How to start your WordPress E-commerce website like a Pro?

If you are running a brick and mortar business then there can’t be a better time to build an E-commerce website for your business. In today’s digital world having an online presence for your business is a must if you really wants to get ahead on your competitors. Although there are many options but an E-commerce website is best if it is designed by the world’s most popular content management system WordPress. A WordPress based E-commerce website has lots of features and is capable of doing many functions and is easy to use. You can also easily manage your WordPress based E-commerce site.

You can also contact a WordPress development company if you want to develop your initial WordPress site from experts and later on want to install the required plugin to enable your WordPress website ready for e-commerce. Now we will discuss about how to start your E-commerce business on WordPress yourself.

Developing your Own Online Store with WordPress

Now we will provide you about some of the steps that will help you understand the steps you need to take in order to build your own online store.

- Get a Domain Name and Web Hosting

For building a website the first thing you need is a domain name and a web hosting service provider. You should select a hosting service provider after doing thorough research. You should choose a domain name which reflects the nature of your online business. Domain name is the first thing which your customer will notice about your online business hence it should be unique. We recommend choosing a hosting service which provides you best and quality services.

- Install WordPress in your Hosting Account for Free

Most of the web hosting service providers provide WordPress as it is free to download, install and use. You just need to go to the cPanel of the service provider and install WordPress in your hosting account. This will give you authority and power to manage everything on your website right from here.

- Install the WooCommerce Plugin for Free

After installing the WordPress in your hosting account now you can access the WordPress dashboard directly from the cPanel of your hosting account. WooCommerce plugin has made the life easier for the WordPress developer who wish to make an E-commerce website based on WordPress. WooCommerce has lots of functions that will help you to make online store function rich. To install WooCommerce plugin just visit the WordPress plugin directory and simply download it and install it.

- Do Settings for your Store Locale

The next important thing is to do settings for your Store locale. In this step you need to give all the details about your store location, currency and measuring parameters which you will prefer to use in your E-commerce website.

- Add the Taxes and Payment Methods

You need to understand the tax system of your country and follow it and do the appropriate settings in your E-commerce website. After that comes the most important thing i.e. The payment method. WooCommerce provides you two type of payments i.e PayPal and Stripe. PayPal is the most popular payment platform hence it is highly recommended. However you can use Stripe payment method also which is equally good.

- Add your Products which you want to sell on your E-commerce site

Now in this step you  need to add your products which you want to show to the public at your E-commerce site. Just go to the WooCommerce option in the WordPress dashboard and select “Add Products”. After that fill out the information like product name, description and the product data section which have the options like pricing and taxes, stock level, cost of shipping, product attributes etc. After this you have to add the product category, tags, image etc.

After you have done, just click on the publish button at the bottom of  the page.

Conclusion

We have just discussed the steps which are needed to be followed if you want to get a proper and user friendly WordPress E-commerce online store. In today’s competitive environment having a WooCommerce powered WordPress E-commerce website will definitely give you a competitive advantage in your business and you can easily build and run your E-commerce business like a professional.

What is Landing Page and How to build it for WP website?

It has become crucial to establish a strong web presence in this highly competitive business era. Well, doing so can be a bit challenging and a daunting proposition, especially for the startups which usually are low on budget. Even supposing that you have found some great techniques to create a solid online identity, but you still might lack time to follow each technique. Wouldn't it be better if you just concentrate on a single effective way to attract target audience? You can do so, by creating a gorgeous & functional landing page of your website.

What is a Landing Page and Why You Should get One?

A landing page is, basically a single web page which is built to achieve some particular objective like increasing the click-through rate, notifying users about a future product launch, getting user details etc. You can hire Wordpress developer who will provide you with a functional landing page as per your business requirement. Keep this thing in mind that not all web pages could be turned into landing pages. 

How to create a landing page in WordPress CMS?

1. Using Page Template to manually build a landing page

This is a highly recommended way to create a feature-rich and functional landing page. The main benefit of opting for the manual process is that it allows users to construct a tailored page as per the business needs. Irrespective of the WP template you picked for your landing page, you can create a custom page template and place it inside your selected theme. In other words, you can make a customized landing page using a blank template. For this purpose, you need to have expertise in CSS and designing.

2. Using a pre-made Landing Page Theme

The best way to build a landing page is by deploying a pre-built WP theme which is available on the web. At present, the internet is full of so many WordPress ready-to-use themes, which are specifically designed for creating landing pages. These templates come loaded with features such as effective CTA's, attractive sliders and several other great options that allow users to create beautiful landing pages in no time.

Here are some single page WordPress themes suited for building landing pages :

Appster : A lean Minimal App Landing Page for WordPress

Scalia Multi : Suitable for Concept Business, Shop, One-Page, Blog Theme

3. Use a Plugin

Another obvious way to quickly develop a landing page is to make use of a reliable plugin. You can open up the WordPress Directory and search for a suitable plugin which will help you in this process. If you are looking out for an easy way to build landing pages quickly and not much concerned about optimizing the code, then you can use the plugins for accomplishing your objective. At present, there are tonnes of free plugins available in the official WP Directory, and here are some of them which you can use:

• OptimizePress 2.0
• LeadPages
• Thrive Landing Pages

Summing Up

In this article, you will read about three different steps through which you can make a landing page for your business.

How Does WordPress Benefit A Business?

With dominating more than half of the digital market share, WordPress is undeniably the leading CMS today. The platform lets you create an attractive and highly functional portal which is loaded with all the modern features. The SEO driven elements of WordPress allow the developers to create websites which ensure higher revenues and organic traffic on the website.

WordPress is a well-known CMS for its performance-oriented features. The platform is continually gaining recognition for business website development. Companies are looking to hire WordPress developer who possess expertise at creating custom WordPress solutions. Developing exclusive themes and  plugins is becoming popular these days, given their efficiency and ease of usage.

Hiring a dedicated team of developers from certified web development firms ensures that a business achieves splendid services. Where a business website needs to come up clean in terms of proficiency and reliability, it is important that only professional should be relied on. Being involved with the WordPress sphere on a daily basis, these developers make use of the latest tools and techniques for rendering an amazing web portal.

The skilled and professional WordPress website development companies let their clients manage their business website with ease. The developed is focused on addressing the target audience in mind, hence ensuring the highest ROI.

These companies deliver services which are in sync with the needs of the customers, while keeping website management simple. The WordPress developers keep themselves updated with the latest trends of the market and deliver websites which are bug-free and performs phenomenally well once they go live.

You should always consider the WordPress development services who have a record of delivering services of greatest quality and have helped businesses increase their productivity. Getting in touch with WordPress professionals will offer the following advantages:

All-In-One Services

Hiring dedicated WordPress services ensures a complete solution. The project includes website development, support, maintenance, responsive, theme development, customization and much more.

Web Customization

Although WordPress provides features to perform some basic customization, a skilled developer is always needed to tame this robust technology. Tweaking the WordPress platform as per the needs of the business requires specialized knowledge of the CMS and it becomes crucial to hire a developer for it. It is the duty of the developer to perform various tasks which includes development, integration, extension and support for the website.

Tested Methodologies

Hiring the professional WordPress services isn't just for creating a website. Once the website has been finally launched, it must be able to index higher in the search engine rankings. These services assist you to make the most out of the CMS by ensuring that the site ranks well on the leading web browsers.

Apart from a higher online visibility, the website is also able to achieve features like W3C compliance, crisp content and SEO optimized keywords for making it easier for the search engine crawlers to index the website.

Top 4 WordPress Plugins For Footnotes

Footnotes are defined as attributes or notes which are placed at the bottom of a page. These are used to acknowledge the content on the page. The WordPress footnotes plugins are wonderful tools which can be used by business professionals effectively add footnotes to the WordPress site.

These footnotes can be a plain text or media that appears on the bottom of the WordPress website. All of the plugins used by WordPress developer are easy to customize and are affordable. You can add any kind of content in the footnotes to help the viewers about the information on the page.

1. CM Footnotes

The footnotes plugin by Creative Minds is a highly advanced plugin which can be customized from the scratch. The plugin enables to add any type of desired texts to your website. You can add footnotes, citations, end notes, bibliography and any kind of media. Footnotes can be added to any page or post as well as customize them according to the requirements. The plugin is ideal for developers who want to have unique and customized footnotes on their website.

2. Easy Footnotes

The easy footnotes plugin is one of the most popular plugin among WordPress developer as it is easy to install and work with. Viewers just have to click on a footnote and they can easily view the data. This way, they don’t have to scroll to the bottom of the blog or article. When the user adds a shortcode, a footnote can be placed at the bottom of the page. Every footnote is assigned an individual icon, which can be clicked to automatically get the user on a certain word.

3. Inline Footnotes

The Inline Footnotes plugin is easy to use and perfect for new WordPress users. People can use a shortcode to add relevant footnotes to post or web pages. The Inline Footnotes plugin can be viewed in the text itself, so users need not scroll to the bottom of the page. A number appears along with the word and users can see the information there itself.

4. WP NoteUp
WP NoteUp is a premium plugin which allows the admin to add footnotes while modifying the WordPress pages. The website admin can add notes, images or any kind of media to any page or post. Moreover, one can customize the style and layout of the footnote. The plugin is ideal for people who want to add footnotes when they are editing pages or creating new posts.

Conclusion

Apart from the mentioned above, there are many other footnote plugins available. The key is to find the one that goes well with the website. There are some plugins which have simple shortcodes, and some that enables the viewer to view the content without scrolling down the page.

Why custom WP development is becoming famous in web sphere?

Today digital marketing has steered past all the traditional marketing strategies. Almost all the business enterprises are going online so that they can reach out to millions in a hassle-free manner. Not only firms but people are also using various web technologies to stay in touch with web world. As organizations are moving to a virtual environment, the internet marketing sector is growing at a very rapid pace.

New technologies are launched now and then. Every latest development is helping businesses in establishing their strong and powerful presence on the internet. WordPress is one such platform which is has gained a lot of popularity these days. With the assistance of a reliable and highly skilled Wordpress developer, you can quickly develop a robust site for the users. The primary reason behind the popularity of WP is that it has an easy to use architecture and a broad assortment of themes, plugins etc.

You cannot deny the fact that WP is a great platform which can support an eStore, corporate site and a blog. Still, there are times when you need something more advanced and for that, you can opt for custom WP development services in which you can get anything designed as per your requirements. Here is the few reason which makes WP a popular choice of any firm:

Superb Flexibility:

WordPress comes loaded with pretty features and that too right out of the box. Just make sure that you opt for the best Wordpress CMS development service provider who will help you explore all the inbuilt and add-on functionalities of WP so that you can make the most out of its flexibility.

Highly Customizable:

All the WordPress powered sites can be customized to meet the individual needs. In fact, WP is known as the best CMS system in terms of customization. By using plugins, shortcodes and widgets, one can easily get a site customized from a professional. You can also develop various themes/templates from scratch.

Search Engine Friendly:

Sites based on the WP CMS system highly search engine friendly. It doesn't matter you install an SEO plugin or not, but these sites will still run comfortably on the web. WP sites are quite easy to list on the SERPs (search engine results page). The search bots can quickly index and fetch the site if a user feeds in a particular keyword on Google, Yahoo or Bing. By adding Meta tags, descriptions, title, etc. to every page a user can make his site more SEO-friendly.


Social Media Friendly:

When it comes to online promotion, social media plays a pivotal role in enhancing the product exposure. Millions of people have joined social media sites and it has become really easy to pitch them by deploying efficient social media marketing strategies. A social media-friendly site allows users to share your site' content on different platforms.

Conclusion

In this article, you will read few reasons that make WordPress site development services most popular in the web sphere.

How A Custom WordPress Theme Procures You A Unique Online Identity

As soon as you initiate your online venture, you must always consider the importance of a customized WordPress theme design. Incorporating a custom theme on your website works as a magnet to attract more visitors. This is highly beneficial, especially if it is a business website.

WordPress is the most popular blogging platform known today. Along with serving as a primary tool for blogging, the platform features wonderful functions like custom Wordpress theme development and much more. There is more than an individual can use to optimize their online website. WordPress is undeniably the best Content Management Systems available today. Most of all, the powerful system is very easy to use and you will never have any issue in uploading new content, all by yourself.

In addition, WordPress CMS has already been proven and tested by a lot of users from around the world. There are many good reasons as to why most of the website owners prefer WordPress in comparison with other content management systems. The primary reason for website owners opting for WordPress is because they always strive to deliver the best services in the field.

Generally, a business owner can simply choose from the diverse WordPress theme designs and layouts. But the concern is that the designs are already being used by thousands of websites. So, you can hire WordPress developer and save yourself from this glitch. This is a big step towards achieving a unique identity on the internet. The customization process will be undertaken by the developer you hire. By achieving an all-exclusive website, you will be able to make a mark on the customers and keep the brand reputation strong against your competitors. Always remember that it is the distinguishing identity that would ultimately help you flourish your online presence and enable better returns.

Applying an apt WordPress theme can sometimes be a bit of a trouble, especially if you have made a lot of modifications in your site content. Although it is ease to take care of in most of the cases. Yet, you can consult the developer you hire for the best results. Getting a professional to get the job done can help save you a lot of time and relieve you from unnecessary efforts. Once you narrate your requirements to the developer, you can see that you are getting exactly what you are looking for. Moreover, you can always pool in your thoughts whenever necessary.

As soon as you utilize your custom WordPress theme development, you can count yourself among the most visionary webmasters. The level of uniqueness you get from a custom development is incomparable to any other WordPress theme out there. Some major features that custom templates offer are customizable header, color scheme, background display, icons, buttons, navigation, control keys, and overall layout.

5 Simple Tricks To Raise Your WordPress Development Artistry

WordPress is growing at a lightning speed. For a developer dealing with this rising technology, it is next to impossible to get hold of the changing trends. Professional WordPress firms have always been on the conservative side. They prefer to go for the tried and tested techniques for a better result in every development cycle.

Today, new clients are looking for WordPress website development to enhance their business. They want exclusive WordPress solutions, from a new website to modifying any existing one. With the current market trend, companies are always looking out for enthusiastic developers who have the vision and knowledge of the latest technologies. So, being a developer, it is important to keep up the learning curve and sharpen the skills regularly. Here is a list of 5 tricks that will let you stay ahead:

1. WordPress News Subscription

Following or subscribing to the WordPress news is a great way to catch hold of every new trend. You can get all the latest updates by having subscriptions to the websites that regularly post the latest news on WordPress. Following the news feed of such websites is the best way to stay updated because all the latest news and important information can be obtained from a single point. WordPress news subscriptions also let you know about the upcoming WordPress conferences so that you do not miss any.


2. Social Media

Sharpening your skills can be done in your lunch time. This may sound weird but it is a fact. Take advantage of the diversity of social media. You can follow the blogs and posts managed by the blue ribbon WordPress developers  from around the world. A WordPress developer, who has been in the field for long, would share his stories and the tricky projects and how he was able to handle it. Such methods can be used in the upcoming projects because these are tested by the best developers.


3. Online WordPress Training Programs

Many good websites can be found on the web that provides productive training modules with a little or no fee. Many expert developers have agreed to the fact that such programs have helped them to enhance their development skills. These programs also let you know about the different methods used by developers from around the world. And at the same time, you can also evaluate yourself at a global stage.


4. Attend Tech Conferences And WordCamps

Attend WordPress tech conferences that take place from time to time. It is a great way to keep yourself on track about the advanced developments. Such conferences help to make new connections with developers and know the latest practices. WordPress tech conferences are organized in major cities after every six months. If you cannot attend it live, you have the alternative to view it online.


5. Try Out The Newly Acquired Skills

It is advised to practice the new methods and tools before you deploy them on the client’s project. You can try them out on personal projects and once you are confident enough, you can use it on any project. This will help you to further fine-tune the skills and learn as you move forward.

5 Steps To Optimize Your WordPress Website

WordPress is the first choice of CMS by millions of developers around the world. The major reason behind its reputation is its unmatched themes, templates, extensions and many other unique features. Creating a website over WordPress is quite simple. A well-designed website, featuring crisp and informative content and great functionality to the users keeps the readers engaged.

Although WordPress web development being such a great tool, many people mess with it and damage the reputation of the website. Sometimes, the website is loaded with useless pop-ups, irrelevant content or even the site is less responsive. To avoid getting the website lost in the crowd, you can hire a professional WordPress developer or take some measures yourself.

Install Cache Plugin(s)

In the digital world, the website which has the minimum loading time and is most responsive is the ultimate winner. And one of the sure shot ways to do it is to add some cache plugins to your WordPress website. When a cache plugin is enabled, the visitors of the website access the cached versions of the main website.

This helps in reduction of usage of PHP requests, access requests for static resources and heavily decreases MySQL database access. For this, you can hire WordPress developer or if you have the knowledge, you can do it by yourself. As soon as you install a cache plugin, you can see a significant boost in the responsive behavior of the website. Some of the best cache plugins are

• WP Super Cache
• W3 Total Cache
• Cache Enabler
• Zen Cache
• WP Rocket

Upgrade Your Database

An optimized database is highly beneficial for WordPress website, which is a database drive software. Database of a WordPress website can be optimized from the “PHPMyAdmin” dropdown menu.

The other, and simpler way to do it is by installing database optimizing plugins. These plugins delete the spam data, automatically saved drafts, trashed posts and other things that pile and slow down the website. Some of the database optimizing plugins are

• WP DBManager
• WP Optimize
• Optimize DB
• WP Clean Up
• P3

Select A Good WordPress Web Host

You can only start optimizing the site once you are assured that it is not the host services that are slowing it down. Many hosts put hundreds of websites to be hosted on a single shared server, killing the responsiveness of the website.

Look out for the hosting services who value your website and provide a better speed. There are many hosting services that specialize in WordPress web hosting. You can also consider managed web hosting services.

Install Gzip Compressor

It is always a better solution to present the website to your users in a compressed version. These are smaller in size, and loads a lot faster. You can enable this compressor directly from the control panel or using various plugins (try W3 Total Cache).

Put Off Pingbacks And Trackbacks
Trackbacks and Pingbacks are absolutely unnecessary and reduce the speed of the website. When a visitor comes to your website, a trackback is created. This consumes the database and utilizes the web server, ultimately slowing down the entire website. Turn off these features from the discussion settings to boost the overall speed of the website.

5 Steps To Optimize Your WordPress Website

WordPress is the first choice of CMS by millions of developers around the world. The major reason behind its reputation is its unmatched themes, templates, extensions and many other unique features. Creating a website over WordPress is quite simple. A well-designed website, featuring crisp and informative content and great functionality to the users keeps the readers engaged.

Although WordPress web development being such a great tool, many people mess with it and damage the reputation of the website. Sometimes, the website is loaded with useless pop-ups, irrelevant content or even the site is less responsive. To avoid getting the website lost in the crowd, you can hire a professional WordPress developer or take some measures yourself.

Install Cache Plugin(s)

In the digital world, the website which has the minimum loading time and is most responsive is the ultimate winner. And one of the sure shot ways to do it is to add some cache plugins to your WordPress website. When a cache plugin is enabled, the visitors of the website access the cached versions of the main website.

This helps in reduction of usage of PHP requests, access requests for static resources and heavily decreases MySQL database access. For this, you can hire WordPress developer or if you have the knowledge, you can do it by yourself. As soon as you install a cache plugin, you can see a significant boost in the responsive behavior of the website. Some of the best cache plugins are

• WP Super Cache
• W3 Total Cache
• Cache Enabler
• Zen Cache
• WP Rocket

Upgrade Your Database

An optimized database is highly beneficial for WordPress website, which is a database drive software. Database of a WordPress website can be optimized from the “PHPMyAdmin” dropdown menu.

The other, and simpler way to do it is by installing database optimizing plugins. These plugins delete the spam data, automatically saved drafts, trashed posts and other things that pile and slow down the website. Some of the database optimizing plugins are

• WP DBManager
• WP Optimize
• Optimize DB
• WP Clean Up
• P3

Select A Good WordPress Web Host

You can only start optimizing the site once you are assured that it is not the host services that are slowing it down. Many hosts put hundreds of websites to be hosted on a single shared server, killing the responsiveness of the website.

Look out for the hosting services who value your website and provide a better speed. There are many hosting services that specialize in WordPress web hosting. You can also consider managed web hosting services.

Install Gzip Compressor

It is always a better solution to present the website to your users in a compressed version. These are smaller in size, and loads a lot faster. You can enable this compressor directly from the control panel or using various plugins (try W3 Total Cache).

Put Off Pingbacks And Trackbacks

Trackbacks and Pingbacks are absolutely unnecessary and reduce the speed of the website. When a visitor comes to your website, a trackback is created. This consumes the database and utilizes the web server, ultimately slowing down the entire website. Turn off these features from the discussion settings to boost the overall speed of the website.

How to safeguard WP based site from hackers?

When it comes to maintaining a website, you might have to face plenty of technical and non-technical issues. It will be good that you overcome these problems before they destroy your site and takes away everything which you built. Most of the website owners usually worry about the security of their portal. Security issues like malware, virus and malicious codes, etc. are some of the most common problems faced by the owners.

WordPress is one of the most widely used CMS systems. It's an open-source technology which is easy to use and comes with plenty of plug-ins & dashboard settings. Keep this thing in mind, once your site is live on WP and it begins to attract more web traffic, it becomes more vulnerable to hack attempts. You can also look out for an experienced WordPress developer who will help you make your site secure. Most of the web hosting companies don't take the responsibility of defending your website so it completely depends on you how efficiently you handle the security of your site. 

Today WordPress powers almost 30% of the business websites which are live on the internet. This popularity had made this CMS one of the most favorite targets of hackers. As per the market surveys, it is said that around 30,000 WP sites are hacked annually. The main reason behind this is the negligence of the website owners. Most of the small & medium sized enterprises depend on their internal staff to maintain the security of their WP site even if it's not their area of expertise.

Given below are the few simple ways that will help you protect your WP based site from hackers:

Opt for a stronger & hard to configure password : Most of the website owners choose an easy to remember password such as a name, or number, etc. This type of passwords is very easy to decipher. When it comes to creating a password for the website, it will be good that you opt for minimum 8 to 16 characters long password which should contain numbers, lower case letters, capital letters, and special characters.

Always update your WP Version : Whenever WordPress releases a new update or security patch make sure you install it ASAP. Hackers quickly develop a program which can scan the vulnerabilities of the outdated versions of WordPress.

Deploy WP security plugins : The WP directory has plenty of security plugins that will keep your site safe and secure. Besides this, there are several third-party plugins available on the internet, but it will be good that you stick to those which are published in the official store as they are regularly updated and backed up by the team of experienced experts.

If you have sound technical knowledge, then you can yourself tweak the security settings of your site. In case you don't know much about these web systems then you can hire the team of experienced web developers who will help you accomplish this task. These web developers are fully aware of the ongoing security trends and the potential threats based on which they design the security system for your portal.

While looking out for a web developer, it will be good that you consider checking their past projects and clientele. You can also ask them about the type of security issues they have resolved till now as well as the strategies they deploy to overcome these problems. By taking all these factors into consideration, it will become easier for you to find the right developer for your web development and security project. You can also take help of the internet while searching for the suitable developer for your portal.

Tips To Dramatically Improve Your Website Traffic

Today, WordPress is the most trusted Content Management system with more than 754 million websites built on its platform. The primary reasons behind its high usage are its themes, plug-ins and various customizing features. Creating an appealing design, activating user-friendly functionality and building a traffic-oriented template of a website takes only a dedicated few hours with WordPress.

As you require only the simple knowledge of using its methodologies, a website could be built quickly but still you need WordPress web development process to attract more and more visitors for a wealthy online business. Here are few tips that you can apply to your website to make it more user-friendly and engaging.

Fast Loading Time

Out of 10 visitors, seven will leave your website if it's taking longer than 4 seconds to open. It means, speeding up your website is critical to continue the incoming traffic without any loading-related-obstacles. With below five tips, you'll be able to optimize your website's speed.

1) Choose the Right Hosting Plan :

You're skirmishing a lost battle if your hosting server is taking too much time to process SQL and HTTP commands. It's vital to choose a host that can handle traffic spikes completely.

2) Use A responsive Theme :

Most of the WP themes are well-coded, fast, light-weight and could be easily customized which is beneficial for your website speed. You just need to select the right one. Either hire a WordPress theme developer or learn by online tutorials to get an efficient WordPress theme.

3) Install A Caching Plugin :

WordPress offers various plugins that you can use to clear and optimize the cache. One of the most effective plugins is W3 Total Cache as it comes with features like Page Caching, Object Caching, Database Caching, Browser Caching and much more.

4) Optimize Uploaded Images :

As websites are 70% filled with images, it is imperative to improve their loading speed on your browser. Using optimized images in your website will significantly enhance its performance and speed.

5) Don't Use Conflicting Plugins :

There's no limit to the number of plugins you can use on your website but make sure none of them conflicts with each other. It can hamper the speed and can also cause damage to the website. Also, regularly update your plugins and remove those plugins that are updated or you no longer use them on your site.

Use SEO Plugins

Another good thing about using WordPress is that it offers you various SEO plugins to improve your website ranking among search engines. One of the most used and recommended plugins is Yoast SEO. It helps your website content to be easily indexed by the search engine spiders, thus ranking your website among top searches.

Split Test Your Headlines

One of the most effective ways to increase your website traffic is by deciding which headline of your post will be more efficient. For this, you can use WordPress plugin “Title Split Testing”. It'll dramatically boost the traffic and will also help you in future creating better headlines.

Catchy Content in The SERPs

While most of the bloggers try to keep their website among the top searches of Search Engines, they often forget to write an appealing headline on the SERPs(Search Engine Results Pages). It helps readers find out whether the blog is right according to their search or not. A well-written headline on SERPS is helpful in improving engagement of a website.

Steps to Import .docx in Your WordPress Blog

There are a lot of people who like to write in Microsoft Word rather than writing on the WordPress editor directly. Moreover, those who wish to import the .docx document in their WordPress and do not wish to copy or paste the document makes the formatting quite bad.

Moreover, with the amount of blogs that we need to put in to the website we can say that  We do certainly need a professional WordPress developer for technical task, but here i have put in efforts to make you understand the process of importing. In this blog, we will discuss how to import the .docx documents in a WordPress website without botching up with the formatting. 

Converting Docx to WordPress

Make sure to import properly .docx Files in your WordPress website. There are several users that prefer to write down their articles that are present in Microsoft Word that offer an inbuilt thesaurus, spell check,  styles, templates, and formatting.

Wherein, WordPress's default visual editor do not offer all these features. Moreover, guest blogging is another possible usage scenario which is required for the development.

There are various publishers that do not want to give guest writers access to the admin area of their WordPress; then they have to receive their guest posts either using the normal HTML as well as a .docx document.

At the end of this, you might require already have some content which is saved in .docx documents. Now the next step if Copying, as well as pasting from the docx file, will be a little difficult, especially if you need to copy the content from more than one document.

Keeping this in mind let us see how one can properly import .docx documents in their WordPress without breaking the formatting.

The next step is to Import .docx Documents in your WordPress

The very first thing you need to do is install and activate the Mammoth .docx which is a converter plugin. Make sure that you know the step by step guide on how to install a plugin. 

After activation, make sure that you create a new post or one can even edit a new one. Looking at the edit screen, you will get the Mammoth .docx converter meta box which is present below the editor.

Use the Mammoth docx converter for your WordPress

All you need to do is click on the choose file button so as to select the .docx file which is needed in the computer. After selecting the .docx file, the plugin will depict the three views for the documents.

In the Visual tab, it will help you see the document on your WordPress website. You will notice that it will ignore any styles applied to your .docx documents such as background color, text color, margin, padding, etc.

Rather than this, it will allow your theme’s stylesheet to control the display items on your screen. 

This also allows you to view the HTML, which was generated by the converter, and this can be done by just clicking on the button that says Raw HTML. Make sure to click on the messages button in order to check out any warnings or errors that one gets on the conversion.

You can check the look of the documents, and if you are satisfied with the way how the document appears in the visual tab, then it allows you to click on the ‘Insert into editor’ button. The plugin will allow you to insert you converted HTML in the post editor of your WordPress post.

Now you can keep on working on the post.

Applying Conditions to Menu For WooCommerce Subscribers

Have you been planning on starting up a WordPress powered membership site? Well, then you might have heard of the difficulties associated with creating membership sites with WordPress. Thankfully, building a membership site using WooCommerce can make the task considerably easier.

But remember, once you've created a membership site it's imperative that everything on your site oozes exclusivity for your logged-in users or WooCommerce subscribers. Thankfully, many plugins are available online that renders the ability to control the pages or portions of your website content that you want to show to active subscribers and hide from inactive subscribers.

Understanding the need to show/hide menu items

Of course, if you don't want certain pages to be accessed by non-members (or non-logged in users), you won't want those pages to be displayed in your site's navigation menu as well. Likewise, there will be some pages that might not be of much use to members. For instance, the pages that sell WooCommerce subscription products and/or services to guests aren't useful for active subscribers. And so, it's better to keep such pages hidden from the subscribers.
In essence, for a membership site, you should consider adding conditional logic to show or hide menu items based on user role. After all, it isn't a good practice to make your members (or active subscribers) shuffle around the content every time they visit your site. Rather, you should make it easy for your members to find quickly the features and services they've signed up for. In short, you must make your site's navigation menu more member focused.

So, what's the solution?

This is where the “If Menu” plugin comes in handy. The plugin helps in controlling the navigation menus for members. Through this tutorial, I'll help you learn how you can create a menu adjusted for your active WooCommerce subscribers. Also, you'll get to know about the plugin and how it can be used to determine whether a subscriber has an active or inactive subscription. In reference to this post, we'll be using the following two plugins:

• If menu plugin
• WooCommerce Subscriptions

Note: Before proceeding with the process of using both of the above mentioned plugins, make sure that they're installed on your site.

Let's get started

For adding conditional logic to menu items you'll need to configure:

• Active or inactive roles of your WooCoomerce subscribers.
• Menu items for members (i.e. active subscribers)
• Menu items for guests (i.e. non-logged in users)

A list of sample memberships included in the image.

Let us now have a detailed overview of all the above listed key points one by one:

Step 1 – Configuring Active / Inactive Roles of WooCommerce Subscribers

Before you configure the menu items for your WooCommerce subscribers, you'll first need to set up the roles of active or inactive subscribers. For this purpose, click on the WooCommerce option from your WP admin navigation menu. Next, click on the Subscriptions tab, and from here set up the active/inactive subscribers roles.

Bear in mind; active subscribers are assigned the “Subscriber” role, and inactive subscribers are assigned the “Customer” role by default as shown in the below image:




Note: You can also choose to set up custom roles for your subscribers, by using WordPress plugins such as User Role Editor.

Keep in mind that the roles we'll assign to active and inactive subscribers will help us in showing or hiding certain menu items.

Step 2 – Configuring Menu Items for Active WooCommerce Subscribers

So, now that you have set up the roles of active (and inactive) WooCommerce subscribers, next you need to decide which menu item you would like to show to your active subscribers. Here, we'll need to make use of the If Menu plugin.

The 'If Menu' plugin lets you show/hide your website primary navigation menu items on the basis of conditional statements, such as user roles, whether a user is logged-in or not, etc. But, to make use of the plugin, you'll first have to make sure that the plugin is enabled.

As soon as the plugin gets enabled, a new checkbox option labeled “Enable Conditional Logic” will be added to each menu item. For this, go to Appearance → Menus, and from there you can start making edits to your navigation menus.

Next, click on any of navigation menu item and then make the ‘Enable Conditional Logic’ checkbox checked. And then, you just need to select whether you would want to show or hide the selected menu item. You will then need to choose any one of the corresponding conditions from the drop down box.

Since we need to show particular menu item just to your active subscribers, we have to choose to show the “Subscriber-only” page link only if “User is Subscriber”:

Once you have selected a condition, just hit the “Save Menu” button.

Step 3 – Configuring Menu Items For Non-Logged in Users

In this section, we'll talk about the process of showing your menu items to guests (or non-logged in users) of your membership website. To do so, you just need to click on the “Hide” option if the corresponding condition is set to “User is logged in.”

Click here, to get more information about subscription


Wrapping Up

Apart from making your membership website pages or part of the content to members, you should also consider adjusting the navigation menu items based on user statuses. Doing so will save the time and efforts of your active subscribers directly shuffle through the useful pages that can be accessed by them. Likewise, you don't necessarily need to show the pages that cannot be accessed by guests or inactive subscribers.

Hope this post will guide you in controlling the navigation menu items of your WordPress membership site with utmost efficiency.

What's In A Store Of WordPress 4.5 Version?

WordPress 4.5, is the next upcoming version of WordPress that is already in development phase and is targeted  to release in the month of April 2016 that is already been set by WordPress team. According to the update, in the month of February 24, 2016, WordPress version 4.5 Beta 1 has been released in the market  and is now accessible to users to download for the purpose of testing.  We just got to see the latest release of WordPress 4.4 with its latest security as well as maintenance version of WordPress 4.4.1 that was released earlier. Working with WordPress alteration process needs an immoderate hard work to make it function in proper ways

Coming to the core development team that has published a brief project agenda referencing the release of WordPress version 4.5 in the month of April 2016; but, according to the WordPress team, the current target release date version 4.5 of WordPress is April 12, 2016. The beta version 1 of WordPress 4.5 is currently scheduled to release by the end of February 2017, and it is great news to know that its three more beta versions are in sync in the releasing process.



Below here is given a planned chart that defines the project schedule for WordPress version 4.5.

Mike Schroder, who is known for WordPress core developer is handling  the release lead for the WordPress version 4.5 and will be well helped by two other release assistants: Mel Choyce and Adam Silverstein. The project schedule that is presented above clearly defines that all new enhancements as well as feature requests  of WordPress version 4.5 definitely needs to be added by the release of Beta 1 version.

All the latest WordPress features are initially prepared as a plug-in and are efficiently managed to be merged properly in the core over the course of alteration stage. There are surely ample of WordPress 4.5 features, but there are few features that are worth mentioning that are implemented to be worked on and surely has made it to discussions in the opening meeting that comprises the following list:

• Betterments with the theme customizer section that includes features such as customize pane resizer tool and customize device preview panel.
• Enhancement of Post Editing process and Publishing activity
• Fixing up of image compression process in the core sector
• Enhancement of HTTPs to fix integrated content sections

Well, apart from above improvement plans of WordPress, I feel that there are various other updated features that are currently taken forward as plug-ins and already offers am exciting look to users. They are:

Two-Factor Authentication mode

 
Background Image Cropper – Enables easy cropping of all types of background images in the Customizer section that are quite similar to header images.

Next we proceed to discuss about Shiny update features that help WordPress users to – remove every ugly scraps of updating plug-ins as well as themes. 

WP Toolbar Experiments are defined as essential UX adjustment properties to the WordPress toolbar. 

WordPress REST API version 2 is defined as one of the complete version of WordPress REST API section.

There are more to happen that touches various reinforced image compressions, HTTPs enhancements and the Two-Factor Authentication system for WordPress.

I hope this latest article about the release of WordPress version 4.5, will fetch you with enough idea that will discuss about all new and latest features of WordPress that will be added to this version. So, what kind of features are you expecting in WordPress 4.5 version?  Please share your comments here.

Why Should You Hire a WordPress Developer and How?

Running your WordPress site in today's highly competitive virtual world is not an easy task, and requires you to put in a lot of efforts and time in coming up with a solution that can facilitate you a competitive advantage. So, despite having little knowledge about WordPress, there is a greater likelihood that you might fail to create a rock-solid web presence.

Especially if you are a non-tech savvy user, you cannot expect to make it big online merely by making a pre-built WP theme up and running. There are several other aspects that need your due consideration, during WP website development. But, what if you don't have the time or skills needed to get the job done? In that case, choosing to hire WordPress developer can help address your project needs efficiently. 

Below are a few crucial tips to help you understand how you can hire a credible and trusted WP developer:

1. Check out Developer's Proficiency in WordPress

Analyzing your developer's proficiency in WordPress is crucial in getting a result-driven solution. Remember that not all the developers have the same skill set. While a few may excel in some areas of WordPress development, but might fail in other areas (that match your project requirements).

So, be clear whether the developer you are about to hire can provide the exact services based on your preferences or not. Getting familiar with the basics of WordPress can help you in analyzing your service provider skills in a better manner.

2. Experience in WordPress Development/Customization

Ask how many years of experience your developer possesses in offering WordPress development or customization services. That is not to say that you shouldn't consider hiring a developer with less experience in WordPress projects, but selecting a highly experienced professional (with at least five years of experience), you can get assured outcome.

Also, make certain that your service provider has worked on the latest technologies essential for performing WordPress development.

3. Match Your Project Requirements With Developer's Portfolio

Today, almost every professional WordPress developer or a web development firm include a portfolio page to help users get an idea of what sort of work they can deliver to them. Check out your developer's portfolio as well, so as to make out if he/she has worked on any project that matches your project requirements.

4. Ask For Development Cost and Delivery Time

Your development budget can be an obstacle in hiring a service professional – that can deliver the quality of work you're expecting. But, you can still get first-class development services by choosing to outsource your project to an offshore web development company. But, be wise to select a company having a good reputation in the market.

Also, make sure that the company holds a good track record of delivering projects within discussed timelines.

Conclusion

Taking up an experienced WordPress developer services can help you address all your specific project requirements in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Reading the points above will further help you in finding a reliable development partner for your project.

Why WordPress is a great for Non-profit organizations ?

WordPress has recently celebrated its 12 birthday and has emerged as a leading content management system for websites and blogs. WordPress plugin development services plays a crucial role in maintaining the zest of WordPress alive by providing high performance plugins for extendable functionalities. There are a lot of organizations which have chosen most professional WordPress website development firm to build their websites in order to cater their audience in the best possible way. Being an open source software WordPress is widely used by a lot of non-profit and social organizations to make their mark in this open source world. Though there are a lot of content management systems present in today's world but WordPress is the most widely used CMS in the market preferred by this social service group and NGO's. Let's dig deeper!

WordPress provides quick service and being an open source software is free. You need no money to purchase its license, no money to upgrade the software and no other extra cost regarding commissions are required. It is estimated that organizations spend around $500 only while paying for the license and other stuff related to the content management system let alone the cost of hiring a WordPress developer. Furthermore, WordPress offers ample lot of template designs and themes with easy integration steps which helps the organizations to save the cost they invest to hire designers or web programmers.  Moreover, there are a lot of free themes specially tailored for non-profit organizations. Moreover, it offers quick installation and setup procedures which plays a crucial role in its success. This further helps you to establish your website on internet within a very short period of time. WordPress has some where or the other has played a crucial role in decreasing the time taken to build websites.

Perfect model for NGOs

As we are well aware of the fact that most of nor-profit or social service organizations function with the help of donations and thus have a revenue model for getting non-conventional income.  WordPress works as one of the best CMS for these sites as it allows very easy integration of Payment gateways, which accepts online transfers and other regular payment modes. There are numerous plugins such as PayPal, 2CO, Stripe and many other which fosters the payment model which these websites need. Everything is ready made and handy to use and all you need to do is to fill in the bank details of your organization and start the process. We further have plugins which allows these organizations to spread their work with ease.

Add extra features via Plugins

No CMS can provide all the features which you need in your website. Thus, it becomes necessary for you to use tools which allows a wide range of extendability. WordPress stands tall in offering this functionality as it allows simple integration of plugins which helps you to improve the credibility of your website. One can install various features such as  Statistics Tools ,Social Networking Buttons, Payment Plugins , Audio Players and Video Galleries in your website with just few installation steps and no programing acumen.

Gives organic traffic

NGO's and social service organizations need websites which have the functionality to conduct online polls, surveys, feedback and other tools which can carry forward interactions with a large community or a target audience.  WordPress being a highly competitive CMS offer all such tools which embarks on interactions which are quite favorable for the admin of the website.  Thus, it helps you to organically generate traffic and further get attention of people and voluntary donors.

With such a low setting-up cost and affordable maintenance cost, WordPress seems to be the  most viable option for NGOs and social service organizations. I am sure there must be queries regarding the development and other things. Feel free to drop us your queries, we will be glad to help!

A Noteworthy Checklist To Consider While Making Your WP Site Go Live

WordPress is admired for its blissful features by a whopping number of individuals, including developers as well as users. What makes it a much sought after choice is its intuitive interface and amazing web development features.

WP is an open source CMS that allows one to customize the look and feel of his website by tailoring the theme in a desired manner. Moreover, to integrate the requisite functionalities, you can seek a suitable plugin from the WordPress repository and install it on your site. All these great features of this platform have encouraged many to invest in WordPress website development and efficiently leverage their businesses.

If you are also interested in creating a prolific WP website, it is advisable to thoroughly go through its official guidelines and adhere them while developing your site. Today, in this article, I will uncover the imperative steps that must be followed to before launching a WordPress website to ensure its smooth performance. Without any further ado, let's have a look into them.

1. Test for cross-browser compatibility

When you are sure that your design is pixel perfect and ready to be released, it must be tested over browsers beforehand. Although it need not to be pixel perfect on all browsers, but it must run smoothly throughout. Don't forget it to check on all the popular browsers, including Opera, Safari, IE, Firefox and Chrome.

2. Block Search Engine

As, no one wants to display ant junk content in a search, it can be stopped by not allowing the search engines to index your site content. This can be proficiently done by accessing the Reading  tab under the Settings tab, check mark the option that is saying - block search engine. This process works proficiently and thus, once you are done with your website content editing, make sure that you have unchecked that box.

3. Resize the thumbnails

If you have tried a few different themes on your site, it is paramount to ensure that your thumbnails are properly sized. You can ensure that by installing and activating the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin. Don't forget to run it before you launch your website.

4. Test your site over mobile

In this mobile age, it has become more than imperative to ensure a seamless and breezy performance of your website. Although dummies offer a way to test the design, but real time testing on different devices can ensure flawless performance. Thus, it is better to test your website on all the targeted mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet.

5. Degrade it gracefully

Since users often run websites with turned off JavaScript for some security reasons, it is worth to make it certain that your site is accessible even in that mode. It is advisable to test your forms and identify whether it is performing server-side validation check or not.

No doubt, the WP platform allows even non-tech individuals to control their website with ease. However, to develop or customize some functionality of a website, it is better to hire WordPress developer and ensure a surefire performance.

I hope this checklist will help you make your website go live with ease and run without any glitches. However, you may add your own points to this checklist, but these are the most essential key points that must be considered before announcing your online presence to the world.

A Comprehensive Guideline on managing coupons with WooCommerce

As an owner of a WooCommerce enabled e-store you'd have definitely enjoyed multiple features and functions that come with the WooCommerce tool-kit. Coupons are one of the best-known tools for making your customers come back to you on a repetitive basis. If you are planning to offer discounts and rewards to your customers then learning about the WooCommerce Coupon Management utility is something you'll regret missing.


If you've ever chosen to hire WordPress developer, you might be well familiar with the pros associated with building a coupon website using WordPress. Through this blog, I intend to share with you all the key steps that mark efficient handling of various discount coupons which are being made available to the product purchasers.

So, let's come to the steps now:

Step 1- Activate the use of coupons on your WooCommerce e-store

As the very first step, you need to inform WooCommerce that you'll be using coupons on your e-store. For this, you simply need to go to your WooCommerce admin dashboard where you need to click on the 'Settings' option available within the left hand sidebar. Now, click on the 'Checkout' tab available on this page and against the label 'Checkout' simply select the check-box for “Enable the use of coupons'. The screen-shot for this step is displayed below:

 

Step 2- Add new coupons

In order to add a new coupon, simply scroll down within the left-hand sidebar and click on 'WooCommerce'. After this, click on 'Coupons' . A page similar to the one shown below will be displayed:

On the Dashboard, scroll down the left-hand sidebar and click on “WooCommerce”, before clicking on “Coupons” from the dropdown that appears. The coupons page consists of a box that shows all of the coupons you have created so far. To create a new coupon, click “Add Coupon” at the top of the page. Thanks to the quick availability of WordPress plugin development professionals, we can easily get access to a wide range of plugins custom-made for performing tweaks to a WP-powered site/blog.

Coming back to the tutorial, on the above page, click on 'Add Coupon' button. A page similar to the one shown below will be displayed:

On this screen, you'll be required to enter values for the following fields:

• Coupon Code- Use this textbox for specifying the code that the users would need to enter in order to apply for the respective coupon.
• Description- Use this text-area for entering a brief description for the coupon. This information would be displayed along with the coupon on the front-end.

Once you're done with inputting values for the above fields, proceed ahead with specifying coupon data which is being segregated into the following sections:

• General

The screen for this section is similar to the one shown below:

 

So, the fields covered on this form include:

• Discount Type- Use this dropdown for selecting the discount type in relation to the respective coupon. You may choose from the following options available within this drop-down list:

1. Cart discount- Select this option if you want to offer a fixed total discount for the entire shopping cart.

2. Cart % discount- Select this option if you want to offer a percentage discount for the entire shopping cart.

3. Product discount- Select this option if you want to offer a fixed total discount for only a selected group of products.

4. Product % discount- Select this option if you want to offer a specific percentage discount for a chosen group of products.

• Coupon amount- Use this to enter a fixed value or percentage discount on the basis of the discount type chosen above. Here, please note that a value entered without the currency unit or percentage sign will be automatically added, for example: a value entered as 20 will be treated as 10% or $10.
• Allow free shipping- Select this checkbox if you want to enable free shipping(i.e. Zero shipping cost) for the product(for which the respective coupon has been used)
• Apply before tax- Select this checkbox if you want the discount coupon to be applicable on the product well before the tax calculation for the same.
• Coupon expiry date- Use this date picker for selecting the data which when passed will make the coupon invalid for use.

• Usage Restriction

The screen for this section is similar to the one shown below:

The fields covered within this section are explained below:

• Minimum spend- Use this textbox for setting a minimum sub-total that the user needs to have in order to avail the respective coupon. The customer's cart sub-total+tax will be compared to the value entered here.
• Individual Use only- Select this checkbox if you don't want the coupon to be used in conjunction with other coupons.
• Exclude sale items- Select this checkbox if you don't want the coupon to be applicable for products put on sale.
• Products- Use this textbox for selecting products that must be added to the user's cart in order to enable him/her to apply for the respective coupon.
• Exclude products- Use this textbox for selecting products that must not be added to the user's cart in order to enable him/her to apply for the respective coupon.
• Product categories- Use this textbox for defining a list of product categories that the user's cart must contain in order to be eligible for availing the coupon.
• Exclude categories- Use this textbox for defining a list of product categories that the user's cart must not contain in order to be eligible for availing the coupon.
• Email restrictions- Use this textbox for specifying all the email addresses which are allowed to use the respective coupon. Values defined here are compared to the customer's billing email address.

• Usage Limits

Screen-shot for this coupon data section is displayed below:

Fields covered here include:

• Usage limit per coupon- Use this dropdown for choosing a maximum usage limit for the coupon before it expires.
• Usage limit per user- Use this dropdown for choosing the number of times for which the coupon can be used by a user before it becomes invalid for him/her.

So with that you're done with the task of adding and managing coupons for your e-store.

Final Thoughts

If used appropriately, coupons can actually help you in boosting the visitors' count and conversion rate for your e-store. Hope the above mentioned steps would enable you to make the most of the 'Coupons' feature available with your WooCommerce e-store.