Category: eCommerce

Create a Video Marketing Strategy

It’s becoming much harder to reach customers with traditional methods of digital advertising. Companies need to constantly step up their game to stay relevant on the web. If you feel the same, creating a video marketing strategy for your business might just what you are looking for. Video marketing isn’t exactly new, but it has been gaining traction as a valuable and relevant way of attracting visitors and customers. While online users often completely tune out forms of advertising like banner ads, video marketing continues to grow as a promotion channel.

It’s also quite versatile as you can use it on social media, your website, in online advertising, and various other channels. Plus, unlike typical advertising, it integrates naturally into a website’s content or a social media feed.

While video marketing may be one of the more difficult and expensive forms of marketing yourself to pull off effectively, the results are more than worth it. Just look at these stats — 12 times more shares on social media, 49% faster revenue growth, and 157% increase in organic traffic from SERPs than people who don’t use video. How could you not try it?

That’s why, today I’ll take a look at how to create an effective video marketing strategy, beginning to end and set you up for marketing success.

Why Video Marketing?

Your business probably operates on a tight budget, and you might spend a lot on advertising as it is. Wasting money by making bad investments can easily sink your company.  Is video marketing really worth your time?

For most companies, it almost certainly is. Video advertising is popular, versatile, and effective. If you have a social media account, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the explosion of branded video content. 85% of Americans watch videos online, reaching up to 95% in some other countries. Pretty much everyone watches videos, so using them will undoubtedly expand your reach.

And it’s not just popular among users. 87% of businesses use video marketing, and 83% say it gives them a good ROI. In short, your competitors are doing it, and most of them are finding that it works well. That means they already have an edge on you.

Considering how popular video content is among users, it’s not surprising to see its effectiveness as a marketing tool. 83% of consumers would share a branded video they enjoyed, and 85% want to see more of them from companies they like. For example, this brand video made quite a splash when it came out:

Your consumers aren’t just willingly engaging with video content — they want to see more of it. It’s rare for advertising to elicit such a strong positive reaction, so this could completely revolutionize your marketing.

You should certainly employ other, perhaps more well-established forms of online advertising alongside it. But video marketing isn’t just a fad that’s on its way out. More and more marketers are adopting this versatile form of promotion.

Yet, many businesses choose not to pursue it simply because they don’t know where to start. If you’re among them, this guide to creating your own video marketing strategy will help you learn the basics.

Understand Yourself and Your Audience

It might be exciting to dive straight into recording and editing, but this process starts slow. Before you so much as begin making plans, you need to determine your target audience and understand your own business’ branding.

Every business targets a buyer persona: the ideal person who’s most likely to be interested in your products, broken down by demographics like age, race, and interests. The same goes for marketing video content.

Who is your target audience? Who is your content most likely to reach? Your first step should be doing some research and getting a rough idea of what platforms they’re on, what types of videos they’re interested in, and what tone and style resonates best with them. Finding success in video marketing starts with understanding your audience.

marketing persona template to define target audience for blog style guide

For example, if you decide to produce step-by-step software tutorials, how you go about this depends on your target audience. Some may prefer a straightforward and serious approach, while others would like an upbeat narrator. A slow-paced tutorial that covers all the very basics is appropriate if you’re targeting older users, but it would quickly frustrate a young adult that’s already well-versed in technology.

Know your audience, and be prepared to craft your content around them.

Besides that, figuring out what type of content is consistent with your branding is key to reaching your target audience. What sort of videos do similar companies put out? Do they create helpful guides, funny viral videos, professional interviews and explainer videos? It isn’t just about your audience; what type of videos work with your branding?

Figure out how to use the brand you’ve built to put your own spin on things. There are many types of video content you can create, but you’ll need to make it yours if you want to leave an impact.

Lay Out a Basic Video Marketing Strategy

Once you have a good idea of who you’re marketing to, it’s time to start creating a rough draft of your strategy. That means doing all the deep research, making outlines, and generally deciding on goals and the way you’re going to go about this.

First step: Research. The best place to start is figuring out and choosing the types of videos you want to focus on. Here are just a few examples:

  • Explainer videos are essentially mini advertisements that convince customers to try your product.
  • Brand videos focus on your company’s mission, vision, and goals.
  • Product videos show demos, unboxings, and shots of your stuff in action.
  • Instructional videos and tutorials walk users through using your product.
  • Case studies feature your customers and the positive effects you’ve had on them.
  • Vlogs give a glimpse into you and your company’s daily life.

Pick a few that are appropriate for your brand and interesting to your target audience. This will help with the next step: planning out the particulars.

How long do you want your videos to be? They might be less than a minute long, just a few minutes for bite-sized content, or even 20-40 minutes of in-depth discussion. This very much depends on the type of videos you’re making.

You should also decide how frequently you’ll want to post them — daily, weekly, monthly? — and the tone you’re trying to emulate. Are your videos formal and professional, or casual and cheerful?

Last, pick your platforms. Social media like Twitter and Facebook are usually best suited for short explainer videos and fun viral subjects, while YouTube and Vimeo host all kinds of medium- and long-form video content.

You don’t need all the nitty-gritty details, but it’s good to have a general plan for your project’s scope.

Create a Detailed Content Strategy Guide

Once you have a basic idea of what you’re after, you should create a detailed content strategy guide. This will help you and anyone who’s working with you stay on brand and keep things moving forward. Keep it all collected in one document for easy sharing.

In it, start by stating your reason for pursuing video marketing — what you hope to achieve, and what you want to give your customers. Also clearly identify your target audience, who your videos are made for, and how you plan on reaching them.

You should next lay out the detailed guidelines for your video content, using the research you did before. Here are some good things to include:

  • Target video length
  • Tone
  • Schedule
  • Publishing platforms
  • Branding considerations like colors to use in graphics

Also state how you plan on managing the creation of videos before, during, and after their publication. List who’s involved at each stage of the process so they can be reached easily.

If you have any resources like a schedule, brainstorming forum for pitching video ideas, or links to video content you’d like to draw inspiration from, make sure to list these as well.

You might not know all of this yet, but start making this document anyway and fill it out to completion as you do more research.

(By the way, it’s also a good idea to have a content style guide for your blog.)

Figure Out the Budget

Last, you need to determine how much this is all going to cost. This includes the initial price of purchasing equipment and software, plus any recurring costs like video hosting, advertising, or paying actors.

If you’re starting out with yourself, a smartphone, and a free editing program, you might not need to buy anything. But creating more professional, high-quality content will usually mean paying some money. Here’s a brief list of items to take into account.

  • Equipment: Video cameras, lenses, lights, tripods, and any other accessories you’ll need to improve the quality of your film.
  • Locations and Studios: Setting up a recording studio, filling out the set/purchasing a green screen, or renting out a location to film in.
  • Employees: Actors to play roles, film crew to work the cameras, lighting, and audio, editors to fine-tune the videos, and animators or artists to create graphics.
  • Costumes and Props: Professional clothes, makeup, and props if necessary.
  • Software: Editing software to clean up, cut, and tweak your videos. This is usually a one-time fee but it can cost several hundred dollars.
  • Advertising: Don’t forget to budget the money it’ll take to push your video out there and get it seen.

Depending on the type of videos you’re making and how much you’re investing into quality, you might need to pay thousands of dollars, or only a few hundred. It’s best to start small, gauge the success of your endeavor, and work your way up from there.

Bring it All Together

Once you have a concrete plan in place and the resources to pursue it, you can finally make the arrangements. Hire new employees or give your current ones tasks, write up and edit your first script, and start ordering props and setting up your recording studio.

Once you’ve gathered everything you need, you can finally record, edit, and upload your first video. This first experience should give you a better idea of the time the whole process will take, so you may want to tweak your schedule a little. Then you can get right to work on producing your next set of content!

Analyze and Optimize

No matter how much planning you put in, your first few videos definitely won’t be perfect, but it’s part of the learning experience. Part of having a video marketing strategy in place is to use analytics and social media metrics to help you gauge user reaction and figure out what you did right or wrong. Platforms like Twitter and YouTube come with comprehensive analytics built in, but if you’re hosting on your own site, you may need to use a tool like Google Analytics.

These tools can gauge clicks and watch time across individual videos, which are invaluable statistics to examine in depth. If you’re posting somewhere like YouTube or on social media, you’ll also have access to engagement metrics like view count, shares, likes, and comments.

tracking analytics part of video marketing strategy

At first, you may want to post a variety of content and see what gets the best response. Every few weeks or months, make sure to go over your analytics and evaluate how well you’re doing. Use this to optimize your content strategy and see if you’re doing everything right or if it’s time to take things in a new direction. After that, it’s a matter of rinse and repeat.

Create a Detailed Video Marketing Strategy to Get More Clicks

Video marketing is definitely one of the more difficult promotion strategies to set up and maintain, but it’s also one of the most lucrative sources of growth.

Creating an effective video marketing strategy is the key to finding success in your new endeavor. Identifying your brand and audience, planning around this knowledge, and analyzing your metrics to continue optimizing your strategy will help you grow and make better content.

While high production value should be an end goal, you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars to get into video marketing. You can start with a smartphone camera and a free video editing program like Openshot. Pick a budget that matches your business and see what you can do. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on Sitejet Review And Appraisal!

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7 Top Winery WordPress or ClassicPress Themes

In the wine business, wineries and wine culture in general, aesthetics play a very special role. A role that is almost as important as the quality of the wine itself. In the wine industry, having an elegant, smart and sophisticated website is a thing of crucial importance. And this is precisely what I had in mind when I created this list of the best winery WordPress or ClassicPress themes. One advantage of WordPress as a platform is that it allows you to create a website that will be a perfect reflection of who you are as a brand and what you stand for. In the wine business, this is something that is particularly important.

There are winery themes for WordPress that can be used as they are, or customized to fit your needs, and these are the winery WordPress themes are ideal for any sort of wine-related business, whether it’s an elegant wine bar, a countryside vineyard or a budding small business working in wine distribution and sales:

1. Vino – A Refined Winery, Wine Bar and Vineyard Theme

Vino wordpress theme

To begin with, this is a theme that immediately stuns with its sheer elegance, the simplicity of hip minimalistic design and soft, dimmed colors. The design is not all that makes Vino a complete stunner among winery WordPress themes. The real value of this theme is in the variety of excellent homepages and impressive sections that come with the theme.

Specifically, Vino packs nine different homepages, each prettier than the last one. We particularly like the impressive Parallax Showcase Home, with a powerful but unpretentious parallax effect on the scroll. Also worth noting is the Wine Shop Home, where you can list your products in a way that will make your page visitors want to spend hundreds of dollars on your bottles.

Furthermore, Thanks to the Wine List shortcode, you caneasily list your menu items. We also really like the Showcase List Item shortcode, which allows you to show the journey that your winery or one of your wines made overtime, giving it a romantic value your customers are bound to respond to.

Also, maybe right now you’re not planning on starting a blog, but when you see Vino’s premade blog pages with plenty of options and custom posts, you might just change your mind.

If you are in the wine selling business, then we have a terrific section to show you. As you know, not all visitors come to your site to actually purchase anything. Perhaps they just want to look around, see what your winery is all about.

But then they come upon this Interactive Info Box, which should be placed right there on the homepage, combining the image of the product with some essential info, complete with a dynamic hover effect taking the user directly to the shop pages. It will definitely tickle their curiosity and make them want to buy a bottle or two.

Vino shop row

Each wine has a story to tell and your WordPress site should be the voice. You can use the Wine Label Homepage for this sort of compelling storytelling but even if it doesn’t fit as a homepage, you can always use it for one of the inner pages.

Vino

Features that make Vino the best Winery WordPress theme:

  • Free WPBakery Page Builder and Slider Revolution
  • Translation Ready
  • Multiple Logo Versions
  • Workflow Shortcode
  • Extensive Typography Options

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2. Thelma – Wine and Winery WordPress Theme

Thelma wordpress theme

Thelma is a clean, neat, striking winery WordPress theme with a particular focus on animation. The theme packs some quite dynamic, modern solutions. One example are the animated buttons, with a cool strike-through animated effect. It’s a simple, yet a very powerful solution. Plus it adds an extra kick to the theme’s visual appeal.

We especially recommend the Vineyard Homepage, with a terrific selection of shortcodes. These are created to help youmake your winery website an exciting, dynamic and modern place to be.

Another innovative thing about this theme that your winery website could definitely benefit from is the Side Area feature. Clicking on the icon in the top right corner of the page opens the side area. Here you can conveniently list your contact details, place buttons for your social profiles, with a neat Instagram gallery. Unfortunately, side areas are often neglected. Should you opt for this theme, you can seize the opportunity to display your content in a way that users have not yet grown tired of.

By the way, the pages also featurethe always-attractive parallax sections, which by now represent the gold standard in web design. Yet somehow Thelma managed to make them appear brand new and super fresh.

Next, for showcasing your best products, we recommend using the Vertical Carousel, a dynamic, modern and elegant way of displaying items and item info. Combined with superior typography choices, this is a great contribution to your site and your brand in general.

Every business needs client testimonials. It’s a way of showing your prospective customers that your product has been tried and tested and that people were impressed by it. Thelma conveniently includes not one but two types of testimonials you can use on your winery website. We particularly like this style, as it is not overused by other themes and adds a modern touch to the site:

Thelma testimonials

Generally, one of the most important pieces of information every user looks for when checking out a website for any sort of establishment is the working hours. You’ll be happy to hear that you don’t need a special shortcode for this, as there is a perfectly functional Working Hours shortcode that comes with Thelma. And, unsurprisingly, it looks great.

Thelma working hours
Features that make Thelma the best Winery WordPress theme:

  • Call to Action Shortcode
  • Three Side Area Types
  • Social Share Functionality
  • Process Shortcode
  • Multiple Header Behaviors

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3. Vineyard – Wine Store Responsive WooCommerce WordPress Theme

Vineyard wordpress theme

Vineyard is an excellent choice for wine business owners who want to run a fully functional, easy to use and beautifully designed ecommerce site. Vineyard allows you to display your bottles in a gorgeous way. Plus it helps lure in customers thirsty for some exquisite wines. The design is clean and elegant, combining modernity with great wine-making traditions.

As I said, a lot of attention is paid to the online shop here. Specifically, you have a lot of customization options, from how to display products (grid or list, full-width, left or right sidebar…) to the options you want to offer your customers.

Wines can be divided into categories and further sorted by popularity, rating or price. Price range and bottle size are also applicable as filters. Customers love having this sort of choice as it narrows down search times significantly.

In addition, the shop also features a very interesting hover effect on products. Namely, the Shopping Cart and Compare buttons “drop down” into sight as the user hovers over the image. It’s always a good idea to add a dynamic effect like this to your shop. Primarily to set it apart from others and get the customers in a good mood for buying.

If your winery, cellar or wine bar organizes regular events, you’ll be pleased to learn thatVineyard includes an excellent Events functionality. Your event details will be listed in a way that is not only elegant and enticing but also very clear and informative.

 

Vineyard event

The Welcome Vineyard homepage represents an excellent solution for displaying your wine-making tradition, your best wines and people working on them. Visitors love hearing a little more on the winemakers and their history. Plus, it makes them more likely to trust your brand and try your wines.
Vineyard description

We should also note that, while its name suggests a wine-related business, Vineyard is actually a multi-purpose theme that can be used for any other sort of online shop.

Features that make Thelma the best Winery WordPress theme:

  • Call to Action Shortcode
  • Three Side Area Types
  • Social Share Functionality
  • Process Shortcode
  • Multiple Header Behaviors

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4. Aperitif – Wine Shop and Liquor Store

Aperitif WordPress Theme

Whether looking for a theme to represent a vineyard, wine bar or spirits store, Aperitif is sure to have something for you. With warm, muted tones, this theme simply breathes retro glamour. And that impression carries over to each of its nine different homepage layouts.

This themehas everything you could possibly need to make an elegant and tasteful presentation for your business. Beyond the looks reflected in strong typography, toned-down stylish design details, and subtle interactive elements, this theme possesses all the functionalities you could ever need.

Starting with the homepage, the layout is carefully arranged to provide the perfect balance of imagery and text. Spacious areas in toned-down shades allow the content to shine while helping to avoid oversaturation. This assures the visitors will be able to navigate about easily and take everything in at their leisure. All information is presented clearly and neatly. The working hours and menu shortcodes, for example, usesdiffering fonts, colors, and font effects to keep everything looking sleek. Let your visitors enjoy your online presentation the way they would a glass of your wine.

Aperitif WordPress Theme Menu

Of course, the working hours and menu are just the start of what you can show and do with Aperitif. This theme comes bundled with a predefined contact page so you can let visitors know where to find you, embed a map, and include a contact form to let them get in touch. Another great feature that comes included is the Events page powered by the Events Calendar plugin. You can show off all your scheduled events in a list view or display them by month or day. Next, you can create detailed descriptions of individual events to entice your website visitors into dropping by your winery.

Aperitif WordPress Theme Calendar

Features that make Thelma the best Aperitif WordPress theme:

  • Age Verification Page Included
  • Multiple Contact Form Styles
  • WooCommerce Compatible
  • Social Share Functionality

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5. Luxwine – Wine WordPress Theme

Luxwine wordpress theme

Luxwine is quite an interesting winery WordPress theme. It offers a choice between light and dark demo. The two have the same content but the vibe is obviously completely different. Depending on your brand identity, you can choose the demo you want and start from there.

Another interesting feature of this theme is the full-screen menu, which is particularly impressive in the dark-skinned demo. The video background is striking, yet unobtrusive and creates an impressive effect on the viewer.

The light version of the homepage is dominated by whites, off-whites and greys, and as such is ideal for vividly-hued pictures of wines, vineyards, grapes and other wine-related imagery.

We also like the simplicity of the design here, and the way the pictures are revealed upon hover. Dynamic elements are always a great asset for any website, and developers of Luxwine must be well aware of that.

Luxwine hover

Also noteworthy here is the Instagram shortcode. Displaying Instagram pictures is a very common thing in websites these days but not all of them do it in such an innovative and elegant way. Colors on images appear upon hover, as if they’re waking up, creating an atmosphere of magic and abundance.

Other sections don’t lack this sort of magic either. Each one is equipped with a little something extra to help youcreate a beautiful, inviting winery website.

Luxwine hover instagram

Features that make Luxwine the best winery WordPress theme:

  • Overlay Menu
  • Timeline Feature
  • $100 Worth of Premium Plugins
  • Extensive Documentation
  • Child Theme Support

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6. Villenoir – Vineyard, Winery & Wine Shop

Villenoir wordpress theme

Villenoir is a particularly refined WordPress theme for wineries and wine businesses. It’s also a theme that can prove to be a worthy ally to your brand in the quest to gain more clients. In addition togorgeously crafted homepages, Villenoir is rich in well-developed inner pages that we wholeheartedly recommend you make use of.

For instance, the Estate page allows you to tell the story of your vineyard and the facilities, along with a historical overview of how the brand has developed over time. Your visitors will appreciate interestingly displayed information about the soil, the water, the climate and other factors that play an important role in the birth of a wine bottle.

Furthermore, Villenoir makes excellent use of solutions such as slider galleries and video backgrounds. These elements are easy to implement wherever you want, and they yield excellent results. The Homepage Version 2 is a particularly good example of this.

Furthermore, Villenoir isexcellent for winemakers who organize a lot of events, wine tastings and dinners. The schedule has the option to search events per date and per month, so your visitors can find exactly what they’re looking for in no time. Plus, additional details about the event, complete with a picture, are revealed as a card upon hover, which is also a cute touch.

The newsletter signup section is another useful thing that Villenoir has prepared for its users. Keeping your visitors up to date with your events, promotions, deals and other news is crucial for your lead generation efforts. With this theme, you get to invite and encourage visitors to sign up using a classy, beautifully designed form.

Villenoir newsletter

The Shop section of the homepage is also an interesting one. If you play your cards right and display your wines’ best attributes, your visitors will be happy to click on appropriate buttons that will take them to the shop to seal the deal, so to speak.

Villenoir img

Features that make Villenoir the best winery WordPress theme:

  • Age Verify Popup
  • Translation Ready
  • Multi-Level Dropdown Menu
  • SEO Optimized
  • MailChimp for WordPress

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7. Saras – Pure Wine Wordpress Theme

Saras is a refined WordPress theme dedicated to wineries and wine businesses from the same authors as Villenoir and Luxwine. The template is 1170px wide with a light setting in contrast with dark footer which makes the site’s ambiance more elegant and sophisticated. It features a multitude of business specific elements, large fonts and a spacious layout in order to help you gain focus on the website content.

The shop is powered by the most popular and powerfull ecommerce plugin available – WooCommerce. A very flexible plugin which gives you the possibility to sell anything, from digital downloads to women shoes, and especially wines.

Saras makes excellent use of solutions such as slider galleries,  fancy overlay menu and threaded comments, along with many other features. These elements are easy to implement wherever you want, and they yield great results.

Features that make Saras a great winery WordPress theme:

  • Clean Shop Page
  • Translation Ready
  • Multi-Level Dropdown Menu with Overlay
  • SEO Optimized
  • Featured Image Boxes

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Conclusion

To summarize, from innovative, inspiring sections to modern animations and parallax effects, these themes are the perfect match for any winery, wine bar, vineyard or wine distribution business. Especially those that aim high and strive to promote the brand in the most efficient manner possible.

Wine is not just any product or piece of merchandise. It’s a symbol of wellbeing, hedonism, abundance and joy, and, as such, deserves a theme that will do it justice. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on 5 Top WordPress or ClassicPress Gaming Themes!

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Turn Your WordPress or ClassicPress Site In To A Sales Machine

Converting WordPress into a high selling machine is not a new thing. Rather, people are using various e-commerce plugins to convert WordPress into a selling machine. However, using plugins is not enough when you want to build up your WordPress site as a top-flight salesperson. Here in this blog, we will discuss how several off-page and on-page techniques can make your site a good salesperson.

Make your WordPress a Top-Flight Salesperson

A top-flight salesperson is treasured by every company. If you have a WordPress  or ClassicPress website, you can certainly make your own “salesperson.” Your website could be the salesperson for 24/7. It can engage your potential customers with more information about products or services. It can build trust, create a relationship with the visitors, and motivate them to select and buy any products.

But, is it really meeting your expectations? In short, is it merely helping your potential customers but not driving them psychologically to buy a product? Is it selling products from the store but not as efficient as you wished to be?

If the answer is “Yes,” then your website is not an automated selling machine. Here we are presenting step by step solution to convert your website into an automated selling machine.

Determine the USP or Unique Selling Point

Before you start stepping in to convert your website to an automated selling machine, you need to define the “USP” or Unique Selling Point of your business. What is USP?

It is a simple logic that if you are buying any product from any source (local store or online store), there must be a reason for selecting that particular seller. Maybe you like the features or looks of the store; maybe the products come at a cheaper price or the high product quality. This particular reason could be marked as USP.

So, before converting your website into a high selling machine, you have figure out the “USP.” The next strategies will be developed based on this USP.

Step 1: Promote Your USP like anything (social media)

promote your blog

The first step should be developing a unique marketing strategy, and you need to put USP in the loop. You have to promote your USP like anything to grab the attention of maximum potential buyers. Put your USP on the header, and WordPress is just the perfect place. WordPress support services are also used to create an attractive heading. USP can also be promoted in the body content, but be careful of using overrated keywords. Besides, you can create a “main message with the USP” and put it on the home page.

Step 2: Be Specific About What You Sell

Helping customers with sufficient information is good. However, you have to make sure that the product descriptions are not overloaded with unnecessary information. The seller has to be very precise and to the point when describing a product. Bullet points and bold highlights could be used to earn the attention of the viewers.

Always answer the buyer queries. It is easy to hire a VA and offer 24/7 customer support. Always remember that we belong to the oligopoly market, which is driven by the buyers. Hence, facilities like good customer support, easy checkout, and enrich-comparative product information/reviews do matter in terms of attracting potential customers. Don’t forget that you have access to hundreds of plugins that could be used for this purpose.

Step 3: Help the Customers In Advance

help customers

Always help your customers before they start thinking of queries. But how? For this, you have to dedicate a page for FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions. The FAQ section should consist of 10 to 12 relevant questions that frequently arise while dealing with any e-commerce site. You can either create a separate page for the FAQ section or add this part under any service page.

If you feel troubled to decide which types of questions and answers are “ideal’ for FAQ, we will advise you to take inspiration from the big boys, such as Amazon, McDonald’s, e-bay, etc. It is noticed that people can relate to the question and answer format easily. Hence, create short and questions with simple answers and appropriate links.

Step 4: Optimize Your Website from the Beginning

Success in search engine optimization means success in reaching maximum potential customers. If you start building a WordPress site in favor of SEO from the first day, it will be the best move for your business. According to research, more than 55% of the business persons are not familiar with SEO. With WordPress, you can use a number of plugins that can offer you certain SEO advantages.

Step 5: Focus on Web Designing

Focus on webdesigning

Web designing plays a crucial role when you are thinking of building an automated salesperson. Your site should have a modern and cut edge look to impress the users. You can see, the e-commerce filed is highly competitive. To stand out from the competition, you have to consider UX with extra priority. With WordPress, you can use the WooCommerce plugin to design and develop the site and use hundreds of themes to improve it.

Step 6: Add Product Videos

Informing customers and engaging them with your site is important. For this purpose, we highly recommend the use of Product Videos. Product videos are short and made in such a way that they usually lure customers. If you want to promote certain products or want to increase the sale of products, short videos can help you a lot. Use product videos on the top of the home page along with unique and reasonable content. If you have offers on certain products, tag them on the page header.

Step 7: Customer Support

Customer service is very much important for an automated selling machine. In terms of the improvement of selling efficiency, build well-structured customer support. You can use VA support for this purpose. Many WordPress care plans come with VA assistants at a reasonable price. The VA supports tracks and informs customers about the shipping time and price, along with answering their feedback.

Five Best WordPress Plugins for E-commerce

WordPress is an efficient content management system that offers freedom of creating a blog site to develop a large e-commerce site. When you intend to build an e-commerce site with WordPress and convert it into a high selling machine, you have to select your “preferred” e-commerce plugin wisely. Here is a list of widely popular and useful plugins that you can certainly try:

  1. WooCommerce

woocommerce

It is a free e-commerce plugin that empowers you to sell anything and everything. This A-grade plugin now used by 30% of all online stores. This plugin is built and maintained by Automattic. Besides, they have a greater community, always ready to help.

  1. WP e-commerce

wp ecommerce

This plugin was launched in 2006 and gained its popularity within the next few years. If you want to sell physical inventory or digital downloads, you are only one step away from the new level of e-business. The part best is, it offers free SSL and dozens of payment gateways.

  1. MarketPress

marketplace

With 15 payment gateways, MarketPress is now one of the most favorite e-commerce plugins. It comes in both premium and a free version. It offers unlimited product variations along with coupons and discounts. You will be powered with the AJEX cart and cart widget.

  1. Jigshop eCommerce

jigoshop

This open-source software is the advanced version of Jigshop, which is developed by Jigshop Limited. With Jigshop, you will have complete control in your store or e-commerce shop. It takes minimum set up time and has various payment gateways.

  1. Cart66 Cloud

cart66

Cart66 Cloud is developed by Reality66. It is a sophisticated and secure approach to WordPress e-commerce. The best part is, this plugin takes care of security responsibly and free you to think only about business.

Conclusion

WordPress gives wings to your business. It is easier to convert WordPress into an automated salesperson by all means. It is always easy to manage WordPress and use highly sophisticated themes to achieve a great look for the gallery. With WordPress, you can decorate your store like the way you want it. In this post, I’ve offered 7 easy steps to convert WordPress into your automated sales machine. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on the 6 Top WordPress or ClassicPress Forum Themes!

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How To Install The MySQL Database Server

The MySQL database server is a powerful tool that allows developers to expand the offerings of web sites, applications, and more. In fact, if it weren’t for the likes of MySQL, web server software like WordPress would have a lot of trouble functioning properly. This is because databases store crucial information those platforms depend on. And without the means to serve that database information up, there’d be no way for the software to use the data. That’s where database servers like MySQL come into play.

MySQL is an open-source database server that can be installed and run on many platforms (such as Linux, Windows, and MacOS). MySQL is a relational database, so it’s perfectly suited for apps like WordPress. What is a relational database? Simply put, a relational database is a set of formally described tables that house data which can be accessed in different ways. The information contained within a relational database is easily compared because it is saved in columns and rows.

But how do you install the MySQL database and how do you enter data into its tables? I’m going to walk you through that process. I’ll be demonstrating on the Ubuntu Server 18.04 platform. Although I’ll be using the command line, there are plenty of tools (such as phpMyAdmin) that make use of web-based or local client GUI applications for the process.

Once you have your database up and running, with data inserted, that database can then be used for in-house or third-party applications. Although you’ll be learning how to add data via the command line, you shouldn’t have much problem with it. If you do, you can always hire one of many third party QA services like BairesDev to help you with the task.

What You’ll Need

The only things you’ll need to make this work are:

  • A running instance of Ubuntu Server 18.04.
  • A user account with sudo privileges.

With those things at the ready, let’s install the database server, create a database, and add data.

Installing MySQL

Believe it or not, the installation of MySQL is actually quite simple. Log into your Ubuntu Server instance and issue the command:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server -y

Once the server is installed, you’ll want to start the server with the command:

sudo systemctl start mysql

Finally, you’ll want to enable the MySQL daemon to start upon server boot (in case you ever have to reboot the server). This is done with the command:

sudo systemctl enable mysql

Securing the Installation

Before you can create that first database and add data, you must secure the MySQL installation. This allows you to do the following:

  • Enable the Validate Password Plugin, which ensures that all passwords must adhere to strict password policies.
  • Create a password for the MySQL admin user.
  • Remove anonymous users.
  • Disable root login.
  • Remove the test database and access to it.
  • Reload privilege tables.

To run the security tool, issue the command:

sudo mysql_secure_installation

If you want to enable the Validate Password Plugin, type Y and hit Enter on the keyboard (otherwise hit any key). Next, create your admin user password and then answer Y for the remaining questions.

Once you finish that, you’re ready to continue on.

Creating a Database

Let’s say you work with an IT software outsourcing company and you need to create a database of clients you work with. We’ll call that database clients. In order to create the database, you must first log into the MySQL shell. To do that, issue the command:

sudo mysql -u root -p

You will first be prompted for your sudo password. Once you successfully enter that, type the admin user MySQL password you created when you secured the installation. You’ll know you’ve successfully logged into the MySQL shell when you see the command prompt change

The MySQL shell is ready for commands.

Let’s create a database called clients. To do that, issue the command:

CREATE DATABASE clients;

In order to add data to the new database, you have to switch to it with the command:

USE clients;

You should see in MySQL report that you’ve switched databases.

We’ve created and switched to the new database.

Now it’s time to create a table in our new database. This is where the process requires a bit of thought. You need to know the information that will be stored in the table. Since this is clients, let’s say you want to store the clients:

  • First and last name
  • Business name
  • Email address
  • Phone number

If a piece of data will contain letters and numbers, you’ll most likely use the VARCHAR (variable character) type. If the data is only a number, you’ll use the INT (integer) type. For our list above, we could get by with using all VARCHAR types (even the phone number will have the – character).

Say you want to create a table for clients from the USA, using the list of data information above. The command to create this would be:

CREATE TABLE usa (name VARCHAR(20), business VARCHAR(20), email VARCHAR(20), phone VARCHAR(20));

The numbers in parentheses denote the longest a string can be. If you know you’ll have entries that will require more than 20 characters, up that number.

Type the command SHOW TABLES; to see the newly added table.

Our newly-created table.

Adding Data

Now we’ll add data to our table. Say you want to add the following client:

Name – Paul McGowan

Business – Xhostcom

Email – [email protected]

Phone – +1 646 224 2225

The command for this would be:

INSERT INTO usa (name,business,email,phone) VALUES("Paul McGowan","Xhostcom","[email protected]","1-646-224-2225");

To make sure your data was successfully entered, type the command:

SELECT * FROM usa;

You should see the new entry listed.

Our new entry has been successfully added.

Once you’ve finished working on the database, type the exit command and you’re back at the Linux bash prompt.

Conclusion

And that’s all there is to installing MySQL, creating a database, and then adding data to the database. With this information, you should be able to create all kinds of databases for numerous use cases on your server. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on Setup ClassicPress on Ubuntu at Digital Ocean!

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11 Top WordPress or ClassicPress Contact Form Plugins

When a customer arrives at a website to figure out how to contact the company, what do they find? They may stumble upon a live chatbox in the bottom corner of the site or a phone number to call. While these are wonderful customer support solutions, it’s important to provide multiple avenues for customers to get in touch with you. After all, people are busy. They don’t have all the time in the world to sit on the phone or chat back and forth with a Virtual Assistant (VA), especially when this might take their focus away from their current work.

This is one of the reasons why email is still one of the most convenient and reasonable ways of communicating and why it should be an option for business websites. An email form allows customers to shoot off a quick message and respond at their own convenience. Plus, contact forms let you direct the emails to the proper department for response.

Thanks to plugins, adding these forms on your site is easier than ever. In this post, we’ll take a look at 11 of the best WordPress contact form plugins to use, as well as the unique advantages and features of each. Let’s get started!

WPForms

WPForms is a powerful WordPress contact form designed for even the most novice of website owners. Building online forms in minutes using one of the many pre-built WordPress form templates, this plugin provides all of the fields and features required to create your desired form. In addition, it easily integrates with your preferred email service provider and even configures to collect booking and order payments.

With WPForms, you can:

  • Utilize the drag and drop form builder
  • Take advantage of the instant notification feature for making quick responses to promising leads
  • Learn more about your users using intelligent geolocation data

In addition, WPForms also includes a number of useful add-ons such as the one designed to let readers submit their own content to your website.

Lastly, this beginner-friendly form plugin implements smart CAPTCHA and honeypot techniques for combating spam and allows for multi-page form creation. It streamlines your workflow with its entry management system, placing leads in one convenient location.

There is a free version available that includes many features needed to achieve effective, powerful forms for your WordPress site. However, there are also premium plans that unlock access to advanced capabilities.

In the end, you simply can’t go wrong with WPForms. It is one of the most feature-packed and user-friendly from builders on the market today.

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Gravity Forms

The Gravity Forms WordPress plugin.

Gravity Forms is one of the more popular premium form plugins available. It runs from $59 (for one site) to $259 (for unlimited sites).

Multi-page forms are a standout feature, giving your customers a chance to fill out extensive forms and view how much longer they have until completion. You can even limit your entries if you’re running a contest and only want to accept, say, 50 entries.

It features a plethora of standard fields you can use for posting items such as:

  • Radio buttons
  • Paragraph fields
  • Dropdown boxes

Advanced fields bring in information like websites, file uploads, and street addresses. You can incorporate schedule forms to allow people to set up appointments, as well as try pricing or post fields for the ultimate customization experience.

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Contact Form 7

The Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin.

With over five million active installations, Contact Form 7 is the most popular form plugin in the WordPress repository. This is due in no small part to its simplicity and customization features. With the plugin, you can customize and manage multiple contact forms and place them on your sites within just a few seconds.

Contact Form 7 lets you modify the mail contents however you want. Plus, you can do all of this with some of the simplest markup on the market. The best part is that the plugin is quite clean, allowing it to work well with other plugins and tools such as Akismet spam filtering, CAPTCHA, and Ajax-powered submitting.

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Simple Basic Contact Form

The Simple Basic Contact Form WordPress plugin.

Our Simple Basic Contact Form plugin offers a secure, clean, and flexible way to add contact forms on your WordPress site. Much of the value of the SBCF plugin is fastened in its simplicity.

It’s a powerful option if you’re looking for a no-frills solution and don’t need any fancy or complex bells and whistles. Plus, it’s completely free!

With this plugin, you can:

  • Display forms anywhere on your site using the shortcode or template tags
  • Send descriptive, well-formatted, and plain-text messages
  • Easily configure and customize the contact forms via the plugin settings

In addition to the ease of use that you can enjoy with this plugin, you will also be able to appreciate the peace of mind that comes with knowing the forms are safeguarded against malicious content. The Simple Basic Contact Form plugin includes a handful of security features that helps with tasks such as spam blocking.

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Formidable Forms

The Formidable Forms WordPress plugin.

Formidable Forms is a free plugin that also comes with two pro versions, priced at $99 (for one site) and $399 (for unlimited sites). The plugin-maker pitches that you can get a form up and running on your site within 60 seconds.

Formidable Forms has a drag and drop builder that helps even the least knowledgeable webmasters. Email notifications are smooth and clear, and you can create forms with up to seven field types.

With this plugin, you can:

  • Import and export forms with XML
  • Customize HTML and CSS to make your form exactly the way you want
  • Tailor the success message the user sees after they submit the form

However, if you’re looking for a plugin that goes beyond creating a standard contact form, this is certainly worth considering. It comes with a built-in survey feature as well as a registration form option. More, you can even create payment forms and accept online payments directly from your WordPress site.

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Contact Form by BestWebSoft

The Contact Form by BestWebSoft WordPress plugin.

Contact Form by BestWebSoft is another ‘freemium’ plugin that comes fully loaded with dynamic features. Prices range from $30 per year for one site (for one site) to $300 for lifetime access.

One of the things that makes this plugin unique is that it lets you incorporate actions into your forms to control who the form submissions are sent to. You can choose one or multiple people within your organization.

Additionally, you can also add a field for customers to include attachments and send out a copy of the email to the person who actually submitted the form. Each of the fields you create on your form is customizable, allowing for the changing of labels and submission fields when your form is displayed on the front-end.

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Jetpack Forms

The Jetpack WordPress plugin.

You may know Jetpack as one of the most installed plugins from the WordPress repository. The plugin features a suite filled with plenty of free tools to power up your site and make it run a little smoother.

Some of the tools that come along with it include:

  • A mobile responsiveness builder
  • Site performance tool
  • Site stats and reports
  • Social network commenting system

However, this is an article about WordPress forms, which Jetpack also offers. This versatile plugin provides a sleek and powerful form builder, which is backed by Akismet for blocking spam from building up on your website. The forms are some of the more simple options on this list, making it easy for designers at any level to work with.

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Ninja Kick Sidebar Contact Form Plugin

THe Ninja Kick SIdebar WordPress plugin.

Ninja Kick Sidebar is a premium WordPress plugin that lets you add a contact form with content push animation effects and clean design to every page of your site. You can also use it to add a floating button to your site that is always visible.

This plugin not only adds a well-designed contact form to your WordPress site, but it also increases the likelihood of your audience connecting with you, generating more sales, and landing more clients. Check out our Ninja Kick Sidebar review and how-to guide to understand how to configure the plugin properly and get more leads.

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Visual Form Builder

The Visual Form Builder WordPress plugin.

The Visual Form Builder plugin is free to start, but they also offer a pro version starting at $29. The goal with this plugin is to build forms within a few minutes, without having to touch any code.

So if you’re looking for a straightforward solution, this is a strong contender. The plugin lets you add fields with one click and use the drag and drop functionality to arrange fields in whatever order you like.

Feel free to export your forms to a CSV file and automatically store your forms in the WordPress database. Not to mention, the plugin has one-click form duplication to save you time while designing.

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Quform WordPress Form Builder

The Quform WordPress plugin.

The Quform plugin is a premium option that goes for $29. However, this is a modest price for what you get.  It uses a live form builder and 15 form elements to make it super easy for you to build unique, fully functional contact forms within a few minutes.

With this plugin, you can create unlimited forms and manage the entire list of submissions from the convenience of your WordPress dashboard. The plugin comes with both light and dark color options. Additionally, the responsiveness and reCAPTCHA functionality helps it stand out from other plugins.

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Ninja Forms

The Ninja Forms WordPress plugin.

Ninja Forms has the power of a premium plugin, but it doesn’t take a dime out of your pocket. It lets you quickly and easily design stunning forms using a drag and drop interface, all without having to touch a line of code. The custom input mask restricts some submissions for things like currency and dates.

With this plugin, you can manage, edit, and export every submission that comes through the form. You can also save some of the fields you create as favorites for use in the future.

Another appealing bonus is the datepicker feature. Finally, the plugin provides messaging to multiple people in your organization, along with confirmations to the customers who submit the forms.

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I hope you enjoyed this post, if so, why not check out this article on 6 Top WordPress or ClassicPress Forum Themes!

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Top Wordpress and ClassicPress Netflix Themes

The history of the film industry takes us back a long time, as the first movie appeared in 1895. Although they already used so-called special effects, TV got its popularity later, which happened in the 1950s when different TV shows become trendy. A lot of water under the bridge since then, but the cinema becomes more and more popular. Nowaday’s, many users search for Netflix WordPress themes, and this post will tell you about must-have features. Before we get started, I’d like you to check out the next statistics.

Here are some statistics from 2019:

  1. Almost 95% of negative site feedback happens because of poor web design.
  2. Slow-loading projects cost their owners £1.73 billion per year in lost sales.
  3. 47% of prospects expect a maximum loading time of 2-3 seconds.
  4. 89% of today’s users wouldn’t return on the website if they didn’t like the shopping experience.
  5. Half of the visitors would leave the site, which has no contact info. Or in case it is hard to find.
  6. 40% of visitors will leave the website if it takes too long to load the images.
  7. Almost 90% of prospects expect to see your top items on the homepage.
  8. Half of the users prefer checking product pages before moving to other site sections.
  9. People prefer creative designs to plain text.
  10. Still, they would prefer plain text to the one which is hard to read.

All of these mean you need to take care of comfort. The site you design should be super visitor-friendly, eye-pleasing, readable, and rocket-fast. It is the only way you can get the audience and stand out from the crowd.

Which Features to Look in Netflix Style WordPress Themes?

Are you ready to run a movie or TV-related site? Don’t miss the list below in this case. Here are the essentials your project should have:

  • Mobile-ready design,
  • Full-width slider,
  • Relevant posts selection,
  • Search Engines Optimization,
  • Versatile UI & UX components,
  • eCommerce features,
  • Sticky Posts,
  • Menu with categories and subcategories.

Netflix Style WordPress Themes Tips to Maximise SEO

Let’s imagine that your project already has all the needed web design elements. In this case, it’s time to think about SEO. The good thing is prof products come with SEO-friendly code by default. You won’t need to do anything to improve Google search results. However, there are a few SEO tips I’d like to share with you. To get better SEO results, you should do the following.

  1. Use high-quality & unique content.
  2. Add header tags.
  3. Format pages properly.
  4. Work on page loading speed.
  5. Optimize pics.
  6. Use trustworthy links.
  7. Run a blog.
  8. Use multiple content elements.
  9. Check website readability.
  10. Optimize it for mobiles.
  11. Be active on SM.

Want to know more about must-have features? Here is what you need with fresh examples.

INGMAR – [$85]

If you are looking for WordPress themes like Netflix, don’t miss INGMAR. This product is a ready-made solution for projects related to movie news, reviews, blog, etc. It comes with a wholly responsive and minimalist design.

The pack includes various content widgets, buttons, fonts, and more.

You can select from the pre-styled page layouts or design your own with a visual builder.

The product is perfect for critics, bloggers, cinemagoers, and writers. It comes with a flexible homepage with sliders to create a modern user experience. By purchasing INGMAR, you get the following homepage blocks:

  • Featured slider with custom titles & button text,
  • Latest Posts feature,
  • Featured categories,
  • Popular & Most Visited Posts,
  • Featured reviews,
  • Featured movies added in the database.

It takes a user only 50 milliseconds to form an opinion about the site. This is the most critical step which determines whether a visitor will stay or leave. Well, it looks like INGMAR’s creators took care of this point. They added lots of popular features in the product’s packaging. Here are the ones all Netflix style WordPress themes should have.

  1. Lateral Menu Access – it allows showing in less space menu & sidebar widgets and other visual content.
  2. Dark Mode Switcher – it lets you change the color scheme in a single click.
  3. Color Selector – you can pick colors for texts, buttons, hovers, home sections, etc.
  4. Fully versatile design.

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Vodi – [$59]

Vodi - Video WordPress Theme for Movies & TV Shows

Long story short, Vodi is another premium WP theme. It ideally suits movies, videos, TV shows, or streaming-related sites. Also, Vodi would be a nice choice for a site with reviews and other entertainment content.

The creators of Vodi made it following the newest criteria, including Gutenberg standards. That’s why the theme has almost 50 Gutenberg blocks. Use them to craft the variety of homepages, and not only.

Same to all modern Netflix WordPress themes, Vodi offers you several layout styles. You can select from nine main pages, four footer and header templates. Plus, there are various demos to choose from:

  • Main,
  • Magazine,
  • Sports,
  • Stream,
  • Tube,
  • Prime.

Almost 60% of web users claim they will not use the site with poor mobile design. No wonder, today’s prospects got used to comfort. And it explains why more than half of the traffic comes from mobiles. For these simple reasons, your project has to be mobile-friendly. Make sure the sections are scrollable, and the posts are readable from small-screened gadgets.

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Kreeti – [$75]

Kreeti - Clean and Elegant Responsive WordPress ThemeThose who long for Netflix style WordPress themes also need a fully responsive layout. No matter which content you provide, the site should be 100% versatile. Thanks to Retina-ready design, viewers can visit your site anytime they need it. These are the pre-designed demos Kreeti has in its package:

  • Sports,
  • Fashion,
  • Gadgets,
  • Business News,
  • Recipe,
  • Travel,
  • Lifestyle, etc.

Kreeti comes with Live Customizer. It shows all performed changes in a live mode. With it, you can see all changes rapidly and avoid common mistakes. What else can you see inside the Kreeti pack?

  1. WooCommerce plugin to integrate your online business with the blog.
  2. Instagram Carousel.
  3. Optimization with search engines to get higher results from Google.
  4. Single-click demo import.
  5. Abundant 
  6. Frontpage options, including popular tags, archive settings, and header options.
  7. Banner advertisement.
  8. Prime News section.

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SKT Filmmaker – FREE

SKT Filmmaker
Quick Contact Form is another feature to get when choosing Netflix WordPress themes. Thanks to the feature, you can answer customers once you have time. As you can see, SKT Filmmaker is a free product. It would suit projects related to:

  • Video store,
  • Fashion show,
  • Photographer & videographer,
  • Cinema reviews, and more.

Though the theme is free, it has lots of essential features. For example, you have different UI & UX elements for a blog. There are customizable background options you can change to add beauty to the site design. What is more, SKT Filmmaker has a Sticky Posts feature. It allows to make website navigation even more viewer-friendly. Among the other features of the freebie, there are the following:

  • Custom Menu,
  • Portfolio,
  • Typography,
  • Blog,
  • Featured Images,
  • Footer & header widgets, and more.

As expected, the item is 100% customizable. It is easy to tweak the theme’s components to suit your business style.

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YouMovie – [$75]

YouMovie - Videography Elementor WordPress Theme

What else to look for when purchasing WordPress themes like Netflix? I recommend you think of the mobile-first design. It’s a popular way to manage websites in 2019.

Shortly, the technology starts crafting the project from its mobile version. As a result, you can have visitors when the desktop site is not even ready. Here is what you should know about YouMovie.

  1. Ecwid-ready design lets you add shop feature for free. With it, YouMovie includes all the needed eCommerce components.
  2. Elementor Page Builder.
  3. JetBlog plugin includes lots of helpful content widgets.
  4. Parallax Movie Theater feature guides people through the website in an interactive way.
  5. Video Playlist.

Besides, by purchasing YouMovie, you get JetFamily plugins. It includes JetMenu addon for menus of any complicity. You get JetTricks to create eye-catching visual effects, JetTabs, and more.

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Summarizing

It looks like these were all Netflix WordPress themes I wanted to check. As you can see, it’s easy to set up a movie & entertainment related project today. Modern themes and templates have all the essentials to design a professional website. These products are available for users of all skill levels. You won’t need to edit a single line of code. To say more, you can get the very website without losing money. There are cool free themes you can use. They come both with must-haves and trendy options, like Background features or Sticky Menu.

Movie WordPress website checklist

Let’s take a look at this movie website checklist. Here is how you can go further in blog development by utilizing features of Wordpress:

  1. Write at least 300-word-long posts, 1400+ for top rated articles
  2. Use primary & secondary keywords and tags.
  3. Use headings and subheadings.
  4. Add meta tags to maximise SEO.
  5. Divide your content into categories.
  6. Create content plans.
  7. Make content translation-ready or multilingual.
  8. Use promos and sales to increase website activity.
  9. Identify your prospects and do your best to keep them satisfied.

Watch this short video on how at Xhostcom we make it easier for you maximize SEO and Social media facilities in the admin area.

If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on 6 Top Wordpress or ClassicPress Forum Themes!

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6 Top WordPress or ClassicPress Forum Themes

The benefits of including a forum functionality on your WordPress or ClassicPress site are huge. It can strengthen brand presence and in doing so draw in new customers. It could also improve a company’s relationship with its existing customers by gaining trust through support and online activity, contributing to building brand loyalty. It can also create a passionate community that will help its members and ease some of the burden that would be placed on the company’s customer support service.

With a forum, you can open the floor to any topic that would be of interest or create value for the users. The topics can focus on a business’s products or services, provide customer support suggestions, spotlight latest events or developments, and provide an overview of customer testimonials. A forum can bridge the gap between a company and its customers or to put customers in touch with one another; it’s up to the business to decide how best to put it to use.

In this article, we’ll be taking a look at some of the best forum WordPress themes out there. The following list contains themes designed for a variety of industries (gaming, journalism, etc.) that, due to their nature would all benefit immensely from a forum.

  1. Eldritch – Epic Theme for Gaming and eSports
  2. Newsroom – Newspaper Theme
  3. Godlike – Game Theme for WordPress
  4. Lynk – Social Networking and Community WordPress Theme
  5. Disputo – Epic Theme for Gaming and eSports
  6. Kleo – Pro Community Focused BuddyPress Theme

1. Eldritch – Epic Theme for Gaming and eSports

Eldritch WordPress Theme

Eldritch is a visually stunning theme aimed at gamers and businesses in the video game industry. It comes with six entirely different and fully flexible home page layouts covering areas from eSports to concept art and eCommerce.

Whichever area suits your business, the forum can be molded to support it. This theme comes with a forum template that possesses an all categories overview (All Forums), an individual category’s page (Single Forum) as well as having predefined pages for threads (Topic). This makes a solid base for you to start building your online community. Any customization efforts will be helped along by this theme’s compatibility with the bbPress plugin as it will let you set up discussion boards or introduce new topics easily.

Beyond the forum functionality andsuperb visual design, Eldritch is equipped with a large collection of shortcodes and a great variety in terms of portfolio options so you can show off artistic skills or display products to their best advantage. This theme also comes with parallax effects – a must when appealing to the visually-rich video game industry.

You can rely on the Contact Form 7 plugin compatibility to see you through smooth forum registrations or newsletter subscriptions. Keeping visitors engaged is key and Eldritch is great at achieving that.

As an aside, if you choose to have a commercial component to your website, this theme is compatible with WooCommerce and comes with an e-shop template already included.

Features that make Eldritch a great WordPress theme:

  • Content Entry and Image Zoom Animations
  • Large Collection of Custom Shortcodes
  • WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress Included (current value $45)
  • Social Media Widgets

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2. Newsroom – Newspaper Theme

Newsroom WordPress Theme

The Newsroom theme is there for everyone interested in running their own contemporary newspaper or magazine.

The forum functionality comes with a classy toned-down template with a minimalist backdrop that will let the content come to the fore. It is compatible with the bbPress plugin which is lightweight so it won’t slow down your website. You can use the theme’s settings, aided by the plugin, to open a discussion of the news, have visitors suggest topics for future articles to cover or let people pose questions. Any of these might help your publication with engagement and forming a supportive, inclusive community of readers and followers.

Newsroom comes with six different homepage layouts and is mobile-ready so readers can easily keep up with articles and posts on the go. If you want to make multimedia posts, this theme lets you createstunning galleries or embed audio or video files to accompany anything you publish on the site.

And, given that news ought to spread fast, this theme has an integrated social share functionality as well as social feed widgets that help the readers do their bit to circulate information. Moreover, Newsroom is WPML plugin compatible. This means you can easily create a multilingual site and turn it, as well as your forum, into a place where international visitors can come together.

Features that make Newsroom a great WordPress theme:

  • Compatible With bbPress and AccessPress Social Counter
  • Responsive and Retina Ready
  • Numerous Widgets (Social Media, Weather, Recent Comments…)
  • Child Theme Included

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3. Godlike – Game Theme for WordPress

Godlike WordPress Theme

Godlike is a powerful gaming theme that lets you promote a game, sell related merchandise, form a social network, and more. Its makers are quick to point out this theme need not be relegated to gaming alone as it is very customizable.

The Godlike theme comes with a comprehensive forum template. It is compatible with two different forum plugins (bbPress and BuddyPress), so you can choose the one you’re more comfortable with. Either will let you shape the forum into multiple sub-forums, let users create their own content or allow them to create profiles and groups in a social media-like setting… The important thing is that the visitors who use your forum will be your site’s organic traffic and, potentially, promoters of your product or brand.

This theme comes with many inner pages, covering everything from blog posts to the Shop, 404, and Coming Soon pages. The layout comes with an animated background and several options for site navigation to choose from. There is also a great selection of header options, including a header with video (YouTube and Vimeo videos are both supported) or no header at all. Any of those can beeasilycustomized with the simple integrated drag-and-drop page builder if the large number of existing options doesn’t satisfy you.

Additionally, this theme is retina ready, so you can be sure your users will always be presented with sharp, hi-definition images.

Features that make Godlike a great WordPress theme:

  • Age Check (Age Verifier) for Pages and Posts
  • MailChimp Integration
  • Twitter and Instagram Feeds
  • Four Navigation Types

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4. Lynk – Social Networking and Community WordPress Theme

Lynk WordPress Theme

Geared towards society at large, Lynk is a WordPress theme built with social in mind – it can serve as the basis for a directory, social network, magazine, shop and more.

Therefore, when you set out to build your online community Lynk will have your back. This WordPress theme is BuddyPress plugin compatible, and you can use it to set up a community website forum of any kind, with user groups, message exchanges, member profiles, and activity streams. It’s good to note that this plugin has components that let it “cooperate” with other plugins (e.g. bbPress) so you can pick and choose the appropriate features from the two plugins that would work best for making the forum streamlined. This can improve user experience and engagement, ultimately benefitting the enterprise behind the site.

Lynk also comes with a couple of useful features, such as the business directory which you can use to create a database of shops and companies, allowing users to quickly find out their location and contact info. There is also amagazine page that can be turned into a news or feed page to keep visitors up to date with any changes or upcoming events.

And you can make a shop of your own – this theme is fully compatible with the WooCommerce plugin.

Features that make Lynk a great WordPress theme:

  • Built-in Ajax Mega Menu
  • Seven Different Header Types
  • RtMedia Ready
  • MailChimp Compatible

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5. Disputo – WordPress bbPress Forum Theme

Disputo WordPress Theme

It’s clear that it’s all about forums with Disputo. This is a theme designed to bring the bbPress plugin to life. It includes four different home page examples to choose from. You can present your forum topics in a carousel slider as laid out in demo 2. Or you can use demo 3 which has forum topic overview in a table-like layout; the first few threads in that forum topic are visible within the table.

The overall design of this theme is clean and modern. You want to avoid your forum coming across as a vast jumble of hard-to-parse information. And Disputo’s trimmed down design and temperate colorscape will help keep everything looking neat.

Additionally, you can label topics as closed if they are concluded, or mark topics as fixed/sticky. As for individual topic posts, your users can, besides text, post external images or embed videos from YouTube.

There are a couple of quirky design details in Disputo. One can be found when logging into the forum. Failed logins include an animation that lets the username and password boxes move side-to-side as if shaking their heads. Another comes in the form of member verification and green checkmarks that are displayed on the icons of verified users.

Naturally, social sharing is very important for any website, especially one that relies on the flow of people for content creation. So, Disputo includes a social share functionality and social media icons. There is also the option to follow a topic or thread on vk.ru as well as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Features that make Disputo a great WordPress theme:

  • Ads Manager
  • User Blogs
  • Built-in Facebook Comments
  • Live Search

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6. Kleo –Pro Community Focused BuddyPress Theme

Kleo is a theme designed around Buddypress . It includes nearly a 30 layouts to choose from. You can present your forum topics in a huge variety of ways and themes, and even as an eCommerce layout

The overall design of this theme is ultra modern. You want to avoid your forum coming across as a vast jumble of hard to read information. And Kleo’s epic features will help keep everything looking great.

Kleo is built for speed, with interactive guides, Buddypress design and shortcodes, Multilingual and RTL, Geo Directory, Facebook login, Sensie, RT Media, Go Pricing, Profile search and much more.

Features that make Kleo a great WordPress theme:

  • RtMedia Ready
  • User Blogs
  • Built-in Facebook Comments
  • Geo Directory
  • Lots more goodies

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Conclusion

So, to wrap it all up, if you are looking to start your gaming career or just take it to the next level one of these 6 gaming WordPress themes will definitely help you achieve your goals. Want to form clans, schedule your matches, and create a whole community of gamers? No problem! Each and every one of these themes will let you do that and make you stand out from the crowd. No need to wait any longer, grab your perfect theme straight away! If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on 5 Top WordPress or ClassicPress Gaming Themes!

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Setup ClassicPress on Ubuntu at Digital Ocean

In this post, I take a look at how to set up, install and configure ClassicPress on an unmanaged web server at Digital Ocean VPS. The server we are going to set up should be running on Ubuntu 16.04 with a working Vesta Control Panel that can be used to manage multiple websites, email accounts, Ftp accounts, Mysql Databases, DNS records and more. ClassicPress is a lightweight, faster and more secure fork of Wordpress, and is used by Xhostcom for most of the bespoke site builds. This is for self builders who want to use ClassicPress with Digital Ocean.

An Unmanaged Server

As the name explains, an unmanaged server is one that is not automatically controlled or managed by a hosting provider or other service; it is managed by you. The hosting provider gives you access to a dedicated server where you install the necessary components to keep your server & website running. There is no support mechanism to could guide you if anything goes wrong.

So, you can either hire skilled people to help you with the configuration or you can do it yourself with a manual installation guide. (Be aware that you can mess things up if you aren’t skilled enough.)

For a moment, let’s assume you have a knowledge of how to set up a server and you got your website running successfully. Fortunately for you, in time your business/website starts to gain traction and your business starts to grow. But, over time, you notice your website has become a resource hog. Your dedicated unmanaged server isn’t capable of serving your website anymore.

All is not lost! You have three options:

  1. Add more resources to the existing server. This may or may not be possible, depending on your hosting provider. Some hosting providers allow for an upgrade, while others do not. If you are lucky and your provider supports an upgrade, then you can add more resources. However, there are usually limits to how much you can add and, depending on how it is set up, you may experience some downtime during the transition.
  2. Add more servers and distribute them accordingly. This can be a daunting task, as you have to manually configure them yourself or hire knowledgable people to do it for you.
  3. Migrate to a cloud server. A cloud server is capable of scaling automatically as the need arises.  You can automatically upgrade CPU, Ram, or Disk Space with little to no downtime.

This guide will assist you in registering and configuring your cloud server at DigitalOcean.

What is a DigitalOcean VPS?

DigitalOcean is a cloud hosting provider that offers, among others, Virtual Private Servers (called Droplets). Like a dedicated server, you own your Droplet. You have the privilege of choosing your OS during deployment and you’ll also be able to configure the VPS to your liking.

The benefits of using Digital Ocean’s VPS solution are that they maintain the hardware for you, and you can automatically scale when the need arises. With that understanding, we are ready to move into the main part of this guide.

Note: I’ll assume you have a registered domain name

Let’s buy a server at DigitalOcean and get on to setting up ClassicPress.

Registering at DigitalOcean

If you have a registered domain, then you want to point the domain name to your Droplet. (You’ll remember I said a Droplet is Digital Ocean’s name for a Virtual Private Server). You need to purchase a Droplet to proceed.

This is the link to register: Register with DigitalOcean

Step by Step Instruction:

  1. Click on the link above, and fill in your details as shown below, you can use Github if you like, as I did.

     

  2. Sometimes, you might be redirected to a Recaptcha page upon clicking the “Create Your Account” button. Verify you are not a robot and you will be redirected to the below image if using Github. Click “Authorize digitalocean”

  3. You will be sent a confirmation link to confirm your email address.
  4. Once you’ve verified your email address, you will need to set up your billing account. This is necessary in order to eliminate frauds and spammers. Fill in your credit card details or use PayPal to make the process faster.
    DigitalOcean credit card details
    You may see a temporary authorization hold on your card, which your bank should release soon. DigitalOcean does not charge you until you start using paid services.
  5. Don’t be surprised if your account is automatically locked after verifying your payment details. Don’t be scared; you will be unlocked after the team checks it manually, This could take a few hours, so if you don’t want to wait, contact them using this email address: [email protected].
    Tips: In case you are asked the reason for choosing DigitalOcean, reply by saying:  I want a better cloud hosting with a greater uptime for my website.

Hopefully, your account is now unlocked, and you are ready for the next step. We’ve covered a lot already, this is where the information you learn above should merge together like ice-blocks ?

Creating a Droplet on DigitalOcean/Creating an SSH

Droplet is the nickname of Digital Ocean’s VPS (Virtual Private Server). They are virtual machines that run on top of a virtualized hardware. They mimic a real server in that you are provided with a set amount of CPU, SSD (Solid State Disk) Storage, and RAM.

Let’s create our first Droplet:

  1. Click on your new project and fill the fields: Name of your project, description, and purpose.Add new project alt
  2. Click on “Get Started With a Droplet”Get started with a droplet
  3. Select Ubuntu 16.04.6 x64
  4. Wait! Don’t select the $40 Droplet, you don’t need it if you are just starting out. The $5 Droplet can handle more than you think it can. Select the $40 Droplet if you know what you are doing. If you use the ClassicPress referral link, the $40 Droplet covers you for two months, which is $80, then you pay $40 every following month.For me, the $5 Droplet is okay for now.
    Don't select 40 bucks alt
    .
    $5 droplet
    $10 Droplet isn’t bad either if you feel 5 bucks is too cheap ?
  5. Select your datacenter region (where you want your data hosted, e.g if your users are based in New York, select it, if you don’t have an idea, kindly ignore and select at random).
    Data centre and more alt
    Please tick those boxes the red arrow is pointing to
  6. Please Select SSH as your authentication. Secure Shell is more secure than using a password to login on your server. SSH helps to communicate remotely with another computer in a secure way by ensuring that the exchange of data is encrypted. Encrypting the data keeps it from being intercepted by an unauthorized system. There is more to this, but for now, just see SSH as being stronger when compared to Password authentication.Let’s proceed.
    Select SSH alt
    Select SSH and Click on NEW SSH KEY
    Add a public ssh key alt
    Enter Your SSH Name Here

In completing these steps, some stuff could get complicated along the way. Let me briefly explain the concept of how SSH works:

Do you remember when I said “SSH helps to communicate remotely with another computer”? 

There are two pairs of SSH keys: Private and Public. The private is known as the client key (those are the ones in your physical or local computer); the public key is stored in your server (in this case, your Droplet).

When the client tries to connect to the server, the client does this to the server:

  • Client: “Hey server, I am your boss, I have the private keys.”
  • Server: “Hmm, where is your signature if you are my boss?”
  • Client: “……….” (note: the client isn’t actually sending the private keys. It demonstrates to the server that he is the owner of the private key, in the form of a digital signature)
  • Server: “Let me verify from my Public key.”

The server verifies the signature and if it correlates, the client is given access to the server.

We need a way to generate the Private and Public Keys. On windows we use a program called PuTTY, on Mac and Linux, you use Openssh.

I am on Windows, so, I will be using PuTTy. Mac and Linux users can follow the on-screen instructions here:

SSH Keys for Linux and Mac
Scroll using the scrollbar to follow the above image for openssh!

Steps for windows are as follows:

Go to the PuTTy website, and download the setup appropriate to your system:

PuTTy setup
Download the 32-bit version if you are on a 32-bit system, I am on a 64-bit system, so I should be downloading the 64-bit version

Install PuTTy on your local computer by double-clicking the putty program file,

Putty installation wizard 1

Upon clicking on Next in the above image, click on the subsequent Next and wait for PuTTY to complete the installation.

Once that is done, search for PuTTYgen or locate it inside this folder: C:\Program Files\PuTTYand open puttygen.exe

To go to this folder on a 32-bit system: C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY

Open PuTTY gen

Click Generate and then move your mouse randomly over the blank area. (This is called the entropy of mouse motion. Bring in thousands of users, and no one would ever predict your mouse movement. This means no one can reproduce your keys. If you are curious to learn more, you can read this StackExchange answer .)

Your key looks like this, once it is generated:
The generated ssh key alt

You can also password protect your SSH key by filling the Key passphrase field. This way, if someone gains access to your computer, they will need to provide a passphrase to access it. Keep in mind that you must provide this passphrase every time you use this key.

Note: Don’t use a simple password or password you’ve used elsewhere; use something stronger. You can generate one here: Password generator

Once generated, store the password inside a private book at home. (No, don’t keep it on your PC.)

Save your Private Keys in a folder in your local computer:

Save private key

We are getting there!

Copy Public Key
.

Copy the Public Key and paste it in your DigitalOcean account. Make sure you copy everything:

Paste Public Key in DO

Click “Add SSH Key”

The last step of finalizing our Droplet: Choose your name, add tags and Click “Create Droplet”

Finalize DigitalOcean
You can also enable backup

You will see a progress bar:

Progress bar DO droplet

You see this once the progress bar is done setting the server up:

26. Done with DO setup

The next part is initial server configuration and a basic server security enhancement that helps in securing your server a bit. When we are done with that, we will point our domain name to our DigitalOcean IP and finally install VestaCP.

Connect to your Droplet with PuTTY on Windows

Since we have PuTTy installed, let’s configure it to connect to our DigitalOcean Droplet

    1. Open PuTTy: Locate it inside this folder: C:\Program Files\PuTTY and open putty.exe, if you are on a 32-bit system, goto this folder C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY and open putty.exe
      27. Open PuTTy
      .
      28. Putty opened
      Putty window ↑
    2. Copy The Droplets IP: Copy your Droplet IP address in the control panel, and paste it in the putty IP field:
      29. Copy Droplet IP
      Copy Droplet IP in DigitalOcean control panel ↑
      30. Paste Droplet Ip to Putty
      Paste it in the field Hostname ↑
    3. Add SSH Key: Add the private ssh key we generated in putty
      31. Add the ssh authentication
      Add ssh authentication ↑
      32. Select the ssh private key
      Select the private key we generated from putty the other time ↑

       

    4. Add Root User: root is the default administration user on an ubuntu server. Let’s add it to the Auto-login username field:
      33. Add The Root Username
      Type in root ↑
    5. Lastly: Save your session for recurrent login
      34. Save New Session
      Type in the session name, in my case, I wrote “My New Session” ↑

Once you are done with the above steps, you can open up PuTTY and select your new session to access your server.

Note: The first time you connect to the Droplet, PuTTY’s security alert pop-up asks you to confirm that you trust the server. Please choose “Yes” to save the server host key as this is the first time you are connecting, or select “No” to connect without saving the identity.

35. Load the new session
Load the new session you saved ↑
36. Confirm the server security
Select Yes ↑

PuTTY automatically adds your root username. Since we are using an SSH key, you will be prompted for the password you set on your key. Input the password and you should be automatically connected to your Droplet server:

Putty prompting for passkey of user root ↑
You can see we are connected to the Droplet server ↑

Initial Server Setup In Ubuntu (Recommended)

I almost skipped this part!
This section is highly recommended if you care about tightening your server security, usability and reliability.

I won’t cover this in this guide, as I already wrote a detailed tutorial on how to do this: Initial Server Setup on Ubuntu 16.04 [Enhancing Server Security]

If you prefer an automatic method, you can use a setup script from Jason Hee; it does the heavy lifting for you.

In my opinion, you should go with the manual method. You will not only learn how to troubleshoot issues in the future but also see what is going on step by step. Ultimately it is up to you.

Pointing DigitalOcean Nameservers to Your Domain Name

I am using Namecheap, so, the control panel could be different from yours, but it should be similar regardless of the panel.

Go into domain manager:

39. Domain Manager Namecheap

Add Digitalocean nameservers:

40. Custom DNS Namecheap
This should be ns1.digitalocean.com, ns2.digitalocean.com, and ns3.digitalocean.com

Now, head back to the Digitalocean control panel and create 2 new domain names. One should be your real domain name (e.g websitename.com) and the other should be your panel name (e.g panel1.websitename.com):

41. Add a domain
Click on Add a domain

42. add the domain name in the field and click create domain

Repeat the above step and create a new domain for your control panel URL: panel1.websitename.com where websitename should be the name of your domain.

If you’ve done that, you should now have this:

43. Listed Domain Name

Navigate into the websitename.com, and add a CNAME record pointing www.websitename.com to websitename.com:

44. cname www. to domain.com

If everything is done properly, you should have the below DNS records:

45. Last DNS records

Remember: “websitename.com” should be your domain name, I’ve used this only as an illustration.

Installing Vesta Control Panel

First, log in to your non-root user account. If you don’t have a non-root user, follow this guide Initial Server Setup on Ubuntu 16.04 [Enhancing Server Security]

Download bash install script using the following command:

sudo curl -O http://vestacp.com/pub/vst-install.sh

You might be prompted for a password to confirm you are the new user. Enter the password for the non-root user and proceed by removing group admin using:

sudo groupdel admin

Finally, use this to install vesta:

sudo bash vst-install.sh

You will be asked to confirm the software you want to install on your system, enter y and hit enter:

46. Vestacp first prompt

You will be asked to enter your email address, please enter one:

47. Vestacp 2nd prompt_email

Lastly, you will be asked to enter your FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name), this should be the panel URL: mine is panel1.devsrealm.com

Note: Devsrealm is the name of the test domain, so you should replace it with yours:

48. Vestacp 3rd prompt_fqdnl

Vestacp takes about 15 minutes to complete the setup, so sit back, take a sip of your water, and watch.

Once that is done, Vesta gives us the info to access our control panel:

49. Info to login the vestacp

Copy the panel and paste in your preferred browser, this is mine: https://panel1.devsrealm.com:8083

Note: If you aren’t able to access your panel URL, it probably has to do with the DNS propagation. It might take anywhere between 30 minutes – 48 hours. If this happens to you, you can use your Droplet IP to login instead; e.g 157.245.94.17:8083. You can also check the url using whatsmydns.net to see if your url has propagated yet.

You will get an SSL warning like this, kindly click on advance and proceed. The warning is normal for first-time access:
50. SSL warning when connecting to new vestaSetting Up Your Vestacp

Log in with the user and password Vesta generated for you:

51. Login to vesta using the given admin and pass

Don’t be like the average Joe! The first thing you should do is change your Vestacp password.

Hover over the admin area, and click Edit:

52. Hover the vestacp admin area and click edit

You can either let Vesta generate the password for you, or you can generate it yourself using Password generator

Wait! Don’t save the settings yet. You can also change other settings like the user’s first and last name, but the most important part to change is the Nameserver:

Change both fields to ns1.digitalocean.com & ns2.digitalocean.com:

53. Change the Nameserver to DO's own

Press Save when you are done fiddling with the settings. Take your time!

When you are done saving, Navigate to the Web Section:

54. Navigate to web section in vestacp

You should see this:

55. Vestacp web section

Before we continue editing, visit the URL to confirm all is in place properly. You should see an Apache Ubuntu Default Page, telling you it works!

56. Apache Ubuntu Default Page

 

You can read those later, head back to the web section in Vestacp and click on add web domain name.

Adding New Domain

57. Web section ADD DOMAINt

Add your domain name and change the IP address to the IP address of your Droplet like so:

59. Adding domain name_1

Click Advanced Options, and use the following setting:

  • Aliases should be www.yourdomainname.com, this way your user can access your website using www
  • Web Template – Default
  • Proxy Support – check
  • SSL Support – check
  • Let’s Encrypt Support – check
  • Web statistics – choose Awstats, I love how it shows me the bandwidth I am consuming
  • Statistics authorization – check, and add a unique user & pass
  • Additional FTP – If you feel you need one for uploading to your hosting easily, check and create the user and password; leave the path as is
  • Save.

 

60. Vestacp Advance section in web

 

Access your website URL (e.g yourdomain.com) and you should see something similar:

61. empty domain vestacp

Adding A New Email Account

Go to the mail section and hover over the domain you’ll want to add the email support for:

62. Add mail account for domain name

Add your username in the Account field; add a unique password and click on the advanced section

62. Mail account vestacp simple field

The Quota allows you to set a mailbox size limit. This is useful since you’ll want to reserve disk space for other things. You can press the infinity icon to give it an unlimited storage

Aliases allow you to add other email addresses that forward to that main account. You don’t need this in most cases. The only case you might need is when you have an email account on another service, and you want to keep your emails on that service.

Send login credential to an available email of yours and click Add

63. Advance section vesta mail

To access your email, use panel.example.com/webmail, where example.com should be your domain name. Log in with the user and password you just setup, and you should be ready to go!

Note: You can also use branded nameservers if you have one. It is possible to brand your nameserver if, for instance, you want to use a custom nameserver for every website you are using e.g (ns1.yourwebsite.com). This is beyond the scope of this guide, but if you want to host multiple websites on one Droplet, just point your new domains to the default DigitalOcean nameservers at your domain registrar (ns1.digitalocean.com, ns2.digitalocean.com, and ns3.digitalocean.com) and add new domain as we’ve done above. When adding new domains, make sure you select public address from the listed IP addresses.

Installing ClassicPress Via Softaculous

Softaculous comes pre-installed in Vestacp. It is useful for using scripts to install platforms like ClassicPress, Presta, Joomla, Abantecart, and WordPress.

ClassicPress is due to become available in Softaculous, but in case it is not there yet, there are workarounds. We can either use a free “Softaculous one-month trial license” to install ClassicPress or use wp-cli to download and install ClassicPress. Installing via wp-cli is a little more complex than we want to get into for this example, so for now, let’s use the free month trial.

Note: You can also buy a VPS license for $12 a year. The price is very reasonable!

Visit Softaculous Free Premium for your free trial. Enter your Droplet IP and click issue license

64. Softaculous free trial

Give it about 5 minutes to process, and log in to your panel.

Click on App at the upper section:

65. Accessing softacoulous in vestacp

Search for ClassicPress:

66. Search for classicPress in softacoulous

You should see the ClassicPress page. Hover over the Install tab and choose Custom Install:

67. Use custom install for cp

Use this setting to complete the installation:

  • Software Setup – Choose your domain name, and make sure the In Directory is blank
  • Site Settings – Add the website name and your preferred description
  • Admin Account – You need this to access your admin panel, input user, password and email of the account
  • Enter your email in the Email installation details, and Install

68. ClassicPress Custom install setting

When you are done installing, you will be given info details, which should look something like this:

69. ClassicPress installation detail in softaculous

Access the admin dashboard (e.g https://yourwebsite.com/wp-admin) and start building with ClassicPress! If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on 5 Top WordPress or ClassicPress Gaming Themes to get started!

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Filed under: Development, eCommerce, WordpressTagged with:

Top WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugins

Are you in Australia, and searching for a top-notch shipping plugin to list Australia Post rates on your WooCommerces store? Australia Post is one of the leading shipping services which provide domestic and international shipping services. You can incorporate these services into your WooCommerce store by adding the best plugin which is ideal for your requirements. Let me look through two foremost Australia Post plugins which will give you the insight to choose the ideal one for your store.

  1. ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking (previously XAdapter Australia Post Shipping Plugin)
  2. WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method
  3. Both plugins offer a number of Australia Post shipping services, but some features are different in each plugin. ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post plugin has more advanced features like label printing and tracking options for you and your customers. And when it comes to Australia Post services, ELEX Australia Post plugin offers eParcel and StarTrack services.

If you have a registered account of Australia Post, you can enable the ‘contracted account’. The contracted account will get additional handy shipping services on letter and parcel services, postage meter resets and pre-paid envelopes and satchels (including Express Post), etc. And also if you want to use StarTrack services, you must hold a contracted account.

ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking also offers eParcel services of Australia Post. If your online store is shipping more than 1000 parcels in a year, you can use this service to streamline the shipment of products. It offers flexible pricing for products, fast delivery, tracking services, and barcoded printing labels.

This eParcel service is not available in WooCommrce Australia Post Shipping Method plugin.

Now let us take up an analysis of their features.

Features

Both are best WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping plugins, offer basic Australia Post shipping features. And both plugins fetch the shipping rates from Australia Post and calculate the shipping orders. And they require your shop to be located in Australia and use the Australian dollar as currency. These are the basic common features of these two plugins.

As we have discussed, the WooCommerce Australia Post plugin offers the basic Australia Post shipping features such as displaying Australia Post rates, the option to choose the packing method and adjusting tax rates. But when it comes to ELEX WooCommerce Australia Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking, it is rich in advanced features. You can maybe replace one or more shipping plugins that you use with this single plugin. That is because, with the help of this plugin, you can display Australia Post service rates, choose packaging, print labels, offer tracking details, etc..

Now, let us go through the features one by one,

  1. Shipping Services
  2. Weight Based Packing
  3. Print Shipping Labels
  4. Shipment Tracking
  5. Australia Post StarTrack Services
  6. Updates

Shipping Service

ELEX WooCommerce Australia Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking helps to list live shipping rates of Australia Post shipping services based on the weight, dimension and delivery location of the package. Compared to the WooCommerce Australia Post shipping plugin, the ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post plugin offers more shipping services of Australia Post.

These are the domestic & international services provided by ELEX WooCommerce Australia Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking plugin. Have a look!

Domestic Services 

  • Regular / Parcel Post: In this, product delivery is based on normal business days for prepaid satchels and parcels. You can enable the required Satchels in this service. They are,
    • Regular Satchel 500G
    • Regular Satchel 1KG
    • Regular Satchel 3KG
    • Regular Satchel 5KG
    • Regular Letter Small
    • Regular Letter Medium
    • Regular Letter Large
    • Regular Letter Large 125
    • Regular Letter Large 250
    • Regular Letter Large 500
  • Express Post: It is a cost-effective shipping method, which delivers the product on the next business day. In addition to that, it is available in 7 satchels. They are,
    •   Express Satchel 500G
    •   Express Satchel 1KG
    •   Express Satchel 3KG
    •   Express Satchel 5KG
    •   Express Letter Small
    •   Express Letter Medium
    •   Express Letter Large
  • Courier Post
  • EXPRESS POST
  • PARCEL POST W/SIGNATURE
  • EXPRESS POST W/SIGNATURE
  • PARCEL POST + SIGNATURE
  • EXPRESS POST + SIGNATURE
  • NATIONAL FULL RATE
  • EXPRESS NATIONAL FULL RATE

International Services

  • PACK & TRACK INT’L 8
  • International Post Courier
  • International Post Express
  • International Post Standard
  • International Post Economy Air
  • International Letter Courier
  • International Letter Express
  • International Letter Registered Post DL
  • International Letter Registered Post B4
  • International Letter Economy Air
  • REGISTERED POST INT’L 8
  • EXPRESS COURIER INT’L MERCH 8Z
  • INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL 8Z
  • EXPRESS COURIER INT’L DOC 8

WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method offers 3 domestic and 7 international Australia Post shipping services. They are,

Domestic

  • Regular/ Parcel Post
  • Express Post
  • Courier Post

International

  • Express Post International
  • Express Courier International Platinum
  • Express Courier International
  • Registered Post International
  • Pack and Track International
  • Air Mail
  • Sea Mail

Weight Based Packing

In both WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method and ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post plugins, it takes the total weight of all items in the cart. You can add the maximum weight, and if the weight is too high the package will be split. There are three options for packing. The default packing method is packing items individually. The next one is, pack into boxes with weights and dimensions. If you choose this, there will be a number of predefined boxes. You can enable which are required for your product shipping. Have a look.

Best WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugins | ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Plugin Packing

ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Plugin Packing

You can add new boxes and set custom boxes and dimensions. The units are in ‘kg’ and ‘cm’.

If you choose packing based on total weight, you have to enter the maximum weight. The features of packing are the same in both plugins.

Print Shipping Labels

WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method does not offer label printing options. If you want to print shipping labels while using this plugin, you can install additional label printing plugins. But if you need a complete package of shipping and label printing, you can go for ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin.

You can enable ‘Direct Download’ to download the shipping label and order summary in the Label & Tracking page. If you want to save the label into the wp-content folder for future reference, you can enable ‘Save shipping labels’. You can also generate bulk shipment labels using this feature of ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin. You can choose the label layout for different shipping services such as Parcel Layout, Express Post and Australia Post International.

Best WooCommerce Australia Post Plugins | ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Label PrintingELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Label Printing

You can use  Australia Post Bulk Label Printing Add-On to generate bulk labels and print them into one single PDF file. In addition to that, if you want to automate the label generation much more smoothly and fast, you can use ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Auto-Generate & Email Labels Add-On. This Add-on will automate the process of shipment creation, label and generation and sending email notification with a shipping label to you and your customers.

Shipment Tracking

WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method plugin does not offer the shipment tracking option. But ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping plugin offers an option to track the shipment. If you enable the ‘Email Tracking’ option, the Australia Post Shipping API will return the label to you after the order placement. Using the tracking ID returned by Australia Post, you can track the shipment of your products.

If you are a contracted account holder of Australia Post, it will automatically pay the postage on these labels using your Australia Post account and it will print shipping labels with a tracking barcode for eParcel.

When it comes to international eParcel shipping, it will contain four labels such as labels attached to the product, Australia Post copy, Customs copy and the label for the sender. And you can create an Order Summary/ Shipping Manifest for particular orders. The advantage in this is that you can generate a single manifest of a group of shipments that happened on a single day.

Australia Post  StarTrack Services

StarTrack is an Australia based shipping and logistics company owned by Australia Post. It mainly deals with domestic shipping services in Australia. ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post plugin incorporates StarTrack service to offer an on-demand courier service. If you are a contracted account holder, and you have a StarTrack account also, you can enable and add the credentials in the general settings.

Best WooCommerce Australi Post Shipping Plugins Compared | ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Plugin StarTrack Account

ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Plugin StarTrack Account

It is an on-demand courier service, which offers fast delivery of your products ranging from immediate to 3 hours. You will get 3 StarTrack services when you enable this option. They are,

  • PREMIUM
  • 1,3 & 5KG FIXED PRICE PREMIUM
  • EXPRESS

It offers real-time tracking and offers electronic proof of delivery. While using this, you can simply relax without worrying about whether your shipment will reach the right place at the right time. And you can also generate StarTrack Shipping Labels with barcodes using this plugin.

This service is not available in WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method.

Updates

ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping plugin frequently updates its features in accordance with the changing trends and requirements of WooCommerce shipping. And also it assures the compatibility with upgrading the WordPress-WooCommerce-platform. It always adds new features according to the rising requirements of WooCommerce customers.

WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method also keeps updating its features as it is a part of WooCommerce.

Now, let us wrap up.

Conclusion

Both are best WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping plugins that are highly efficient in offering the basic features of Australia post shipping services. But still, ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking offers more additional and advanced features compared to WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method. As we have discussed, the ELEX Australia Post plugin offers eParcel and StarTrack services of Australia Post, which is not currently available in the WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Method. And ELEX Australia Post plugin offers label printing and shipment tracking options.

If you want a single Australia Post shipping plugin with additional features rather than using a number of plugins for each feature, ELEX WooCommerce Australia Post Shipping Plugin with Print Label & Tracking plugin is the right option. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on Top Free WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing Plugins!

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12 Best Elementor Addons for WordPress or ClassicPress

Ever since its introduction in 2016, Elementor has completely taken over the WordPress industry. Its 1 Million Active Users speak volume for itself. If you are not familiar with it, let us give you a brief on it. Elementor is the WordPress Page Builder plugin which offers users a unique web designing experience. Anyone can just Drag & Drop cool elements and create an amazing website in just a few minutes.

In addition, Elementor Page Builder provides Ready-Made Templates for users to instantly apply on the website & get started. It gives you the freedom to personalize all the features with its styling capability. Therefore, you are able to show off your creativity and come up with your own unique ideas.

Thanks to Elementor, you don’t have to worry about hiring developers anymore as you can do it yourself without any prior programming experience or knowledge.

Why You Might Want to Use Elementor Addons?

It’s never easy to satisfy everyone’s requirements to the fullest. So, despite Elementor offering 80+ Fantastic Elements, it is very possible that you may want something even more advanced & unique. This is exactly why third-party developers have decided to expand the Elementor functionalities & develop their own Elementor Addons.

Right now, there are 131 Elementor addons available in the marketplace. So, you definitely have tons of options to choose from and start using the right extension for your website.

These addons give you the opportunity to strengthen your website design with its amazing features & layouts. Besides, you can create a special vibe by using the Elementor extensions.

By the end of this article, you will no longer be in a doubt on where to get started with the Elementor Extensions. Because we are going to discuss the best addons you need to have a look at to enhance your page building experience with ease.

Disclaimer: WPExplorer is an affiliate for one or more products listed below. If you click a link and complete a purchase we could make a commission.

1. Elementor Pro

Before looking for an alternative solution, you should definitely give Elementor Pro a shot. Despite the free version offering 29 basic elements, the premium one will enrich the numbers even by a large scale. For instance, it offers more advanced widgets such as Posts, WooCommerce, Forms, Social Media & many more.

Elementor Pro offers Theme Builder flexibility to help you easily design your themes as well. This outstanding feature gives you the capability to make changes to your Header, Footer, WooCommerce, Blogs & all the other Dynamic pages which aren’t possible through the basic version.

Moreover, you can instantly build a landing page using its huge collection of ready-made Templates. You can then personalize it as per your preference quite easily. On top of that, if you are into coding, then you can even add custom CSS from the Elementor dashboard itself. As a result, you are able to check all the changes you have made in real time.

To save your time, Elementor Pro comes with the ‘Global Widget’ feature. Just save a template & you will be able to use this in any of your future pages through the ‘Drag & Drop’ capability.

Basically, to capitalize the absolute best from the Elementor Page Builder, you must use its Premium version.

2. The Plus Addons

The Plus Addons for Elementor

When it comes to Elementor addons you likely won’t find one with more options than The Plus. Packed with over 8,000+ customizations it’s an all-in-one extension for the popular page builder.

This plugin is an easy way to build and customize your Elementor powered site fast. The Plus Addons includes more than 300+ UI blocks to really speed up the creation process. And they’re really though of just about everything. Quickly add icon box grids, pricing tables, hero sections, feature lists, map sections, forms and more. These blocks have been designed and styled for you, so you can simply add in your content. Or us the built-in options to further customize colors, backgrounds, icons and more.

Curious as to what else is included? 50+ unique widgets (tables, charts, info box, countdown, headings, animated text, flipbox, timeline, parallax, Google maps, tabs, etc.), a powerful listings builder, SEO and translation ready code (use the POT file to translate) – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The plugin also includes top notch support and you can even purchase an extended license if you’re a developer who wants to use The Plus on all of your clients sites (and why wouldn’t you?).

As a bonus, there is also a Plus Addons Lite you can grab for free from WordPress.org. Think of it as a trial for the premium version. With 20+ widgets and 4 custom post types it’s a great way to test The Plus Addons before you upgrade.

3. Essential Addons for Elementor

Essential Addons for Elementor

If you talk about any third party addons after Elementor Pro, then you need to check the Essential Addons for Elementor first. It has recently achieved the milestone of being the first Elementor Addon to reach 100K+ active installations. Besides, Essential Addons has the highest number of active users among all the third-party extensions in the market as well.

Essential Addons offer both free & premium version which you can use to design attractive websites with ease. From the Free version, you will be able to use 30+ outstanding elements such as Form Stylers, Post, Social Media and many more. It fulfills all the basic needs the users so that you can pull of an amazing looking site.

Aside from this, Essential Addons for Elementor is very light-weight & doesn’t slow down your site because of its ‘Modular Control’ capability to enable or disable any elements at any time.

To get your hands on more advanced & extraordinary features, you can also try out Essential Addons Pro. The great thing is you will get access to overall 59+ fantastic elements with this plugin. You will be able to show off your creativity and make your website jaw-dropping with its premium widgets such as Off-Canvas, Lightbox & Modal, advanced Post & Gallery widgets, Parallax effects, Form Stylers and many others.

Moreover, the Premium version of Essential Addons offers 100+ Ready Blocks. You can easily import these templates on your pages and start customizing & get your desired result in an instant.

4. Crocoblock – JetPlugins Elementor Extension

Crocoblock Elementor Extension

Crocoblock contains all the Jet plugins as a package and offers a great collection of pre-made templates. Besides, Crocoblock bundle lets you add top quality designs to your website. You can personalize your site with its elements such as Post, WooCommerce, Popup & more.

However, since Crocoblock includes Jet Widgets as separate plugins you may want to give it a try on a localhost first. The more plugin you use the greater chance there is for conflicts – so just be sure sure to check before installing on your live site.

5. JetElements Addon for Elementor

JetElements Addon for Elementor

JetElements is a premium plugin which comes with 40+ fantastic elements. It gives you the flexibility to easily use all the elements with customization options on your website.

You can design amazing blog and image layouts by using its high-quality Post & Gallery elements. Besides, JetElements offers a nice collection of pre-made templates. You can instantly use them on your sites to get a top-notch layout on your website.

6. Ultimate Addons for Elementor

Ultimate Addons for Elementor

Ultimate Addons for Elementor is another highly rated Elementor extension that you can’t miss out. It provides 21+ widgets which comes with advanced & unique features.

You can use its Modular Control to keep your site fast. On top of that, Ultimate Addons offers the WooCommerce & Post widgets to nicely display all your products/contents on your website.

Despite its impressive widgets, the amount of widgets Ultimate Addons is offering is pretty limited. Since it doesn’t have any free version for you to try out, you need to purchase the premium version to get the live experience.

7. JetBlocks Addon for Elementor

JetBlocks Addon for Elementor

JetBlocks is very narrow and specific. This bundle includes elements that will help you build beautiful Headers and Footers.

You may ask what is the need for a dedicated addon that includes elements for beautifying the Header and Footer? Well, the need arises from the fact that every Business Website serves very specific customers and belongs to certain niche markets.

But then again as a Business, concerned about your Online Presence, you should ask yourself this question, should I buy an addon that has very narrow usability or buys an addon that combines different types of elements thus giving me the flexibility to use it for different purposes which may seem insignificant now?

8. Element Pack

Element Pack for Elementor

Elementor Pack is another cool addon library for Elementor, there are enough elements in the pack for building amazing top-notch elements. It has a beautiful collection of both top-notch and most commonly used widgets for Website Building. Although the collection of elements gives this addon a fair edge, its downside is it does not have a Free Version.

9. Elementor PowerPack

Elementor PowerPack

PowerPack contains a bunch of Creative elements. There are a total of 42 elements in this bundle which is very moderate compared to what other bundles are offering. However, PowerPack for Elementor bundle also does not have a Free version which could be a big turn down if you are looking for free options.

10. JetTricks Addon for Elementor

JetTricks Addon for Elementor

The name JetTricks gives fair hints to what this bundle includes. Jet tricks got some elements that are eye-catching and will appeal to your readers.

Here is what you should be asking yourself, can only animations increase your traffic? If yes, then are you interested to buy an addon that only includes such elements or go for the ones that are versatile and contains elements for each and every one of your needs? If animation is more important for you, then you can decide to go with this addon. However, it also does not have a Free Version.

11. Envato Elements Free Template Kits

Envato Elements Free Template Kits

Envato Elements includes several Template Kits. A Template Kit is a collection of beautiful templates specially designed to help you create a website for a specific niche industry, with the help of a page builder, which in this case is Elementor.

Although this addon doesn’t yet have dedicated elements for Gutenberg, the team behind this addon is working on it.

12. All in One Widgets for Elementor

All in One Widgets for Elementor

All In One Widgets helps you to add Expand Grid, Image Hotspot with Tooltip, Flip Box, Card Slider, Before & After, iHover, Timeline, Float Block etc in Elementor Page Builder. In total there are Eight Elements in the bundle. The team working behind this addon is hopeful that they will be adding more widgets to the bundle in the future. Unfortunately, there is no free version to this addon.

Wrapping up the Best Elementor Addons

So, have you decided which addon you are going to use for your next project? Don’t feel bad if you are still confused about which one to pick. Of course, you are dedicated to your work that’s why you are reading this blog, all with the purpose of finding the ideal Elementor addon for your needs. But remember there are a handful of great addons for Elementor out there. So, which one should you pick?

Here is a quick trick for you. In today’s world, everything is consumer-centric. And this is true for WordPress plugins as well. Every customer has the option of posting a review and rating. If an Elementor addon is not great, it’s reviews and ratings will speak for itself. On the other hand, the number of active users shows the credibility of the product too. In that case, Essential Addons for Elementor is the top of the leaderboard.

Get Elementor Pro

Of course, to use all these you are going to need the Elementor Plugin, and the pro version is the best version to get, so do that first then take a look at all the others! If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article onTop Wordpress or ClassicPresss Gaming themes!

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Top WordPress WooCommerce Facebook Groups to Join

If you are intending to improve your knowledge about WordPress or even proposing to share a few on, what you know, then blogs are not just the only option you have. You can find a plethora of massive groups in social media circles like Facebook groups, LinkedIn, etc. But as you see, there are plenty out there. Let me make it much easier for you. Here, I am listing out the top best WordPress WooCommerce Facebook groups that you can join. These groups are specifically meant to knowledge share and discuss the various upcoming and currently trending topics on WordPress WooCommerce.

Let us take a look at the popular WordPress WooCommerce Facebook groups to join :

Advanced WooCommerce Group || Facebook WordPress WooCommerce Group

Members : 25,538 +

Rules: No spamming or Promotions.

This Facebook group is ideal for WordPress developers, store owners, and even WooCommerce Enthusiastic. The groups have everything you need to know about WordPress WooCommerce. The group answers to anyone who comes up with a query on WooCommerce.

WordPress WooCommerce Tips and HelpZone

Members: 19.249+

Rules: Use very descriptive language in questions with proper links and screenshots.
Paid and private support.

The Facebook group is meant for discussing all WordPress WooCommerce. The major topics covered are WordPress, WooCommerce, WordPress Themes, and Plugins recommendations and troubleshooting support.

WordPressplugins
Members: 29,311+

 Rules: Group allows commercial posts and self-promotion only on the plugin related topics.

This Facebook group was created by Stephen B. Henry for WordPress enthusiasts to discuss all WordPress WooCommerce. The group offers excellent support in terms of getting a better understanding of plugins.

woocommercehelpandshare

Members: 30,102+

Rules: No promotions.

You can easily share anything related to products and offerings related to WooCommerce. The group is meant for asking questions and clearing your doubts on WordPress WooCommerce. The group offers a healthy platform for discussion.

Plugin Suggestion

Members: 17,817+

Rules:  Focus on questions to help in discussing WordPress WooCommerce plugins suggestions only.

Ideally, this Facebook group is meant to support WordPress WooCommerce users or store owners to gain helpful insights related to WordPress plugins. If you are looking for just learning about WordPress Plugins, then the group is perfect.

WordPresseCommerce

Members: 4953 +

Rules: No Commercial Posts and self-promotion

Again, yet another group by Stephen B. Henry on WordPress eCommerce. Here the group allows posts only related to eCommerce directly. The group contains an unparalleled discussion on WordPress eCommerce

woocommercewordpressecommerce

Members: 65

Rules: Anything related to WordPress WooCommerce can be posted,

An emerging Facebook group to assist any WordPress developer enthusiasts or even businesses who are into developing and maintaining a WooCommerce website. Any eCommerce related queries will be addressed in the group.

woocommerceexperttforum

Members: 2477+

Rules: The group gives you an open platform to discuss all WordPress WooCommerce.

This Facebook group just has all those passionate about WordPress WooCommerce. It provides a unique platform to post about WordPress WooCommerce and solve any ambiguity regarding the same.

wordpresswoocommerce.

Members: 2316 +

Rules: Strictly only WordPress related contents.

This Facebook group aims to build a WordPress empire through positive knowledge sharing and also promoting WordPress WooCommerce among businesses.

wordpressthemespluginsandjobs

Members: 1448

Rules: Only WordPress related posts allowed,

This is a private group for promoting WordPress. A group of enthusiasts who will answer your queries as well as address various needs on WordPress knowledge sharing and even jobs too.

Conclusion

So, above is a list of cool Facebook WordPress WooCommerce groups. This includes already established ones as well as emerging ones that should satisfy your knowledge on WordPress WooCommerce. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on the 83 Top WooCommerce Extensions!

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Top Free WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing Plugins

Offering a special price for your customers is common in conventional business. You can also offer these special prices to your online customers using free WooCommerce Role-Based pricing plugins in your online store. There are many role-based pricing plugins available for your WooCommerce store, you can choose the best suitable one for your store based on your requirements. 

What Is The Relevance Of Role-Based Pricing In Your e-Commerce Business

As a shop owner, you will be having a large number of customers. Some customers may be regular shoppers, or some may be new to your online store. Based on the purchase history of your customers, you can offer special prices to them using these role-based pricing plugins.

You may want to offer your products at different prices to different customers as well as based on certain standards like the total number of previous purchases etc. These plugins also help you to create new customer-roles and assign them pricing rules. And you can set impressive discounts and markup prices for your customers, which will improve the loyalty of your customers as well as help you gain traffic to your site. This will invite new users to your online store naturally. 

Each plugin has its own features and properties along with the fundamental role-based pricing feature. For instance, options like remove the ‘Add to Cart’ button for a particular group of users. Here, in this article let us analyze the features of 3 free WooCommerce role-based pricing plugins. That will help you to choose the best suitable one for your e-commerce store.

  1. ELEX WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing
  2. WC Role-Based Price For WooCommerce
  3. Pricing Deals For WooCommerce

ELEX WooCommerce Role Based Pricing

ELEX role-based pricing plugin is one of the best free WooCommerce role-based pricing plugins with a number of additional features you can choose for your online store. If you want to assign different price scales, discount and markup prices for different categories of users for different products, ELEX WooCommerce role-based pricing plugin is the right choice. In addition to this basic feature, it offers an option to replace the ‘Add to Cart’ button with a custom call to action text. You can make these changes on the buttons to only a specific group of users using this plugin. And you can set different pricing for guest users and registered users as well.

If you want more features like shifting your WooCommerce store to Catalog mode, you can go for its premium version ELEX WooCommerce Catalog Mode, Wholesale and Role-Based Pricing Plugin. 

Now let us check its features,

User Interface

The simple user interface of this plugin will help you to set all the features you want for each user role without any confusion. You can find the ‘Role-based Pricing’ option which comes under WooCommerce. There you can set the features for each user role. If you want to add new user roles and assign price rules for them, it is also possible. You can go to the ‘Users’ option and add a new user role to your e-commerce store. And then, go to ‘Manage User role’ in ELEX Role-based pricing plugin, and add the new user there. 

You can set features for unregistered users such as to remove and customize Add to Cart button, hide price and regular price and, hide cart and checkout page by enabling them. 

When it comes to registered users, you can set more role-based and pricing options.  You can select the user roles from a dropdown menu to apply the features, remove and customize Add to Cart button, hide price and regular price, hide cart and checkout page and, individual product adjustment for them. It’s very easy!

Now, let’s move on to the pricing part. It is very simple to configure pricing for individual pricing for your wholesale e-commerce store. Have a look,

Free WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing Plugin | ELEX WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing UI

ELEX WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing UI

Here, you can set individual price adjustments by a fixed price or a fixed percentage to individual user roles for the selected product categories. And this price adjustment can be either discount price or markup price, which you can choose. And don’t forget to enable these features of individual users to whom you want to apply. 

Product Price Adjustment

As we have discussed, you can add individual price adjustment as a discount or markup price for each user role and select the categories on which you want to apply that price adjustment. Let us see an example,

Free WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing Plugin | ELEX Role-Based Pricing Price Adjustment

ELEX Role-Based Pricing Price Adjustment

Here, the administrator will get a 20% discount for the categories Clothing and Posters. Likewise, you can set pricing according to your requirements. Got it?

Now, let us move on to the next role-based pricing plugin.

WC Role Based Price For WooCommerce

WC Role Based Pricing plugin offers multi-currency and price level options for different user roles of your online store. In this plugin, you can choose the allowed category of users who are applicable to the special prices. And you can set the regular price and selling price for each product individually. And with this plugin, you have an option to add more extensions to your WooCommerce store. 

WC Role Based Pricing plugin has no option to set discounts and markup prices for individual users and products like ELEX WooCommerce Role Based plugin. Instead of that, you have to set regular prices and selling prices for each product individually. 

It is compatible with WPML (WordPress Multilingual Plugin) and also it offers currency switcher integration. And you can implement shortcodes to get product prices in your online store. If you want more features like scheduling selling price, you have to choose its premium version. Its premium version offers a number of impressive features like dynamic pricing, role-based product blocker, role-based payment gateway blocker and, bulk price updater integration, etc.

User Interface

WC Role Based Price plugin has a very simple user interface, that you can easily set pricing features for the customers and products of your e-commerce store. 

Free WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing Plugin | WC Role Based Price UI

WC Role Based Price UI

Here, you will be able to add the user roles to which you want to apply this pricing feature. And if you want to create new user roles, you can do it with the option in WordPress and add it to ‘Allowed User Roles’. If you want to customize the regular price and selling price labels, it has an option to do that. And then, you can save the changes.

Then you can go to the individual product page, and there you can set your selling price. So you can sell at different discount prices without any discount percentage to a particular category of product. 

Product Price Adjustment

After setting user roles to role-based pricing using WC Role Based Prices plugin, you can choose the product to which you need to apply this selling price. And you can simply add the amount at which you want to sell that product. At the bottom of the product page, you can see this,

Free WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing | WC Role-Based Price Price Adjustment

WC Role-Based Price Price Adjustment

Instead of setting a discount price to a particular category of products, you can set prices to each product using WC Role Based Price plugin.

Pricing Deals For WooCommerce

Pricing Deals for WooCommerce plugin offers discount pricing for your e-commerce store. Here, in this plugin, you can create ‘price rules’ for your online store. It also helps to implement dynamic cart pricing discounts and catalog pricing discounts for your products. One of the impressive features of this plugin is its BOGO (Buy One Get One) option. You can set this BOGO option to selected products using this plugin. 

It offers different kinds of discount options like, fixed amount discount which applies to a particular group or individually on products, percent discounts, and package pricing. And you can give discounts to particular members, groups or brands according to your business nature. It also offers an option to display discounts on catalogs.

User Interface

Compared to other plugins’ user interfaces, you may find it a bit difficult to understand each feature on the user interface of the Pricing Deal setting that comes under this plugin. But still, you can set the pricing rules for discounts easily. Have a look,

Free WooCommerce Role-Based Pricing | Pricing Deals For WooCommerce UI

Pricing Deals For WooCommerce UI

In this, you can choose which discount type you want, whether a purchase discount or store display discount. And you can choose the deal type such as BOGO, Bulk pricing, Simple discount or any other type of special pricing for your online store. And you can set the deal schedule, that is, how many days you are planning to offer a discount to these products. 

Product Price Adjustment

Using the pricing deal setting, you can set the coupons and discounts you want to apply to products. In addition to that, you can go to Price Deals categories, you can create new custom pricing deal categories and apply it to your products. Its free version mainly focuses on discounts only. If you want additional features like applying discounts to a particular group of members, you can go for its premium version.

But if you own an e-commerce store that offers many discounts and season sales, you can choose Pricing Deals for WooCommerce plugin.

Let us conclude,

Conclusion

If you want to apply specific discounts or markup prices on individual products to individual user roles, then ELEX WooCommerce Role Based pricing plugin is the right option for your online store. If you want to simply offer a selling price to a particular group of user roles instead of giving a fixed discount rate, you can go for WC Role Based Price for WooCommerce plugin. If you need a plugin that offers different kinds of discounts, you can choose Pricing Deals for the WooCommerce plugin. 

But ELEX WooCommece Role-Based plugin offers role-based pricing by discounts and markup prices with a simple user interface. And you can set a particular percentage of discount or a fixed markup price for product categories for user roles. So when it comes to the role-based plugin, ELEX WooCommerce Role Based pricing seems to be an obvious choice thanks to the advanced feature. If you enjoyed this post, why not check out this article on the 7 Best WooCommerce Points and Rewards Plugins!

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