perhaps you’ll enjoy WordPress- The Website Champion and Market Leader. 

What are WordPress Plugins and why do you need them?

WordPress plugins are tools that allow you to add new functionality to your website. In the WordPress community, they are one of the most well-known technology developments.

WordPress (WP) plugins are certain to transform a standard WordPress website into a multifaceted one. There are approximately 59, 000 plugins in the official WP plugin repository, and it’s continually growing.

Why do you need plugins?

Imagine a smartphone with no apps installed. Isn’t it boring? Without Plugins, websites are also boring (or, to put it another way, it’s limited).

Plugins are required for website implementations, and they aid in improving the website’s functionality in a specific functional area. WP plugins are small pieces of software that enhance and extend the functionality of your website. Whether you want to develop an online store, increase site speed, add contact forms, monetize your website traffic or improve SEO, the building blocks of a WordPress site work for practically every aspect of your site.

From eCommerce to SEO, design features to social media, security to spam prevention, there’s almost no limit to what you can do with WordPress plugins. As previously stated, there are thousands of plugins accessible, but which one is the best match for your business to increase conversions? We will discuss a few of the plugins that will boost conversion on your website. 

8 Must-Have WordPress Plugins for your Website to Boost the Conversion 

Buckle up!! We will take you to the ride of 8 top WordPress plugins to boost the conversion of your website. 

Here’s the WordPress Plugins list: 

1. WP Forms

A powerful WP form is also called a conversational form. It’s vital to understand that conversational forms are a brand new feature in the WPForms plugin. The best part about conversational form is that your users can complete the entire form using just their keyboard, similar to as if they were having a chat conversation on Messenger.

Image supplied by Author

The conversational form is a unique, successful, and efficient method. It will enhance user experience and works great for smartphones (mobile) and tablets making your forms more accessible for all.

There are a lot of other things you can do with WP forms like creating basic contact forms, payment forms, registration forms, survey forms, and newsletter forms for your WordPress website. 

WPForm’s contact forms are well optimized for web and server performance because they understand the value of speed in SEO, marketing, and conversions. WPForms is, without a doubt, one of the fastest WordPress contact form builder plugins available with 5+ million active installations and a 10,000+ five stars rating. 

Here are the features of powerful and user-friendly WPforms: 

  • Drag & drop form builder
  • Responsive mobile-friendly
  • Form templates
  • Smart conditional logic
  • Instant notifications
  • Entry management
  • Payments made easy
  • Marketing & subscriptions 
  • Spam protection and many more. 

2. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is the most popular WordPress plugin that assists webmasters in optimizing WordPress websites for search engines. This well-known plugin has been assisting millions of websites all around the world in improving their search engine rankings since 2008. 

So, do you really need the Yoast SEO plugin to improve the SEO of your website? Yes, the Yoast SEO plugin is required for top Google rankings and to increase visitors to your website. 

Google is the most important source of traffic for most websites. Regardless of how vital social networks are for a site’s success, SEO is typically the most important component. Not following SEO best practices, or not conducting SEO at all can affect the ranking of your website. So, let me explain why Yoast SEO is essential for any website. 

Yoast is a desired WordPress SEO plugin that helps you optimize your site for search engine visibility and increases search ranking. You may use Yoast to make your pages and blogs more search engine friendly. It also generates a sitemap for your website, which helps submit to search engines like Google. 

Now, let’s understand the features of Yoast SEO:

  • Canonical URLs and Meta Tags.
  • XML sitemaps- making it easier for Google to understand the structure of your website. 
  • Faster loading times.
  • Site breadcrumbs.
  • Title and Meta description templating
  • Keyword density
  • In-depth Schema.org integration and many more. 

3. OptinMonster 

Every business or website, without a doubt, requires lead generation. OptinMonster is the prominent lead-generation plugin for WordPress users.

OptinMonster is the greatest popup builder and marketing plugin for increasing email subscribers, sales, and business growth. With OptinMonster pop-ups and conversion toolkits, you can turn abandoned website visitors into subscribers and customers.

With the help of this powerful plugin that boosts your website conversion, you can also make high-converting popups and bars on your website to draw out users’ attention to special deals or other onsite marketing campaigns. 

OptinMonster is also a No.1 best email popup and lead generation plugin. It enables site owners to develop attractive, attention-getting opt-in forms that increase conversion rates. Around 1,213, 437+ websites are using OptinMonster to swivel their traffic into subscribers, leads and sales. 

OptinMonster pop-ups are also compatible with all devices (mobile, laptop, tablet, and desktop). This plugin is a blockbuster and power-up with many benefits like it understands the importance of speed when it comes to SEO, marketing and conversion optimization, and a lot more. 

OptinMonster has a ton of tools that will help you increase your conversions with simple Optin campaigns.

  • Exit-intent technology
  • Full-screen welcome gates
  • Clever monster links 
  • Engage users with monster effects
  • Smart A/B testing
  • Email newsletter segmentation
  • Mailchimp and many more. 

4. WP Rocket

WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin that helps businesses instantly reduce load time and boost Google page speed & core web vitals scores. 

No one likes slow websites, not even Google. In 2010, Google stated that for a pleasant user experience, a web page must load completely within two seconds, and this is still often referenced today. In short, website speed is super important and so is the need for WP Rocket. 

WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin. It’s one of the most extensively used caching plugins, with around 2,080,000 websites using it around the world.

WP Rocket aims to speed up your WordPress site by optimizing it. It does it as a simple WordPress plugin with a user-friendly interface and simple setup. If you are still not clear about how to install and activate the plugin, get in touch with our WordPress experts.

WP Rocket is chosen by the top WordPress professionals as it is compatible with the most popular themes and plugins. It’s also the only cache plugin supported by the leading Managed WordPress hosting providers.

What makes WP Rocket the most effective caching plugin out there? In terms of performance, the plugin incorporates all the latest features.

Let’s have a look at WP Rocket’s features:

  • Page caching
  • GZIP compression
  • Cache preloading
  • eCommerce optimization
  • Browser caching
  • Excellent compatibility.

5. Sucuri 

Website security is important to protect your business, brand, and website reputation, as well as to avoid financial loss and website termination. You’ll be able to maintain your website’s reputation while also retaining customers and/or visitors by installing the wonderful Sucuri plugin by WordPress. 

When it comes to WordPress security plugins, Sucuri plugin is at the top of the heap. 

This plugin is a powerhouse for security as it offers you Security activity auditing, file integrity monitoring, malware scanning, blacklist monitoring, and a website firewall are all included in this plugin. To verify your site, it uses a variety of blacklist engines such as Google Safe Browsing, Sucuri Labs, Norton, McAfee Site Advisor, and others. It will send you an email if something goes wrong.

It also protects your website against DDoS, brute-force, and other scanning assaults. Additionally, it keeps track of all activities and stores them in the Sucuri cloud. Your security logs will be safe at Sucuri’s security operations center even if an intruder manages to get beyond the security controls.

To learn more on WordPress security you can refer-Tips to Maintain WordPress Security.

Let’s have a look at Sucuri plugin features:

  • Multiple variants of SSL certificates
  • Security activity auditing
  • Monitoring of File Integrity
  • Remote malware scanning
  • Blocklist monitoring
  • Effective security hardening
  • Notifications of security
  • Post-hack security actions

6. Monsterinsights 

MonsterInsights, a digital analytics tool, is a WordPress plugin that makes it simple to integrate, customize, and manage Google Analytics website tracking services. It aids in the retention of customers as well as the rise of sales and revenue by tracking how people find and use your website, focus on the content, and receive all your critical store data in one place with MonsterInsights.

Image from MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights makes it simple to set up Google Analytics in WordPress and gives relevant information about visitors from inside the WordPress dashboard.

MonsterInsights is the greatest Google Analytics WordPress plugin simplifying the most advanced Google Analytics features with only a few clicks.

The best thing is that you can access all the data from your WordPress dashboard. This implies that these reports can be viewed without logging into Google Analytics.

How can a company or business benefits from using Monsterinsights

  • Increase traffic
  • Improve conversion rate
  • Improve the quality of content
  • Get more email subscribers
  • Can examine the stats that matter
  • Identify performing and non-performing pages
  • Can see reports in a dashboard

Let’s have a look at Monsterinsights plugin features:

  • Page-level insights
  • Affiliate link tracking
  • Keyword tracking
  • Custom dimensions
  • Form tracking
  • Audience and behavior report
  • Site speed report and many more. 

7. Tidio Live Chat

Having live chat on your website allows you to communicate with your customers. You may convey a clear value to your customers through precise messaging, which will aid them in taking quick decisions to purchase. 

Example: Emirates saw an 87% lift in engagement using chatbot options on their website compared to traditional click-through ads. 

Convert your visitors into loyal customers now with Tidio Live Chat, one of the best WordPress plugins to communicate with your customers or visitors. Chats are managed using the Tidio Chat tab, which can be found in your WordPress dashboard. Installing a separate desktop, iOS, or Android app to manage chats is also an option.

Image supplied by Author

Offline messages are sent to your inbox if you are unable to chat for whatever reason. Similarly, if a visitor exits the chat, the conversation can be continued by email.

Tidio Live Chat plugin is widely used by 160k+ websites in the US alone with 100k+ active installations. 

Let’s have a look at Tidio Live Chat plugin features:

  • Real-time notifications
  • Third-party integrations
  • Virtual assistant
  • Website visitor tracking
  • Email management
  • Customer database
  • Complaint monitoring and many more. 

8. Contact Form 7

WordPress Contact Form 7 is one of the most in-demand plugins for developing lead generation forms. 

Image from WPexplorer

Why do you need contact form 7 on your WordPress website? The answer is simple, if you put your email address on the contact us page, chances are, you are missing out on many opportunities, mainly if you want to grow your business. 

A contact form has always been and continues to be an important aspect of allowing your visitors to contact you for the reasons like automating email responses, integrating your work with other tools, generating more leads, making yourself reachable, and so forth. 

Let’s take a look at some of its most appealing features:

  • Multiple contact forms can be created and managed.
  • Form fields can be easily customized.
  • To change the content of your email, use simple markup.
  • With the help of shortcode insert forms into any pages or posts
  • Akismet spam filtering, Ajax-powered submission, and CAPTCHA are all supported by this plugin.
  • There are numerous third-party extensions available to offer additional functionality.

Conclusion 

Plugins are very essential whether you want to optimize your site for search engines, improve security, or increase conversions. You won’t have to spend hours looking for the best WordPress that boosts conversions, because this post has already done the work for you!! 

So, have you tried the above plugins on your WordPress website yet? If not, you are free to contact us for choosing the essential WordPress plugins to increase sales and revenue.

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WordPress Performance Speed Plugins https://www.sitepronews.com/2021/01/14/wordpress-performance-speed-plugins/ Thu, 14 Jan 2021 05:00:03 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=112685 Fast WordPress hosting is the starting point for speeding up your WordPress site. But after the hosting part is appropriately set, you need to focus on some other WordPress speed optimization plug-ins in order to improve the front-end optimization.  WordPress speed optimization plugins are equally as crucial as WordPress searchable database plugins. We know when […]

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Fast WordPress hosting is the starting point for speeding up your WordPress site. But after the hosting part is appropriately set, you need to focus on some other WordPress speed optimization plug-ins in order to improve the front-end optimization. 

WordPress speed optimization plugins are equally as crucial as WordPress searchable database plugins. We know when you read WordPress speed optimization plugins, the first thing that comes to your mind is caching plugins. Dedicated page caching plays a massive role in speeding up your website, but caching is not the only thing you can do to enhance performance. 

Top WordPress Performance Speed Plugins

Here are some top-rated WordPress performance speed plugins that are packed with attractive features. 

1. WP Rocket

Along with all the caching functionality that you would expect, WP Rocket also offers a bunch of exceptional features that you might not expect. You get all of these with a user-friendly interface. Just after the activation of WP Rocket, a number of performance optimization techniques are automatically implemented. These techniques include:

  • Browser Caching
  • Page Caching
  • Gzip compression

With the help of its user-friendly interface, you can also configure some other optimization techniques.

Features:

  • Combine files
  • Elimination of render-blocking Javascript
  • Lazy loading
  • Minification
  • Heartbeat API control
  • CDN integrations
  • Cloudflare integration
  • Database optimization
  • Hosting tracking scripts locally (like Facebook Pixel or Google Analytics)

Cost:the premium plugin version of WP Rocket starts at $49.

2. NitroPack

Nitropack is more than just a WordPress performance speed plugin; it is a complete speed optimization platform. Nitropack reduces the use of multiple plugins and decides what to optimize manually by doing all the optimization itself. All you need to do is add your website and install the connector plug-in. Your site will start optimizing automatically with NitroPack. 

Since all of the optimizations run on their own servers, your own server usage load is reduced. You also can customize the settings for better performance. To learn more, visit Mr doob google.

Features:

  • CSS, JS and HTML minification
  • CSS, Js and HTML compression
  • Defer JS loading
  • DNS prefetching
  • Conversion of images to next-generation formats
  • Automatic image optimization
  • Automatic website optimization
  • Include global CDN and automatically configured
  • Supports WordPress along with other content management systems
  • Various caching types, such as browser, page, and more

Cost:the free plan adds a “powered by” badge to the footer. To remove the badge, get a paid plan.

3. Perfmatters

Perfmatters lets you optimize a bunch of smaller parts of your WordPress site. Though it does not help in page caching, it is a great tool to use along with your caching plugin. It allows you to disable lots of WordPress settings that are unnecessary for most sites—for example, Dashicons, WordPress version number, emoji fonts, and some others. 

Apart from all these small tweaks, you will be able to eliminate a number of HTTP requests that are unnecessary. The powerful script manager tool that comes with Perfmatters also allows you to load CSS or Javascripts on specific pages with conditions. This is a great way to cut down  unnecessary sitewide HTTP requests. 

Features:

  • Lightweight plugin
  • Heartbeat control
  • REST API control
  • Works great with your existing plugins
  • DNS Prefetching
  • Host analytic locally
  • Preconnect
  • Lazy load images
  • Diables WordPress options that are responsible for your site slowing
  • Disables scripts on per post or per-page basis

Cost:for single site usage, the cost is $24.95.

4. WP Super Cache

This popular caching plug-in is offered by Automatic, the name behind WooCommerce, Jetpack, and WordPress.com. The best thing about this plugin is its simplicity. It is perfect for beginners. You just need to install it and check a single box to get started. With the advanced setting, you also can use the below-mentioned features. 

Features:

  • Browser caching
  • How to cache content
  • Gzip compression
  • How often the cache updation is needed
  • CND support
  • Cache preload
  • Support for more than one caching types
  • Provides static HTML files

Cost:This plugin is absolutely free. 

5. WP Fastest Cache

WP Fastest Cache is considered as one of the top-rated and most popular caching plugins for WordPress. It has a 4.9-star rating based on more than 3,000 reviews. This plugin allows you to enable page caching and is packed with a bunch of features.

Features:

  • Super easy setup
  • Browser Caching
  • Gzip compression
  • Help to integrate with CDNs
  • WordPress emoji disabling option
  • CSS and HTML minification (not the Javascript)
  • Exclude certain content or user from caching

A premium version is also available with some additional features:

  • Database optimization
  • Image optimization
  • Lazy loading
  • Loading option of Google Fonts async
  • More advanced minification options with Javascript minifications
  • Elimination of Javascript resources

Cost:The basic version is free. However, the premium version starts at $59.

6. W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is a popular caching plug-in that is totally free. It is the best caching plug-in, overflowing with useful features, but is also the most complicated and definitely not recommended for beginners. But, if you are a power user or developer and want to control each small detail of the caching on your site, this is the best one for you. W3 Total Cache has some super-advanced features. 

Features:

  • Browser caching
  • Object caching
  • CDN support
  • Database caching
  • Minifying
  • Page caching
  • Fragment caching

Cost: You can use this plug-in without spending a single penny. 

Conclusion

With these top-rated plug-ins, you will be able to improve the speed of your WordPress website. Other high-quality plugins include:

  • WP-Optimize
  • Autoptimize
  • Asset Cleanup
  • ShortPixel

Some of them are free while some have paid premium versions with advanced features. Based on your needs, you can choose one, or multiple plug-ins.

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Best WordPress Plugins for WordPress Websites in 2020 https://www.sitepronews.com/2020/11/27/best-wordpress-plugins-for-wordpress-websites-in-2020/ Fri, 27 Nov 2020 05:00:34 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=111709 Do you know that more than 500+ websites are built every day using open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress and HubSpot? CMSs have empowered every digital experience, be it an oh-so-good personal blog, an intuitive eCommerce store, or a complex enterprise portal, including millions of other websites!  Over the years, WordPress has witnessed a […]

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Do you know that more than 500+ websites are built every day using open-source Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress and HubSpot? CMSs have empowered every digital experience, be it an oh-so-good personal blog, an intuitive eCommerce store, or a complex enterprise portal, including millions of other websites! 

Over the years, WordPress has witnessed a growing and supportive community. In fact, WordPress has a market share of 37%. What makes this open-source CMS popular is because it’s easy to use and is highly flexible. Anyone can build a standard and good-looking website using WordPress in no time. What makes it even easier is the accessibility of a dashboard. You can create posts, web pages, schedule, manage day-to-day content, assign user roles, upload and manage media – without any hassle.  

Apart from this, WordPress plugins have enchanted developers and WordPress nerds for years. After all, these plugins form the building blocks of WordPress websites.

WordPress plugins have made a name for themselves when it comes to gifting enriching digital experience. Contact forms, pop-ups, on-page SEO, email opt-ins, optimizing site speed, image compression, and optimization – these are just a few of the significant functions modern-day websites demand.

There are more than 57,000 WordPress plugins developed to date which is quite an overwhelming number. 

With such an extensive range of options, webmasters often get challenged to find the best ones, and hence we have curated a list of some of the must-have WordPress plugins. Let’s dig in!

1. MonsterInsights Lite

Building a WordPress website is one thing, and growing it is another. You have to keep tabs on everything from page views, sessions, conversion rates, revenues, bounce rate, and much more. MonsterInsights Lite is the ultimate Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress websites. With features like precise and real-time tracking, readable dashboard reports, and conversion rates tracking, this is all you might need!

Source

2. OptinMonster

Are you struggling to generate leads? Is your sales manager giving you a hard time with the sales target? 

OptinMonster can make your life easier. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins used by aspiring WordPress Blog owners, small business owners, and even enterprises. OptinMonster helps you to optimize your lead generation efforts like a piece of cake. Be it getting more subscribers or curating customized ad campaigns based on geographical location – it can help you with almost anything and everything. You can boost conversions by 785% by converting links or images to Optin Forms.

3. Yoast SEO

Another most sought-after WordPress SEO plugin that should be on your bucket list is Yoast! When you think of SEO for your WordPress websites, the first name that pops-up is Yoast SEO plugin. You can enjoy tons of privileges, including creating automatic XML sitemaps, recommendations for SEO-oriented content, snippet views, or setting up canonical URLs to save your website from Google penalties. 

Not just that, but it even helps you curate reader-friendly content to rank higher in Search Engines. It promotes balance between both readers and spiders.

 

4. Pretty Links

What a pretty name it has, right? But, it’s not just the name – its functionalities are even more appealing. So, if you are an affiliate expert or just another curious learner trying to drive massive affiliate sales through your WordPress blog, Pretty Links can prove to be useful. From making your URLs look professional, clean, and conversion-friendly to tracking the number of clicks you receive, this WordPress affiliate plugin is worth consideration. 

5. Smush

Images drive our Digital world, be it just attracting users or influencing your end consumer to make decisions. 

That being said, images consume most of the space and form most of your website’s content. So, apart from choosing the best and high-quality graphics for your websites, you also need to ensure that your website’s speed isn’t affected. 

Smush is a WordPress Image optimization plugin to help you scan, cut unnecessary data, and scale your images before uploading them to your media gallery without compromising quality. 

Some of its key features include lossless compression, image resizing, lazy loading, incorrect size detection of images, Gutenberg block integration, and multisite compatibility.

6. Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed

How about the idea of getting a customized Instagram feed displayed on your WordPress website? 

Socializing has a new address these days, which we call Instagram, Facebook, etc. Your website visitors will be interested in connecting with your brand over these social media platforms because brand building is essential if you are looking for long term success. 

Smash Balloon is a WordPress Social Feed plugin to integrate and display Instagram posts on your website. Easy to set up, this plugin offers various features and functionalities, including displaying your one, or multiple Instagram account feeds, responsive and mobile-friendly layouts, built-in shortcode options, and many more.

With this go-to social feed plugin, you can beat the competition by showing your audience what you are up to on Instagram.

7. Envira Gallery

Are you looking for the best, premium WordPress plugin for your website galleries? Envira Gallery is the one! This plugin helps you create responsive photo and video galleries in minutes. 

It offers a drag and drop builder, pre-built templates, social media integration options, and image proofing for eCommerce stores. Envira Gallery is packed with features. 

So whether you own an eCommerce portal for your home-decor business or are a full-time professional photographer, this plugin will prove useful. From adding pagination, meta tags, or building your customized galleries – everything is easy.

8. UpdraftPlus

Are you scared of losing your website’s data due to a sudden malfunction, server breakdown, or worst case scenario, having your site hacked? UpdraftPlus is a solution to all these threats. It is an auto backup plugin for WordPress websites, allowing you to store directly on Cloud Servers, including Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and so on. Not only that, but if you smell something fishy, you can restore your whole website instantly with a single click. Isn’t that cool?

Conclusion

There are thousands of WordPress plugins available, but you need to ensure that you choose the right set of plugins based on your niche. You might end up with other recommendations from fellow WordPress bloggers or Professional WordPress Developers, which might help you enhance your website’s overall performance and aesthetics too. 

We hope that this list proves useful for your website. Do let us know if you have any queries or recommendations. 

We would love to know which plugins you currently use and why!

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The 5 Best 2020 WordPress eCommerce Plugins https://www.sitepronews.com/2020/06/05/the-5-best-2020-wordpress-ecommerce-plugins/ Fri, 05 Jun 2020 04:00:44 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=108297 You might be bored of sitting at home due to the ongoing pandemic. If you are fond of shopping and dining out, like me, then these social distancing SOPs must be killing you. Guess what; I have never surfed online sites as much as I have in these last couple of weeks. I even bought […]

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You might be bored of sitting at home due to the ongoing pandemic. If you are fond of shopping and dining out, like me, then these social distancing SOPs must be killing you.

Guess what; I have never surfed online sites as much as I have in these last couple of weeks. I even bought a bunch of (totally unnecessary) new clothes. 

Before I drift away and start telling you about my recent online shopping experiences, let’s get to the topic.

As a blogger, I am cursed with curiosity. While surfing these online sites, I came to realize that eCommerce is performing better than other industries during these strange times. 

You are probably aware that luxury items are experiencing low purchases while grocery items, medical, cleaning, food items, etc. have shown a huge spike in sales. 

While various industries have almost come to a halt, eCommerce has received a new boost because most people are shopping online for their daily needs. Even masks, sanitizers, and hazmat suits are being sold on eCommerce sites. 

No doubt about it, contactless payments have increased by a considerable margin. 

So, if you are planning on developing an eCommerce site of your own, you are on the right track. 

Undoubtedly, WordPress is one of the best platforms to create an online store. 

Using WordPress, you can create an eCommerce site for a B2B business as well as a B2C business.

In this post, I’m going to list the Best 5 WordPress eCommerce Plugins for your online store. 

  • WooCommerce
  • Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart
  • Easy Digital Downloads
  • Shopping Cart & eCommerce Store
  • BigCommerce for WordPress

Let’s take a deeper view of these.

1. WooCommerce (Best Overall)

WooCommerce transforms your WordPress website into a fully functional eCommerce site. It is undoubtedly the most popular tool for creating an online store in WordPress. 

WooCommerce is loaded with numerous paid and free eCommerce themes for you to choose from.

These themes take away the need for hiring a front end developer with WooCommerce adding necessary functionalities like the “ability to sell.”

 The development team has made it so user-friendly that everyone, ranging from beginners to experts, can use and customize their eCommerce sites according to their needs. 

With 5+ million active installations, WooCommerce is a smart choice for your business.

2. Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart (Best for Simplicity of Use)

Ecwid Ecommerce Shopping Cart is a smart, all-in-one plugin for fulfilling the needs of your online store.

This eCommerce plugin allows you to integrate with other platforms like Google Shopping, Facebook, and more. Because it is integrated with Facebook, it is an excellent plugin for people who want to sell handmade products. 

Facebook stores are becoming popular, so having a plugin like Ecwid can be a great help to enhance your sales.

You can easily track your inventory, view analytics, issue reporting, and manage sales from a single console.

Unlike other plugins, the Ecwid stores data automatically and you don’t need PCI compliance. The best thing about Ecwid is, you can easily transfer products to other sites, making it a hassle-free process.

You don’t have to stress about managing customer engagement, analytics and inventories as Ecwid has got you covered. With 30k+ active installations, it’s a smart pick for you. 

3. Easy Digital Downloads (Best for Selling Digital Products)

Easy Digital Downloads is ideal for you if you’re looking to sell eBooks, PDFs, Music, Images, Media Files, Documents, Software, etc. 

This plugin is specially designed to sell digital products. Easy Digital Downloads has 60k+ active installations and provides simple, powerful features with a library of useful extensions. 

If you prefer an eCommerce solution with simple rich features, then Easy Digital Downloads will manage everything for you without losing any significant functionality.

If you are looking to create your first eCommerce WordPress site or you have a small budget, then this plugin might be ideal for you. Shopping Cart & eCommerce Store is perfect for small businesses. 

Using this plugin, you can add eCommerce to almost any WordPress site quite conveniently. 

You can setup your eCommerce store within minutes. It is a simple plugin with SSL and other site management tools. With the premium extension, you can also sell your products on Instagram and Facebook.

The Shopping Cart & eCommerce Store plugin comes with unlimited updates and no hidden costs.

5. BigCommerce for WordPress (Best for Scalability)

BigCommerce is a go-to plugin for the growing needs of your eCommerce site. 

You can scale out your business with WordPress on the front end and for payments, management of logistics, and much more with BigCommerce servers on the backend.

With this plugin, you can run the eCommerce portion of your site at the backend and the content managed portion on the front end, potentially saving money on hosting costs.

BigCommerce is specially built to integrate with WordPress seamlessly. It can handle PCI compliance, and you can easily sell across different marketplaces and channels from a single location. 

Since you have come with me this far, here are a couple of bonus plugins for your WordPress eCommerce site. Let’s check them out!

Bonus Plugin 1: Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode

This plugin will enable you to set up your coming soon page in minutes. It has a gallery of more than 1 million free HD pictures that you can use on your landing page. 

Forget wasting hours on complicated plugins to create a coming soon or maintenance page for your eCommerce site. You can use the efficient  “coming soon & maintenance mode” plugin which is equipped with all the features you need.

Moreover, it also includes over a 100 themes. 

One more thing; the plugin also supports the “site under maintenance” mode. For example, you have to add something on your website (like a page) and you don’t want your visitors to look at that “404 not found” page.  In such cases, you can generate an interactive customized page.

This feature will also enable your client to visit the website while it’s under development, through a secret link.

Bonus Plugin 2: Simple Author Box Pro

Having trouble attributing posts to one time authors or authors of guest posts in your eCommerce website’s blog? 

WordPress has a plugin for that too, and it’s quite simple to use. You can easily add an author box at the end of all your posts with a “simple author box pro” plugin.

This author box shows the name, picture, description, and other details about the author of any particular post. You don’t have to go through the trouble of making accounts for guest authors or one-time authors. 

You will discover many more features when you start using Simple Author Box Pro. Every author needs attribution, and this plugin makes your task of attribution very simple and effective. It not only benefits you, it helps authors too, and they will undoubtedly find it very pleasing.

Conclusion

Not all eCommerce sites are the same, and therefore their needs vary. You need to choose the right plugin that best suits your eCommerce needs. 

All the plugins mentioned here offer unique solutions. What your site offers should align with the features of the plugins you use to ensure a flawless visitor experience. 

Do not waste your precious time on the plugins that have nothing to do with what your eCommerce store will be offering.

In the end, you must also focus your attention on SEO after your site’s development stage. If your product does not reach its desirable audience, you won’t be able to sell it. 

The post The 5 Best 2020 WordPress eCommerce Plugins appeared first on SiteProNews.

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10 Awesome WordPress Plugins for 2020 https://www.sitepronews.com/2020/04/06/10-awesome-wordpress-plugins-for-2020/ Mon, 06 Apr 2020 04:00:56 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=107269 You may have various concerns or requirements when building a WordPress website. Some common ones are: The design of your website should look great You need to protect your website from spammers Your site should be well optimized for search engines Your customers should be able to navigate conveniently The question is – how can […]

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You may have various concerns or requirements when building a WordPress website. Some common ones are:

  • The design of your website should look great
  • You need to protect your website from spammers
  • Your site should be well optimized for search engines
  • Your customers should be able to navigate conveniently

The question is – how can you manage these?

One answer is WordPress plugins. 

WordPress runs more than 30% of the internet and is the most popular platform for managing content. 

Along with thousands of pre-made themes, WordPress has over 55,000 plugins to choose from. 

Undoubtedly, WordPress plugins are beneficial to increase the functionality of your website. 

They help to optimize your website, protect it from spammers, improve user experience, and much more. 

But with this vast collection of plugins, how do you know which ones you need?

Every business has different needs. But, there are some WordPress plugins that every website should consider regardless of their industry. 

Today, I’m going to round up my list of ten must-have WordPress Plug-ins for your website.

Let’s get started.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a smart pick for all of your SEO needs.

It is an all-in-one solution with 5 million+ active installations and one of the most popular plugins out there. 

Yoast is an essential WordPress plugin which helps you optimize your website’s on-page SEO – which is quite crucial to help you rank your keywords in search engines. It’s also quite helpful for increasing traffic to your online store.

Moreover, it assists you in examining your content for SEO optimization and readability. Yoast SEO not only makes it easy to optimize your content but also guides you throughout the process.  

Wordfence Security

According to stats, almost 30,000 websites are hacked daily. Clearly, impenetrable security should be your top priority. 

Are you concerned about the security of your website?

If yes, Wordfence has got you covered.

The Wordfence security plugin is one of the most effective and powerful plugins for your website’s security.

This plugin has over 3 million+ active installations and is equipped with several features that will aid in securing your website.

It includes features like malware scan, login security, website audit, firewall protection, and much more. Wordfence is an all-in-one security plugin and is worth checking out.

The plugin fights against spam, malware, and other threats in real-time. 

Antispam Bee

Comments spam is a menace for WordPress sites globally. 

You can get rid of spam comments for free, super easily and quickly using Antispam Bee. With over 500k + active installations, this plugin is undoubtedly a smart choice. 

It allows you to take care of spam by automatically screening all incoming comments. 

Antispam bee blocks any spam comments and trackbacks effectively. It is free, lightweight, and 100% GDPR compliant. 

UpdraftPlus

You must consider regular backups to protect your valuable files if anything unfortunate occurs. 

Just as your computer is prone to online threats, so is your website. 

Apart from your security precautions for your website, you must backup your site regularly. 

Backing up your WordPress website is easy. You just have to install a plugin called UpdraftPlus. With 2million+ active installations, it is one of the most popular backup plugins.

It allows you to manually or automatically backup your site with a single click. You can choose the frequency of backups and their location. There are multiple options to store your backups, including Google Drive, Amazon S3, Dropbox, etc.

Restoring your data is as easy as the backup itself. You can restore your backups, whenever needed, with a single click. 

WP rocket

You can face high loading time due to many reasons such as large images, unclean code, too many ads, JavaScript issues, and much more. 

Website loading speed is crucial for user experience and search engine optimization. 

Adding a cache plugin will help you to speed up your website. 

WPRocket is an exceptionally versatile plugin. It is simple, user-friendly, and also includes advanced features like page caching, file compression, and much more. 

Shortpixel

Shortpixel is an image optimization service, which has two different plugins; Shortpixel Image Optimizer and Shortpixel Adaptive Images. 

ShortPixel Image Optimizer “SPIO” helps reduce the load time of your site by compressing images. It is beneficial if you have a lot of high-resolution images.

Shortpixel Adaptive Images “SPAI” does more than just optimizing images. It not only optimizes your images but also scales them down to the appropriate size for display on different devices.

For example, if you open a web page on a desktop or on a mobile phone, it will scale images according to the screen size.

WP Reset

Debugging WordPress issues can be quite time-consuming. It can take hours to find and fix even small bugs. 

With WP Reset plugin, you can speed up maintenance & development of WordPress plugins and themes.

This plugin resets the database of your site to default installation values, without amending any files. 

With over 100K active installations, the WP reset plugin is fast and safe to use. 

WP 301 Redirects

There may be an occasion when you want to change the URL of a page or a post. When this happens, you need to redirect traffic from the old post to the new one.

This is where WP 301 Redirects is very useful. With over 80K active installations, the plugin helps to efficiently create and manage URL redirects. 

It monitors traffic coming to 404 pages and easily redirects your visitors to the pages they want to see. 

You spend a lot of time and put a lot of effort into creating remarkable content to draw visitors to your site. Good SEO practices will surely help you out, but adding a smart plugin will make the job a lot easier and effective. 

SmartCrawl is a plugin that makes your website more visible to search engines. It informs the web crawlers whenever you update great content on your website. 

SmartCrawl’s one-click setup will allow you to create automatic sitemaps, keyword and content analysis, scans, reports, and whatnot. Don’t like the extra load that Yoast SEO places on your website? SmartCrawl might be a better option for you.

Under Construction

Sometimes it happens that you are working on your website and don’t want people to see what you’re doing until it is completed.

Using this plugin, you can create under construction pages relatively quickly.

With this plugin installed, your website visitors will see the “coming soon” or “site under maintenance” pages.

The plugin is fast and easy to use, enabling you to instantly create fun, informative, and user-friendly pages. Visitors will see you have everything under control and return to the site later without feeling frustrated.

Predefined themes and customization options allow adjusting the page to fit your needs and branding requirements. It also helps to ensure that Google doesn’t penalize your site while it is under construction.

Conclusion

When it comes to creating a website, WordPress is flexible, scalable and great for SEO.

You can add various features to your site using WordPress plugins, but remember to avoid plugins that have not been updated in a while bcause they may compromise your site’s security. And, be sure to check out user reviews before installing a plugin.

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How to Backup your WordPress Database https://www.sitepronews.com/2020/02/14/how-to-backup-your-wordpress-database/ Fri, 14 Feb 2020 05:00:30 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=106093 Imagine logging into your WordPress website only to find that you have lost all the improvements and changes that you had made. Quite the nightmare, huh? Since WordPress is the most used CMS platform and takes credit for 60% of websites, it is a favourite target among cybercriminals. Like every other digital platform, WordPress isn’t […]

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Imagine logging into your WordPress website only to find that you have lost all the improvements and changes that you had made. Quite the nightmare, huh? Since WordPress is the most used CMS platform and takes credit for 60% of websites, it is a favourite target among cybercriminals.

Like every other digital platform, WordPress isn’t 100 percent secure, and a data wipeout is its only Achilles’ heel. So what will you do if the server crashes one morning? Without a backup folder, it is not possible to recover EVERYTHING – all the work that you have put into your website over the years. The solution lies in a robust BackUp plan, irrespective of the hosting site that you are using. That brings us to the question – 

How do you save your website developments from a potential breach?

If WordPress is the problem, the solution also lies in WordPress: WordPress Backup plugins. While you can backup your WordPress website manually too, backup plugins come with a lower chance of failure. Moreover, a manual or on-demand backup can be complicated if you are not good with gizmos. But which plugin is your safest bet? Read on to find out. 

Top 8 Plugins to Backup Your Website Data on WordPress

Here is a curated list of the best WordPress backup and restore plugins that you can use for your website.

1. BlogVault

The best part about BlogVault is that it is free and offers automated backup services. You can schedule the backups, as per the frequency of changes you make on your website. You can save your data to Dropbox or any other WordPress-approved storage location. The only downside to the plugin is that launching and using it can be quite a tedious task. 

Features:

  • Complete backup of unlimited files and database
  • Real-time backup option
  • Automation available with timer-set options
  • 365-days rolling history of backup

Pros – The plugin encrypts data across multiple data centers to ensure uncompromised security.

Cons – The plugin has no dashboard. You will have to go to the web application BlogVault for details.

Get it here. 

2. VaultPress

VaultPress comes with Industry-standard backup and unlimited restoration features. If you are on the lookout for a lightweight backup plugin that is powerful, then this is the best option for you. The bonus, however, is that VaultPress has in-built cloud storage which automatically adds more security for your website. The plugin can also be used to scan for malicious files.

Features:

  • Daily backup 
  • 30 days archive with backup data
  • Real-time analysis of security glitches
  • Available in Premium versions along with 2 Free Trials

Pros – The plugin has a simple interface that makes it easy to apply.  

Cons – There is no free plan, so you have to dish out money to use the plugin. 

Get it here. 

Bonus Tools : Spell Checker 

3. BackWPup 

BackWPup is a free WordPress backup plugin that lets you back up site files and changes and store them on Rackspace Cloud, Dropbox, or an external hard drive. The plugin can be set up in just two steps and offers automatic scheduling that you can customize according to the update frequency of your website.

Features: 

  • Real-time backup available
  • No sign in required
  • Needs internet backup 

Pros – You do not need to launch the web application because it comes with a separate dashboard that allows you to check details in the header bar of your website. 

Cons – Since it is paired with limited storage options, you do not have the discretion to choose Cloud plugins.

Get it here.   

4. BackupBuddy

Although not free, BackupBuddy is considered one of the most cost-effective backup plugins for WordPress because the premium version of the tool is worth every penny. The plugin offers a license-based service which means that you can use the plugin for all your websites collectively. You also get a cloud storage space of 1 GB for backup restoration. 

Features

  • Storage locations available are BackupBuddy Stash, Amazon S3, Dropbox & Google Drive
  • Allows manual backups
  • Integrated migration tool

Pros – There is a dedicated customer care centre to troubleshoot issues you may face while using the tool. 

Cons – There are no free plans or trial period available.

Get it here. 

Free Service For Students:  Grade my Paper

5. BackUpWordPress

BackUpWordPress boasts of more than 200,000 installations and is the perfect solution if you have a lot going on and want to schedule your backup. The tool allows complete backup and restoration of data and works on shared hosting as well. You can either save the backup on Cloud or send the backup files via email. 

Features

  • You can set several backup schedules 
  • Customizable backup profile with exclusion options
  • Works with both Windows and Linux 

Pros – The plugin comes with a simple interface and is available in multiple languages. 

Cons – The features are limited, and there is an absence of external support. 

Get it here. 

6. UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup Plugin

UpdraftPlus is a free plugin that can create backups of all kinds of WordPress sites, heavy and light. You can use Google Drive, Rackspace Cloud, or Dropbox as storage locations for the backup data. You can even send backup data via email. UpdraftPlus allows quick restores and selection of specific files. The reason why the plugin has a 4.9-star rating is that it allows reattempted uploading in the case an upload fails. 

Features

  • Automated, scheduled as well as manual backups
  • Works along with DreamHost, DreamObjects, FTP, and OpenStack. 
  • Large backups can be segregated into multiple archives
  • Available in a free and premium version

Pros – The tool supports multiple languages supported and has advanced configuration options for experts

Cons – Minimum support for troubleshooting issues. 

Get it here.

7. WordPress Backup & Clone Master

Cyberhacking goes beyond what we can imagine, and it is a wise decision to be double sure about website protection. A smooth backup process can help you restore the last available backup when disaster strikes. WordPress Backup & Clone Master is just what you need to make the picture complete. The tool allows you to back up both on-demand or on-schedule. You can access the backup data via Cloud storage or get it in the form of a zip file. 

Features:

  • Manual and automated backup options
  • Compatible with Cloud storage and external drives
  • Comes in Free and Premium versions

Pros – The tool allows selective and personalized backup, where you can choose files that you want to restore and set timer options as per your frequency of uploading. 

Cons – The tool can be tricky to install for a WordPress newbie.  You also have to sign up and launch the plugin to use it. 

Get it here.

8. BackupMyWP to Dropbox

When it comes to backup plugins, the security of the storage space used for the backup files is an essential box to tick. Backup My WP to Dropbox allows you to backup a WordPress site with a single click. The factor that differentiates BackupMyWP from the rest in the niche is that the tool transfers the zip file with the backup data automatically to your DropBox account when the upload is finished.

Features:

  • Only compatible with Dropbox
  • Allows automatic scheduled backup
  • Notifications via email

Pros – The tool is easy to launch and comes with a free version that has enough features. 

Cons – Since it is limited to Dropbox, you need to open an account and won’t be able to use other storage facilities. 

Get it here. 

With a proper backup plan for your WordPress website, it will be easy for you to survive an attack without losing too much time. However, the backup process you choose should be in sync with your backup frequency, your choice of storage space and other such factors. If you have a startup with a website that has gone live recently, then my suggestion is that you use a free plugin that has an easy interface. So choose a sentinel from the list above to man the boundaries of your website from ambushes. 

Be a responsible creator and success will be yours!

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How to Upload Themes and Plugins on WordPress.com https://www.sitepronews.com/2020/01/16/how-to-upload-themes-and-plugins-on-wordpress-com/ Thu, 16 Jan 2020 05:00:40 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=105720 Back in the day, if you chose to use WordPress.com for your business, you could not upload themes and plugins to customize your website. Since then, this policy has been replaced with a new one that allows individuals to upload or install custom themes or plugins.  This is great news for individuals who are looking […]

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Back in the day, if you chose to use WordPress.com for your business, you could not upload themes and plugins to customize your website. Since then, this policy has been replaced with a new one that allows individuals to upload or install custom themes or plugins. 

This is great news for individuals who are looking to personalize their business website or want to add loads of plugins that could facilitate a connection between their website and other communication tools. In whatever ways you are willing to personalize your WordPress.com website, here are some easy instructions to help you achieve desired effects. 

Uploading Themes and Plugins on WordPress.com 

Uploading themes or plugins sounds like a fun opportunity to customize your personal internet space. The only downside to this opportunity is that it is a paid feature and can only be utilized by people who have signed up for the WordPress business account. To get started, you will need to pay $24.92 every month to keep your business account functional. Before you say anything, keep in mind that this is a small price to pay for getting all the customization you need!

Once you are done with that with, you can carry on with the next steps:

1. Choosing the Right Themes and Plugins

When it comes to themes or plugins, you have two options to follow. You can either purchase themes or plugins from trusted third parties or you can create your own themes or plugins. Unless you are fluent in coding and programming, we would suggest you buy from third parties since they are better at understanding the industry and have better support. 

Once you finalize any theme or plugin, there are certain things you need to be aware of. When it comes to themes, you will need to acquire the file to .zip. If you are opting with custom themes, make sure to convert the files to .zip.

With plugins, you will need to figure out whether it is compatible with your WordPress.com website or not. If purchasing from external vendors, you need to check the ‘last updated’ section of the plugins. Going through this piece of information will give you a pretty good idea of how frequently the plugins are being updated by its creators. Stay clear of anything that has not been updated in the past three or more weeks. The same goes for themes from third parties.

That said, if the WordPress’ free theme templates do not appease you or the third-party plugins fail to meet your website’s requirements, you can hire any software development company to fulfill your needs. It may end up being a costly option; however, it will provide you with a lot of customization opportunities that you may lack in the existing themes or plugins. 

2. Uploading the Content

Now comes the part where you upload your selection. To proceed, go to your designated dashboard and spot ‘Add’ option on the left-hand side. Upon clicking, the said resources will be uploaded to your WordPress.com website without any issue. 

But before you get on with it, there are a few things that need your attention. First of all, you need to go through the documentation or user agreement that comes with additional plugins or themes. This is to make sure that you know what you are getting yourself into. Also, this step is necessary since it enlists all the uses you will get out of the plugins/themes once you install them. 

Secondly, test every new addition separately. If you want to work with multiple themes and plugins, the best approach would be to install one thing at a time and test them out individually. Keep doing this until all your themes or plugins have been uploaded and tested out. In this way, you will be able to single out any problematic resource or any plugin/theme that fails to perform according to your expectations. 

Lastly, when uploading and testing out new features, it is better to deactivate any previously installed plugins or themes before uploading a new one. This will provide you with a better testing experience. If possible, have your tech-savvy friends around you during the testing phase since some custom plugins may disrupt your settings or even break your WordPress.com website. 

3. Customization and Setups 

Using plugins or themes in their original state is an amateurish move. So, you may have to tweak some settings to unleash their full potential. To do so, start by putting your WordPress.com website in the maintenance mode. Then, carry on with your modifications and once you are satisfied with the final product, you can remove your WordPress.com website from  maintenance mode and launch your website to put plugins and themes into play. 

You may have to perform additional steps when you are dealing with custom themes or plugins. Since every custom product is different from one another, it is better to go through the instructions provided with the custom product to finish setting them up. If you cannot find any additional instruction manual or you are not sure how to set up a custom theme/plugin, we recommend getting in touch with the plugins/theme’s support department.  

For custom themes, you can explore additional setup settings in the Customizer section. From your WordPress.com website, open My Site and click on Design. From there, locate the Customize option and adjust the settings according to your heart’s desire. For detailed instructions on uploading and setting up custom themes, please refer to this article. 

Wrapping Up 

Uploading themes or plugins from external sources is a fun way of personalizing your website. 

However, doing so is not easy since you need to follow instructions, convert files, not to mention installing, setting up and running your finished product. Even with this last step, you are not truly finished since certain custom themes or plugins require additional steps before being launched completely. 

Considering the thorough nature of this process, we have enlisted a few yet detailed steps that will clear up any confusion for you. We hope this article will help you in setting up your themes or such plugins that can maximize the functionality of your WordPress.com website. 

The post How to Upload Themes and Plugins on WordPress.com appeared first on SiteProNews.

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The 10 Best WordPress Plugins for Your Website in 2020 https://www.sitepronews.com/2020/01/15/the-10-best-wordpress-plugins-for-your-website-in-2020/ Wed, 15 Jan 2020 05:00:59 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=105712 Are you planning to develop a blog website? You have to pay close attention to the plugins that you will be using. These tools have a crucial role to play on every WordPress website. Therefore, you have to make sure that you are getting the best WordPress Plugins.  In fact, there is no way you […]

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Are you planning to develop a blog website? You have to pay close attention to the plugins that you will be using. These tools have a crucial role to play on every WordPress website. Therefore, you have to make sure that you are getting the best WordPress Plugins. 

In fact, there is no way you will build a website minus plugins. You can use them to customize your website in the way that you want. Plugins also deliver a powerful and attractive website. 

The WordPress directories have thousands of plugins. Some of them are free while the others are paid. It can be confusing to choose some for your website. 

This article will cover the ten best WordPress plugins for your website. You can choose the ones that meet your needs best. 

1. Everest Forms 

This plugin is a dynamic WordPress form builder that you can use in making awesome donation forms, subscription forms, contact forms and many more. The plugin can help you make simple and elegant forms. 

The builder comes with drag and drop ajax fields, multiple column support, unlimited forms, and is 100 percent responsive etc. 

It is translation ready and has smart tags, editable email settings, and a CSV exporter for entries. The plugin also has a redirect option after submission, an editable form validation message, and multiple email notifications. 

2. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO has millions of users because it is one of the best WordPress Plugins. If you have a blog, it is crucial to customize it in a way that will boost its search ranking. Yost SEO can help you achieve a good ranking position. 

Yoast SEO provides a long list of amazing features to help you customize your website in an elegant manner. Yoast SEO has well-detailed documentation. It guides users step by step through the process of optimizing their content for search engines. 

It has great tools for the creation of SEO-friendly text. It also has automatic internal linking suggestions. Yoast SEO is a plugin you should not overlook if you have a WordPress website. 

3. WP Social Sharing 

WP Social Sharing is an interesting plugin that offers many benefits for your blog website. The social share option has an important role to play for any blog website. The reason is that it helps boost traffic to your blog. 

With this plugin, you can add very responsive and attractive social share buttons to your website. The social icons that this plugin create are simple and light-weight. 

You can integrate it with the various social sharing platforms such as Pinterest, Xing, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Facebook. It is 100 percent mobile responsive and offers short codes that are integrated with any theme. 

4. W3 Total Cache 

 W3 Total Cache is a crucial plugin for your website’s SEO and helps enhance  the performance of your website. 

After completely configuring this plugin on your website, it will automatically improve the overall performance of your website by up to ten times. It generally enhances site performance and conversion rate which directly affects your search ranking on Google. 

The plugin has various security features, is mobile responsive, and compatible with shared hosting. It has an extension framework for extensibility or customization.

5. Contact Form 7

Everyone knows how important contact pages are on a website. Contact pages provide the information that visitors need to contact you. You have to make sure that they are powerful and attractive. 

Contact Form 7 is among the best contact form plugins that are available for a WordPress website. The good news about this plugin is that it is easy to install and use. Even a beginner can use it without any problem. 

The plugin gives you multiple options for customizing your contact page in a way that is quite beautiful. It offers multiple contact forms and has spam prevention. It is translation ready, easy to use, and can be customized to your unique needs.

6. Akismet

Akismet is the another tool on our list of the best WordPress plugins. It’s especially designed for your contact page and comment page section. 

The plugin is responsible for maintaining and checking the comment section against a global spam database and prevents the publication of malicious or spam content on your website. 

With over five million active installations Akismet is very popular. It automatically checks and filters spam comments and also provides contact and comment history.

7. Disqus 

Disqus is the best WordPress plugin for managing all comments quickly and efficiently and can be used to increase traffic because it has millions of trusted publishers. 

You can setup and install the plugin easily within a few minute. The plugin will export comments to WordPress. It is compatible with XML hence you can migrate or backup to another system. 

It can engage users for an extended period of time and can help with your site SEO customization. It also has a monetization option to help you grow your revenue and is highly mobile responsive. 

8. Modula 

The Modula WordPress plugin is user-friendly and easy to use. It allows users to create lightboxes and elegant galleries, custom grids, masonry grids, and much more with just a few clicks. 

Modula also shines in the premium version with so many advanced features. It helps in making your website more attractive and powerful. 

The plugin gives you a responsive and unique gallery, allowing you to resize your gallery images and choose the right image. 

9. Editorial Calendar 

With a busy schedule, it’s easy to forget posts you put on hold a few days ago. If you are in such a situation, editorial calendar is the best WordPress plugin to bail you out. It reminds you of your publication dates to keep you on track. 

After publishing a post, you can edit, drag, and drop them. It also gives you the status of your posts. It is among the best WordPress plugins that you need, if you own a blog website. 

10. HappyForms 

The HappyForms Plugin allows you to easily respond to conversations with your website visitors.  It  has user-friendly features and even a beginners can operate it without any trouble. 

The plugin has a free drag and drop form builder that you can use to create an amazing contact form. It can also create a survey form, quote form, feedback form, and lead generation form. 

It can create multiple forms with a single click and also provides a configuration message upon submission. These features make it one of the best WordPress plugins for website owners. 

Conclusion 

The plugins mentioned above are the best for WordPress website owners. These tools will help your website with speed optimization, SEO customization, and improved security. Having these plugins will enhance the overall user experience for your website.

The post The 10 Best WordPress Plugins for Your Website in 2020 appeared first on SiteProNews.

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6 Highly Useful Social Media Plugins for Your WordPress Sites https://www.sitepronews.com/2019/09/18/6-highly-useful-social-media-plugins-for-your-wordpress-sites/ Wed, 18 Sep 2019 04:00:50 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=103670 Are you searching for the best social media plugin for your WordPress site to bag more social traffic and followers?  If you look closely, you will find one thing that is common in most of WordPress sites. They all have social media buttons to make things easier for visitors to share content and follow social media accounts.  […]

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Are you searching for the best social media plugin for your WordPress site to bag more social traffic and followers? 

If you look closely, you will find one thing that is common in most of WordPress sites. They all have social media buttons to make things easier for visitors to share content and follow social media accounts. 

It’s a win-win for both you and your visitors. There are lots of social media plugins to choose from. So, the inevitable question that arises here is -how do you choose the right plugin for your social media site? 

That’s what this article aims to help you with. We have selected the six best and result-oriented social media plugins for your website:

Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress:

This is a comprehensive tool that can do pretty much everything for your WordPress website Social Media engagement activities. When it comes to getting all the bells and whistles of Social Media buttons under a single umbrella, nothing could be a better option than this tool. 

Button Placement Options: 

This tool allows you to choose from 30 different default display positions that include –

  • Above/below the content 
  • Floating icons that you can place either above, below the content or sides. 
  • Top or bottom bars
  • Post sharing option 
  • On media 
  • As a pop-up
  • And many other placement options. 

Cost: only $20.

MashShare:

If you love the way Mashable uses their stylish social media buttons, then using MashShare is the best choice for you. 

MashShare is not all about stylish buttons. It offers lots of other things apart from that. This plugin is currently active on over 80,000 websites. 

Options for button placement: Above/below the content 

You can add buttons manually with PHP or HTML tags, 

You can also get more exclusive placement options like sidebar and sticky share bar with the premium add-on. 

The Key Features of MashShare: 

  • Share counts: it displays overall share counts like Mashable
  • HTTP: it recovers the share counts of HTTP. 
  • Fake Share Count
  • Allows users to share a specific part of the content 
  • Pageviews 

Price: free for WordPress.org and Paid add-ons are ~€19.95 each.

Monarch: 

Monarch is a premium social share button plugin. Buying Monarch can be a costly affair. If you are interested in Elegant Theme’s other tools like Divi builder, Divi theme or Bloom opt-in, you can get excellent value from the paid membership of Elegant Theme. 

Placement Options for the Buttons: 

  • Floating option 
  • Above or below content 
  • On media 
  • Automatic pop-up 
  • Automatic side-in 
  • Shortcode 

Sassy Social Share:

Sassy Social Share is a very easy to use social sharing plugin for WordPress sites and comes with support for social media sites. It allows you to add buttons in post content and the sticky social menu also. 

This tool also keeps tab on the number of social shares. When it comes to choosing the icon style, Sassy Social Share comes with three shapes – square, rectangle, and round. 

AddtoAny: 

AddtoAny is a very popular social sharing plugin for WordPress. It supports a large number of social media platforms. It offers you standard and floating sharing bar and universal social sharing options. 

It can show social sharing counts and allows you to integrate Google Analytics.

Final Thoughts

All the tools mentioned above offer unique features and styling options, so it is not possible to select one plugin as the best one. Based on the styling and placement requirements of your WordPress site, you should pick the ideal one for you.

The post 6 Highly Useful Social Media Plugins for Your WordPress Sites appeared first on SiteProNews.

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Top 8 WordPress Plugins for New Business Websites https://www.sitepronews.com/2019/06/20/top-8-wordpress-plugins-for-new-business-websites/ Thu, 20 Jun 2019 04:00:00 +0000 https://www.sitepronews.com/?p=102265 The success of any website relies on having a set of right tools to accomplish the goals and objectives of your website. If you are thinking about building a website for your business, then WordPress is the right tool to succeed online. WordPress can help your business to expand on internet platforms and accomplish your […]

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The success of any website relies on having a set of right tools to accomplish the goals and objectives of your website. If you are thinking about building a website for your business, then WordPress is the right tool to succeed online. WordPress can help your business to expand on internet platforms and accomplish your business goals. Yet, to make the most out of WordPress, you will need the right set of plug-ins.  

In this blog, we’ve rounded up a list of top WordPress plug-ins for your new business website. Let’s have a look at what these are and become aware of the power of plug-ins. 

Check out These 8 Powerful WordPress Plug-ins for Your Business Website

1. WPForms

One of the must-have plug-ins for your business website is WPForms. It allows you to create powerful WordPress forms within minutes. Every website needs a contact form because it allows your visitors to get in touch with you. This must-have plug-in is one of the friendliest contact form plug-ins for WordPress. 

Fundamentally, the WPForms plug-in is a drag and drop online form builder, allowing you to create contact forms, email subscription forms, online order forms, payment forms, surveys, polls and all other types of forms with just a few clicks.

Image Credits: wpforms

In addition, the WPForms plug-in integrates with all popular marketing and payment platforms, so that you can create powerful forms in less than 5 minutes. It also comes with options to help you to create a custom WordPress user registration form as well as the login page. 

2. Yoast SEO

Basically, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps more & more visitors from various search engines like Google, Yahoo & Bing come to your website, and Yoast SEO is one of the most essential and powerful plug-ins for your business website.

Image Credits: yoast

Yoast SEO provides a comprehensive SEO solution along with all the features and tools that you need to enhance the on-page SEO of your business website. 

  • Add Meta Tags & Generate Sitemaps: This plug-in helps users to add meta tags, generate sitemaps, and connect your business website to Google Search Console, and optimize it for social media. 
  • Redirect Feature: Yoast SEO comes with a powerful Redirect feature which lets you easily create 301 redirects. This can be extremely helpful. 
  • Detects the Change of URLs: Yoast SEO detects the change of URLs and creates auto-redirects so that you do not have any broken links on your website. 

3. Google Maps Builder

Google Maps Builder helps you to add unlimited maps to your business website. The plug-in provides an out-of-the-box solution for corporate websites along with some powerful functionalities and customized options. Another great thing about this plug-in is that it features an intuitive builder of responsive maps, a geolocation feature, layers, a store locator, and unlimited markers.

Image Credits: wpmeta

By using this plug-in you get a number of benefits such as:

  • It brings Google Maps to your website and takes advantage of the wealth of information they offer. 
  • It also embraces better user experience and makes it easy to create customized maps within minutes and insert them into posts and pages.
  • Moreover, the plugin also provides a high-level of customization, ease of use, and support.

Thus, Google Maps Builder ensures that your potential customers find your business’ physical location where you can convert their interests in goods and services to sales. 

4. Akismet: Spam Protection for WordPress

When you are in business, you’re bound to have a busy schedule. You might not have enough time to differentiate between genuine and spam comments. To help you with this, you should use Akismet, an anti-spam plug-in, that checks your comments and contact form submissions against a global database of spam. This way you can prevent malicious content from appearing on your website.

Image Credits: akismet

By using this plug-in, you get the following benefits:

  • It automatically filters out comments which appear to be spam.
  • The plug-in maintains a status history of filtered comments so that the user can quickly scan and draw out those which might not have been spam.
  • There’s a Discard feature for eliminating outright spam and allowing the user to save disk space. 

5. BirchPress

BirchPress provides an effective way to streamline your business operations. It allows you to keep track of information and schedule meetings online.

Image Credits: birchpress

On a fundamental level, BirchPress is a premium WordPress appointment booking plug-in. This streamlined booking and scheduling platform helps orchestrate meetings between clients and various members of your team. As a website owner, you can be certain that you won’t miss any valuable opportunities in order to serve your potential clients. 

In a nutshell, this WordPress plug-in provides:

  • Booking options for customers
  • Date and time configuration options
  • Easily embedded booking forms
  • Support for multiple staff and services

6. Insert Headers and Footers

Another powerful WordPress plug-in is Insert Headers and Footers which is a must for any WordPress business website. The plug-in allows you to insert code like Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, custom CSS, and many more to your website. It simplifies the process of inserting headers and footers into your WordPress website without making alterations to your theme.

In a nutshell, Insert Headers and Footers provides the following features:

  • Easy insertion of scripts.
  • Easy insertion of Facebook pixel code.
  • Quick setup and easy navigation.
  • The ability to add Google Analytics code to any theme.

7. WooCommerce

For building your online business, WooCommerce is the most customizable e-commerce platform. In general, an e-commerce platform can either help or hinder your ability to enhance the bottom line of your business.

Image Credits: iconicwp

WooCommerce offers a seamless e-commerce integration into your WordPress website. You don’t need to develop a mobile app since it is mobile friendly already. By using this plug-in, you can: 

  • Offer a wide range of purchasing options and set up shipping to any location.
  • Sell physical and digital goods of all shapes and sizes.
  • Maintain complete control over your sales and the design of your storefront. 

8. Quick & Easy FAQs

The next must-have WordPress plug-in is – Quick & Easy FAQs. As its name implies, it provides a quick and easy way to add FAQs by using custom post type and then later displaying FAQs by using shortcodes. With this plug-in you can:

  • Add custom FAQs.
  • Place your FAQs in a toggle or filtered toggle style list.
  • Customize the CSS box to override default styles.
  • Quickly edit style, text, backgrounds, and border.

Getting answers to all technical or non-technical questions can actually make the difference in making sales. Moreover, utilizing this plug-in can actually impact your sales and be a money-maker for your business. 

Concluding Remarks

The above are a few powerful WordPress plug-ins which you can use to double or triple the performance of your WordPress-based website. All you need to do is use them to amplify your business growth. 

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9 Expert Tips on Picking the Perfect WordPress Theme https://www.sitepronews.com/2019/03/27/9-expert-tips-on-picking-the-perfect-wordpress-theme/ Wed, 27 Mar 2019 04:00:32 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=100447 Did you know that there are over 31,000 WordPress themes available on the market? With such a large number of themes, how in the world do you choose the perfect one for you? Here are some tried-and-true tips to help you make a decision. 1. Take Notes Before anything else, you need to figure out […]

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Did you know that there are over 31,000 WordPress themes available on the market? With such a large number of themes, how in the world do you choose the perfect one for you?

Here are some tried-and-true tips to help you make a decision.

1. Take Notes

Before anything else, you need to figure out exactly what you want on your theme. You should brainstorm with someone else or just get a piece of paper and write down what you want from a theme.

Your ideal theme also depends on the type of content your website will publish. Basically, you want to be looking at things like loading speed, whether you want a cutting-edge design or something really simple, features like an e-commerce store, a blog or a vlog, and the amount of pictures vs text on the theme.

There are no right or wrong answers. Just ask yourself these kinds of questions and write down your preferences. After this process, you will know exactly what you want.

2. Think Ahead

You know your website and your long-term goals for it, and that is important. You don’t need a theme that is ready to include a store if you won’t be selling anything now or in the future, but if that is one of your future goals, now is the time to think about it.

Think about what plugins and widgets you will need. All of this is important because of compatibility issues.

3. Who are Your Users and Visitors?

This information helps a lot when picking a theme and deciding what you want from it. Look into things like user behavior or origin in order to choose the best plugins and widgets for your audience. Make sure that your theme is compatible with those.

4. What to Look Out for?

When picking a theme, try to test it or see if there is a running version on any other site.

See the widgets they are using, note their loading speed, and look for anything else that really matters to your particular case.

Just because site X or Y is using it doesn’t mean it is good for your case. Always keep that in mind.

Also, you need to know if it is updated frequently to be compatible with the most recent WordPress versions. Look into the available support services. When you set up a new theme, some problems may occur, so it’s a good idea to know if someone who worked on the theme is available to answer questions you may have. This could be a major issue on a free theme.

Take the time to read the customer reviews about certain themes to see if they ran into any problems that may be a deal breaker for you.

5. Free or Paid Theme?

This is an important part: you should know that a paid theme is not necessarily a better theme. There are a lot of high-quality free themes out there and some really bad quality paid ones.

Take the time to explore both possibilities, read reviews, and do some research on the seller.

6. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The theme you choose can absolutely affect the way search engines walk through your website.

There are some plugins that can help you improve the overall performance of a website in this particular point, but some parts of the theme’s coding in itself can highly affect your SEO. Make sure the coding on the theme is clean and well-organized. This could be tricky for a beginner because great-looking themes are not always optimized, and it could affect your website’s loading time and SEO-friendliness.

7. Responsive Theme

Currently, most websites’ traffic comes from mobile devices, so you want to make sure your theme can adapt to different screens. Having a standard PC theme is not an option anymore, as you can access the Internet from pretty much anything.

You can test out your theme on Google’s Mobile Friendly Test Page for compatibility issues with your theme.

8. Language Compatibility

First of all, not all themes are built in English as a base language, and this could be hard for you to translate yourself. On the other hand, you may want a website in your native language or to build a multi-language website.

If that is the case, you need a theme that specifically states that possibility. Again you must ask yourself if you need this possibility now or at some point in the future.

9. Test, Test, Test…

Picking a theme is an important task for the future of your WordPress-based website, so take the time to test all the functions. Test them on different browsers, different mobile devices and mobile browsers too in order to make sure everything is working smoothly and without errors before you make your final decision. Then, you can feel confident in making your chosen theme live.

If you follow these 9 tips for picking the perfect WordPress theme, you will certainly end up with a great-looking theme that offers compatibility with all the features you may need now or in the future.

Take note that every site is different. You shouldn’t pick a theme just because it looks good on a competitor’s website that has a lot of visitors. You need it to adapt to you as the manager, to your specific user base and to your future goals. It is a very personal decision.

One final thing you need to know before you make your decisions doesn’t have to do with theme choices, but with the plugins and widgets you install on it. Make sure you install only the features that you really need. No one likes a slow website.

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9 Reasons Why Jetpack for WordPress is an Ideal Choice https://www.sitepronews.com/2019/01/30/9-reasons-why-jetpack-for-wordpress-is-an-ideal-choice/ Wed, 30 Jan 2019 05:00:58 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=96178 Plugins are one of the most useful features of WordPress, enabling people to easily extend the functionality of their interfaces. It is one of the major reasons for which people hire WordPress developers to build a new website. Jetpack for WordPress is an extremely popular plugin that allows users to perform a variety of functions. […]

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Plugins are one of the most useful features of WordPress, enabling people to easily extend the functionality of their interfaces. It is one of the major reasons for which people hire WordPress developers to build a new website. Jetpack for WordPress is an extremely popular plugin that allows users to perform a variety of functions. Instead of installing different plugins, they can use this single product to design, secure and manage their websites. There is no doubt about the credibility of the service as it is supported by Automattic, the organization behind WordPress. The plugin comes in free as well as a variety of paid versions. All types of users can choose a plan which suits their requirements. We are presenting a list of compelling reasons for using the service on WordPress websites. Let’s take a look at them.

1. Monitor Website Uptime and Downtime

One of the biggest reasons for using this product is its feature of downtime monitoring. Users are notified about the problem through email or mobile messages as soon as their interface goes down. They are also provided with details of the duration for which the website remained inaccessible. The plugin keeps sending email reminders at regular intervals during the time when the interface is down. Once services are restored, it sends a confirmatory message to the users informing them about the development. This is a standard feature available in free as well as premium versions.

2. Enable Lazy Loading of Images

Page loading speed is an important factor affecting the performance of a website. Owners must take all necessary measures to ensure that all pages of their interface load in the shortest possible time. The lazy loading feature of the Jetpack plugin is useful in reducing the time taken by a page to render. It ensures that images are loaded only when they enter the viewport of a browser. This kind of optimization ensures that web pages are delivered quickly while using less bandwidth provided by the hosting service. It will have a positive impact on website traffic and performance.

3. Activate Infinite Scrolling on the Website

One of the primary concerns of website owners is to make visitors spend a long time on their interfaces. Introducing the feature of infinite scrolling can be useful in this respect. Visitors, instead of refreshing the page or clicking on links, will need to simply scroll down to see more content. The plugin allows users to choose the manner in which new content will be loaded. They can either configure the settings so that posts load automatically or include a button for the purpose. This feature will be helpful for bloggers or content heavy websites. 

4. Flexibility of Modifying Content Through Mobile Devices

People using Jetpack for WordPress websites enjoy the flexibility of modifying content through their desktops as well as mobile devices. The service provides native apps for Android and iOS users. People can create and edit content through these apps. They can also receive comment notifications on their devices and reply through mobile applications. This eliminates the need of having a computer to publish content. Owners can create and upload posts from anywhere in the world as long as they have a smart device and a functional internet connection. Even if the internet speed is slow, users can post content through email. A dedicated email is provided to users and they can send their material to this ID to publish. 

5. Easily Build a Contact Form

Contact forms have become essential features of modern websites. They enable owners to build a database of users, handle customer support, answer queries, and generate feedback. There are numerous plugins that can be used for building customized contact forms. People using Jetpack do not have to install a separate plugin as it has a pre-loaded feature for the purpose. The module for adding a contact form is activated by default in the service. Go to “Posts> Add New” section in the admin dashboard of the WordPress installation. The tab “Add Contact Form” will be visible over the text editor.

6. Benefit of Automated Social Sharing

Social media has become a powerful platform for marketing. Website owners must integrate their platform with these networks to maximize the potential of their valuable content. The Publicize module of Jetpack allows people to automatically share their website posts on chosen social media outlets. They can configure the settings to connect the website with their different social networks. Once they authorize the connection with their social accounts, a new website post will automatically appear on the channels.

7. Protection from Brute Force and Hacking Attacks

Most new owners do not possess much knowledge about necessary security features. They can use the service to activate these measures with a simple click. The plugin provides protection from brute force attacks from hackers or bots. It also enables secure authentication through WordPress.com accounts. Premium subscribers enjoy the facility of automatic backup creation. They also have the benefit of restoring their websites with a single click.

8. Embed Media Content on the Website

Owners can enhance the quality of their posts by embedding media content on their websites with the plugin. They do not need to write code for the purpose and can use shortcodes provided by Jetpack to do the needful. They can embed videos, audio, images, text as well as social media posts. It supports major services like YouTube, SoundCloud, Instagram, SlideShare, Facebook, Twitter etc.  

9. Get Access to a Vast Theme Collection

The plugin gives access to more than 100 free WordPress themes to all users. Subscribers of the premium professional plan are offered an additional 200+ paid themes. Users can search templates by name, style, color or type and use provided tools to customize their appearance. They can preview the changes and then install and activate a selected item with a single click. All the templates are fully optimized for open-source CMS and mobile devices.

Conclusion 

Acquiring Jetpack for WordPress websites is a sensible decision for new users because they will get access to all necessary features for managing and securing their interface at a single location. Experienced owners can use the plugin to improve the efficiency of their efforts to enhance a website’s performance.

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5 Amazing SEO WordPress Plugins That You Need to Install https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/12/31/5-amazing-seo-wordpress-plugins-that-you-need-to-install/ Mon, 31 Dec 2018 05:00:25 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=95729 New to WordPress or just looking for a change? SEO is definitely important to any site out there and SEO plugins have proven to be of immense help.  Here are some of the best ones: Yoast SEO  Yoast is a popular – some might say favorite – plugin on WordPress. It’s one of those things […]

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New to WordPress or just looking for a change? SEO is definitely important to any site out there and SEO plugins have proven to be of immense help. 

Here are some of the best ones:

Yoast SEO 

Yoast is a popular – some might say favorite – plugin on WordPress. It’s one of those things people basically order you to install first thing you get a website. It’s free and available in a pro version which costs about $89 without discounts which happen frequently. It’s a SEO plugin that has done wonders in directing people towards better content. Some of the features involved are keyword optimization, suggestions ranging from formatting to linking and images. It can also notify you if you are creating duplicate content. It’s updated every two weeks and includes the newest updates to Google’s algorithm. 

It uses colors and emojis to let you know how well your page fits current SEO recommendations. For instance, a red smiley face would mean that there are improvements you can make. Bellow your text, the plugin will let you know what you need to do in order to fix it. It will let you know what you did great, what needs just a slight change and what needs a lot more improvement. Yellow smiley means that your text is okay but could be better SEO-wise and green means that it’s great.

SEO Hound

SEO hound is another popular WordPress plugin you can use for SEO. It can show you keyword stats for different pages at once and it suggests which keywords to use. This plugin is available for $59 for one website and $119 for more. The latter comes with consultation and installation options as well. The Hound also has a free video course on how to use this plugin. It shows you your page metrics and so on. You can see from this which keywords work and which don’t. It also features a MOZ integration, note taking possibilities and more. 

All in One SEO Pack 

This is a great plugin for WordPress – the original one that people used to recommend. It’s simple and easy to use, install and configure which makes it the perfect choice for beginners on WordPress and in SEO. However, it has more advanced features as well. 

This plugin is free and you can also purchase the individual version for $57, business one for $97 and pro one for $149. The last one comes with unlimited downloads and many other features for serious SEO players. 

SmartCrawl SEO

SmartCrawl is one of the greatest WordPress plugins available. You can get it for free – which is great – and you can also purchase the pro version for $49 a month. It offers branding for all elements of your WordPress site. Some of the features are pretty easy to set up. You can do a SEO audit with every new algorithm update, simple 301 redirects and so on. There is also the great integration with Moz which can come in handy at all times.

The SEO Framework 

“This is a fast SEO plugin. You can get it for free and it allows you to use SEO in a simple and effective way. You can transfer data from another plugin so that you don’t have to start fresh and this feature is fairly simple to set up.”, says Zara Hamilton, a blogger and regular contributor to Draftbeyond and Writinity. 

Some of the features here include already existing settings so you can share easily to social media, support custom posts and so on. It also has no ads. It prevents 404 errors by automatically updating the search engines with the newest changes. 

Other SEO Tools You Could Use

Plugins are great but there are more tools that you may find useful when it comes to SEO. Here are some of them:

SEM Rush

“SEMRush is a tool for any website owner to gather insights from their website and use those insights to improve their marketing efforts and more,” says Seth Thompson, an author at Researchpapersuk and Last Minute Writing

Google Keyword Research 

Google Keyword Research is exactly what it sounds like. Google advertisers can get it for free and see which keywords they can rank for. 

Keyword.io

Keyword.io is a simple but useful tool for keyword research. It requires no prior commitments or any payment. 

Open Site Explorer

Finally, this tool is perfect for checking data for any domain name. It’s completely free as well. 

SEO can be quite complex if you don’t have all the right tools. However, with these tools, you can hardly make a mistake. Use these plugins to get the most out of your website and optimize it for search engines. 

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Advice from an Expert: How to Weed Out Unnecessary WordPress Plugins https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/11/06/advice-from-an-expert-how-to-weed-out-unnecessary-wordpress-plugins/ Tue, 06 Nov 2018 05:00:25 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=95070 WordPress plugins are a big part of what makes the platform so flexible. I look at between 100 and 200 plugins per day, and there’s truly a lot that you can accomplish with them. That doesn’t mean that every plugin is a good one, and a lot of sites are hosting plugins that are unnecessary.  Unnecessary […]

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WordPress plugins are a big part of what makes the platform so flexible. I look at between 100 and 200 plugins per day, and there’s truly a lot that you can accomplish with them. That doesn’t mean that every plugin is a good one, and a lot of sites are hosting plugins that are unnecessary. 

Unnecessary WordPress plugins are sometimes installed by the site owner or webmaster. Alternatively, they could show up inside a theme or as part of a package of plugins. They don’t always look unnecessary at first, but they can still be slowing down your site or causing problems on the back end that make your website less responsive. It’s important to identify these plugins and find good plugins that address the same needs without adding dead weight to your website and frustrating your site’s visitors.

Here’s how to sort the bad plugins from the good.

The Making of a Good Plugin

How do you tell good from bad?

Unfortunately, as someone who does a lot of code review for developers creating plugins for WordPress, I see bad plugins all too often.

You know the type—a bad plugin slows your site down, does its work in a convoluted way, and can be worse for your WordPress site than not having it installed at all. 

Of course, there are a lot of excellent plugins available as well. Good plugins don’t reinvent the wheel. They do their jobs efficiently and address a unique problem that hasn’t already been solved. When exploring new plugins, look for those that break new ground with an effective and innovative solution to a problem.

How to Identify a Good WordPress Plugin

If you’re going to install a plugin, one of the best ways to find a good one that won’t harm your site is to do some research into who created the plugin and how they did it.

See if they actually use WordPress and are actively involved in the WordPress community. Checking out their personal or company site to see if it uses WordPress can help you gauge their own level of experience with the platform and their knowledge of it. Not being a WordPress user is a warning sign that this developer is probably not someone who can develop well for WordPress.

Developers who actively give talks about WordPress and participate in WordPress meetups and events are more likely to know what they’re doing and to be strong developers for the platform. WordPress has a strong and active community of developers who express interest in helping plugin users improve their websites and find the right solutions. Answering user questions in the free support forums and being responsive to what other people say about their code are other good signs. You want to know if that developer is a good WordPress citizen and is interested in supporting WordPress users.

From there, I also look at plugin reviews and ratings, but I also take them with a grain of salt. What works for one user may not work for another. Your own mileage may vary with any plugin, and it’s important to remember that. What you are trying to determine by looking at reviews is whether or not problems mentioned are subjective issues or fatal flaws. 

While a large number of positive reviews for a plugin is a good sign, that may not mean as much as one trustworthy review. If you know a user who reviewed the plugin personally, then you can give their review more weight and that might help you make your decision.

As a general rule, a widely used plugin is probably a safer bet than one that’s lesser known. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean a widely used plugin is going to be exactly what you need. It can be helpful to look at the code if you can before installing a plugin. While this isn’t something everyone has the knowledge to do, it does give you a glimpse at how the developer tackled the project.

Ultimately, picking a plugin sometimes come down to your gut. If you ever have a bad feeling about a plugin you encounter, it’s okay to walk away. In fact, I’d advise it!

Removing Unnecessary Plugins—The Last Step

So, now you know what sketchy and pointless plugins look like (They’re the ones slowing you down and getting in the way of what you want your site to accomplish.) let’s talk about removing them. Once you’ve identified a problem plugin, you can deactivate it and delete it afterwards. (Note: Leaving an inactive plugin on your site without deleting it can give that plugin the opportunity to create an ongoing security risk.) Deactivation and deletion should be a straightforward process. A better idea is to also delete any lingering files in your directory. An even better idea is to use the plugin’s uninstall process if it has one.

There’s no set number of plugins you need to target for removal to keep your WordPress site healthy and responsive. While some people say you should limit how many plugins you have on your site, the truth is that it’s okay to have more plugins as long as they all work and play well together. 

You also don’t want a large number of plugins that do the same task, either. If you have redundant plugins, target some of them for removal after choosing one good plugin that can handle the work you need accomplished. 

Plugin removal can feel good, and it should. This is important maintenance work that helps make your WordPress site better. So, analyze those plugins already on your site. Remove those that don’t belong, and go forth and enjoy a leaner and meaner website.

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Gutenberg for Developers: How the Upcoming WordPress 5.0 Update Will Affect You https://www.sitepronews.com/2018/10/03/gutenberg-for-developers-how-the-upcoming-wordpress-5-0-update-will-affect-you/ Wed, 03 Oct 2018 04:00:03 +0000 http://www.sitepronews.com/?p=94648 WordPress’ new Gutenberg editor will change how users interact with and create their sites, and, of course, this means it’ll also impact your plugin or theme. If your plugin or theme isn’t ready for this, you’ll probably be getting a lot of support emails. So, let’s dive into what you can expect from Gutenberg. Gutenberg Timeline […]

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WordPress’ new Gutenberg editor will change how users interact with and create their sites, and, of course, this means it’ll also impact your plugin or theme. If your plugin or theme isn’t ready for this, you’ll probably be getting a lot of support emails. So, let’s dive into what you can expect from Gutenberg.

Gutenberg Timeline

It’s in beta right now, and you should definitely download Gutenberg as a plugin to see how it works firsthand between now and the full update release. (Of course, if you do try Gutenberg while it’s in beta, don’t put it on a live website.) Otherwise, it’s being released with WordPress 5.0 sometime in 2018. It won’t come out until it’s ready—there’s a lot to do to make it really shine.

Certainly, though, it’s not too early to adapt.

From TinyMCE to a New Editor

Gutenberg is replacing WordPress’s TinyMCE editor in this next update. This represents a complete reboot of the editing experience in WordPress, and, consequently, will probably have significant implications for your work.

Basically, Gutenberg is making content on WordPress pages creatable and editable in blocks. Eventually, entire WordPress pages can be created and edited live without having to continuously hit “preview” to see how content looks and behaves. This creates a friendly, familiar experience for users that gives them more control over how their websites look than TinyMCE does. The TinyMCE library offers a lot and is a great deal better than WordPress’s original offering, but you’ll probably be glad to move on.

Users can quickly create new blocks and change settings like design elements, all without knowing the underlying code. It’s liberating to a lot of WordPress users, particularly people who were frustrated that their posts never really did look exactly how they wanted them to.

Prep for Gutenberg

Strategy-wise, there’s a lot you can do to help your plugin fit the Gutenberg ecosystem, and you’ll want it to.

Some Plugins won’t be as popular with users once Gutenberg gains steam, because they won’t look as good or work the same way. To keep your work competitive, I recommend preparing it for Gutenberg.

For many, this means creating plugins and themes that work with Gutenberg’s blocks. Maybe your plugin, for instance, will let users make blocks directly. Maybe all you need is the Block API because your plugin relies on shortcodes. Or, you may need the Sidebar API if what you’re doing is a bit more complicated.

You can use:

  • Block API–blocks are the Gutenberg editor’s primary elements
  • Shortcode API–when blocks aren’t enough
  • There’s others too (Status Bar, Publish Panel, etc.)

For themes there’s:

  • Adding-in custom styles for Gutenberg
  • Creating themes with blocks
  • Allowing for customized blocks

Getting the right development environment together to develop for Gutenberg is important, and there’s some things to know.

  • Gutenberg Plugins are coded in Javascript, so you’ll need to know some basics to make Gutenberg plugins
  • React was used to create Gutenberg; not essential for you to know, but might be helpful

Now, how your plugin operates will dictate what you’ll need to do to get it ready. One thing I can almost guarantee is that your plugin probably already does something or uses something that is dependent on Gutenberg. You’ll need to prepare for Gutenberg if your plugin uses the editor, and, well, that includes just about everyone. You’ll need to pay careful attention to understanding the basics of the Gutenberg editor so you’ll know how your plugin will behave.

In many cases, your plugin or theme pages will revolve around the use of blocks. So, we should probably talk about what those are and how they work in Gutenberg.

Block Basics

A block does so much and can be so much. Like:

  • Text
  • Widgets
  • Media, like videos and audio
  • Buttons
  • Graphics and images
  • Embedded stuff, like content from social media sites

Most of these are common blocks. Then there are also layout blocks. You can save blocks to reuse somewhere else on your site, too. So many options.

With your plugin or theme, you can integrate blocks and customize them to behave how you want them to. Awesome! Blocks are discrete units you can edit by themselves, together making the design of a post layout.

While it’s not really a page builder yet, Gutenberg will make it a lot easier to create more complex and customized post layouts. Maybe, in the future, it’ll become a page-building tool. Gutenberg is definitely still evolving and likely will for some time as users and developers get more creative with it.

Help Your Users Transition to New Things

No one wants to leave their plugin and theme users high and dry, of course. But plenty of developers have been waiting to update and prepare themselves for these changes. That’s taking a risk, I think.

These changes are coming up fast. And users and developers alike can already start playing around with Gutenberg, so what do you have to lose? It’s time to start making the transition now.

I like Gutenberg. I think in time you will too. It’s not 100 percent where it needs to be yet, but it’s completely changing the WordPress editing environment, and I believe it’s doing so for the better.

The post Gutenberg for Developers: How the Upcoming WordPress 5.0 Update Will Affect You appeared first on SiteProNews.

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