Month: December 2019

17 Best Selling WordPress Themes 2019

Posted on December 31, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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The year 2019 is nearing its end, in fact by the time this gets published it’ll be done, and we look forward to the exciting new year 2020 — a new year with new opportunities, new challenges, and new goals to achieve. WordPress is evolving, with the introduction of ClassicPress and Gutenberg opening up new avenues in different directions, and the number of users and websites increases annually, and at the time of writing, WordPress is used by 35.3% of all the websites online..

All of us WordPressers use WordPress themes on our websites. There are a plethora of both free and premium themes to choose from, and it can be both a time-consuming and challenging task to find a suitable theme from all WordPress theme providers around the globe.

But help is on the way to help you find popular themes, hence even the best WordPress themes available.

This year I have compiled a list titled – What Are the Best Selling WordPress Themes?
and I ask two questions to leading WordPress theme companies, and these are as follows:

Q1. What is your best selling WordPress Theme 2019?
Q2. Why do you think your best selling WordPress theme is so popular?

This year, 44 WordPress theme companies responded which is hugely gratifying, so I’s like to thank all the WordPress theme companies who participate.

The Best Selling WordPress Themes 2019

So, sit back, relax, and let’s dig into the best selling WordPress themes 2019.

Ink Themes

Q1. Ink themes have a large variety of themes, but if you are looking for an individual theme purchase which will tick all the boxes, then Hazel multipurpose theme will do just that.

Hazel is an all-in-one minimalist theme for creating leading-edge modern websites. With its help, you can power groundbreaking corporate, digital, SEO and web design agency websites. It is compatible with WooCommece and has everything you need to set up and run a successful eCommerce website. is one of the best minimalist themes of 2019. It has 9 pre-made designs that are built to engage users and provide for a remarkable browsing experience.

Q2. The skins of Hazel incorporate video backgrounds, cool Parallax effects, custom elements with micro-interactions, present-day content animation and more, moreover, Hazel is builder-friendly. It also has a bunch of most-wanted premium plugins onboard for free, including Visual Composer, Revolution Slider, Cube Portfolio, Ultimate VC Addons, etc. You’ll find both light and dark skins based on minimalism trends.

Thanks to Ingrid from Ink Themes.

TeslaThemes

Q1. So our best-selling package is All Themes, but if you look at individual theme purchases, then Hudson is the most popular theme purchased by customers in 2019.

Hudson is a Premium eCommerce WordPress Theme with minimalist, modern, clean design and a complete set of eCommerce features to help you easily manage your online store. It is compatible with WooCommece – the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress and has everything you need to set up and run a successful eCommerce website.

Q2. WooCommerce is growing more and more in popularity even as platforms like Spotify continue to grow. Hudon is a beautifully clean eCommerce theme for sites running WooCommerce. It has controls for deep customization and a stunning floating cart for increased conversions on your website.

Thanks to Scott from TeslaThemes.

Anariel Design

Q1. Elephant is currently a popular theme on our site. We like to think of it as a charity WordPress theme of the new generation as it is built from the ground up using the new WordPress editor (Gutenberg). That also makes it future proof and robust.

Elephant theme features clean and modern design and supports a set of features that most charity/non-profit organizations will probably want to have on their websites.

Q2. After building a couple of very popular charity themes like Maisha, Pena, and Zeko, we gathered our experience and the feedback we got from our dear customers and turned it into what we feel is our best charity theme so far. People seem to have recognized that. Also, being fully optimized for the new WordPress editor, Elephant theme is a joy to use and customize.

Thanks to Marko from Anariel Design.

Catch Themes

Q1. Catch Vogue Pro is a premium, beautiful, and stylish, fashion-minded, and aesthetically conscious multipurpose fashion WordPress theme for fashion blogs and websites. It comes with features like skills, why choose us, stats, gallery, services, promotion headline, WooCommerce, promotion sale, pricing, team, reservation, contact info, and more.

All of these fantastic features with a clean outlook makes Catch Vogue Pro even more powerful and flexible. It is wholly customizable, and you can quickly and effortlessly set up your fashion blog with a one-click demo install feature. So, make your website visually aesthetic, sophisticated, and grow your audience with Catch Vogue Pro.

Q2. Catch Vogue Pro is a good mix of modern, stylish design and easy to use excellent features. All of these features can be easily set up using WordPress core Theme Customizer and also rearrange any sections using Section Shorter, which makes this theme very versatile as well. So, the bottom line is Beautiful Design, Flexible Sections, and Easy to Use is the main reason for the success of this theme.

Thanks to Sangeeta Catch Themes.

CSSIgniter

Q2. Our most popular theme for the 4th consecutive year is Olsen, our fashion blogging theme for WordPress. Minimal, really flexible in terms of customization options and ready to support long-form content, whether it’s text, photos, or both.

Q2. Fashion blogging is on the rise, and users from this niche are looking for themes that don’t get in their content’s way.

Thanks to Gerasimos from CSSIgniter.

MyThemeShop

Q1. Schema has been our best selling for three years in a row now. It is schema-ready and 100% fluid responsive. Schema theme is a full package, and it is SEO-friendly, comes with an in-built review system, loads extremely fast, and comes with an advanced options panel.

Q2. The Schema theme is one of the fastest WordPress themes around and comes with built-in Schema. It is straightforward to use, and it is SEO friendly. It is a complete package and offers everything a website owner might need to make their content rank at the top of search engines.

Thanks to Bhanu from MyThemeShop.

Organized Themes

Q1. In French, Mise En Place means “put in place” and carries the idea that a chef has everything they need in place before the cooking even begins. Our Mise En Place WordPress theme is designed with that same philosophy, giving you the tools you need to create an amazing site for your restaurant.

Q2. There’s something about it that calls for simplicity and sleek style. It just works. The use of parallax is subtle and appealing. The food menu is displayed on each side next to a picture creates a pleasant flow. It has many included features without the need to download plugins, as mentioned in its description, and that helps our customers make better decisions.

Thanks to Ramsey from Organized Themes.

PixelEmu

Q1. Business WordPress Theme is our bestseller this year. It’s a modern, highly configurable, accessibility-ready theme that meets WCAG 2.1 and ADA standards (required by the law in many countries) to adjust a website for people with various disabilities. This WCAG and ADA WordPress theme is tailored for different kinds of business ventures, including startup companies.

Q2. The main advantage of this business WordPress theme is WCAG and ADA compatibility. Moreover, you will also discover many useful theme settings, shortcodes, and ready-made widgets, such as carousel sliders, tabs, counter, testimonials, team members, pricing tables, and much more.

That is why it’s often used for professional services or product presentations. As a solution for a successful business website in accordance with WCAG and ADA adjustments.

Thanks to Izabela from PixelEmu.

Themify

Q1. Our best selling theme on Themify is Ultra. It is a multi-purpose theme that is suitable for most general and ecommerce sites. It includes many headers and footer layout options, which you can select for the entire site or individual pages. Many pre-built demos allow users to build their websites quickly by importing the demos.

Q2. Themify Ultra is popular due to its flexible design options and powerful tools such as 1-click demo import, drag & drop page layout builder, and the growing skins.

Thanks to Nick from Themify.

PremiumCoding

Q1. Anariel is a classy and modern WordPress Fashion Blog for all the Bloggers out there who strive towards minimalism. Its retina ready and fully responsive design will look amazing and work fluently on all the devices, mobile, tablet, and desktop.

To save time and start your online experience even more comfortable and quicker, Anariel comes with six pre-defined demos that you can install with one simple click of your mouse or trackpad.

Q2. I think it is so popular because of its minimal yet appealing design which can be adapted to many different needs of our customers. And its best suited for any fashion or lifestyle blog out there. And since that is a popular trend in the past few years with people writing blogs about basically just about any topic, a blog theme like this can be very popular.

Thanks to Gljivec from PremiumCoding.

aThemes

Q1. Our best selling theme is Sydney Pro (and has been for a while). Once you dig into its features, it’s easy to understand why. Sydney Pro is all about simplifying the process of building professional-looking websites, even if you’re still developing your coding experience.

The theme ships with several ready-to-go templates for a broad range of project types. You can easily tweak almost any aspect of those templates using the Customizer, and expand on them using drag-and-drop widgets. Plus, it works with WooCommerce out of the box!

Q2. The aspect that makes WordPress arguably so popular is that coding skills aren’t required to maximize its potential. We wanted Sydney Pro to build on this experience by giving you access to more advanced features.

At a base level, you can use the templates we set up to help you get started. For more advanced users, there’s a broad range of customization options, so you can make your website look and work exactly the way you want it to.

Thanks to Charlie from aThemes.

TemplateMonster

Q1. Imperion is an ultimate corporate WordPress theme that will provide you with a large number of essential tools. It has ten pre-made layouts to choose from. As an example, you will find something to present a topic of cryptocurrency, finance, and others. It also has multiple customization opportunities that allow editing the look of your online project.

Q2. This ready-made solution became very popular among different companies who want to promote their services. There are a few key reasons for it: Elementor Page Builder does not allow having some expert coding skills from people. Six headers, six-footers, and four blog layouts make it possible to create an original look. The package also includes multiple bonus images that will save time. Carousels and brands highlight the most important content.

Thanks to Lana from TemplateMonster.

SKT Themes

Q1. After taking the reviews and feedback of our customers, it has been noticed that SKT Elements Pro is considered as the top-selling WordPress theme in 2019. Whether your business is based on a large scale or a small, this theme will work perfectly. The regular updates and modern functionality makes an SKT Elements Pro most demandable.

Q2. The theme is the best choice for ranking your business on search engines. The SKT Elements Pro is 100% responsive and features with the best solutions. Excellent support and documents have provided with that. The easy and attractive user interface will never let your customers leave the website without performing any action.

Thanks to Shri from SKT Themes.

WPZOOM

Q1. Foodica is our most popular theme among food bloggers. It is packed with plenty of customization options, color schemes, a beautiful featured slider, and a Recipe Index page. The theme includes several types of custom widgets that can be used to create various layouts. Also, it is integrated with the first Recipe Card Gutenberg block of its kind, making each recipe stand out. Moreover, WooCommerce integration is a significant advantage for those who need to sell products or services directly on their blogs.

Q2.Since its release, we have updated Foodica continuously according to the needs of the food blogging niche. We think it has become so popular because it always kept pace with the requirements and feedback from our food blogger customers. A product that is permanently improved will always have the attention of its users and potential users.

Plus, the theme is very flexible and easy to set up, as we think food bloggers should concentrate on creating great recipes and not lose too much time setting up their blog. Moreover, with the different widgets and options, Foodica includes, it has proved to be useful for other types of blogs such as travel or lifestyle blogs and online magazines.

Thanks to Ina from WPZOOM.

AccessPress Themes

Q1. AccessPress Parallax Pro is our top selling theme of 2019 with parallax design. Parallax design has been popular due to the 3D effect, can add a sphere to the product, can use as a platform for storytelling, and attract more visitors with interactive, engaging content and Call to Action features.

Q2. AccessPress Parallax has unique and attractive features along with following powerful features, that make AccessPress Parallax popular. Multi-layer and smooth parallax that adds interaction on your website. Drag and drop page builder to build the page layout with ease.

The theme is perfect for multipurpose like travel, portfolio, photography, nature, health, personal. 13+ widgets and 11+ shortcodes. Polylang free plugin to build a multilingual site. Two header layout. Advanced parallax section.

Thanks to Kushum from AccessPress Themes.

Bluchic

Q1. Meet ChicServe, our best selling WordPress theme 2019, a unique WordPress theme that was built specifically for females entrepreneurs running a service-based business. It’s outrageously stylish, incredibly flexible, and easily customizable, making this modern theme one-of-a-kind.

With it’s easy to use drag & drop free Elementor editor plugin. You get total control of your website look and feel, without needing to understand the technical side. Your website can look exactly like our demo site in just a few hours! AND you’ll be maximizing how you show your services because this theme was built specifically for business models like yours!

Q2. Reasons besides its chic design: Websites aren’t one-size-fits-all. The ChicServe theme includes specific website features that work best for service-based business models. Who doesn’t want a WordPress theme made just for their business model?!

ChicServe offers a lot of flexibility and customization for service-based female entrepreneurs who may not know how to design or develop a website, allowing for full control without needing to know the backend. Bluechic specialize primarily in themes for Female Entrepreneurs and Bloggers.

Thanks to Kathie from Bluchic.

Themeisle

Q1. Neve is the theme that encapsulates all the modern features a user needs nowadays. It is highly flexible and multipurpose, providing tens of different starter sites in which you can customize the way you like. Neve can be easily customized via drag-and-drop page builders like Elementor or Beaver Builder and works perfectly with the block editor.

Apart from its versatility, the theme was built for site performance, as it is one of the fastest themes out there and comes with Google AMP compatibility.

Q2. The reason why people love Neve so much is because of its beautiful and flexible design, which both casual users and developers find it easy to work with. Themeisle have created a lightweight theme without sacrificing flexibility. Total default WordPress install is as tiny as 28KB.

Conclusion

That wraps up this roundup of the best selling themes of 2019, however there are plenty more to choose from, for example from StudioPress, part of WP Engine, who have a large variety of top flight themes. Also of course you can get them custom made, and Xhostcom can help in that department, just get in touch for more information!

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on Wordpress Building Trends for 2020!

Post by Xhostcom Wordpress & Digital Services, subscribe to newsletter for more!

Top 15 WordPress Plugins for Non Techies

Posted on December 28, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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Nowadays everybody, including both techie and non-techie users, knows what it’s like to have a well-functioning website showcasing your business. The standard procedure incorporates choosing a popular content management system that excels in popularity as well as simplicity and launch it over the internet. Yes, I am talking about none other than WordPress, or indeed ClassicPress!

But what you might not be knowing is other than offering business owners an easy to build a website, WordPress aids developers in tag-in for more advanced custom needs. And that’s what our today’s post is all about! I will discuss some of the best WordPress plugins for ultimate website design which are suitable for both techie and non techie users alike.

One of the questions that I often get asked is: Why WordPress and not any other platform? Since its inception way back in 2003, the platform has proved its worth again and again. Started as a mere blogging tool, the platform has carved its way to becoming flamboyant enough to make all different types of websites and has massive support from contributors worldwide. This means WordPress offers a huge variety; some live examples built with Wordpress include Time Magazine, Facebook Newsroom, Wall St Journal Law Blog, Techcrunch, Microsoft News, Sony, Quartz, Disney, Harvard Gazette, MTV News, The Rotary Club, Target, BBC America, Variety Magazine, SAP News and many many more. You ask me why I choose Wordpress. I ask you why the heck not?

Now do you know what is the most exceptional aspect of WordPress Development other than being an open-source CMS? It’s a robust library of plugins. You will come across tens of thousands of both free and paid plugins available for WordPress websites. These bunch of tools can help you with everything right from caching your website to help it run faster, enhance SEO techniques, add social media plugins and many others! Also, we can write our own plugin if need a certain special type of functionality! At the same time, it’s easy for anyone to get overwhelmed. But that certainly does not mean it cannot be made easier or should I say less overwhelming. All you require is to know which specifics you should be focusing on. But before that let’s take a detour and go through certain aspects that must be taken into account before choosing a plugin for WordPress development.

#1 Plugins & Page Load Times

Very few of you know that the concept of less is more works while dealing with WordPress plugins. Downloading or activating too many plugins at a time can slow down your website and this can be a major turn off for your end-users. Technically speaking, as soon as a user visits your site, every plugin script sends a request to the server. And all this happens in a span millisecond, so you can expect sites to load in two seconds or less.

#2 Security

Like I said before you might get attracted to many open source or free WordPress plugins because they are available for free! But being open source also means they are vulnerable to hackers. Recently I came upon a shocking news one well-known plugin: WP Total Cache; hackers found a way to use the plugin as a backdoor to breach websites and insert malicious code. Eventually, those who downloaded the plugin were compelled to change passwords on their sites.

Before you choose a plugin just ensure it is safe and secure. I would also recommend working closely with a WordPress developer like Xhostcom, who can offer you tools that can be used to achieve the right functionality and prevent any potential cyberattacks or threats.

#3 Ongoing Support

Last but certainly not the least, choose a plugin that offers continuous ongoing support and not a ticking time bomb at hand. Unfortunately, there are many free ones that offer a year of user support before they eventually stop responding to inquiries or making updates to the code. And you end indulging among problems like compatibility issues with other tools, design errors begin to render, the primary function no longer works, and in some worst-case scenarios or it may entirely end up crashing the website. Thankfully, we have many premium WordPress plugins to choose from.

Top 15 WordPress Plugins for Non Techies

Speed Booster Pack

This one is pretty obvious! Site speed is a major factor for positive Google ranking and good user experience. As soon as a user clicks to a website, and find slow page load time. He or she is more likely to abandon the site and switch to your competitor. Speed Booster Pack is one such WordPress plugin that automates and fixes many issues at a time; of course regarding speed. Right from minimizing clunky scripts to compressing images, optimizing database calls, load CSS asynchronously, and more to make page load time faster.

Get Speed Booster

Elementor

This free plugin with over 2M active installs isn’t a bad pick at all. The WordPress plugin features the most advanced drag & drop editor and is mainly used to create high-end designs in no time, without coding. Moreover, Elementor works at its best with any theme and plugin and will not slow down your existing website. Also, you get to choose from over one hundred pre-designed templates.

Get Elementor

Yoast

Search Engine Optimization is very much in vogue! Yoast SEO is completely out of the box tool when you are looking for SEO- friendly plugin for WordPress. If you are looking for a comprehensive solution with all the features and tools that you need to improve your on-page SEO. You can add Meta tags, generate sitemaps, connect your site to Google Search Console, optimize it for social media, and more, and also its easy to use for non techies.

Get Yoast

Pexels Images

Many site owners and writers in the past have spent hours searching for images to place in their articles, now those days are well and truly gone with the introduction of plugins for fetching free Royalty free images from designated image hosts. This one is for Pexels, where you can get a free account, and make use of the millions of Royalty free images available there. This is a major time saver when writing articles and helps gather relevant images for them with minimum fuss, saving many wasted hours over time.

Get Pexels Images

Smush Pro

Smush Pro by WPMUDEV is a premium (with a free version) plugin which offers fantastaic compression and optimization facilities for your site. With “Auto Smushing” Compression, WEBP, Lazy Load, Image Resizing, Metadata and much more, all automated, it makes life a lot easier for admins, and helps speed up your site, making it a must have for many sites online. It also works well with other plugins listed here, so is very well tested.

Get Smush Pro

Bulk Image Title

Bulk Image Title by Pageup, is an automated image titler which will optimize your Pexels (or other) images for SEO purposes and save you the trouble of having to do it manually. It uses page/article titles or image names and/or site name, separately or combined depending on your settings, and is a must have for busy site owners.

Get Bulk Image Title

Auto Image Alt

Auto Image Alt, again from pageup, optimizes all the images as above but this time for the Alt tags. It automatically optimizes all image alt texts on the website (and Woocommerce online store), per page & product, from Yoast SEO optimization settings (keywords), so works well with the Yoast SEO plugin listed here. Its a set and forget plugin like the Bulk Image Title plugin above.

Get Auto Image Alt

Video SEO

Video SEO, again by Pageup, is a video optimization plugin for site owners with video content. Given that the trend is for web users to watch video in preference to other media, that’s likely to increase in future, hence this plugin will become essential. It provides transcripts of your video content, among other features, and can be the perfect starting place for creating derivative works to sprinkle around and grow your SEO!

Get Video SEO

Google Site Kit

Googles Sitekit plugin for Wordpress is a tool for insights about how people find and use your site. Site Kit is the one-stop solution to deploy, manage, and get insights from critical Google tools to make the site successful on the web. It provides authoritative, up-to-date insights from multiple Google products directly on the WordPress dashboard for easy access, all for free!

Get Google Site Kit

WP Optimize

WP Optimize is a Database cleaner and optimizer, with many other features built in. It does it in three clever ways, it allows you to clean and optimise your database, it gives you the option to compress your images an it allows you cache your pages, for super fast load times. This is by far the best Database tool for Wordpress, and I have tested quite a lot of them.

Get WP Optimize

Google Analytics Daboard

Google Analytics Dashboard from ExactMetrics, is a real time analytics display of your sites activity, giving valuable insights in to visitors and site performance at a glance. It connects to the Google Analytics account for the site, and displays the data in the back end admin. A very useful tool to have in your armoury!

Get Google Analytics Dashboard

Constant Contact

One of the most effective and most reliable marketing tools at your disposal is email marketing. The WordPress plugin allows you to stay in touch with your users even after they leave your website. All you have to do is build an email list and send beautiful email newsletters to your subscribers.

Get Constant Contact

WP Rocket

Are you looking for a plugin that allows you to instantly improve your WordPress website speed and performance with no technical skills required. Featuring WordPress Catching settings like gzip compression, page cache, and cache pre-loading, WP rocket has secured a place in the top ten plugins which even offers optional features such as lazy loading images, CDN support, DNS pre-fetching, minification, and more to further improve page load times.

Get WP Rocket

Beaver Builder

Another WordPress plugin featuring one of the best drag and drop page builder which allows you to easily customize your website design and create custom page layouts without writing any code. Business owners simply love it as it allows them to create completely custom landing pages within minutes without having to hire a developer.

Get Beaver Builder

SEMRush

Last but certainly not the least, SEMRush is a highly recommendable marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals and business owners. Constant improvement in SEO, paid traffic strategy, social media, and content & PR strategy is the outcome. Some of its other perks include do keyword research, backlink audit, track brand mentions, spy on competitors, and discover best-performing posts on social media, ad strategy analysis, and more.

Get SEMRush Free Trial

So, that’s a look at the most used (probably) Wordpress plugins for non techies, and in fact the vast majority of these are free, with just a couple of paid examples. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on the Best SEO Plugins for Wordpress newbies!

Post by Xhostcom Wordpress & Digital Services, subscribe to newsletter for more!

Filed under: eCommerce, WordpressTagged with: plugins for design, wordpress plugins

6 Tips To Stay Healthy as a Web Developer

Posted on December 28, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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Life as a web developer can be indomitably tricky. When most of your time is spent sitting in front of a computer, good habits such as eating nutritiously, keeping up with a fitness routine, and even taking care of your mental health can fall by the wayside.

However, making an effort to eat well, stay in shape, and practice self-care can improve your quality of life, both on the job and off. You’ll likely see benefits that affect your work as well, such as increased focus and motivation.

In this post, we’ll discuss some of the challenges of staying healthy when you work in web development. Then we’ll share six key tips for improving your health. Let’s get started!

The Challenges of Staying Healthy as a Web Developer

There are many aspects of working as a web developer that make it especially challenging to stay healthy. Most significantly, the job requires long hours sitting in front of a computer.

Lots of time spent in front of a computer can affect your vision and your sleep patterns. It can also lead to poor posture, which can cause back and neck pain.

Web development may even make it difficult to maintain your mental health. Self-employment and long, demanding hours can lead to a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and burnout. Therefore, being intentional about your physical and mental health is key when you’re working in web development.

How to Stay Healthy as a Web Developer (6 Tips and Tricks)

Every person is different, which means that advice regarding health isn’t one-size-fits-all. If you’re having trouble, make sure to consult a physician or a mental health professional (since we are neither).

In the meantime, however, the tips and tricks below can help you start forming healthier habits.

1. Use Meal Planning to Boost Nutrition

Many of us go through our days eating whatever sounds good, or trying to throw together haphazard ‘meals’ from the random items we picked up at the grocery store. Without meal planning, it’s almost impossible to keep track of what you’re eating each day.

While you can find meal plans online to follow, it’s just as easy to create your own from scratch. That way you can work in foods you already know you enjoy so that sticking to your plan doesn’t feel like a chore or punishment.

Therefore, consider scheduling some time in your week for planning meals, grocery shopping, and food preparation. You can keep track of your meal plan on paper, on a calendar, or using whatever other tools you like.

To start, simply note what you’ll eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner each day. You can even plan out your snacks if you want to. Just make sure that your nutrition throughout the week is balanced – there should be some variety in your diet, and it should include plenty of healthy items.

2. Schedule Your Fitness Routine So It Fits into Your Lifestyle

Web development can be demanding on your time. It’s easy to believe you don’t have room in your schedule to work out. However, there’s usually more time in the day than you think there is.

Scheduling your workouts can make it more likely that you’ll actually show up for them. First, you’ll need to find a time that will be relatively convenient for you. For example, perhaps there’s a gym near your office where you can stop on your way to or from work.

Maybe you’d like to get your exercise out of the way and tackle it first thing in the morning, or you might prefer the evening instead. Whatever time of day you choose, the important thing is to stick with it. Working out at the same time every day is more effective than exercising sporadically.

It can also be helpful to incorporate a variety of types of fitness into your schedule. You might plan to run on Wednesdays and take a trip to the gym on Fridays, for example. This is both better for your overall health and keeps your routine from getting too dull.

Finally, if you’re not sure where to get started with your fitness routine or you just need some extra accountability, consider hiring a personal trainer. Just a few sessions with a professional can help steer you in the right direction. Plus, you’re more likely to show up if you know there’s someone waiting on you.

3. Practice Self-Care to Improve Mental Health

Mental health is just as important as physical health. Depression and anxiety can become debilitating, and have an impact on your work and your personal life. For that reason, implementing a self-care routine is key.

First, make sure to set clear boundaries around your time. It’s easy to get carried away with checking your work email outside of office hours, or taking on extra projects when you’re already overworked. Committing to maintaining separate work and personal lives will give you a chance to unwind.

It’s also helpful to create and keep up with valuable relationships. Whether it’s friends, a significant other, or family members, it’s important to have someone you can talk to about anything that may be bothering you, work-related or not.

Plus, studies have shown that interacting with other people on a regular basis can decrease stress and anxiety. Spending time with others in some way at least once a week is not only entertaining but good for your mind as well.

Finally, consider starting up a meditation practice. As cheesy as it may seem, meditating can help decrease your stress and anxiety too. Taking a fifteen-minute break during your workday to meditate can help you recenter, and finish off the day strong. You might also want to take a look at a Yoga Routine for additional stress reduction.

4. Keep Food Away from Your Desk to Avoid Snacking

Whether you work from home, in an office, at coffee shops, or even in a co-working space, it can be easy to fall into a habit of snacking regularly. When food is easily accessible, it’s hard to keep yourself from eating it, especially if you’re distracted by work.

The simplest solution is to keep food away from your workstation. You can start by clearing out the snack drawer in your desk. If you like working in coffee shops, leave your credit card at home and bring enough cash for just one or two drinks.

If you actually become hungry during the day and aren’t simply eating due to boredom or ease of access, plan out when you’ll have your snack time and what you’re going to eat. Preferably that will involve something healthy, like a piece of fruit or some nuts.

This will help you avoid snacking more than you should, and prevent you from eating mindlessly. Eating at your desk can also decrease productivity, so being intentional when you eat outside of mealtimes is key.

5. Take Screen Breaks to Decrease Tension and Reduce Eye Strain

As a developer, you likely spend at least eight hours a day staring at a computer – more, since you probably use screens outside of your job as well. Taking screen breaks is vital to maintaining your overall health.

First, screen breaks can help minimize the chance of vision damage. ‘Computer Vision Syndrome‘ or ‘Digital Eye Strain’ can result in blurry vision, dry eyes, headaches, and neck and shoulder pain.

It’s crucial to take regular breaks throughout your day to avoid these symptoms and other lasting effects. Every 20 minutes or so, look up from your screen and focus on something in the distance for about 20 seconds.

Additionally, it’s best to take a 15-minute break for every two hours of screen time. This is a great opportunity to get up and stretch or walk around a bit. These short breaks can also help prevent tension from building up in your neck and shoulders.

6. Go On Vacation or Get Outside to Recharge

In the U.S., most people don’t take all of their vacation days, even when they get paid time off. Our tendency to overwork can have serious negative effects on our physical and mental health, which makes taking time off a necessity.

There is no shame in taking all the vacation days you’re given – that’s what they’re for! If you’re a freelancer or otherwise don’t get paid time off, it’s still ideal to factor some vacation time into your schedule and budget.

Vacations have been found to decrease the risks of heart attack and stroke, as well as improving mental health and productivity. In the long run, taking time off could help boost your career by keeping you healthy, rather than setting you back.

Studies have also shown that time spent outside can help recharge your batteries. Time in nature can improve short-term memory, reduce fatigue, and inflammation, boost your creativity and focus, and have other health benefits.

You may spend your vacation days traveling to National Parks or similar locations. Or you could simply take time over the weekend to get outside and go for a short hike. Either way, spending time outdoors is an excellent way to get away from your screen and improve your health. You can also pick up tips, diet news, recipes and a lot more from Storedetox Health & Fitness Magazine.

Conclusion

Nutrition, fitness, and mental health are all important if you want to excel in both your personal and professional lives. However, there are many aspects of working as a web developer that can make staying healthy difficult.

In this post, we’ve shared six tips and tricks for improving your health as a web developer:

Use meal planning to boost nutrition.
Schedule your fitness routine so it fits into your lifestyle.
Practice self-care to improve mental health.
Keep food away from your desk to avoid snacking.
Take screen breaks to increase productivity and decrease tension.
Go on vacation or get outside to recharge.

Do you have questions about nutrition, fitness, or other aspects of staying healthy as a web developer? Ask away in the comments section below! If you enjoyed this post, and want to get back to the grind nonetheless, why not check out this article on Wordpress Building Trends!

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Filed under: eCommerce, Trends, WordpressTagged with: fit web developer, healthy web developer

How to Add Direct Checkout to Your WooCommerce Store

Posted on December 27, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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The process that consumers must undergo to checkout shopping cart items largely controls the key metrics of an eCommerce store. It contributes to conversion rate, average order value, customer acquisition cost & lifetime value, cart abandonment rate, customer retention, etc. This remains valid as consumers continue to grow a taste for seamless transactions while competing merchants across varying eCommerce platforms relentlessly seek ways of increasing their website revenue.

About 60 percent of online shoppers that abandoned their carts in 2018 did so due to issues related to the complex checkout process. The figure is only poised to increase, as long as the website owners continue to neglect checkout optimization which is now an integral part of operating any type of eCommerce website.

Common Checkout Optimization Methods

Some of the most common checkout optimization methods among the extremely long list include the use of exit-intent, abandonment emails, extensive payment options, live chat, save options, etc. These are excellent aspects of optimizing a checkout page but won’t rid consumers’ indifference from a complex checkout process.

With WooCommerce direct checkout, merchants running their stores on the most popular eCommerce platform can effectively manage transactions and easily set up a highly-simplified checkout process that would appeal shoppers and bloat overall sales.

How direct checkout for WooCommerce works

The WooCommerce plugin deals with a lengthy checkout process by providing options to merge transaction requirements, do away with some checkout procedures such as the shopping cart page and fully customize transaction fields. Direct checkout for WooCommerce allows you to skip the cart page by redirecting the “Add to cart” button on each product page to the checkout page where they can quickly place orders.

Features of WooCommerce direct checkout

Automatic and manual integration

One of the most interesting features is how easy it is to set up. You can integrate the plugin into your WooCommerce using either a manual or automated process depending on how quickly you want to activate the plugin. Manual integration procedure lets you adjust the features which you can also adjust after setting it up using the automated integration processes.

Support for WordPress Multisite

WooCommerce direct checkout is multisite compatible. This feature allows users to install and activate the plugin on a single WordPress for multiple sites. Just as WooCommerce allows you to set up products on the different sites independently, the Direct Checkout plugin allows you to manage checkout features separately for all sites in a single WordPress network.

Support for child themes

Child themes are most common in the eCommerce sector because it lets you set up new websites that match your niche quickly by allowing them to inherit features and designs of existing themes. Direct checkout for WooCommerce is compatible with websites designed from child themes and the setup is not any different from other independent stores.

One page checkout

Consumers are mostly put off by too many forms when they’re placing orders online. WooCommerce direct checkout included features to allow you merge the cart form into the checkout page, allowing customers to edit cart items while confirming orders on the same page.

Remove checkout fields

The promise of making checkouts easier is mostly powered by this feature which allows you to remove unnecessary fields, thereby reducing the time users have to spend providing information like checkout order comments, coupon form, shipping address, policy text, terms, and conditions, etc.

Flexible menu layouts

Aside from custom menu locations, which allows you to choose positions for different menu icons, the WooCommerce direct checkout also includes multiple styles for accustomed layouts such as horizontal and vertical menu positions. Customization includes the option to dock the links to your preferred side of the menu.

Remove checkout column

Just as you’re able to remove checkout fields, the two columns in the checkout page can equally be removed using this WooCommerce direct checkout feature. The idea is to make your checkout page as simple as possible.

Redirect checkout

To reduce the total checkout process, you can just redirect users to a custom page or directly to the checkout page as soon as they choose items instead of taking them to the cart page.

Quick purchase

You can include a quick purchase button as a direct button on each product page or category, including virtual products to redirect users to the checkout page.

Ajax add to cart on single products

With the WooCommerce Ajax add to cart feature, customers can add single, grouped or various items to the cart without any need to refresh your website. The interesting thing about this feature is that it provides notifications/alerts to users about products that have been added to the cart. The Ajax add to cart also helps to reduce the load on your website because it eliminates a need for refreshing the website each time there’s a change to the cart items. This also helps to improve user experience through reduced website load time.

A quick view in product archive

This feature allows you to add a quick view button and product categories in the WooCommerce shop page. Merchants selling various products would find this tool very useful because it allows them to select and add products directly into the cart using their attributes or categories.

Additional features for developer

Direct Checkout includes features that let developers iterate most functionalities to suit their store demands and style. Developers can load their own .less files to compile the menu, add filters to modify the content of the menu, and enable or disable styles and script loading. They can also set the default options for their customers, create custom dropdown animations and create static options.

How to install and activate Direct Checkout for WooCommerce

Here are two methods on how to install direct checkout for WooCommerce.

Download a free copy of Direct Checkout for WooCommerce from wordpress.org or from QuadLayers
Login to your WordPress dashboard and click on Plugins >Add new to load the plugin installation page
Click on the “Upload Plugin” button > choose file.
Locate and select the downloaded woocommerce-direct-checkout.zip file.
Click on the “Install Now” button and the “Activate Now” button when the installation completes.

The second method does not require you to download a copy of the plugin onto your computer.

At your WordPress admin panel, click on Plugins > Add new for the plugin installation page
Enter “Direct Checkout for WooCommerce” in the search plugins box
Find the plugin name by QuadLayers and click on the “Install Now” button
Click on the “Activate Now” button when the installation is completed.

How to skip cart page using Direct Checkout for WooCommerce

Skipping the cart page could help ease the transaction process on your website. It simply redirects your customers to the checkout page from the product page instead of first taking them to the shopping cart. You can also change the “add to cart” label on the button to your choice of content, such as “Buy Now” or “Purchase” without writing a single line of code.

Having installed and activated the plugin through any of the above-mentioned procedure, please follow the next steps below to set up the “skip cart page” feature and rename the “add to cart” label.

On your WordPress dashboard, click on WooCommerce > Direct Checkout. This should take you to the Direct Checkout tab on the WooCommerce dashboard.
Under the plugin “general” tab, you will find “added to cart redirect.” Click on the dropdown menu and select “Yes”
Click on the dropdown menu next to “added to cart redirect to” and select “Checkout”
Click the “Save Changes” button below the page.

This will redirect customers to the checkout page each time they click on the “add to cart” button either on a product page or category list. The next step is to change the label on the “add to cart” button.

Click on the “Products” tab under the direct checkout tab
Click the dropdown menu next to “Replace Add to cart text” and select “Yes”
Fill your choice of content in the field next to “Replace Add to cart text content”. The box should show “Purchase” by default, replace the content with your text.
Click the “Save Changes” button down the page.

Instead of redirecting the “add to cart” button to the checkout page, you may choose to add an additional button like “Purchase now” next to the button that would take your customer to the checkout page. This feature and many others are only available in the Direct Checkout for WooCommerce pro version.

How to customize checkout fields using Direct Checkout for WooCommerce

The ability to customize fields in your checkout is another very important aspect of Direct Checkout for WooCommerce in simplifying your eCommerce checkout process. The feature gives you the flexibility to remove unnecessary fields and to introduce new fields you find necessary according to your niche.

Go to the Direct Checkout tab on your WooCommerce dashboard. This could be done by clicking on WooCommerce > Direct Check from your WordPress dashboard.
Click on the “Checkout” tab for a list of all fields in your WooCommerce checkout page

On the list also include options to merge your store cart to the checkout page, include or remove coupon form, add a custom class to cart table, etc.

Go to the “Remove checkout fields” dialog box to uncheck unwanted fields.
To add new fields, click in the box and select the fields you want to add.
To remove the checkout shipping address, click on the dropdown menu next to the field and select “no”.
The same procedure in the previous step applies to policy text, terms and conditions, order comments, and checkout gateway icons.

Only the premium version of Direct Checkout for Woocommerce would let you merge remove checkout columns and order details address, alongside many other features, such as merging the cart and checkout page, customizing the cart page, and adding quick purchase button.

WooCommerce Direct Checkout pro

The premium version of Direct Checkout lets you access many more functionalities and to enjoy personalized support within the first 6 – 12 months of subscription. The Direct Checkout Pro also offers you the opportunity to enjoy lifetime updates and the Ajax add to cart alert.

The personal license (supports for one website) is priced at $15. Agency license, which supports up to 5 websites, is sold for $50, while the developer license with support for an unlimited number of websites is available for $60.

How Direct Checkout can improve your online business

Most eCommerce plugins for improving sales end up increasing the workload on the website server or impose more bandwidth on your website. This is completely the opposite when you use the Direct Checkout for WooCommerce.

Direct Checkout encourages less bandwidth by reducing the number of times consumers would have to load your website before completing their transactions. The same attribute reduces the website server load and increases the site speed for improved user experience while also reducing the checkout process for increased sales.

Conclusion

The need for a user-friendly checkout process cannot be overemphasized in any eCommerce business model. Consumers will always want easier routes of placing orders online and won’t prefer websites with a tedious checkout procedure. The Direct Checkout for WooCommerce allows for so much flexibility in checkout optimization and deeply resolve checkout-related challenges.

In other to understand which checkout optimization works best for your niche and location, it’s important to monitor your business conversion metrics each time you adjust the checkout process. You may have to include at least one 3rd-party payment option such as Bitcoin, PayPal, etc. to give consumers additional payment options. This will increase the number of customers likely to complete their orders after making it to your checkout page.

Use a Little Code and Invention

If you do not want to bother with plugins and just need a quick way to do it with minimal fuss, there is also a way to do it manually, although might require editing the cart and checkout template files a little.

This is simply to add the checkout shortcode to cart page, under the cart shortcode:

Also set to redirect straight to cart in the settings:

So you will get both a cart and a checkout page on the cart page, hence may have to edit some of the code in the template files in the theme root /woocommerce/cart folder as you may have replica items. (Maybe place them there as overides). Its not overly difficult, but you do have to play around with the template files a little.

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on Top Multipurpose Wordpress Blogging Themes!

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Filed under: eCommerce, WordpressTagged with: direct checkout, straight to cart

15 Best WordPress Themes for Lawyers

Posted on December 27, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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Every law firm needs an incredible website to match the level of service they provide. Luckily, as a WordPress site owner, you have hundreds of different WordPress themes for lawyers to choose from. Whether you’re redesigning your legal website or building a new site from scratch, we’ve got you covered. You’ll find the perfect WordPress theme in the list below, no matter what type of law you practice. All you need to do is browse through the list below to find the perfect WordPress theme for your legal practice.

Factum Theme

Key Features:

Four different lawyer-specific content types
Custom widget sections
Clean and simple homepage
Built with SEO best practices in mind

View Factum Theme

Nielmink Theme

Key Features:

Responsive and optimized for retina screens
Unlimited color selection
Extensive shortcode selection
Clean and simple codebase

View Neilmink Theme

Lawyer Zone Theme

Key Features:

Nine custom widgets sections on the homepage
Compatible with Page Builder by Site Origin plugin
Easily change up site color scheme
Fully responsive theme
Free & Paid versions

View Lawyer Zone Theme

Libero Theme

Key Features:

Visual Composer plugin included with the theme
Support for WooCommerce integration
Six different homepage designs to choose from
Portfolio and testimonial page support
Included shortcodes for easy customization
Create landing pages for lead collection

View Libero Theme

Lawyers Theme

Key Features:

The Elementor plugin is included with this theme
Equipped with five different homepages
Legal case study, team, testimonial, and contact pages
Compatible with Gutenberg and WPML
SEO-friendly theme

View Lawyers Theme

Lawyer & Attorny Theme

Key Features:

Over 30 different ready-to-use pages
Access to 600+ Google fonts
Built with SEO best-practices in mind
Drag and drop page builder included
Premium Revolution slider plugin is included with purchase

View Lawyer & Attorney Theme

Law Office Theme

Law Office theme comes with WordPress blog layouts, and the bundled Revolution slider. There’s also a cool integrated framework called ThemeRex Framework. This includes a variety of features that’ll assist with site customization, managing your media content, and a lot more. Key Features:

Built with HTML5 and CSS3
Equipped with six different homepage layouts
WP Booking Calendar plugin included
Cross-browser compatible
Support for child themes

View Law Office Theme

Lawyer Base Theme

Key Features:

Handful of attorney-specific layouts
Bunded Master Slider plugin
Goodlayers Page Builder for drag and drop functionality
WPML and WooCommerce support

View Lawyer Base Theme

Human Rights Theme

Key Features:

Drag and drop builder for easy site-building
Demo content importer
Slider Revolution plugin included
One-on-one email support included

View Human Rights Theme

Kaufman Theme

Key Features:

Equipped with a visual page builder
Pre-built legal layouts
Google maps integration
Unlimited color selection
Over 700+ different fonts to choose from

View Kaufman Theme

Key Features:

Responsive and retina ready
11 different header styles
Visual Composer plugin included
Slider Revolution plugin included
Unique search page functionality

View Digital Law Theme

GoodLaw Theme

Key Features:

Visual composer included
Added shortcodes for customization
Revolution and Swiper slider included
SEO-optimized theme

View GoodLaw Theme

Attornix Theme

Key Features:

Visual composer included
Added shortcodes for customization
Revolution & Layer slider included
Mailpoet & Ninja Forms
Multi Language Support

View Attornix Theme

OConnor Theme

Key Features:

Visual composer included
Added shortcodes for customization
Revolution and Swiper slider included
Header Builder
Much much more

View OConnor Theme

Justicia Theme

Key Features:

9 Homepages choice
Shop, Blog & Portfolio Layouts
Revolution Slider and WPBakery Page Builder included
Big custom shortcode collection
Much much more!

View Justicia Theme

Conclusion

Hopefully, the list above has provided you with a few great choices for your new lawyer website. All you need now is a quality WordPress host like Siteground or for more demanding scenarios WP Engine. Then, you can install WordPress, set up and activate your new theme, and get busy customizing your site! Now over to you. Do you have any favorite WordPress themes for lawyers that weren’t mentioned above? Share your favourites in the comments below & if you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on Wordpress SEO Do’s and Don’ts! If, after all that, you find its just a little too much, then get in touch for a quote on our bespoke Wordpress site building service!

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Filed under: WordpressTagged with: lawyer themes, wordpress lawyer themes

25 Top Multi Purpose WordPress Themes for Blogging

Posted on December 26, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
2 comments

A blog is a great way to be creative, grow your brand and show off your writing skills. Of all the possible blogging platforms WordPress is the best. WordPress makes blogging easy and with the help of one of the best blog WordPress themes you can get started writing immediately (almost).

When looking at themes for your blog there are a few key factors to consider:

Layout: Choose a theme with a layout you like. If you want a masonry grid layout, it’s easier to pick a theme that has a masonry demo instead of installing a plugin and trying to make it work. Along the same lines – your theme should be responsive to ensure your blog looks great on any device.
Post Formats: Find a theme that can handle the media you want to upload. Whether you just want standard posts, videos, image galleries or quote double check that the theme you pick supports those formats.
Social Media: Any good blogging theme will include support for social media. Social media marketing is a huge part of growing your blog and online presence, which is why it’s so important that your blog posts are easy to share. A good WordPress blog theme will usually have social sharing options on posts, links in your header/footer and a social “follow” widget.

Those are just a few features we think an awesome WordPress blogging theme should have. Depending on your own needs you may also want a theme with WooCommerce compatibility, built-in ad spots to monetize your blog, an autoplay feature (in you’re thinking of starting a vlog), etc.

If you search for the best WordPress blog themes you’ll likely find thousands upon thousands of results. To save you some time, here’s my list of the best blog WordPress themes to get started blogging. I hope you enjoy them!

1. Total

The Total drag & drop WordPress theme is a flexible, multipurpose theme perfect for any website design. It’s a top selling theme with over 32,000+ happy customers – which is why we keep recommending it! With built-in responsiveness, RTL support, A11y features, custom post types (portfolio, staff, testimonials), an easy to use page builder, premium animated sliders and more Total is an obvious choice for your blog or web design project.

Total also includes 40+ quick install sample demos, including the Mason and Charlotte blog demos seen above. This way you can simply install a sample demo to have your website started in minutes. The theme includes tons of blog-specific features including columns, lists, news layout, masonry grids and customizable dynamic page templates. Plus social is already integrate – so you can add sharing your posts right from the live Customizer.

2. Newspaper

Newspaper is a great WordPress theme for any blog, magazine, news outlet or any other publishing site. As one of the top 10 best selling themes of all time (on Envato), you won’t be disappointed by this theme’s seemingly never ending list of powerful features. Choose from more than 80 demo designs, 810+ ready to use page elements and design templates for blog posts, pages, categories and archives. use the intuitive drag & drop builder (with custom grid and news elements not found in other themes) to easily create one of a kind layout designs. Plus built-in support for AMP, YouTube, Adsense, reviews, bbPress, WooCommerce and GDPR requirements put Newspaper over the top.

3. Activello (Free)

The Activello theme from Colorlib is a lovely blogging theme perfect for your to start your own website. This multipurpose theme is built on Bootstrap with features for slider, custom copyright, infinite scroll, vector icons, responsive layouts, unlimited colors and more. The theme is also compatible with popular plugins like WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, Yoast SEO, JetPack and W3 Total Cache for added features. Plus it’s completely FREE- what’s not to love?

4. Glamor

Start your own glam blog with Glamor by QDONOW. This lovely theme offers tons of easy features, like multiple quick start demos (including lifestyle, entrepreneur, mommy, and food blog) so you can have a great looking website in minutes. Then you can customize your site with 800+ Google fonts, custom widgets, featured image sizing, layouts, color options and more. Plus with Glamor you can also monetize your site – via a WooCommerce store and predefined ad banner areas (header, sidebar, footer and below content sections. And if you need help at any point QDONOW offers free installation, detailed online documentation and direct email support!

5. Rosemary

Rosemary is an excellent WordPress theme for any style blog. The clean and bright layout is the perfect blank slate for your content and is Gutenberg enabled. The theme includes 5 different blog layouts, a featured slider, built-in color options and a responsive over all design. Rosemary also comes with custom blog widgets for your latest posts, promo box, about me, social media and more.

6. Divi

The Divi theme is a popular and flexible option to build your website or blog. Built on the popular Divi page builder, there are tons of easy page elements to add images, text, skills, headings, email optins, search, shop, testimonials, pricing tables, sliders, portfolio, call to action, blurbs and more. But most importantly – Divi’s default blog is a great base for you to get started blogging. Create a stunning homepage with the builder, then use the post formats support to add your content (complete with images, videos, links or galleries).

7. Wanderlust

The Wanderlust blogging WordPress theme was designed to make sharing your adventures easy. Geared towards travel focused blogs or magazines, the Wanderlust theme includes full-width images, 10 post format styles to best display your media (images, video, audio), and a useful Instagram section above the footer to showcase you latest pics. Get started quickly using one of three pre-formatted homepage designs, the get to work adding your posts. Want to add a store? No problem. The theme is also fully compatible with WooCommerce for easy e-commerce options.

8. Mesa (Free)

Mesa is a completely free, 100% GPL blog theme for WordPress. This simple masonry blog style theme is perfect for your new blogging endeavor. The theme features simple styling options via the live Customizer (for responsiveness, header, social links, entry style/columns, ad spots, etc), plenty of post formats (standard, image, gallery, video, audio and quote), custom logo upload, built-in footer & sidebar ads and social link options (header and widget). Mesa is a quick and simple way to have your blog up and running!

9. Olsen

Olsen Light is a lovely free blog WordPress theme you can use to start your own blog. While there is a premium version (which I highly recommend upgrading to, linked to here), Olsen light has helpful features for integrating your social media, displaying an Instagram photo slider, uploading a logo, configuring your menu, and more options in the live Customizer. The theme also comes with blog-specific widgets for an “About Me” section, latest posts and social media. The Olsen theme is also compatible with the Elementor, Divi and/or SiteOrigin builders for even more powerful page building options.

10. Hemlock

Hemlock is a stunning theme for aspiring bloggers. The theme has a unique featured posts homepage slider design to help you better showcase your best content. The theme includes all the features we mentioned that the best WordPress blogging themes should have – like built-in social sharing, plenty of post formats and solid layouts (choose from full-width, sidebar or grid blog). Plus the simple design makes it adaptable for any industry such as fashion, tech, business, gardening, etc.

11. Amadeus Pro

The Amadeus blog WordPress theme is a great choice whether you want to blog as a hobby or to help promote your business. With Amadeus it’s easy to customize the look and feel of your website using the options for unlimited colors, logo, social and layout (all in the handy Theme Options Panel). Add a homepage slider, take advantage of the customizable sidebar widgets and choose your homepage layout (grid or columns) to create your own one of a kind blog. Whilst the authors recommend switching to Neve, it is still available on the site.

12. New York (Blog & Shop)

For those looking to build a blog as a business, New York is one of the best shop & blog WordPress themes you can choose. It’s the perfect theme to build an elegant blog to share your thoughts and tips, or to start your own online store with WooCommerce. The theme includes a unique homepage posts carousel, styled widgets (social, about, Instagram, recent posts, etc), two menu areas, a built-in footer Instagram feed grid and customizable copyright text. On top of the amazing blog features, the theme also comes with the powerful Yellow Pencil CSS editor plugin so you can tweak any part of the design with just a few clicks!

13. Essence Pro

Essence Pro is a beautiful blogging child theme for the popular Genesis framework. Because it’s built on Genesis, the theme already includes important options for accessibility, custom header, responsiveness, translations, layout options, eCommerce and core page layouts. But what makes Essence Pro unique is the stylish homepage layout with featured image, newsletter optin and layered post grid design.

14. Ink Story

The Ink WordPress blog theme makes it easy to share your content. Design options for the theme are all neatly tucked into the live Customizer, where you can make changes to colors and fonts then see them live before you save. The theme’s stunning image grid homepage helps new posts standout, and since the theme is retina ready you can upload bigger, bolder photos.

15. Veggie

The Veggie Food Blog theme is a beautiful choice to start your own site with blog posts, recipes, video guides or anything else. This responsive blogging theme was created for food bloggers but would work great for any number of blog focuses. Easy customization options for colors, various layouts, page builder support (works great with Elementor, Beaver Builder or SiteOrigin), translation options, RTL compatibility and more all make Veggie a solid theme.

16. Authentic.

The Authentic Lifestyle Blog theme includes 9 different demo designs to choose from to start your blog fast and easy. Pick your favorite with options for blog grid, sliders, styled overlays and more. The theme also has easy optins built-in to customize colors for over 67 theme aspects, header design options (with different menu, logo and social positions), customizable footer modules (add your logo, insert your Instagram, or use widgets), add video backgrounds, create a featured posts carousel and more.

17. Pineapple (Free)

Pineapple is a clean and simple tumblog style WordPress blogging theme. If you want to start a blog with just your social links and your content it really is the perfect theme. Pineapple features a clean centered layout, easy post formats (image, video, audio, quote), colorful category tags and built-in social media integration. The theme is also compatible with Yoast SEO (for breadcrumbs), Contact Form 7 and most other popular free WordPress plugins.

18. Peak

The Peak theme is a grid based theme perfect for any online blog or magazine. The theme comes with 2 different homepage options for auto (masonry) or custom (you define image sizes) tiles, post drop cap (on first letter), multiple single post layouts and post formats, a built-in portfolio, mega menu option and even custom page title banners. The Peak theme is also compatible with the WooCommerce plugin – so you can add your own store or share affiliate goods with your readers. Hit the link and search “Peak” to bring it up on authors site!

19. TheBlogger

When considering the best blog WordPress themes we had to include TheBlogger of course. This blogging theme was designed to make (you guessed it) blogging easy. With intuitive Customizer options, built-in portfolio options, parallax backgrounds, intro background video, WooCommerce compatibility, color option, and unique layouts there’s lots to love about this WordPress blog theme.

20. Brittany

Brittany Light is a traditional blog style layout with left side, single column content and a right hand side bar. But that is exactly what makes this theme great! It has options for custom widgets to add your social media links, newsletter signup, about me section and Instagram feed. The light version of the theme is a perfectly good theme to get your blog started. But if you want more features (like author box, color options, layouts, etc) we recommend upgrading to pro.

21. Let’s Blog

The Let’s Blog WordPress makes blogging a breeze. With one click demo import, 300+ theme Customizer settings and options, multiple blog layouts (with sliders, header images, carousels, grids, etc), galleries, custom sidebar widgets and an instant search there are a ton of great features within Let’s Blog so you can create a design worthy of your content.

22. Underwood

If you’re looking for a good theme to create a personal blog, you can’t go wrong with the Underwood theme. This modern theme features bold typography, tons of post formats (9 in total for images, audio clips, video, galleries, etc), 3 unique homepage layout styles, WooCommerce support, styled Contact Form 7 fields and integrated social media.

23. Modern Studio Pro

Modern Studio Pro is another Genesis child theme. from StudioPress. This means you have all of the same great features you’ve come to love about Genesis, with the added bonuses of some classy styling. This includes custom headers, backgrounds, color styles, page layouts, cusomtizer options, etc. Plus the theme adds 2 homepage widget areas and a lovely centered logo header style.

24. Xtra

Xtra is a modern multi purpose theme by Codevz with some great features and a huge number of layouts/genres. This means you have all of the same great features you’ve come to love about Wordpress, with well over 80 prebuilt designs to pick from. You can also style your theme using their trademarked Stylekit system, designed for people with no coding knowledge, giving you remarkable flexibility in designs.

24. Bridge

Bridge is a huge multi purpose theme by which uses both Elementor and WP Bakery page builders, and comes with a staggering 400+ prebuilt demos! It is also bundeled with expensive plugins such as Layer Slider, Revolution Slider, Scheduling and more, so offers huge choice for self builders express their creativity. There are also video tutorials to follow and very good support from the theme authors. With around 27 different blog styles, you are sure to find something you like!

25. Uncode

Uncode is one of the best-selling creative themes of all time with more than 60.000+ growing sales, and is jam packed with a plethora of features. It comes with over 70 pre built demos, and also a Wireframes plugin with which you can import independent designs and mock ups. Header builders, Advanced grid system, Content blocks, Adaptive images and a ton of other features make it one of the best all round themes of all time! Fully Woocommerce enabled and Gutenberg ready, it is an impressive way to start your self build project.

Choose One of the Best Blog WordPress Themes & Get Started!

With all of these awesome themes there are only two things left for you to do – pick one and start your blog! If you are unsure whether you can do your site or business justice, then we may be able to help, just get in touch for a chat about you project!

We know there are a LOT of WordPress themes for blogging, but it’s important to choose a theme that’s right for you. Find a WordPress blog theme with solid code, good features and a layout you like. I’ve listed what are some of the best blog WordPress themes. Hopefully there were a couple solid options for your blog here.

Have any questions about the themes listed above? Or do you have a theme we missed that you think should be on our list of the best blog WordPress themes? Leave a comment below! If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on Wordpress SEO Do’s and Don’ts!

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Filed under: Trends, WordpressTagged with: blogging themes, multi purpose themes, top 25 wordpress themes

15 Wordpress SEO Do’s and Don’ts

Posted on December 25, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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On page SEO techniques, most people believe that if they create “Great Content”, the mighty Google is going to love you and magically rocket your site to the top of the rankings without any additional effort on your part.

Wrong! In the real world, creating great content alone isn’t a ticket to the top of the SERPs – you also need to optimize that content using on page SEO techniques that you’re going to learn in this post.

According to a survey of SEO pros, most experts think on page SEO techniques account for about 25% of what impacts your spot in Google’s rankings. Not a great deal, right?

On a fundamental level, On-page SEO provides the foundation upon which all of your other SEO techniques, like link building, grow. If you have a weak foundation, it’s going to be a lot harder for your off-page SEO efforts to take root.

On page SEO Techniques To Rank Higher

So what goes into nailing your on page SEO? I’m going to divide it into four broad categories:
Let’s go through some do’s and don’ts to help you nail each category…

SEO Titles and Metas
Good Content
URL’s
Site Wide Tweaks

Work On Your Seo Titles And Meta Descriptions

Your SEO title and meta description roughly control how your site appears in Google search results, as well as a few other spots. The texts you see there have been set by you & those texts are your SEO title and meta description.

In order to control SEO titles and meta descriptions in WordPress, you need an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO, The SEO Framework, Rank Math etc, unless like us at Xhostcom you have your own speciality plugins for this.

Here’s what it looks like to set your titles and meta descriptions in Yoast SEO:

And here are some do’s and don’ts for optimizing your SEO title and meta description:

✅ Do … try to naturally include your target keyword

Whenever possible, you want to include your target keyword one time in your SEO title and one time in your meta description. Not only does this signal to Google what your page is about, but it also helps human visitors assess whether your content matches what they’re looking for in Google’s search results.

⛔ Don’t … make them too long

Google typically displays around ~50-60 characters from your SEO title and ~160 characters from your meta description in its search results. But when it comes to your SEO title, you might be better off keeping things well under Google’s limits. Based on the data, the sweet spot seems to be around 15-40 characters for your SEO title. Pages with titles inside this range had an 8.6% higher CTR in Google’s search results than those outside that range.

✅ Add modifiers

Modifiers are little additions like “best”, “2020”, “top”, “free”, etc. They help you rank for long-tail versions of your core keywords by capturing more queries and intent. For example, if someone is searching for “WordPress errors”, there’s a good chance they’ll plug in something like “common/frequent WordPress errors”. By adding those modifiers to your SEO titles and descriptions, you can give your site a chance to capture that long-tail traffic.
In fact, that’s exactly what we did in our collection of the 5 Frequent WordPress errors here.

⛔ Don’t … forget about organic CTR

Beyond helping with on-page SEO, your SEO titles and descriptions are usually (but not always) what Google shows in the SERPs. So remember that you’re not just trying to stuff in keywords, you’re trying to get people to click on your site once they see your listing among other results. That’s your organic CTR, and a well-written, click-enticing headline can make you stand out in the SERPs, much more than people ranking above you.

You wouldn’t place a Google ad with an unoptimized, keyword-stuffed title, so why wouldn’t you apply that same standard to your organic titles? So, how can you boost your organic CTR? Here are some data-backed suggestions:

Consider skipping “power words” because titles with “power words” had a 13.9% lower CTR.

Add some positive or negative emotions. Titles with emotions in either direction had a ~7% higher CTR.
Do questions improve organic CTR? Titles with a question had a ~14% higher CTR. See what I did there?

✅ Do … include your keyword near the beginning

According to UX experts Nielsen Norman Group, users typically see about the first two words in list items (like a list of websites in Google’s SERPs). In order to communicate to your visitors that your website matches their search intent, you want to try and get your keywords as close to those first two words as possible so that searchers see relevant keywords when they’re scanning.

Here’s an example of how this can work (the focus keyword highlighted):

⛔ Don’t … forget your meta description

A lot of these tips have focused on your SEO title, but it’s important to write a unique meta description, too. Search results with a unique meta description get ~6% more clicks than those without – so don’t skimp on your meta description!

Content

Once you optimize your SEO title and meta description, it’s time to move on to the meat of these on page SEO techniques – your content. Here are the do’s and don’ts to optimize your content itself.

✅ Do … include your target keyword multiple times

The days of stuffing your content with keywords are long gone, but it’s still important to include your target keyword multiple times in your content.

So what’s the perfect keyword density for your content? Well, Google is always careful to point out that there’s no ideal keyword density, and that there are diminishing returns to adding additional keywords beyond the first few mentions.

In general, for your average piece of ~1,000-1,500 content, you probably want to include your keyword somewhere around ~5-7 times. In addition to including those keywords in the body of your content, you should also try to add your keyword to one of your headings.

Finally, don’t go overboard and stuff your keyword in as many times as possible. After a certain point, adding more exact match keywords isn’t going to help you, and it might even hurt you if you go too over the top.

Thankfully, you don’t have to worry too much about striking the right number of keyword mentions. SEO plugins like Yoast SEO, which is a good choice for beginners, will let you know what the keyword density of your content is.

✅ Do … include your keyword in the first 100 words

While you want to sprinkle your keyword throughout your content, it’s especially important to include your keyword at least once near the beginning. Specifically, within the first ~100 words. Beyond helping with search engines, doing this also helps human visitors understand that your content is going to deliver on what you promised in your SEO title.

This early mention of your target keyword should come fairly naturally. After all, if your content really is about what you’re promising in the headline then mentioning the keyword shouldn’t be a challenge, right?

✅ Do … include related keywords

Over the years, the mighty Google has become a lot smarter about understanding the topic of a piece of content using advanced algorithm. Now, in addition to including your target keyword, Google also wants to see keywords related to your main topic/keyword.

These Are Called LSI Keywords

Now, if you’re writing good content and avoiding keyword stuffing, you’re naturally going to include a lot of related keywords and synonyms, but if you want to be thorough, you can use a tool like LSIGraph to generate a list of related keywords and try to include as many of those as possible in your content. LSI Graph has a free tier for those who want to try it out.

LSI keywords are an import on page SEO technique

✅ Do … include relevant internal links

Building backlinks to your site from other websites is one of the most important off-page SEO factors. But other websites are not the only source of contextual links – you can also build links from your own site.

Including internal links in your content accomplishes two things:

It gives Google context about the content of the destination page, even if Google doesn’t apply as much weight as it would to a link from a high-authority external site & it keeps visitors on your website and reduces your bounce rate, which provides additional signals to Google about the quality of your content.

⛔ Don’t … forget about images

With all this focus on text content and keywords, it’s easy to forget about other types of content. Namely, images.

On average, pages with at least one image significantly outperformed pages without any images in Google, and more than 97% of all results on the first page in Google feature at least one image.

When you add an image, make sure to add the alt text as well – this can help your images rank in Google Images.

You can set alt texts in the WordPress UI when adding an image to the page, like so:

✅ Do … add structured data/schema markup

Structured data, often referred to as schema markup, helps you get rich snippets in Google’s search results. Here’s an example of what such a snippet can look like:

While structured data won’t help you rank higher by itself, there is data that suggests getting rich snippets can boost your organic CTR in Google’s search results. Additionally, John Mueller of Google has hinted that Google might use structured data as a ranking factor at some point in the future.

URL’s

In WordPress, you can edit the URL slug of any piece of content on your site. Do that from the Permalink section in the Document sidebar in the WordPress editor:

How to set your WordPress permalink and implement these on page seo techniques
You can also control the overall structure of your WordPress site’s URLs from your permalink settings.

Here’s how to take advantage of those settings and optimize your URLs:

✅ Do … include your keyword in your URL slug

Including your target keyword in your content’s URL is important for two reasons:

Google uses the words in your URL as a ranking factor, so using your keyword helps Google understand that it should rank your content for that keyword. URLs that include a keyword in them have a 45% higher organic CTR than those without, perhaps because it signals to humans that the content matches what they’re looking for.

✅ Do … keep your URLs short and sweet

Keep your URLs short and to the point – about 3-5 words if possible.

Why? Because there’s a clear correlation between shorter URLs and higher rankings.

On average, the URL from a site in the first position was 50 characters total, while the average for sites in the tenth position was over 62 characters, with a clear trend in between:

In practice, this means that your URL should just generally be your target keyword and maybe a modifier – nothing else.

⛔ Don’t … change your URL slugs ad hoc.

Once you choose your URL slug, it’s important not to change it carelessly in the future. If you change a URL without taking proper precautions, you’ll lose all your rankings for that page as well as the internal and external links that you’ve built to that page.

If you absolutely must change a URL, make sure to set up a 301 redirect to tell Google and visitors’ browsers that you’ve moved the page.

Site-wide optimizations for improved SEO

Finally, there are some general site-wide improvements/decisions that can improve your site’s on page SEO.

✅ Do … make sure your site loads wicked fast

Since 2018, your site’s speed is a ranking factor in both Google’s desktop and mobile results.

So if you don’t want all the other on page SEO techniques in this post to go to waste, you need to make sure your site loads fast. Or at least has respectable page load times, even if it’s not “wicked” fast.

Learning how to speed up your site requires a whole post of its own, so check out our full guide on how to speed up WordPress.

✅ Do … use an SEO plugin to help you remember everything

Finally, remembering all of these on page SEO techniques for each piece of content can be tough.

If you want some assistance to help you optimize your content’s on-page SEO, you can use a WordPress SEO plugin like Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO’s analysis feature will help you implement many of the tactics we’ve discussed in this post, like including your keyword in your SEO title, optimizing your keyword density, adding images and alt text, and more:

Yoast SEO on page SEO suggestions

Implement these on page SEO techniques today because On-page SEO is not enough to rank your site by itself. But if you implement these handful of on page SEO techniques we talked about above, you’ll set your content up with a strong foundation to rank in Google.

What Else Can be Done?

There is more, and of course it can get quite complicated for beginners to understand, thankfully there are plugins which can help Wordpress, (or ClassicPress) users get more mileage out of their SEO endevours!

SEO Booster

SEO Booster is a neat little Wordpress plugin which can save hours of painstaking SEO analysis – this is where your traffic comes from! Discover keywords that bring visitors, convert keywords in your content to internal or external links & Discover new backlinks to your site!

Some of the extra benefits include:

Automatic links: Enter keyword phrase and URL and instantly link keywords in your content to where you want
All backlinks are discovered and listed – Know who links to you and where
Create tags or categories from keywords and tag posts automatically
404 Error monitoring – discover errors on your site
Overview that SEO Analytics software won’t give you
ncluttered view of what brings traffic
Overview of where you should work to improve SEO
Discover keywords from 600+ keyword sources – Monitor more than just Google
Pro version has more powerful features

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on Wordpress Building Trends, and get your complete site building act together!

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Filed under: WordpressTagged with: seo techniques, wordpress seo

WordPress Building Trends For 2020

Posted on December 24, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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Are you keeping up with the latest web design trends in the WordPress World? Here I aim to show you some of the important design and technical features that are coming up in the next bit of the 21st century!

So, as you know, web design is continually evolving as more businesses compete to establish their brand online and stand out from a growing crowd of template-based websites.

In recent years, we’ve seen — and written about — many web design trends that have captured the collective imagination of web designers and brand-conscious businesses. Every website you click through seems to be influenced by web design styles like brutalism, minimalism, modern retro, modernism, art deco, material, modular, or security-focused design.

And what about using geometry in web design, rule-breaking typography, saturated colors, asymmetrical, broken, or slanted layouts, CSS Grids, video headers, parallax, cinemagraphs, customized illustrations, hand-drawn animations, microinteractions, and website push notifications?

While some web design trends focus on helping sites stand out from the crowd, other trends are borne out of functional or economic necessity, or even compliance. For example, think of mobile-based design or inclusive web design. It’s hard to imagine building sites today without mobile-friendly designs or taking accessibility into account, hence the advent of Googles Accelerated Mobile pages (AMP) of which there is something of a divided opinion in the Wordpress world, and Progressive Web Apps.

Website owners want great-looking sites that will deliver results. It should be no surprise, then, that the trends listed below incorporate aesthetic design with essential functionality.

WordPress Web Design Trends For 2020

Let’s start with the trend that I believe will dominate the world of WordPress web design, especially for self builders and many business site admins, not only in 2020 but for many years to come.

WordPress Design Starts Out Of The Blocks

WordPress Gutenberg block-based web design is the most important WordPress design trend you’ll need to pay attention to in 2020 and beyond.

During the latest State of The Word address delivered in November 2019 at the WordPress Camp US (WCUS) in St. Louis, Missouri, Matt Mullenweg (WordPress co-founder) made it clear that Gutenberg is the future of WordPress web design and web development. To appreciate the significance of Matt’s speech, you need to know that Gutenberg is the biggest change WordPress has made in its 16-year history.

Since the release of WordPress 5.0 on December 6, 2018, Gutenberg has had 20 new releases, the number of contributors has grown significantly (from 200 to over 480 in one year), and the adoption of the Gutenberg editor on WordPress sites has almost tripled.

Anyone designing or building WordPress sites today simply cannot afford to ignore just how serious WordPress is about its adoption push for Gutenberg.

WP 5.3 shows that WordPress is serious about Gutenberg

In the past year, Gutenberg developers have made significant enhancements to the editor (I cover some of these below) and decreased Gutenberg’s average time to load and average time to type. While not everyone has moved away from the WordPress Classic editor yet, and indeed, with the introduction of ClassicPress fork (a lightweight bloat free edition which retains the TinyMCE classic editor) more users are responding to the increase in Gutenberg’s post-loading speed by switching to the new editor. Matt announced during his address that over 270,000 posts per day are now being published using Gutenberg.

You can watch Matt’s full address in the video below:

(Matt’s entire presentation above was created and delivered using Gutenberg.)

So, how is Gutenberg going to affect WordPress web design in 2020?

For a start, Gutenberg will allow more users to start customizing their own sites, which is great for many business site admins and self builders alike.

Many of Gutenberg’s new features are already available with WordPress version 5.3. These features include user enhancements like:

- Smoother block movements as you drag elements on the page with motion settings for improved accessibility
- A ‘typewriter’ mode that keeps your vertical place as you type for a more pleasant writing experience
- Block previews that let users see what blocks will look like before selecting them
- Support for uploading large images such as high-resolution pics from your smartphone
- Faster block navigation mode for improved usability and accessibility
- The ability to customize navigation menus with elements like background and text colors using an inline navigation menu block

Gutenberg also features new blocks that let you group blocks together (Group block), add white space between blocks (Spacer block), and use custom gradients and multi-buttons on pages and posts

gutenberg-blocks-buttons-custom-gradients

A composite screenshot of Gutenberg Custom Gradients and Buttons Block.

During his talk, Matt also mentioned that one of the most sought after features users wanted from Gutenberg blocks was the ability to add social icons. Gutenberg’s Social Icons block will let users add social icons and buttons anywhere on their posts and pages. I expect different types of social media blocks will be made available for users to choose from.

As more contributors and developers are now focusing on Gutenberg as the way forward, WordPress also announced that it will launch a Block Directory that will allow users to search for and install blocks into their sites using an inline block directory. This includes blocks that will add entire collections to your site, like pattern libraries, for example.

You will be able to design pages on the fly using the Gutenberg block directory. With Gutenberg’s block directory, users will be able to design pages on the fly. This leads to our next WordPress web design trend for 2020.

One Theme To Rule Them All

WordPress theme developers take note: Gutenberg’s block-based capabilities will give users more freedom to design and customize their own posts and pages. Rather than focusing on developing purpose-specific themes (e.g. an eCommerce or blog-focused theme) that merely accommodate Gutenberg blocks, WordPress theme developers should rethink how to support this new freedom with multi-purpose themes that offer features for building all kinds of websites.

As Matt Mullenweg (WordPress co-founder) recently stated in the State of The Word WCUS:

“What we’re really trying to enable with these fundamental building blocks is that you can look at any website in the world and build that inside WordPress in just a few clicks.”

This represents both a challenge and an opportunity for WordPress theme designers. How do you build themes that users can transform into anything they want?

Let’s take a look at some theme designs that are attempting to do just that:

Neve

Neve by Themeisle.

Neve is a fast-loading, highly customizable, multi-purpose theme that can be used for all kinds of website projects. Although this theme has a minimalist design, it is highly extensible and works perfectly with Gutenberg as well as most page builders.

In addition to being WooCommerce ready, responsive, RTL enabled, and translation ready, this lightweight theme is also fully AMP optimized (see the next web design trend below to learn why this is important).

Genesis Framework

genesis-framework-breakthrough-pro

Breakthrough Pro is a WordPress theme built with the Genesis framework by StudioPress.
Genesis Framework developed by StudioPress (now part of WP Engine) aims to move beyond being merely Gutenberg-ready by releasing a number of themes enhanced to be specially optimized for Gutenberg.

Themes like Breakthrough Pro, for example, incorporate Gutenberg theme support for things like block color palettes, font sizes, editor width, and image sizes, custom styling and default Gutenberg block styles that work with the full range of available editor widths, and easy WYSIWYG editing that lets you build pages and posts using Gutenberg blocks with matching front end and admin styles.

Make Fast Sites Faster
Sites not only need to look good, but they also need to load faster. Especially on mobile sites.

Two growing trends to watch out for are Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps (PWA), as in the previous paragraphs.

AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) are essentially stripped-down HTML versions of your existing webpages designed for faster-loading speeds. Google caches and serves AMP content to make pages load instantaneously to users in its search results.

Themes like Neve, which I discussed earlier are AMP optimized, so no special configurations are required, which is good for self builders and non coders.

Progressive Web Application plugins for WordPress allow users to return to your site back to your website by launching the app from their home screen and interact with your website through an app-like interface.

Converting your WordPress website into a Progressive Web App allows users to return to your site by launching an app from their mobile phones and interact with your website through an app-like interface.

super-progressive-web-apps

You can use a plugin like Super PWA to turn your WordPress site into an app.

In a world where milliseconds can make a huge difference to whether visitors choose your site or click through to someone else’s and a one-second delay can decrease conversion rates by as much as 7%, WordPress sites that can load even faster than its competitors will keep attracting users’ eyeballs and winning clicks.

WordPress theme designers and web developers can stay ahead of this trend by developing mobile-friendly WordPress themes that won’t require the need of AMP at all and converting sites into PWAs.

Make Sites You Can Talk To

More users are searching online using their mobile devices and using voice search features. According to a voice search study by Backlinko, page speed plays a significant role in voice search SEO, where the average voice search result page loads in 4.6 seconds (52% faster than the average page).

You can add voice search capabilities to WordPress sites using plugins.

WP Fastest Site Search

WP Fastest Site Search not only lets you add voice search capabilities to WordPress sites, but it also replaces the standard WordPress search widget and adds other search enhancement features like autocomplete, spell correct, PDF search, and image search in addition to search filters and search results pages.

Adding voice search plugins to WordPress, however, is not enough. You will also need to learn how to optimize your WordPress site for voice search. Voice search optimization helps users find what they are looking for faster and this requires fast-loading, mobile-optimized sites. Also, it’s important to focus on areas like content readability to make sure that the site can answer readers’ questions.

Make Sites That Talk Back

Users not only expect to find and get what they are looking for faster online, but they also expect to get instant replies to their queries.

Just think about how ‘waiting’ has evolved for users online We have gone from drumming our fingers nervously on the table as we wait for email replies, to watching anxiously as animated dots on mobile screens tell us that someone is replying to our text messages. Technology has conditioned users to expect instant gratification and now we have to deliver.

The solution? AI chatbots

Tidio Live Chat

Tidio Live chat integrated with AI technologies allows businesses to respond and engage immediately with customers who land on their website. If someone is not available to respond live, AI scripts can take over to direct users appropriately and provide a feeling of instant support. Tidio also integrates with Facebook Messenger and comes with a separate portal to handle the calls/chats, multiple users for different departments and many other features.

Xhostcom also specialize in building custom built Automated AI Chat Agents using Avatars, Video Embedding, Auto-translation and complex logic like the spoof example below built for Sally Illingworth of Illingworth Media.

sallyillingworthbot1

View the full example at this link here and get in touch for more information!

Sometimes, all users need is to feel they’re loved, even if only by a caring little site bot!

More Ways To Grab Attention

Most users stick around a website for less than 15 seconds. That’s how long you’ve got to grab their attention. Integrating motion UI features such as animated elements and transitions into your web design can help grab your visitors’ attention as they enter or leave your site. The key here is to strike the right balance between grabbing their attention and then directing them to whatever it is they are searching for. If you don’t know how code to add motion to your website, start where most WordPress users star, with a plugin!

Animate It!

animateit-wordpress-plugin

Add animations to your content and grab your visitor’s attention. Animate it! lets you add CSS3 animations to content on posts widgets and pages when visitors enter, exit, scroll, or click on elements on your site.

Video Backgrounds

Video backgrounds are another way to add motion to your WordPress site. You can use the Gutenberg Cover Block to add a video background to your pages.

Cover blocks let you easily add video animation to WordPress
When adding videos and animations, just make sure that your site still loads fast. Install our Smush and Hummingbird plugins to help you with this.

Say Hello in Multiple Languages

While businesses aim to expand globally in areas like eCommerce and the internet keeps making the world a smaller place, more cultures around the world are trying to preserve their uniqueness. In 2020 and beyond, multilingual WordPress sites that allow users to view content in their own language are going to become more popular.

While WordPress itself currently does not support bilingual or multilingual sites out-of-the-box, it does support WordPress being translated into all languages. Also, there are plugins that will allow you to easily create a multilingual site.

WPML

wpml

WPML (WordPress Multilingual Plugin) lets you translate WordPress sites into many different languages and integrates with WooCommerce, allowing sites to interact with users in over 100 countries and languages. Other popular language translation plugins include Polylang, Weglot, and TranslatePress.

It’s important to note that for years, WordPress has been supporting developers that help improve its multilingual capabilities. WordPress is not looking to replace translation plugins or make multilingual WordPress a core offering but supports plugins that improve its multilingual capabilities.

Everyone Has A Say

Imagine being able to design and develop WordPress sites using real-time collaboration. Different departments would be able to give valuable input into specific areas of the site as it is being developed, resulting in better sites for users and development teams.

Although real-time collaboration in WordPress is not quite there yet, it is on its way. Leonardo Losovitz has written a great article on how Gutenberg is reinventing the experience of creating, editing, and managing content in WordPress and helping web designers assist users.

Gutenberg will soon make it possible to collaborate with other WordPress in real-time.

real-time-collaboration-gutenberg

Gutenberg is here to stay and will soon help WordPress users build sites collaboratively.

Start Designing Tomorrow’s WordPress Sites Today

As you can see from the above, Gutenberg is the most significant development to affect WordPress and will influence all future WordPress web design trends and developments. Ignore this at your own peril.

WordPress web design from 2020 will focus on sites that integrate design and functionality, load extremely fast, and cater to a growing mobile user base worldwide.

What About the Old Stuff?

So where does that leave people, bespoke theme builders, businesses and self builders who like to mix it up a little and prefer the old classic TinyMCE editor and maybe feel that there is too much bloat with all the “new fangled” technology surfacing? Well, that’s been catered for also!

ClassicPress

The new fork of Wordpress, ClassicPress, is a pared down bloat free version of Wordpress with absolutely no plugins and which retains the old TinyMCE editor is the perfect solution in this scenario, and enables theme builders to build a site completely from scratch if necessary, porting original HTML/PSD files etc to build up a theme. It can also of course be used with prebuilt themes, making it extremely flexible for use in many scenarios. Essentially it is a modern antithesis to the “new fangled” developments which can in fact use any of the above listed tools perfectly well, and Gutenberg if necessary also. It is also touted to be a lot faster than the Wordpress Gutenberg version, so if speed is an issue, this might be a tipping point for many. You can migrate your old Wordpress site to ClassicPress if it hits the right buttons for you!

At Xhostcom, as all our sites are custom built, most of the sites built now are actually using ClassicPress unless the customer dictates otherwise, which helps produce fast, easy to use sites for admins and site owners and we get to do what we do best and build awesome websites! If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on Best SEO Plugins for Wordpress newbies!

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Filed under: WordpressTagged with: design trends, wordpress building, wordpress design

5 Frequent Wordpress Errors & How To Fix Them

Posted on December 24, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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WordPress is a stable and secure platform, but that doesn’t mean you won’t encounter errors on your website from time to time. There are several common issues many users face that prevent their visitors from accessing content and carrying out key functions.

By learning about the most common WordPress errors and hiccups, you can prepare yourself to resolve them quickly. Getting your site back up and running fast will minimize any losses of traffic or revenue.
In this post, we’ll look at five of the most common types of errors that could show up on your WordPress site. We’ll also give you information on what to do if you encounter them. Let’s dive right in!

1. Plugin Conflicts

One of the best things about WordPress is how easy it is to customize your site’s functionality with plugins. Unfortunately, because these extensions, the platform itself, and its available themes are all created by many unique developers, they don’t always get along.
Plugin conflicts may result in many frustrating problems for your site, including:

Certain features not working. This is a little vague, but plugin conflicts aren’t always easy to diagnose. If part of your site is broken and you aren’t sure why, checking for incompatibilities is a standard troubleshooting best practice.
Timed Out Connections. An error reading “Connection timed out” may be an indication that there is a plugin conflict on your site.
A Call to Undefined Function. This means that a plugin on your site isn’t able to access code that it needs to work properly. Sometimes this is due to incompatibilities.
The White Screen of Death (WSoD). This error causes your site to appear as a blank white screen. It’s often the result of a plugin conflict.

The standard practice for dealing with these common WordPress errors is to switch to a default theme and deactivate all your plugins. Then, reactivate them one by one until the symptoms reappear. You’ll know that the most recently activated tool is the one causing the conflict.
If you’re locked out of your admin area, you can do this by connecting to your server via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) with an FTP Client such as FileZilla. Then, navigate to wp-content > plugins and rename each of the directories:

To reactivate your plugins, restore their original names. Once you’ve identified which tool is the source of the problem, it’s best to remove it.

The best way to run these tests is to use a staging site, which is an exact copy of your live WordPress site. Typically, hosting providers will provide staging sites for testing purposes.

2. Error Establishing a Database Connection

At some point or another, you may see an error message reading “Error Establishing a Database Connection” while trying to access your site’s back end:

This means that your website isn’t able to reach your database. Often, this is because the credentials listed in your wp-config.php file are incorrect.
To resolve this issue, first find your correct database credentials. Most web hosts will make them available somewhere in your account dashboard.
Then, connect to your server using FTP and locate wp-config.php:

Right-click on it and select View/Edit. Compare the information listed in the following lines of code with that you found in your web hosting account:

<br />
/** The name of the database for WordPress */<br />
define( ‘DB_NAME’, ‘database_name’ );</p>
<p>/** MySQL database username */<br />
define( ‘DB_USER’, ‘database_username’ );</p>
<p>/** MySQL database password */<br />
define( ‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘database_password’ );

/** The name of the database for WordPress */define( ‘DB_NAME’, ‘database_name’ ); /** MySQL database username */define( ‘DB_USER’, ‘database_username’ ); /** MySQL database password */define( ‘DB_PASSWORD’, ‘database_password’ );

If there are differences, make the necessary edits and re-upload the file to your server. In the event that the credentials in the file are correct, you’ll want to contact your hosting provider to determine if the problem lies with your server.

Whenever you’re making changes to a file such as wp-config.php, it’s always recommended to keep a backup of the original file on your desktop. Should something go wrong when you upload the updated file, such as not noticing there might have been a typo, you can quickly restore the original version in the same way while you figure out the exact cause of the problem.

3. 404: Page Not Found

As a user, being met with a 404: Page Not Found error is both disappointing and frustrating:

Ooops!

For site owners, this error means that visitors aren’t getting to your content. That’s a missed opportunity for a conversion.
There are a few situations that may lead to visitors running into your 404 page:

There are broken links on your site. This means that a user has attempted to navigate through your site via internal links, but was directed to a non-existent URL.
Outside sources include broken links to your site. Other websites may also have links that are supposed to point towards your site, but have become broken or were written incorrectly.
Your Pretty Permalinks settings are incorrect. This occurs most often when you’re using WordPress Multisite or Custom Post Types.

To find and fix broken links on your own site, you might consider a tool such as Broken Link Checker:

This plugin detects links on your site that aren’t working and notifies you in your dashboard and by email.
Dealing with external broken links is a little trickier. One way to find them is with SEMRush’s Site Audit Tool which you can try out free at this link, just sign up and get started!

This will highlight broken internal and external links. You can then reach out to the owners of the sites containing them and ask to replace these paths with working ones.
If you believe the source of the problem is your Pretty Permalinks, you can usually fix this by navigating to Settings > Permalinks in WordPress and selecting the Plain option:

4. WordPress Is Stuck in Maintenance Mode

Whenever you run an update on your WordPress site, it automatically goes into ‘maintenance mode’. Any visitors who attempt to access your site during this time will receive a message that your site is “unavailable for scheduled maintenance”:

Once the update is complete, everything should go back to normal. Unfortunately, sometimes WordPress gets stuck in maintenance mode, making your site unavailable to users for an extended period of time.
The solution to this error is fortunately relatively simple. Connect to your server using FTP, and look for a file named .maintenance:

Delete it, then return to your site. Everything should be back in working order.

5. Incorrect File Permissions

‘File permissions’ refer to a native security feature of WordPress. Based on your user role, you’re allowed to perform certain actions on your site, such as installing plugins or updating content. This prevents other users or hackers from making unauthorized changes.
However, sometimes your file permissions can be set incorrectly, preventing you from making administrator-level changes. This can result in several different issues. In some situations, you may see a message that reads “Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page”:

Other times, incorrect file permissions may prevent you from:

Installing or updating themes and plugins
Moving posts or pages to the trash
Uploading files to your Media Library

The best way to put your permission back in order is by using FTP. Once you connect to your server, select wp-admin, wp-includes, and wp-content. Right-click on them, then select File permissions:

In the resulting window, set the Numeric Value to 755. Select recurse into subdirectories and apply to directories only. Repeat this process, but set the Numeric Value to 644 and select recurse into subdirectories and apply to files only:

Then, select the rest of the files in public_html. Right-click on them and select File permissions once more. The Numeric Value should again be 644, but there’s no need to worry about the other settings.

So, that’s a quick look at 5 of the most prevalent errors with Wordpress, if you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on SEO Blunders and how to avoid them!

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Filed under: WordpressTagged with: errors, ftp errors, wordpress errors

12 Best Church & Religious WordPress Themes

Posted on December 22, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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At this seasonal time, people may be considering a Church themed website for their evangelical organization. Your church website will serve many functions. It’ll showcase your church location and upcoming events. It’ll highlight your latest sermons for later access. It’ll let you blog about recent community projects. It’ll give your visitors a way to donate, become members, attend conferences & events and much more.

With WordPress powering your site, you’ll have hundreds of different high-quality themes to choose between.

So, if you are creating a new church website, or building one from scratch, this post has you covered. No matter what type of features you want your church website to have, you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for in the themes below.

Browse through the list below, and you might find the perfect WordPress theme for your church website.

Maranatha

Maranatha is a clean and simple WordPress theme that’s built for churches. The first thing you’ll notice about this theme is it gives off a relaxed feeling with the full-screen image or video header.

Your visitors will enjoy navigating the site via the one-page scrolling Parallax effect.

There are a variety of sermon management features that’ll allow you to upload sermons via PDF, video, audio, and standard text. You also have five different ways to organize your sermons, so your visitors can find the exact thing they’re looking for.

Key features:

Built-in events calendar
Church blog
Map with church locations
Ministries section
Support for multiple media formats

View Theme

Church

Church is an absolutely stunning WordPress church theme. It’s highly flexible, and there’s a nearly endless amount of layout options. There’s also a full-width homepage slider so that you can highlight the latest happenings in your church.

You can choose between four different predefined skins for quick site building, then customize your site further with the 30 different page layouts.

There are all kinds of advanced features like a Parallax page builder, and CSS animations, and more.

Key features:

Sermon post types
Massive video tutorial library
WooCommerce integration
SEO-friendly
Fast-loading theme

View Theme

Benevolence

Benevolence is a feature-packed church theme that can support content-heavy websites. Churches looking for a simple one-page theme might want to look elsewhere.

But, those who have a lot of content, categories, events, and more will love what this theme offers.

Beyond the premium design, it’s equipped with advanced features like the ability to accept donations, highlight upcoming events, sell products, showcase the latest news, and more.

Key features:

WooCommerce integration
Fast loading speeds right out of the box
Church team profiles
Support for Google Calendar
Built using the latest web technologies, HTML5 and CSS3
11 different custom post types

View Theme

Outreach Pro

Outreach Pro is a church theme developed by the experts at StudioPress, which is now owned by WP Engine. Like most StudioPress themes, you’re getting a fast, modern, and feature-rich theme.

With this theme, you can quickly customize things like the fonts, colors, and page layouts via the built-in customizer.

There are also plenty of widgetized areas so that you can create custom content sections.
You can actually get all Studiopress’s themes FREE if you have a WP Engine hosting plan, or just purchase them individually.

Key features:

Full-width homepage slider
Fully responsive and mobile-friendly
Support for popular event management plugins
Ability to embed audio and video from your sermons

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Exodus

Exodus is a flexible and minimalist theme that offers a spacious design. You have a full-width slider where you can showcase your latest events and news. Plus, multiple different content sections specifically built for churches.

For example, you have sections where you can add church staff profiles, ministries, upcoming events, past sermons, photos, and even donations. Plus, the theme is built for beginners and very easy to customize.

Key features:

Incredible mobile-optimization
Support for multiple media formats, including podcasts
Great staff profiles section
Easy to customize via the WordPress theme customizer

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Salvation

Salvation is a warm and welcoming church theme created by MyThemeShop. The unique full-width slider will help your church stand out. Plus, you can customize the slider to send visitors to your most recent articles or sermons.

Beyond the slider, you’ll find a ton of other church-specific features like event management, donations, and audio formats for sermons.

You can customize your site with the drag and drop builder, so there’s no programming experience necessary.

Key features:

Support for multiple languages
Parallax style homepage
Multiple image galleries
PayPal integration for donations
Access to over 600 Google fonts

View Theme

One Church

One Church is a modern church theme with great typography by UpThemes. Right out of the box, you’ll be able to choose between 12 different color schemes to match your church aesthetic and even integrate Typekit fonts.

There are a variety of content types specifically for churches including, media-rich sermons, church location listings, maps and directions, staff profiles, and more.

This theme is also integrated with the popular Beaver Builder plugin, so you create your site via a drag and drop builder.

Key features:

Full multimedia support
SEO-friendly
Full-width customizable header
Integrate with Soundcloud, Spotify, YouTube, and Vimeo
Complete control over website layout

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Evangelist

Evangelist is a modern and organized WordPress theme by Themefuse. As you’ll notice from the homepage slider, it places a focus on showcasing your upcoming events.

This theme is straightforward to use. It comes stock with features like a customizable homepage slider, an events calendar, a gospel resource section, as well as multiple different layouts and backgrounds to choose from.

With multiple page layouts to choose from, you can build out your site in no time.

Key features:

An easy to use admin panel
Responsive and mobile-friendly
Resources section for church educational materials
The theme is SEO-optimized and retina-ready

View Theme

Renew

Renew is an incredibly versatile church theme by Mint Themes. It’s equipped with over 20 different page layouts that you can use to give your church website a unique look.

The overall design incorporates bold text and plenty of whitespace. It does a great job of helping you organize all of your church content. For example, there’s a ministries page, sermons page, donations page, and more.

You can quickly build out your site by importing the demo content and customizing it with the page builder.

Key features:

Bundled events manager
Page builder included
Support for donations
Sermon manager with multiple-media support

View Theme

Native Church

Native Church is a feature-rich church theme built upon the Twitter Bootstrap framework by ImitThemes. This means it’s fully responsive and will look good on any screen size.

Right away, you’ll notice the elegant full-screen slider you can use to highlight recent events. There’s also a mega menu you can customize to organize your website easily.

Plus, there are additional features like a bundled events manager plugin, an integrated sermon manager, and the ability to enable donations.

Key features:

Ten different predefined color schemes
Unique prayer wall feature
Drag and drop page builder
Revolution slider included
WooCommerce and donation integration

View Theme

Real Church

Real Church is a feature-packed WordPress theme by Goodlayers. Whatever you’re trying to accomplish with your church website, this theme will help you do it.

Right out of the gate, it’s equipped with features like a full-width slider to draw your visitors in, along with multiple-church-specific content sections.

For example, this theme supports audio and video sermons, as well as transcripts and PDFs. There are also several different post types including, events, sermons, image gallery, pastor, and more.

Key features:

A drag and drop builder to quickly create your church website
Google map integration for church location and events
An events management tool
Access to over 450 different fonts

View Theme

Dunamis

Dunamis is a modern church theme equipped with advanced-level functionality by Netlabs. You can build out your theme via the included drag and drop builder, so no programming experience is required.

The homepage consists of a large full-width slider, a mega-menu to organize all your content, and multiple church-specific content types.

You’ll also find an integrated events manager and a sliding scale donations tool.

Key features:

Quick and easy parallax design
An easy-to-use admin panel
A massive tutorial library
Included demo content for speedy site setup

View Theme

Conclusion

By now, you should have a handful of church themes you might be thinking of using for your new website.

All you need now is a high-quality WordPress host to handle all your traffic. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on using ClassicPress, the recent lightweight bloat free fork of Wordpress, with the new theme!

Do you have any favorite WordPress church themes that weren’t mentioned above? Please share your favorites in the comments below.

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Filed under: WordpressTagged with: church themes, religious themes, religious wordpress themes

20 Best Bootstrap WordPress Themes

Posted on December 22, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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As many of you may be aware, Bootstrap is a free front-end framework that consists of tools for creating websites and web applications. It contains HTML and CSS-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation, and other interface components, as well as optional JavaScript extensions for navigation, slider, transitions, scroll spy, tabs, alerts and much more.

Bootstrap initially was developed by Mark Otto (@mdo) and Jacob Thornton (@fat) at Twitter as a framework to encourage consistency across internal tools. Now it is open source and is the most popular GitHub development project. Twitter’s no longer associated with Bootstrap since its update to version 2.0.

The use of Bootstrap amongst websites has grown exponentially since its days of inception, and by date, over millions of websites use it, which makes Bootstrap the most popular front-end framework. Web designers know how valuable Bootstrap technology helps in creating eye-catching yet responsive websites based on HTML, CSS, and the extensions of JavaScript. Bootstrap makes front-end web development quicker and painless, especially for beginners.

WP Bootstrap 4 is the ideal starting theme for WordPress bloggers. Version 4.0 is the latest version and uses a powerful mobile-first flexbox grid to build layouts of all shapes and sizes. It’s fast, lightweight, and has full Bootstrap 4 integration. This also means that this theme is mobile responsive, and optimized for SEO standards. On top of that, the theme has had a thorough audit performed by the WP.org team to ensure top-notch quality.

I am a huge fan of this framework although I also use others like UIKit, Susy, Milligram and Bulma (strangely, I don’t like Materialize!) and most developers are familiar with its ease of use and flexibility. Hopefully, you can find it useful as well in combination with WordPress or any other blogging or CMS platform. I’ve looked into the quality of design, the layout, variety, and performance of the themes before adding it to this list. I’m sure these are the best Bootstrap WordPress themes that can take your site to the next level and a recommended starting point for newbies to Wordpress site building.

At the end, I’ve also added on the Avivo VueJS Wordpress Bootstrap theme I built using Gridsome site generator for VueJS, just in case anyone wants to make a foray in to Vue JS/Wordpress (or other backends) hybrids, and which should get you off to a good start, quicker than using just Gridsome on its own. Instructions for that are within the Github download archive Readme.

Kallyas

Kallyas WordPress Theme

KALLYAS is a Bootstrap WordPress theme with a completely flexible, responsive, and mobile-ready layout. It is a multi-concept web design with over twenty main samples and loads more internal page styles. Crafting a modern website does not require much work and effort. KALLYAS has all the required contents predefined for you to put into play out of the box.

Due to the versatility of KALLYAS, you now have a complete resource of web development material for making pages of all styles. From business and blog to online resume and eCommerce, KALLYAS handles them all with ease and comfort. KALLYAS is also lightning fast, fully optimized for search engines, and perfectly in tune with modern web browsers.

GutenX

Gutenx WordPress Theme

Starting on the web is not too big of a deal anymore. With a solid Bootstrap WordPress theme, you can start your online project quickly. If you are interested in launching a blog, do it with GutenX. GutenX is a Gutenberg-friendly tool – hence the name. Moreover, it is also optimized for fast loading speed and SEO. Of course, GutenX also does not miss a completely responsive layout, which just happens to be browser compatible and retina-ready.

All sorts of different layouts await every GutenX user. That said, you have many different combinations that will get you going quicker than you first thought. Additionally, GutenX has all sorts of different header styles, thirteen types of featured posts, sticky menu, and Contact Form 7. You can start sharing your story today and create a strong impact on everyone.

Porto

Porto WordPress Theme

The Porto theme is exceptionally flexible, loaded with amazing customization options for your website. This neat and stylish theme is also built with HTML5 and CSS3 and implements the incredible responsive framework from Bootstrap to be fully responsive and mobile-friendly. Moreover, it gives great support for WooCommerce with all the tools necessary for putting up an online store.

Porto’s versatile design would work well for any kind of business, online store, portfolio, and blog site. With built-in SEO enhancements, Porto is ready to assist your website in climbing the ranks of all the relevant searches.

RAMS

RAMS WordPress Theme

RAMS is a minimalist WordPress theme, which stands out for its exquisite and elegant design. This innovative portfolio theme is ideal for artists, freelancers, and creative agencies who would like to showcase their work online. This theme will certainly save you a lot of time building an outstanding and flexible website.

Additionally, the creators built RAMS’s rock-solid framework using Bootstrap 4 technology. Its fully responsive theme is designed to resize smoothly on different screen sizes and look sharp and clear on high-resolution displays. This flat theme offers unlimited customization possibilities thanks to Visual Live Composer packaged in this theme. It is also WPML ready to help you build a multilingual website.

Bootstrap News

Bootstrap News WordPress Theme

Bootstrap News is a WordPress theme that specialized itself in the media, news, and magazines. It is also the perfect set up to get a digital version of any storytelling writing. You will get awesome content pages, including blogs and contact.

Additionally, Bootstrap News provides a recent post section and separates stories in 4 aspects. These are world news, latest news, editorial, and events. Bootstrap News comes with a cool topbar and a footer that includes social media icons and a header. With this one, you get to put your “front pages on the spot”. Just try out for yourself and get convinced.

Medicol

Medicol WordPress Theme

Medicol is a medical WordPress theme for hospitals, clinics, pharmacy, doctors, surgeons, general physicians, and similar to its kind. This WordPress theme with Bootstrap is compatible with the Elementor Page Builder Plugin. This lets you create a page with its drag and drop functionality. No need to write a single line of coding. Besides that, it contains features like advanced theme panel, call to action, call out section, custom widgets, etc. These features enable you to create a powerful medical website that grabs the attention of any visitors. Medicol is 100% mobile-ready, flexible, cross-browser compatible, and retina-ready.

Kalium

Kalium WordPress Theme

Kalium is a well-thought-out, meticulously handcrafted, exceedingly technologically advanced, and boundlessly creative WordPress multipurpose responsive theme. This powerful theme was created towards creative professionals and businesses—from architectural firms and graphic design studios to freelance photographers, travel journalists, and many similarly creative fields. It’s incredibly powerful when deployed upon websites that must be both entirely professional and inherently innovative.

Kalium is built using the latest and greatest web technological developments. Also, with extensive HTML5 coding and CSS3 styling that produces gorgeous, elegant, and efficiently loading websites. It seamlessly produces impressive pages without any additional coding.

Iziclass

Iziclass WordPress Theme

Iziclass is a colorful and responsive WordPress kindergarten and preschool website theme. This theme is a perfect theme for making child-related websites in a matter of seconds. With Iziclass, you don’t need to write a line of coding to get awesome results. Feature-rich and versatile, Iziclass makes website design simple and fast. The WP Customizer and Rapid Composer allow you to make your website your own with speed and ease.

Iziclass is an easy to approach framework for webmasters from any background. You can reach users on any device and browser with responsive Bootstrap technology. Check out Iziclass today, and let them come.

Bootstrap Lightpress

Lightpress WordPress Theme

Bootstrap Lightpress is a WordPress theme with Bootstrap which you can utilize for building remarkable and eye-catchy personal blogs. It has a 100% responsive and cross-browser compatible layout that works on all devices like a dream. Even when it comes to retina screens, Bootstrap Lightpress makes sure to deliver all the content stunningly all the time.

Additionally, Bootstrap Lightpress is also optimized for search engines and speed. You can now start your project in close to no time, as well as with as little work and energy as possible.

Some of the features of Bootstrap Lightpress are masonry grid, three layouts, profile menu, and back to top button. You will not even want to change the default setting much due to the fact of how pretty, clean, and modern it is.

MediaTel

MediaTel WordPress Theme

Mediatel is a visually aesthetic WordPress theme designed to show video content. It is completely responsive with not only browsers but devices and screens. Also, you will get it with retina ready image quality and an impressive customizer.

You will get compatibility for YouTube, Vimeo, and more. Mediatel has special features such as automatic video thumbnails and video tabs. Some of these work for categories like most popular and recent posts. You will have full decision and liberty on which posts to display. Social media connection for Facebook and Instagram is also provided. Mediatel is also a perfect theme for online streaming, news channels, or online magazines.

WPLMS

WPMLS WordPress Theme

One of the most reliable WordPress education themes, WPLMS offers a unique product. You can also use this theme for school and university websites. The developers constructed this theme using the Bootstrap framework, resulting in an excellent experience for customers and developers alike. WPLMS Education WordPress theme is very powerful, yet it remains extremely user-friendly. Additionally, you don’t need a large amount of programming knowledge to your job done. Surely, this theme is sure to surpass all expectations. Also, it includes Courses, Events, Galleries, a Slider builder, and an expansive library of content. Also, it incorporates useful shortcodes and widgets.

Kokit

KoKit WordPress Theme

There’s no better way of effectively marketing your brand than to have the best digital agency website. Here’s Kokit, one of the finest digital agency WordPress themes you ought to evaluate for your business. It’s a powerful theme built using Bootstrap framework along with WordPress plugins.

Moreover, Kokit also integrates free yet powerful plugins. One that’s worth mentioning is the WooCommerce. It allows you to create a fully functional shop within your website, so selling just about anything is possible.

NewStore

NewStore WordPress Theme

NewStore gives you all the needed tools and components to craft an online store that follows all the latest web trends. It is one of the best eCommerce WordPress themes with a super minimal touch to it. There is no right or wrong answer where you can use NewStore. It could be furniture, apparel, jewelry, bags, shoes, whatever, NewStore is ready for all the challenges you may have for it. With this powerful WordPress theme, you are safe and secure with the establishment of a first-class web store.

Ablogia

Albogia WordPress Theme

If you are looking for a simple and beautiful modern design for your blog, Ablogia is a good option for you. The theme offers you custom header images and logo upload options to make the header section look attractive.

It’s a minimal design to make sure your users have a great experience on your blog and can read your content without any distractions. It can be a really good option for any personal blog or news magazine kind of website.

It’s a clean, minimal, and SEO friendly design that will make sure your content gets much better rankings in Google search results.

Eduma

Eduma WordPress Theme

If you want to create an excellent website that is dedicated to learning, this theme can be your greatest ally. It is surely one of the best education WordPress themes you can currently find on the market. Eduma has a streamlined, practical design that is sure to attract many readers. No coding knowledge is required, and there is no need to hire web development experts.

This Education WordPress theme also incorporates a large roster of premium features, which were added free of charge. Eager students can access the content from their smartphones, tablets, laptops, or desktop computers. As long as it has a screen and an internet connection, it will be compatible with your education website.

Artis

Artis WordPress Theme

Artis is a WordPress theme designed for creative individuals and professionals. The theme is packed with an abundance of demo websites curated for different niches and couples in unique portfolio styles, over thirty portfolio types, extensive customization options, adaptive images for better viewing on smaller devices, an immersive e-commerce experience with the minimal design and much more.

With the inclusion of most of the popular plugins like Visual Composer, Revolution Slider, and LayerSlider, you can rest assured that you will be getting great features with the theme. Again as mentioned, WooCommerce is also seamlessly integrated into the experience along with handy product layouts, Ajax Mini Cart, and eye-catching hover effects.

Blogora

Blogora WordPress Theme

Blogora Theme is a Bootstrap WordPress theme which you can utilize for building remarkable and eye-catchy personal blogs. It has a 100% responsive and cross-browser compatible layout that works on all devices like a dream. Blogora Theme is also optimized for search engines and speed. You can now start your project in close to no time, as well as with as little work and energy as possible.

Some of the features of Blogora Theme are masonry grid, three layouts, profile menu, and back to top button. You will not even want to change the default setting much due to the fact of how pretty, clean, and modern it is. Waste no more time, choose Blogora Theme, and have a page up and running right away.

Gourmet

Gourmet WordPress Theme

Gourmet Restaurant & Cafe WordPress Theme is a sophisticated and innovative website template that you can use for crafting different websites such as restaurant, cafeteria, corporate, business, personal, photography, and even portfolio.

This theme has a one-click demo installer to set it all up. The creators also made this theme with a sleek and easy-to-customize framework and built it on the latest Bootstrap. That way, you can effortlessly build responsive, translation-ready and mobile-ready websites. Additionally, this theme is responsive and looks amazing on any type of device, from desktop, tablets to mobile phones.

Kleo

Kleo WordPress Theme

Kleo is keeping its rich standard on an all-time high for you to make the most out of it when building a job board and freelance services web platform. It only shows that this Bootstrap social network template is the best one out there. Kleo provides flexibility, convenience, and functionality in creating the ultimate online marketplace for job seekers and other creative individuals. Kleo is fun to craft and has tons of documentation and theme supports. Social media’s fully integrated to get clients/followers. Special elements include calendars, a skin editor, and unlimited color options. Featured on the site are unlimited headers and video backgrounds.

Avivo Vue Wordpress Bootstrap

Avivo is a Vue JS/Wordpress Hybrid theme I built using Bootstrap, Bootstrap-Vue, SASS and a couple of other goodies, with the Gridsome site generator for VueJS. Whilst it is configured to use a Wordpress Rest API back end, it can easily be adjusted for other back end frameworks such as Contentful, Drupal, Sanity, Storyblok, Cosmic JS and many others, and is SASS/SCSS enabled. You can check out the live demo here, and download the source files from Github. You will need Node and Gridsome installed on your computer, but otherwise all the instructions are there, along with the test Wordpress Rest API if you dont have one.

Conclusion

No doubt, there are many benefits of using the Bootstrap WordPress themes. First and foremost, you don’t have to hire designers. Hence, it saves a lot of money as well as designing efforts. WordPress Bootstrap themes also save your time that you had to invest in writing pages long designing codes.

Moreover, it speeds up your fresh website development task as it comprises of ready-made coding blocks. It allows creating a prototype of a website quickly and efficiently. Also, it provides a large variety of scripts. And, writing media queries will no longer be a headache.

Furthermore, this responsive grid-based framework assists both amateurs as well as professionals. Likewise, it offers you flexibility for customizing the elements in your theme.

This has been my list of some of the best Bootstrap WordPress themes currently available on the market. If you are going for a WordPress theme as a beginner, it’s better to go for a WordPress theme with Bootstrap because they are more flexible, customizable, attractive, and user-friendly.

I have collected probably some of the best Bootstrap themes available in this post so don’t forget to bookmark this collection!

Use them and let me know about your experience in the comments.

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on ClassicPress, the lightweight bloat free fork of Wordpress which you can also use the above themes with if required!

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Filed under: Trends, WordpressTagged with: bootstrap, bootstrap themes, wordpress themes

10 Free MailChimp WordPress Plugins

Posted on December 20, 2019
By Paul Anthony McGowan
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Many site owners consider their email lists as the most important assets they own. Even if you wouldn’t go quite to that extent, as a savvy site owner, you know that the money is in the list. In other words, the more high quality email subscribers you have, the greater an income you can generate through your online business – and these free MailChimp WordPress plugins are a great place to start.

There are a number of great email subscription providers available online, but this post will focus on MailChimp – a widely used email marketing tool with solid features to help build, grow, and maintain a mailing list for your site. It’s free for lists up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month; beyond that, MailChimp offers subscription plans that grow with your business.

Setup is easy and with a WordPress website, activating MailChimp plugins can increase the number of email opt-ins received daily. With that in mind, in this article we’ve listed the best free WordPress MailChimp plugins that will enable you to grow your email list. Let’s get cracking!

1. MailOptin Popup with MailChimp Integration

First up, MailOptin is a lead generation plugin that integrates seamlessly with MailChimp. The free Lite version of the plugin offers you tons of options to convince readers to signup for your MailChimp powered newsletter. Add a popup, sidebar widget or a before/after post style form. Or you can even target specific posts and pages with the page level targeting.

With MailOptin there is a a built-in campaign builder that makes it easy to create your optin forms. Choose your design, customize the headline, add fields and of course select an email provider and list. You can also choose a form completion action, such as close form and reload page or redirect to a custom URL

Or you can upgrade to MailOptin premium plan to add lead generation features, email automation and even newsletters. With these premium options you can A/B split test you signup forms, add notification bar or slide in layouts, detect ad-blockers, choose from 30+ CSS3 animations, create an autoresponder for new signups and tons more. It’s a solid investment if your newsletter is a big part of your marketing strategy.

2. MailChimp for WordPress

MailChimp for WordPress is a free plugin created by ibericode. Once you activate the plugin and grab your API key from MailChimp, your MailChimp data will be available within the plugin’s settings screen. I find this convenient because there’s a table for each email list that includes all of the fields and even the number of subscribers in each group. With this information, you can determine how many fields you want to include in your opt-in form.

This plugin gives you multiple display options. For example, with the top bar opt-in form, you select your email list from a dropdown menu, and then customize it. The bar, button, and email placeholder text can all be filled in with your copy. You can also position the bar on the top or bottom of the page, change its color, and specify the button and text color – all wonderful tools to help you stick with your blog’s color scheme. Alter the look and feel of the sign up box further with the premium version.

Larger opt-in forms can be placed anywhere using shortcodes. Redirect URL options are available, enabling you to point new subscribers to the “Opt-in Success” page of your choosing.

Finally, MailChimp for WordPress also offers checkbox settings. Visitors who leave a comment or register to your website can also opt in to your email list by ticking a box.

3. MailChimp Forms by MailMunch

What I love about MailChimp Forms by MailMunch is that you have a little more freedom customizing opt-in forms without upgrading to their premium plan. This plugin easily syncs with your MailChimp account, and you can create as many forms as you want. So if you offer content upgrades with each blog post, you could create a separate form for each one if you wanted to. This plugin offers five form types: popover, embedded, top bar, scroll box, and sidebar. You can also choose whether you want this form to pop in on page load and/or exit. If you don’t want frequent visitors annoyed by popup forms, simply alter the frequency of showing this form to the same visitor.

Regardless of which form type you choose, you can selectively publish it using display rules. MailMunch enables you to display forms on specific URLS within your website. This plugin offers lots of options; the only caveat is that if you want to conduct A/B tests, you’d need to upgrade to one of their paid plans.

4. MailChimp Forms by Optin Cat

Another free WordPress MailChimp plugin is MailChimp Forms by Optin Cat. With this plugin you can incorporate embedded forms, popups, and sidebar widgets into your web pages. You can also adjust the frequency of each popup’s visibility and redirect new subscribers to any page on your website after sign up.

Their analytics feature comes standard with the free version of their plugin, but customization options are somewhat limited unless you upgrade your account. Change button, border, and text colors with all three form types. With MailChimp Forms by Optin Cat, you can create an unlimited number of forms for promotions, content upgrades, e-courses, or another creative need making it one of our favorite free MailChimp WordPress plugins.

5. Easy Forms for MailChimp

It took more time to get acclimated to Easy Forms for MailChimp by Yikes, but they did record a video tutorial to help with initial setup.

After connecting your MailChimp API, associate any of your email lists with a new signup form. They can be embedded in pages, posts, or widget areas using shortcode. An alternative approach is to enter into a new or existing post or page, click the Easy Forms icon, and then select which opt-in form you’d like to display. See the example below:

Site visitors can opt in to your email list when leaving a comment or registering for your website with this plugin as well. Account settings display the number of new subscribers, unsubscribes, and average subscription rate.

This is the least customizable plugin we’ve covered in this post thus far but if it fits your needs, it’s worth a try. With over 20,000 active installs and frequent updates, this plugin has worked for many and might be a good fit for your website.

6. MailChimp User Sync

If you allow users to register on your WordPress site, you may want to capture their email addresses and other key information at the same time. This makes it possible to add them to an email list and target them with content and promotions. If you plan to market to user email addresses in this manner, the MailChimp User Sync plugin may be just what you need.

This plugin synchronizes your list of registered WordPress users with any email list you choose in MailChimp. That way, you won’t have to manually copy each new user’s information from one platform to the other. This is perfect for A/B Testing, as well as for targeting specific audiences. MailChimp User Sync also enables you to automatically subscribe new users, sync any changes they make to their profiles (including their email addresses), and even remove contacts from your email list if their WordPress accounts are deleted for any reason. This saves you a lot of time and effort, and keeps your subscription list up-to-date at all times. The plugin is free, although you will need to install the MailChimp for WordPress plugin first. Fortunately, that plugin won’t cost you anything either (it’s mentioned earlier on our list of free MailChimp WordPress plugins), although it does offer a premium version.

7. MailChimp Top Bar

Unlike some of the options we’ve covered, which are more comprehensive in nature, the MailChimp Top Bar plugin has a very specific purpose. It will add a customizable sign-up bar at the top or bottom of your site, so your subscription CTA is more visible and prominent to users. Instead of hiding your sign-up form away in a sidebar or on a contact page, this tool gets it in front of visitors as soon as possible.

What’s more, the sign-up bar includes a variety of options and is easy to customize. You can edit the text, colors, and locations, and even use code to add in extra fields. What’s more, you can pre-select what list people who interact with the bar will be subscribed to, in case you have more than one.

The opt-in bar is easy to install and set up. You simply choose a list, and you’re good to go. Alternately, you can edit the text and colors so they match your branding, or use contrasting colors so this crucial CTA stands out. On the front end, the bar is simple and unobtrusive, and visitors are able to dismiss it if they’d like. Finally, it’s worth noting that as with MailChimp User Sync, you will need to install MailChimp for WordPress before adding this plugin.

8. Contact Form 7 MailChimp Extension

If you haven’t tried Contact Form 7 yet, it’s a WordPress plugin well worth checking out. This popular tool makes it easy to create and customize forms of all kinds, then add them to your site. If you are using this plugin alongside MailChimp, then you may want to add Contact Form 7 MailChimp Extension to the list.

This plugin enables you to capture email addresses in your Contact 7 Forms, and add them to your chosen MailChimp list automatically. This technique lets you create highly customized forms, add them to your site, and then integrate them with your email marketing campaigns. Since it supports multiple mailing lists, you can seamlessly use a different one for each form, which means you can create targeted CTAs and build segmented lists.

Aside from being easy to use, this extension is highly customizable. You can choose whether or not to send a confirmation email to subscribers, include an opt-in checkbox, and add in custom fields. Plus, the plugin is constantly updated and includes email support through the MailChimp Extension developer. To use it, you will need to have Contact Form 7 installed first.

9. WooCommerce MailChimp

Next up, we have another integration tool. If you’ve spent much time in the WordPress community, there’s no doubt you’ve heard of WooCommerce. It’s the most popular tool for adding an e-commerce store you your website. Of course, if you run a storefront you’ll probably want to add your customers to an email list for marketing products.

WooCommerce MailChimp enables your WooCommerce customers to subscribe to your marketing list right from your website. You have the option to capture this information in one of three ways: after an order has been created, once it has been processed, or after it’s completed. This is a great way to gather emails from an already engaged audience and use them in your campaigns. The plugin also provides several consent options, to keep you compliant with international opt-in laws.

There is a caveat with this plugin that’s worth mentioning. While the overall ratings are high, and it boasts more than twenty thousand active installations, the latest reviews are somewhat mixed. Many users love it, but some have expressed issues with getting it to work correctly. We recommend that you test this plugin fully on a staging site, to see if it suits your needs before you commit to using it.

10. N-Media MailChimp Subscription

Finally, the N-Media MailChimp Subscription plugin is all about enabling you to customize your subscription lists for maximum effect. It pulls all of your MailChimp lists from your account, and lets you create targeted forms based on list variables and interest groups.

What makes this plugin really stand out, however, is how customizable it is. Not only does it include a visual form designer, but you can also create your styling using CSS if you’re so inclined. N-Media MailChimp Subscription also enables you to build unlimited forms using its handy wizard tool, and create popups for your opt-ins.

This plugin doesn’t have as many active users as some of the others discussed on this list, but it boasts positive reviews and is a tool well worth checking out. As with any plugin, give it a test to see if it suits your needs before you deploy it to your live site. While the base plugin is free, you may also be interested to know that the developers do offer a premium version.

Free MailChimp WordPress plugins are a great way to increase email opt-ins on your website. Along with useful content, any one of these plugins can support your mission to build your blog into a business.

If you haven’t already, sign up for a MailChimp account, create a list, and then download and activate one of the plugins above that best fits your needs. It may take some time to determine the best form type, placement, and design that’ll work for your website, but that’s part of the process. Over time, you’ll get an idea of your site visitors’ preferences.

Of course there are many other Email Optin providers, such as Mailster, MailerLite, MailPoet, OptinMonster, SendingBlue, and CRM based ones like Hubspot and AgileCRM, but Mailchimp is probably one of the best known and longest established companies in the field.

So have you activated any free MailChimp WordPress plugins on your WordPress website? Have you noticed a difference in the number of email opt-ins? Let us know in the comments section below, and if you enjoyed this post why not check out this article on ClassicPress, the recent fork of Wordpess designed for faster sleeker sites with reduced bloat!

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Filed under: eCommerce, Marketing, WordpressTagged with: mailchimp, mailchimp wordpress plugins