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.

Allowing Your Visitors to Use Custom Post filters in Your Genesis Theme

Recently, I worked on an project and caught with an idea that I should share the case with. One of my clients wanted to use the custom post filter in his genesis theme to get rid of the “post” navigation since he was running a review website. And its justifiably so since it seems misleading to the audience because they aren't reading the actual posts but only reviews.

One of the best things about genesis framework is that its flexible enough to serve the diverse needs of its users at the time of custom WordPress development. Genesis comes with rich “filter” functions under the theme settings area, which lets you place the desirable text on the basis of the taxonomy (terms/categories/tags) at the end of the index page.

Altering this text within the genesis framework isn't an uphill battle. All you need is simply go to your latest Genesis (v1.6) wherein it's quite easy to filter older/newer and next/previous text in the post navigation.

Getting The Grips of Older / Newer Post Navigation Filter

One can easily perform modifications within the Genesis with the help pf the functions that reside under the Genesis Theme Settings. Exploring this particular area you'll assess Content Archives, where there is an option called Post Navigation Technique”, already set as Older/Newer. Here, the default output is “Older Posts and “Newer Posts”, and in order to filter this, the below mentioned code should be added to your child theme's functions.php file. Here I have changed the example as to read Older and Newer Reviews.

add_filter( 'genesis_older_link_text', 'gt_review_older_link_text' );

function gt_review_older_link_text() {

$olderlink = '« Older Reviews';

return $olderlink;

}

add_filter( 'genesis_newer_link_text', 'gt_review_newer_link_text' );

function gt_review_newer_link_text() {

$newerlink = 'Newer Reviews »';

return $newerlink;

}

Previous / Next Post Navigation Filter

This filter is just like the one we have just mentioned above except that it runs when the “Select Post Navigation Technique” which we find under the Content Archive is set to Previous/Next instead of Older/Newer. Here also we are getting a default output, which is “Previous Posts” and “Next Posts”. To filter this, we have to add the following code within the functions.php file which you can get inside the child theme. In this example too we have edited it to Read Previous and Next Reviews.

add_filter( 'genesis_prev_link_text', 'gt_review_prev_link_text' );

function gt_review_prev_link_text() {

$prevlink = '« Previous Reviews';

return $prevlink;

}

add_filter( 'genesis_next_link_text', 'gt_review_next_link_text' );

function gt_review_next_link_text() {

$nextlink = 'Next Reviews »';

return $nextlink;

}

And that's all you have to do. See pretty easy right?

Genesis is a great framework with some truly astonishing settings that help you create a website that helps you serve your client's needs efficiently. Its customization abilities are unique and they allow you give your website and its readers what is actually useful to them.

However, if you want to learn some more methods and ways to filter custom posts than you can rely upon some handy plugins like Beautiful Taxonomy Filters . The plugin can be described absolutely dynamic when it comes to add filtering to your custom post types archives based on taxonomies. The plugin is extremely useful to filter CPTs in the manner most effective.

To know more about this plugin, Beautiful Taxonomy Filters allows you alter rules to create pretty filter URLs by eliminating the need to use JavaScript. It helps you spruce up your custom posts type archives by allowing visitors filter posts on the basis of their terms or categories. The plugin does everything for you in the most seamless way. The plugin works automatically, without having any need to use JavaScript, and the best part is it is based on WordPress Plugin Boilerplate which allows you organize the codebase using the object-oriented approach.

The plugin is capable enough to handle and include as many as filters. However, if you have post type with varied taxonomies, you can better keep out those who aren't useful for filtering.

Some of the other highlighted features include:

• Active filtering on any registered public custom post type.
• Keep those taxonomies out you don't want your visitors to filter on
• Comes complete with functional filter component which you can put in your theme.
• Visitors can be presented with the information regarding their current active filtering.
• Integrated with custom GET parameters.
• Additional filters, settings, and actions to fine tune the filter module behavior.

The plugin provides a convenient and fast way of adding multiple taxonomies to filter custom post types archives. One can also easily extend its capabilities and actions to make it more compelling and versatile. I personally have tested this plugin and found it to be extremely great in the way it helped me to achieve my goals. So, you can also use it whenever the needs arise. It will not disappoint you for sure. Even if you are not confident about your skills you can better hire a WordPress developer, who will deploy his skills and knowledge to give you exactly what you have in your mind in an efficient manner. 

How to Improve Your WordPress Website's Security?

Almost every person directly or indirectly associated with the web industry is aware of the popularity of WordPress as a blogging platform and a CMS. In fact, some of the most popular websites are powered by WordPress. However, because of the immense popularity of WordPress it becomes the target of hackers' attacks.

So, if you don't want to be deterred by the security risks that you might have to face while running a WordPress site, it is recommended to go through the below mentioned tips that will help you to get rid of WordPress security risks:

1. Choose a Secure Web Hosting Provider: 

All the web hosting service providers are not the same, in fact, they may not provide required protection from attacks by hackers. Thus, when opting for any hosting provider during the preliminary registration process you will have a chance to know who will be administering your site. Besides this, try to find out whether your web host use a reliable clustered firewall; do they backup their customer's site? and so on.

2. Update Everything in Your Website: 

Since WP powered sites are susceptible to vulnerabilities, new updates are released to fix any patches that users might have stumbled across when using a WordPress site. Most importantly, make sure to update all your site's plugins and themes. If you can't identify how to keep your site up-to-date, it is advisable to employ WordPress web development services offering website upkeep and maintenance.

3. Use Two-Factor Authentication: 

Another great way to protect your site from security risks is to make use of two-factor authentication, a security process that requires users to provide two means of identification to log into the site. This process can be used for both WordPress(.com) as well as self-hosted sites.

4. Use Strong Passwords: 

Not many site owners pay desired attention to using strong passwords for their site. In fact, according to an online research conducted by info-graphics nearly 8% of WordPress sites are attacked because of using weak passwords. Therefore, make sure to change your password to something that's difficult to crack. Ideally you should use a long password to strengthen your password security.

5. Avoid using “admin” as Username: 

 One of the most common mistakes that site owners make is using “admin” as their site's username. This often results in launching brute-force attacks on a WordPress site. And thus, make sure to create a username that's less obvious.

6. Keep a Back Up of Your Website: 

In your worst case scenario, when your site is somehow hacked despite following good security practices, you can run your site backup and make it up and running in no time. Make sure to keep a backup of your site on regular basis. You can hire WordPress expert to get the job done. But in case, you want to perform the task on your own (i.e. learn how to back up your site), you can refer to WordPress Codex to obtain required resources to get assistance.  

To conclude, if security of your WordPress site has been a concern for you, then abiding by the aforementioned simple tips will certainly help you eliminate some of the potential security risks.

WordPress Developers: Your Best Bet For Performing WordPress Integration

If you have been using WordPress for a while now, then you most likely would have witnessed increase in the demand of WordPress CMS. Whether you want to build a blogging site or any CMS-enabled website or portal, WordPress has helped meet all our needs with efficiency. As time passes by, more and more website owners are integrating WordPress into their site.

However, WP integration is not a cakewalk and rather requires technical expertise and skills. So, in case you're not a tech-savvy guy it is better you should look forward to adopting WordPress web development services of some reputable web development company, which includes WordPress integration. Finding the right development partner for your project will enable you to integrate WordPress features and functionalities into your existing website in a mind-boggling way. That's because, they are well-versed with all the nitty-gritty aspects related to equipping your site with WordPress CMS.

Since, integrating WP functionalities into your site isn't an easy thing and requires specialized knowledge, make sure that your choice of development company is capable enough to meet all your project demands. Here are a few key points that you should pay attention to while employing a development partner for your project:

Figure Out Your Exact Needs: Before beginning your quest to look for the right service partner, it is important to know what you really need. This is because, building a website does not necessarily entails hiring a developer. For instance, when you are merely publishing information about your company you might need to seek professionals assistance. However, when you have some crucial tasks to take care of that requires coding, it's better to search for a developer if coding isn't your thing. But, make sure you know about – what you want to build.

Technology Prowness: In order to get assured WP integration services it is very important that your service provider is well versed with all the ins and outs of the WordPress content management system. A viable way to check out the prowness of your service provider is to conduct a mock test related to WordPress integration and customization. This will help you get an idea of your developers experience and skills.

Design and Development Skills: This is the second most crucial aspect that helps you choose the most suitable firm for your project. When you are employing any developers belonging to a web development company, make sure they possess good design and development skills in PHP, MySQL, HTML5, JavaScript etc.

Wherewithal to Manage WordPress Install: You may be able to integrate  WordPress CMS into your website effortlessly, however managing it requires plenty of work. And so, ensure that the developer you're about to recruit contains experience and expertise in the installation, configuration and management of the WordPress install.

Besides considering all the aforementioned points, make sure to communicate all your project requirements to your development partner clearly. Not communicating your needs with your selected development company, will most likely unable developers to deliver the services in a productive manner.

How Wordpress Can Be Used To Meet Needs Other Than Blogging

It's a no secret that Wordpress is having a good time in the market. Something which is started just as an initiative to support the creative ventures of bloggers, today has been turned into a business trend for start ups to large scale enterprises. Many ideas are seeing the light of the day because of this highly popular and dynamic content management system. The platform is emerging as a strong investment option for many businesses, planning to establish a strong digital presence.

Wordpress, today, is much more that than a mere blogging platform. It could be called as a publishing platform because it enables you publish any type of content online, no matter whether it's just a product of an online store or images of a photography website. In fact, if you visit the official Wordpress Showcase (https://wordpress.org/showcase/), you can view different types of websites built using this awesome platform.

Wordpress is pushing the boundaries in emerging a platform serving the needs of a variety of websites ranging from government websites to magazines and much more. According to the Wordpress CEO Matt Mullenweg, 69% of the users use Wordpress as a CMS, 20% as a hybrid blog, 6% for blogging, while 7% for building applications. 

With a myriad of themes, plugins, and templates, Wordpress theme customization services is a highly customizable platform, there is no limit for what type of website it can be used to build. It provides unprecedented opportunities to create a website of your dream.

Different Types of Websites You Can Create Using Wordpress

1. Coupon Website

Wordpress has grown to become a fully-functional content management system and provides amazing possibilities to achieve things beyond blogging. It can be used to build a coupon website. With the help of a theme called Clipper, creating a coupon website will be extremely easy for the users. It comes with power-packed options and features to let you achieve better results in no time.

2. Discussion Forums

Wordpress is great in launching a discussion forum website. It comes with a forum script known as .bbPress. The script also includes a plugin which lets you turn your website into a discussion forum. All you need is to install and activate the plugin, your site will be ready with a new forum page into your Wordpress directory. To make it accessible for the forum members, just add the link of the directory to the navigation, and it's done.

3. Photogallery Website

If you are a professional photographer and want to build a website which can easily showcases your creative world then Wordpress is a perfect option for you. There are so many themes available that help you show your favorite clicks to the visitors of your website. The themes are both paid as well as free that come with amazing features and options to let you create a perfect photo gallery.

4. Review Website

If you want to create a website to display reviews for products, then you can rely on Wordpress, which comes with various options and categories to easily organize everything you need to display reviews on your website.

WP-review is a great plugin which works well in adding reviews schema to your posts. It's easy to use and review content easily without affecting the speed of your website.

Wordpress is wonderful in creating websites of all shapes and sizes. And, the above mentioned examples are quite enough to give you an idea about how convincing our statement is.

An easy-to-follow guideline on centering an image using HTML

Images play a vital role in making or breaking the visual appearance of a website. Even after hopping onto some of the fine quality images, the inability to center the images can make your website look dull and boring. As per a global research, it has been found that centering images is much more complex as compared to aligning plain text. Through this blog, I'll be offering you a perfect guideline on centering an image using the HTML programming basics. So, let's move ahead to the steps involved with the same.  

Step 1- Placing the “img” tag in the HTML file

As the very first step, you need to place the “img” tag in the HTML file where you want the image to be displayed on the web page. You need to place this tag in between the “body” tags and after the “h1” tags. Here's an example of how you need to place the “img” tag inside the HTML file:
<body>
<h1 style="text-align:center;">This is your text.</h1>
<img src="photo1.jpg" alt="A description of the picture" width="270"
height="50" />
</body>
The above code defines an image named photo1.jpg, which is 270 pixels in width and 50 pixels in height.

Step 2- Now, define the space around the web page elements

As the second step, use the “margin” CSS attribute for defining the space around the page elements such as pictures, call-to-action buttons etc. Here, the “auto” value for the margin attribute indicates that the web browser would auto-detect the amount of space that's being consumed by the respective image/picture. The line of code <img src="photo1.jpg" alt="A description of the picture" width="270"
height="50" /> represents the fact that the space around the respective image is being determined by the web browser. 

Step 3- Define how the page element(here, I'm referring to the picture/image) is to be displayed

Now, use the “display” property for defining how the page element would be displayed. Here, the “block” value for the display indicates that the web browser would showcase the element as per its own preference, with a single space both, above and below it. In accordance to the code snippet mentioned within the step 1, the line <img src="photo1.jpg" alt="A description of the picture" width="270"
height="50" /> can also be written as: <img src="photo1.jpg" alt="A description of the picture" width="270"
height="50" style= “margin: auto; display:block;”> where the additional text “display:block” denotes that the image would be automatically placed on its own line. 

Step 4- View the web page(in which you've centered the image) in multiple browsers

As the final step, opt for viewing the web page in different web browsers for verifying whether the image has been centered properly or not. If you feel something is lacking with the placement of the image, you may choose to go back and rework on the settings. 

Final Words

So, with that it's a wrap on this post that covers the basic steps of centering an image using the HTML programming concepts. Hope you'd have found the steps simple-to-follow and interesting enough for positioning your images towards the center of a web page(s).

This post is shared an copyright by WordPrax Ltd. - a PSD to Wordpress conversion service company having more than 4500+ clients on board.

4 Considerations to Keep in Mind While Developing Wordpress Plugins

Thanks to the massively growing popularity of Wordpress as the choicest content management system out there, it is also becoming increasingly prone to the hacking attacks from hackers across the web realm. The growing tapestry of this web hackers has always posed a threat to all things web, but since Wordpress powers millions of websites on this date, there is a growing need to deal with the threat with much potency and effect.

There are loopholes that may or may not be filled, but there are techniques that can still make the Wordpress powered web solutions impenetrable. While creating a WP theme or plugin, there have to be certain measures taken in order to ensure that there are no obvious backdoors left open for the malicious coders to make an unauthorized entry through. Following is a set of amazingly useful techniques that will help you secure your Wordpress website with a great degree of assurance:

Keep the Debugger ON

Granted, during the development process, the coders prefer to keep all the error notifications at bay so that they can create the codes in an uninterrupted manner. But by doing so, they unintentionally invite the hackers who might be prowling around. When you turn the debugger on, you are notified of the possible errors that might indicate someone trying to break in to your site, and that's something that should more than convince you to keep the debugger on. The errors can thus be seen and you can act accordingly.

And for enabling the debugging, you only need to add this small bit of code to your wp-config.php file

define( WP_DEBUG, true );
Don't access the Files on Site Directly

There is no need to do so, but sometimes, the default settings make it possible for you to access the files directly. Many files are pertaining to the plugins as well as to the themes, and this causes a serious nuisance that needs to be averted. If you are wondering why, the truth of the fact is that accessing the plugin files directly also gives out the installation path of Wordpress.

As iterated before, this error needs to be averted, and thus, we add the ASBPATH check. What it does is that it terminates the script as soon as it branches out of the Wordpress execution.

if ( ! defined( 'ABSPATH' ) ) exit; // Exit if accessed directly.

Prevent Unauthorized Access

This one happens to be the most important aspect of any website. Attempts for unauthorized access are experienced much too often on the websites. But it depends a lot on the webmasters on how they keep a check on these accesses and make their website inaccessible to those who aren't authorized.  The current_user_can() function can be used in order to determine if the particular user has the access to a functionality or not.

Avoid CURL While Posting from a Remote Location

When posting from a remote location, you should, against all advice, avoid CURL. And you can do so if you use the WordPress' WP_HTTP class and wrapper functions, wp_remote_get and wp_remote_post.

Thus, there are various tools and techniques that make the job of enhancing the overall feature-set of your website a breeze. If you happen to be a beginner, there is every chance that you may be missing out on one or more of these techniques. And there is no guarantee that even the experienced programmers have used all the afore-mentioned techniques. Regardless of your experience, the techniques come handy, and thus, they should occupy an an important part in your Wordpress development stratagem.

This article is shared and copyright by Wordprax Ltd.- a leading Wordpress service company committed to deliver all wordpress related services . This company deals in Wordpress custom plugin development service and Wordpress conversion services.