WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool based on PHP and MySQL. Its features include a plugin architecture and a template system.
Below we have several posts written about WordPress. One of our common topics in the past has been Magento and WordPress integration. At Union Square Design, we integrate both Magento and WordPress systems for our blogs, so we have extensive familiarity with both systems.
The Magento WordPress Integration Plugin allows you to bring out any of the default Magento blocks in your WordPress theme, bring out any Magento blocks that you have created yourself, and bring out any static blocks that you have made in your Magento admin area. It also shows products from any category using the widget add-on.
With WordPress, you can create any type of website you want: a personal blog or website, a photoblog, a business website, a professional portfolio, a government website, a magazine or news website, an online community, even a network of websites.
You can make your website beautiful with themes, and extend it with plugins. You can even build your very own application. Simplicity makes it possible for you to get online and get publishing, quickly. Gone are the days where you have to submit content and wait for it to be reviewed by editors. WordPress allows you be your own editor.
Creating new content on WordPress couldn’t be easier—in fact, it’s one of the hallmarks of the application and once that content has been created, integration with Magento allows users to port that content directly onto their e-commerce site or social media outlet.
With all of this information that you’ve gained about WordPress, we hope that you enjoy reading our WordPress blog, and we hope to update you with more info on what’s going on in the WordPress world as it comes.
How to Find a Perfect Domain Name for Your Next Website
Domain name plays a vital role in the success of your website. It is one of the important initial steps which help in depicting the whole concept of why you are creating that particular website. You have to be very careful while creating a domain name as it needs to be accurate, easily memorable, expressive, and depictive. Reading your domain name must give an idea to the user about your website and its purpose. So, it actually needs to be exact and perfect.
Features of the Improved Domain Name Search Tool
In order to help you find the perfect domain name for your website; WordPress has added and renovated various features in the domain search section of the website. These betterments are mentioned below:
1. Design:
The new, attractive, interactive, and modern design helps the user to search for the required names and compare the available options. This user-friendly design of the website and the app would help you find easily what you are searching for.
2. Recommendations of Domain Name:
The website’s domain search provides excellent and accurate recommendations to the users as per their requirements. These recommendations are extracted from 300+ top ranking domains. For example, .blog and .com, etc.
3. Information:
The website domain searches stores all the necessary information regarding the availability, as well as, the value of the domains recommended for you.
Conclusion:
These advanced features of the domain name search work not only for the new WordPress websites but also for the existing websites too. In order to search for a new domain name for your site, you need to select the ‘My Site’ option and click on ‘Domains’. Thus, you can create a new and effective domain name for your website without any complications. The recommendations provided by the website would make your work easier and better. This would help you develop the perfect domain name which would play an important role in determining the popularity of your website.
WordPress Introduces a New Feature That Enables You to Transfer Your Domain to WordPress
Having a custom domain is very essential for your website to stand out. WordPress is already a giant online website creation tool that hosts the maximum number of websites. And now, WordPress has introduced a new feature that enables you to transfer your domain to WordPress from any other provider.
For years now, Wordpress has been providing its registered users to build their own website and work upon their own domain. The only piece that was bothering was the inability of the users of other domains to transfer it to WordPress.com.
Thus, with this new feature, you can now transfer your domain very easily by merely using the support page of the website for assistance and guidance. A custom domain allows you to represent yourself and the work you offer by a name that you provide to your domain.
Benefits to Avail After You Transfer Your Domain to Wordpress.com
Mentioned-below are a few benefits which you can avail if you transfer your domain from any other provider to Wordpress.com.
Management:
You can manage and operate your website as well as your domain from a single source.
Domain Credit:
When you purchase a plan on Wordpress.com, you are given a domain credit. This credit can be used to transfer your domain.
Economical:
Instead of paying separate charges to the registrar and WordPress for your website, a single payment would cover both the charges.
There are certain facts that you might want to know about this feature. The first being, if you are not sure that whether you want to transfer your domain to Wordpress.com or not, you can simply let your domain be registered with your existing registrar and then map it on Wordpress.com instead. Secondly, in case you have already availed your credit for mapping your domain, the domain transfer at Wordpress.com is free for you.
Therefore, this new advancement of WordPress would facilitate the transfer of existing domains to the website which has ultimately benefited a number of users.
Many people think that WordPress is only good as a blogging platform. But this is not true. WordPress is a complete content management system. Bloggers use WordPress websites just for blogging. So, who could really think about WordPress as a CMS for their site? As regarded as a blogging tool, the 10-year old WordPress has become an independent CMS (content management system) for expert web designers. Millions of agencies use WordPress CMS for their sites around the globe. I’ve selected some of the best WordPress websites to show how much this implausible content management system is proficient of.
Let’s check them out below:
Is someone there who is not familiar with Mickey Mouse, Mini or Mr. Goofy of Disney world? We all know, behind these popular cartoon characters, is the Walt Disney Company. This global company uses none other than WordPress to build their slick website away from the glossy colored, cartoonish Disney we love.
Eight times Pulitzer Prize winner and daily newspaper in the city of Chicago uses a solid site framework of WordPress to cope with the daily inflow of hard-hitting research features, sports analysis, entertainment reviews, in-depth political reports, and cultural commentary the paper has to deliver to the people.
Da Ink is an impeccable example of one of the best WordPress websites where the art speaks for itself. Drew Apicture has exploited his creative talents to construct a spectacular site that shows his hard work at the front but mimics it.
Travel Portland targets to inspire people to visit Portland and to assist them in planning their trip. The stunning responsive site is erected on WordPress and uses a custom-built responsive theme grounded on Zurb’s Foundation framework.
Simon Carr and Elijah Wasserman’s design studio “Work by Simon” is the website that serves as their blog as well as online portfolio. This design studio basically focuses on designs and development for CSS3, HTML5, and mobile websites. Customized CMS (WordPress) has been their first preference for building WordPress websites since many years.
In a nutshell of Great Examples of WordPress Websites:
If world’s top companies like Disney, Chicago times or Travel Portland can use WordPress websites to create their professional level flawless sites, then it is not hard to believe that WordPress is a good CMS. There really is nothing impossible to achieve by building WordPress websites whether it is for posting blogs for sharing generic information or doing business with it.
7 Best WordPress SEO Tips & Techniques to Boost Rankings
WordPress is an amazing solution where a user can create a website on his own. But without a proper knowledge of promoting it, what is the benefit of creating a good website? It’s just like building a beautiful palace on the isolated island because no one can see it. If nobody sees the creation whether it’s a website or a palace, all efforts of its owner will go in vain. That’s why website optimization is so important. If you are new to WordPress and looking for some worthy SEO tips to boost up your website’s ranking, then this article will surely help you a lot.
SEO Tips for Boosting the Ranking of Your WordPress Websites
You do not need a special training or spend years to learn the SEO tips for enhancing your website’s ranking in Google search engine result pages (SERPs). It is because there is no any hardcore coding or complicated jargons involved in it. Hard work with little patience will be enough. For knowledge and practice portion, here are some helpful SEO tips you can implement on your WordPress website:
1. Create Unique and Crisp Content:
Make your content user-friendly as well as Google-friendly. For every website content is considered as the king because it makes the viewers spend time on your website. It must be unique, clearly descriptive, easy to read with relevant information, and filled with appropriate keywords so that Google can easily optimize it.
2. Use Linking Strategy with Backlinks:
Build partnerships with other websites who have high page ranking from the same industry. Getting backlinks from them will certainly help you to grow impact in front of Google’s eyes. If many qualitative websites show your WordPress website’s links on their site, then Google can boost up your website rank considering it as a good source of providing information to it users.
3. Permalinks:
Google takes into account the first words in a permalink so try to add keywords that can help your viewers to know that what your posted content all about is.
4. Use SEO Plugins:
WordPress also offers many SEO Plugins like All in One SEO Pack, Yoast SEO Plugin and much more. These plugins encourage you to add SEO title, Meta Description, keywords, and alt tags for SEO purpose.
5. Generate XML Sitemap:
Create an XML sitemap with WordPress or plugins like Google XML Sitemaps. It helps Google to understand the website structure simply while indexing and crawling it.
6. Focus on White Hat SEO Techniques:
Prefer white hat SEO strategies that will make you go so long. Though it is a time-consuming way and need a little patience, still these are really effective whereas there is always a risk in opting shady black hat techniques for SEO.
7. Keep Distance from Flash:
Try to avoid Flash as much as you can. Google do not crawls website intended through flash. So, you may lose the chance to boost up your website’s ranking by using it.
Conclusion:
There are numerous SEO tips that can boost up the ranking of your WordPress website in the SERPs. But the above-mentioned are the most effective ones. So implement these SEO tips on your website and work hard.
4 WordPress Comment Plugins that Will Engage Your Readers
Comments play an important role in creating activities and constructing a community for your website. WordPress is one of the best content management systems on the Internet that help the users to create their own website and stay connected with the audience. WordPress comes with a default comment plugin, but you also have the option to serve different comment plugins with your posts to your readers. Let’s check some of the best ones below:
Best Comment Plugins for WordPress Websites
The WordPress website owners can easily engage their viewers by asking for the comments and presenting question forum online. To accelerate it properly they can take help of various comment plugins such as:
1. Native WordPress Comments:
Being a WordPress website owner, you don’t need an additional plugin to get comments on your blog posts or website. It is because WordPress website supports inbuilt commenting system of the WordPress core ships. It is indeed basic but still does its job perfectly. It comes preconfigured and activated on any fresh WordPress installation.
Any comment plugins need someone to visit your website, read content, and then leave a comment on it. With the help of slide-ins, pop-ups, and top bars the Postmatic enacts as a double opt-in plugin. Visitors can leave their comments at the end of blog posts and also sign up for your email list.
Jetpack Comments is a plugin that replaces your blog’s comment type with a new form of comment so that viewers use social login to explore your website. It doesn’t have an effect on how your theme displays the visitors’ comments but it simply affects the form of readers used to leave comments.
WpDiscuz is one among the most recent edition in comment plugins section. It has effectively established itself on the WordPress plugin directory with 20,000+ downloads and a powerful rating of 4.9. The wpDiscuz plugin is loaded with countless cool functionalities that upgrade the default WordPress commenting system. The developer claims it to be the most effective to the other big alternatives like Disqus, Facebook Comments, and Jetpack Comments.
Conclusion:
Every commenting system has its own pros and cons. This makes it difficult to announce a single comment system as the best plugin. It totally depends on the type of website. But if you are inexpert with WordPress and do not go fuzz with messy configuration, the native comment plugin will be perfectly suitable for your website. You can also boost the functionalities of the native commenting system with other comment plugins like Jetpack or WpDiscuz.
Are you contemplating on putting up an online store? Then you should start thinking about your e-commerce platform. There are two popular options available now—Shopify and WooCommerce. But which platform wins in the Shopify and WooCommerce battle?
Shopify is a powerful e-commerce platform that makes it easy for users to put up an online store, manage inventory, and accept payments. On the other hand, WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin that lets users customize their stores.
Now let’s dig deeper into the pros and cons of both e-commerce platforms.
Shopify and WooCommerce Costs
Cost will always be a consideration for anyone thinking of starting an online store. With Shopify, you will have to pay a monthly fee of $29 for its basic plan. You can also upgrade to the Shopify plan ($79) and Advanced Shopify ($299). But these prices don’t include addons and third-party tools that you may need to take your store to the next level.
On the other hand, WooCommerce is freely available on WordPress. You need to get a domain name and WordPress hosting account to put up your store. Domain name is about $15 while web hosting is around $8 a month. Another cost is SSL certificate which is about $70. So simply put, you’ll still have to shell out money if you are to go with WooCommerce.
Shopify and WooCommerce Ease of Use
Shopify is fully hosted. This means there is no need to download, install, update, or manage software. There is also no need to be concerned about compatibility and security issues. It also has a user-friendly interface.
Unlike Shopify, WooCommerce is not hosted. It means you’ll have to install the plugin, manage updates, ensure security, and keep backups. It also lacks an intuitive interface that Shopify has.
Shopify and WooCommerce: Scalability and Growth
Both Shopify and WooCommerce are scalable. In Shopify, you can simply upgrade your plan once your online store starts growing. In WooComerce, you can opt for a managed WordPress hosting to scale your online store. However, Shopify provides a more hassle-free solution for scaling your site.
Shopify and WooCommerce : Which is Better?
It is really up to your needs. If you want an easy to use platform and willing to pay the costs, then Shopify is the one for you.
WooCommerce may not be free but putting up an online store using it is still cheaper. It also gives you more control of your online store.
If you are to manage an e-commerce store, you have a lot to do. You need to solve customer issues; server and hosting issues, software bugs and above all, you need to maintain adequate stock.
For a store owner, you need to approach the big picture items and not worry about every detail. WooCommerce has brought you with six plugins to automate details of your store management.
Follow-Ups of WooCommerce
Follow-ups are used to automate engagement with customers. Previously in an article, I described it as how to use it to automate customer recognition.
One of the many features of follow up is that they can schedule tweets and add variables to personalize them for customers.
It allows you and your team to create standard email templates in-order to communicate with the customer. This helps in putting your communication on board.
For providing more communication features which are relevant to your store, follow-ups allows integrating with event tickets, WooCommerce Subscriptions, WooCommerce Points and Rewards, WooCommerce Bookings, and Sensei.
Without the burden of huge amounts of configuration and integration, you can centralize all the communication by using Follow-ups.
Dynamic Pricing:
Dynamic pricing has the ability to automate discounts. If five purchases of a particular type are made and you want to give a discount, dynamic pricing will help you with that and many other situations regarding giving discounts.
Combining it with follow-ups will let your customers and new members know about any available discounts via email.
Smart Coupons:
Smart coupons are quite similar to dynamic pricing. It allows you to sell and send gift certificates by building a complete store credit and gift certificate system.
The coupons can be bulk-generated and you can notify your users of their unique coupon codes via WooCommerce sending emails and they can also export the codes to a CSV file in order to share them with other parties.
However, the biggest drawback of smart coupons over dynamic pricing is that it requires the interaction of customers. The coupon code must be filled by the customer or the available coupons should at least be clicked at checkout to use them. Skipping this step would result in applying the discount to an already completed order resulting in more interaction.
PDF Invoices:
For tax purposes, some countries require a PDF invoice. It requires time and effort if you make them manually.
This problem is solved by PDF Invoices. By sending PDFs via emails, resending them on request and make them available for download on their user accounts, PDF Invoices can automate this process.
You can fulfil the needs of an international customer since PDF Invoices is totally customizable whether it is the addition of special registration numbers to an invoice or whatever.
Advanced Notifications:
The options for order and stock notifications at WooCommerce are limited. All the items should be sent to one place and most of the stores are ok with it. However, Advanced Notifications should also be considered.
Advanced Notifications allows you to send custom emails to your drop shipping provider. The recipient by product or by product category can be customized in case of multiple suppliers. The staff for a product which is low in stock can also be alerted.
WooCommerce Zapier:
WooCommerce does not directly integrate with all systems or the data you need is not integrated by the default integration. Hence the problem is taken cared by WooCommerce Zapier.
Information can be sent to other systems from your stores seamlessly by WooCommerce Zapier. ActiveCampaign, a marketing platform, uses it to send relevant client information. Crucial information to its email marketing would be missed out if that firm didn’t use Zapier.
Because of the default drip integration doesn’t include subscription details, I use WooCommerce and Drip (another marketing platform) to integrate. I would have to toggle active and inactive subscription in Drip without Zapier Integration.
By collecting reviews and recommendations of the customers and clients, we can not only guide but we can also have a great impact on others as well. The addition of reviews to a website for a WordPress user is as easy as adding the right plugin.
The product review plugins for WordPress is as follows. A few examples of such plugins are customized review systems, highlight testimonials, import reviews from Amazon and much more.
Product review plugins:
Ultimate reviews:
This is a simple review plugin which the clients present the reviews of products, events or anything else. Smart product review shortcodes (displays your review and a review form) and in-depth reviews are a part of this. It also allows creating additional review fields e.g. value, appearance and quality. Include the custom fields in the review in a way that they don’t affect the rating. Price: $39.99 for one website.
Easy testimonials:
Easy testimonials are where the testimonials are added to the sidebar or are fixed to a certain page or a post by the help of a shortcode, it can be as a product page. In order for the ratings to appear in search engine, easy testimonial uses Schema.org complaint JSON-LD markup which results in rich snippets.
WordPress Customer reviews:
A specific page on your blog is set up which receives customers testimonials about a product or your business. You are the one who chooses which reviews get to be shown and the submissions are all moderated. This plugin can be customized referring to the fields to ask for, require and show. Price: free, accepts donations.
Handsome testimonials:
The idea behind handsome testimonials is that testimonials should be more expensive and friendly. The clients will have more trust and with a pro version, you can get feedback on any website page with the help of a shortcode. It allows rotating all live reviews or the ones within a category.
YITH WooCommerce Advanced Reviews:
This type of review allows the users to reply and construct a dialogue with the clients. It can edit reviews and the reviews can get titles and attachments. For each product, a summary is generated along with the number of reviews with ratings written on it. Price: free. Premium is $77 per year.
WordPress review:
In here the reviews are generated using stars, percentages or points and are entirely changeable. WP reviews allow support for translation, WPMU, google rich snippets and unlimited colours. Price: free. Pro version is $77.
Rating widget:
Ratting widget is a 5-star rating plugin which gives approximately 70 themes and designs. Rich-snippets add metadata which appears as star ratings in google serach results. Rating data is analyzed using advanced analytics and moderate client’s votes. Price: plans start at $3.99 per month.
Yotpo social reviews for WooCommerce:
This review plugin allows submitting the reviews of the users on social networks and is completely customizable. After-purchase emails are sent to encourage clients to leave reviews. A mini-site is also created with user generated content to improve search rankings. Price: free
ScrapeAZon:
Amazon customer reviews are displayed on specific products that you choose. Review iframe can be manually customized from the short code, via custom CSS. The participation in amazon affiliate program is must to use this plugin. Price: free
Wiremo:
Wiremo plugin allows the user to fully customize the style, color, size of stars, buttons and review form to fit your website’s design. The automated review request helps to encourage reviews and through the conversation tool reviews are reached immediately. By creating a two-way communication, the wiremo plugin helps in gaining credibility and trust of your reviewers without leaving the app. Photos of the products can also be uploaded alongside the reviews. Price: free upto 100 reviews. Advanced plans start at $9.99 per month.
WordPress Product Review:
WP product review allows your post to be turned into smart reviews with ratings. With the help of shortcodes, WP product review can position the review box anywhere in the post. Automatically generated comparison tables are generated with the help of existing reviews. From amazon, the name of the product, affiliated link, and price are automatically generated. Price: lite is free. Premiuim starts at $59.
Check out the new WordPress update to have access to your favorite plugins on WordPress mobile apps. The 9.1 update is out for the android applications and the iOS applications as well. It can also be accessed from the WordPress websites which are self-hosted and are with Jetpack. The business plan websites of WordPress with the plugins can also access this update.
The feature has been added to the app after frequent requests by its users. With almost the whole world accessing information and doing work on the mobile phone, it was necessary for WordPress to install this additional feature in their mobile application. The updated app enables management of the plugins right from the phone like never before.
With the easy access, you no longer have to access your dashboard from the web browser in order to make any changes in your plugins, rather you will now be able to add, remove, edit or update your plugins right from mobile apps. In addition to these features, you can also look for the link on the page of plugins on WordPress.org in order to find quick and better references. Not to forget, you can also manage your auto-updates from your mobile now.
Try Plugins In WordPress Mobile Apps:
To find or manage your plugins within your app, first of all, update to the latest version i.e. 9.1 and make sure you have the jetpack plugin updated to 5.6 version. Then, when you enter the app, you will find the option named as “Plugins” right under the heading of “Configure”.
In case of any queries or confusions or feedback regarding the features or conduct of the app, you can contact the support team of WordPress which is an in-app team.
Final Thoughts:
Providing the ability to access WordPress plugins through mobile apps is another step of WordPress toward its technological advancement. Feel free to comment or give feedback on this read in the comment box below. I will be happy to respond on any of your comment, feedback or suggestion.
6 Effective Tips to Engage Visitors on Your WordPress Site
The complete cycle of an online business depends upon the ability of your website to turn a viewer into a customer. The time spent by a visitor on your website plays a vital role in deciding the SEO ranking of your website. The more, the merrier. The longer a viewer stays on the website, the better he gets to know about your products and services. Thus, here are 6 effective tips to increase the stay time and engage visitorson your website:
1. Simple Design to Engage Visitors:
Use a simple and straight design which provides to the point information that might be needed by your viewer. Adding unnecessary complexity to your website would do no good to engage visitors.
2. Use Quality Content to Engage Visitors:
The content held by your website immensely affects the interest of the viewer on your website. Keeping good quality content will increase the stay rate of your visitors rapidly.
3. Maintain Less Page Load Time:
Make sure your website is light and it takes the minimum possible time to load the landing page. The longer a viewer has to wait for your website to load, the more chances are that he/she might close it even before opening due to the poor page load time of your website.
3. Clarity:
The readability of your content is extremely important in order to maintain the visitor’s stay time on your website. The font, style, and placement of your content should be perfect and easily readable.
4. Attractiveness:
Add various relevant images and videos to your website to make it more interesting. This will allow you to engage visitors and also help them understand more about your product.
5. Mobile Optimization:
It is necessary for a website to be mobile-friendly in order to be accessible by the users on the mobile. Almost everyone today uses a phone to perform various technological functions which include e-shopping, posting on social media, checking out websites etc. So, to increase the visitors and to expand their visiting time, it is necessary that they are able to access the website from their mobile phones too.
Verdict:
The tips mentioned above to engage visitors, if followed seriously, can help you a lot in increasing the time stay of your viewer on the website. This will help you gain a good number of potential customers and great business. Hope you enjoyed reading the post and learnt something useful. You can share your feedback about the post in the comment box below.
