Tag Archives: Website

7 Best Live Chat Plugins for Your WordPress Website

[ad_1] At some point during the natural lifecycle of a company, cultivating customers takes priority. As such, your support services become a key battleground. Live chat plugins are one way to offer your customers practically instant access to your support team. They let users talk to either a real person there and then, or a smart ‘bot’ that redirects them to the right place. In this post, we’ll look at a number of live chat plugins, and offer some advice about which one would potentially suit you. Before that, let’s talk about why live chat is a great customer service channel. An Introduction to Live Chat (And Why You Should Implement It) For the uninitiated, live chat does what it says on the tin. In other words, a customer accesses your site – usually looking for support – and can connect with a representative through a button on the page: While live chat was initially ‘manned’ by a real person, gains in Artificial Intelligence (AI) means that tailored bots are more common now. This brings about a number of benefits: The initial heavy lifting when uncovering a user’s support needs can be handled in a routine way by sophisticated tech. Users are essentially self-solving their issue, which means you can treat aspects of the live chat experience as an extension of your knowledge base. You can ‘qualify’ the user for more advanced support. This lets you create dedicated ‘tracks’ and processes for your support chain, and makes them more efficient. Given these reasons, implementing live chat on your website is a great way to bring users through your support funnel in a refined way. How We Chose Our 7 Live Chat Plugins WordPress wouldn’t be the platform it is without plugins. While you can implement practically any functionality using them, this post will look at live chat specifically. To narrow down our list, we’ve used the following criteria: All plugins must have been updated within the last six months to work with a modern version of WordPress. Where recorded, a plugin must have a rating of at least 80% – for example, four stars on either WordPress.org or CodeCanyon. Finally, a plugin must have a relatively substantial number of active installs. For example, plugins hosted on WordPress.org usually need a minimum of 1,000 installs. Because of the above criteria, you’ll notice that popular solutions such as Zendesk Chat and Intercom aren’t included. In a nutshell, their WordPress plugins didn’t meet the standard we set, although the services themselves are stellar. Summarizing the 7 Top Live Chat Plugins for Your WordPress Website LiveChat. Busy support teams using a personal approach will love this plugin. Tidio Live Chat. Arguably the best all-around live chat plugin for WordPress. Sendinblue. If you’re already a user of Sendinblue’s other products, you’ll find this plugin ideal. Crisp Live Chat. If you have a complex product, Crisp will fit the bill. HubSpot Live Chat. HubSpot subscribers are likely going to use this live chat plugin, although it offers value for non-subscribers too. Olark. This plugin will be great for support team as part of a sales funnel. Tawk.to. A top plugin that offers myriad features completely free forever. 7 Top Live Chat Plugins for Your WordPress Website Without further ado, let’s take a look at the plugins. The seven here are in no particular order, although we encourage you to compare them all against your own requirements. 1. LiveChat First up, we have WordPress Live Chat Plugin by LiveChat – we’ll simply call it “LiveChat” here. The plugin has a number of esteemed customers, such as McDonalds, Adobe, and PayPal. As such, the live chat plugin is great for larger organizations. LiveChat also develops the WooCommerce Live Chat plugin for WordPress too, so they have a number of solutions regardless of your specific need. Under the hood, LiveChat offers a number of efficiency features, such as canned responses. You’re able to send personalized messages to users automatically, and also send them files through the chat window. However, the biggest plus point of LiveChat is also its greatest drawback. It’s an expansive live chat platform with practically everything you’ll need to support your customers. As such, it could be overkill for a smaller site. Overall, LiveChat is great for businesses with heavy support needs, especially if a personal approach to your support provision is important. Pricing: LiveChat starts at $16 per month, per agent. There are a number of tiers depending on your needs, although you could see costs quickly shoot into three-figures per month. 2. Tidio Live Chat Next up, Tidio is a company offering a well-supported live chat plugin with solid user feedback. It’s designed for WordPress site owners in mind, and also integrates email marketing services and a chatbot into the package. Installation is rapid, and once you’re ready, you’re able to set up multiple chat windows across different pages. The plugin supports nearly 200 languages out of the box, and offers a number of customization options to help you match Tidio’s chat windows to your branding. Because of the integrated email marketing, you’re able to follow up with users once they leave your website, turning your support channels into a sales funnel entry point. What’s more, there are a number of third-party integrations available. We’d argue that if you’re running a WordPress website, Tidio is going to be a front-runner for your live chat needs. It’s a modern solution, with a thoughtful feature set. What’s more, our research indicates it’s one of the more well-maintained plugins available. Pricing: Tidio offers a stacked free tier, which could be enough for many site owners. However, there are three other tiers that cater to different needs. Each one works out around $200–225 per year, which could become pricey if you’re looking for an all-in-one support solution. 3. Sendinblue Sendinblue is better known for its stellar email marketing services, although the live chat functionality more than pulls its weight. You’re able to leverage built-in design tools to

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10up Publishes Gutenberg Best Practices Website – WP Tavern

[ad_1] 10up has published a Gutenberg Best Practices website as a public resource with tutorials, documentation, and example code. Maintaining current documentation has not been a strong point of the official Gutenberg project as the pace of the project makes it difficult for contributors and extenders to keep up. “Gutenberg introduced an entirely new editorial paradigm for content creation and page building within WordPress,” 10up Associate Director of Editorial Engineering Fabian Kaegy said. “Because the block editor is still fairly new, it is advancing quickly and changes are introduced regularly; as such, learning opportunities are scarce and we have felt an absence of best practice documentation that meets 10up standards for craftsmanship.” 10up’s Gutenberg Best Practices were written to supplement WordPress’ core documentation with what Kaegy said is a “more client-services-centric approach tailored to engineering enterprise-level editorial experiences.” For developers who are brand new to working with the block editor, the Reference section has a wealth of information about the anatomy of a block, the fundamentals of block theming with theme.json, block extensions, block variations, and more, with supporting videos and gifs. The documentation also gives a little more context for practical usage. For example, the section about Block Transforms includes information about when and how to define block transforms. The Training section of 10up’s Gutenberg Best Practices contains a mini crash course on the file structure of a block and all of its components, and how to build a custom block using the 10up Starter Block. This is especially helpful for developers looking for some extra guidance developing their first blocks. The Guides section contains more advanced topics like extending core blocks and including frontend JS with a block. The documentation is available on GitHub for anyone to contribute edits. The site also links to a discussion board on GitHub where developers are welcome to join discussions and workshop the best practices in collaboration with 10up employees. 10up has published the Gutenberg Best Practices website with a beta designation and intends to update and expand it as WordPress evolves. [ad_2] Source link

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Future-Proof Your Website with AVIF Images

[ad_1] Is the fear of slower page load time preventing you from using high-quality images? Are you struggling to compress your existing images without them losing quality? With Converter for Media, you can overcome these limiting factors and efficiently improve your website’s speed. Converter for Media is a premium WordPress plugin that helps you reduce the weight of your images without altering their original appearance. The plugin allows you to convert images to WebP and to AVIF simultaneously. Although you can convert images to WebP via Photoshop or other WordPress plugins, the AVIF format is much better and enables you to compress images by an additional about 30% compared to WebP. But how easy is it to convert images with the plugin? What browsers recognize the AVIF format? In this hands-on Converter for Media review, you’ll learn the answers to these questions and more. Converter for Media: Overview and Capabilities If we talk about image compression plugins, most offerings focus on minifying JPEG and PNG images. And while they can help you achieve a faster loading time for your site, they aren’t future-proof, i.e., most aren’t updated/optimized for Google’s Core Web Vitals.   Core Web Vitals are metrics Google uses to quantity and score a website’s user experience. They’re made up of specific user interaction and page speed elements, with images affecting one of them (Largest Contentful Paint). Serving images in next-gen formats is one of the keys to improving your Core Web Vitals score, and this is where Converter for Media helps. Converter for Media converts your images to AVIF — the latest next-gen image format to date. The AVIF format is backed by big companies such as Netflix, Amazon, Google, and Apple. Displaying images in this format makes for a high-quality user experience — AVIF images have even better quality than WebP images and don’t carry unnecessary weight. Some notable features of Converter for Media include: One-click optimization. Convert all your images with one click. It’s that easy! No server load. Convert using the company’s remote server. Keep your server free. High level of conversion. Use specially configured tools to achieve better conversion quality. Ready out of the box. No need to touch any script — just install and start using. Image testing. Check how much you can reduce the weight of your images upfront. It’s worth mentioning that AVIF is currently supported by over 70% of browsers, including Chrome, Opera and Firefox. In other browsers, the images will be used in the WebP or original format. The plugin converts images to AVIF and WebP simultaneously. Pictures are loaded depending on the browser type of the website user. But the URLs of the images will remain the same — Converter for Media does an invisible direct to a file in the next-gen format. This means the best support for any browser. Article Continues Below Hands-On With Converter for Media Now for the fun part — I’ll show you how to install Converter Media on a WordPress site and use it to convert images to AVIF and WebP for better optimization and SEO. Installing the plugin First, buy and download the plugin from matt plugins’ website. Then, upload its .zip file in the Plugins section of your WordPress admin. Once installed, you’ll be able to configure its functions by going to Settings > Converter for Media inside WordPress. Plugin Settings General Settings are where you can choose a conversion strategy. Options include: Lossy – maximize size reduction with quality loss Optimal – reduce size without visible quality loss Lossless – minimal size reduction without quality loss I went with the default option, i.e., optimal, because AVIF delivers a high-quality result even in this setting. You can also choose which directories’ files should be converted to the output format. By default, only your uploads (images in the Media Library) will convert. But you can check the /themes or /plugins directory if you want to convert image files from either.  Additionally, you can set maximum image dimensions — I went with the plugin’s recommendation of 2048 x 2048 pixels. And if you want to automatically convert the new images that you upload to the Media Library, just leave the toggle in the last option on. Advanced settings are also available, but you do not need to change them. The default plugin settings are recommended for most websites. The plugin is ready out of the box, so you don’t need to be a technical person to handle the plugin without any problems. Bulk Optimization of Images One feature that impressed me a lot is bulk optimization. This option appears below the General Settings and lets you convert all uploads to AVIF and WebP with just one click. Additionally, the list of files that will be optimized is displayed in the form of a tree. By clicking on the “+” icon you can see them. I bulk-optimized the images on my site — the plugin hardly took 2 minutes to convert around 344 image files to WebP/AVIF. If you interrupt the process for some reason, you can continue it later — no need to start all over again. Converter for Media also shows you: How much weight of your images it saved The number of files it successfully converted The amount of failed or skipped file conversion attempts Optimization Results Apparently, you just need to use the bulk optimization option to convert all images to AVIF and WebP. Once done, you can check the optimization results directly in the Media Library. Note that after installing Converter for Media, any new images you upload will be converted automatically. Converter for Media PRO Pricing Converter for Media PRO has three monthly and three yearly plans. You can use one license on multiple websites, so it’s a very attractive offer for people who maintain multiple websites on WordPress. Monthly plans:  10,000 optimized images per month for $5/month 25,000 optimized images per month for $10/month 70,000 optimized images per month for $25/month Yearly plans (includes 2 free

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How to Display TikTok Posts on Your WordPress Website

[ad_1] Within the world of social media marketing, there is perpetual talk of new platforms to conquer and find potential customers on. TikTok is the latest social media platform that has rocketed to stardom due (in part) to the global COVID-19 pandemic. As such, this has lead many site owners to learn how to display TikTok posts in WordPress. After all, WordPress can already embed a slew of other social media platforms. The good news TikTok is no different. In fact, there are a few ways to get the job done, both through native functionality and third-party plugins. In this post, we’ll show you a couple of ways to display TikTok posts in WordPress. Before this, let’s give you a quick overview of the platform. A Brief Introduction to TikTok TikTok itself is only five years old, although the platform has a longer history. It’s known as Douyin in China (TikTok’s ‘home’ country), and although both apps share the same functionality and features, they’re separate from one another. When Douyin’s owners sought to go global, they acquired the popular Musical.ly service. This gained popularity through short form lip-synced videos. Once the merger took place, TikTok was born and exploded onto the world stage. At first, TikTok followed in the footsteps of Musical.ly. Both then and now, lots of viral videos feature lip-syncing and choreographed dance moves. As such, it’s been a popular platform for younger demographics. Though, older users have made their way to the platform too, and there’s more of a short, ‘life-hack’ element to TikTok at current writing. This leads into our next section – all about the benefits of showcasing TikTok posts on your website. Why You’d Want to Display TikTok Posts On Your WordPress Website The reasons for you wanting to display TikTok posts are diverse, and dependent on your needs and goals. For example, if you run a WordPress blog, you may want to showcase your favorite ‘TikToks’ (or your own). Though, for businesses, there are a swathe of benefits to leverage: You’re able to market to a core younger demographic on a hot new platform. The user base is massive, and compares in a way to the Snapchat phenomenon a few years ago. There are more, but in a nutshell, visibility and opportunity are central positives. Also, TikToks are great for embedding in posts because of how short and interesting they are. The great news is it’s straightforward to display TikTok posts in WordPress, and we’ll show you this next. How to Display TikTok Posts on Your WordPress Website (In 2 Ways) While we’ll list two ways to display TikTok posts on your WordPress website here, there are a few more of methods to note. In short, we’ve suggested two possible approaches: Embed TikToks using WordPress’ native functionality. Install a plugin to display TikTok posts in WordPress. The plugin approach is simple, although as native methods go, WordPress has a variety of ways to embed social media of all types. We’ll cover this in more detail next. 1. Use WordPress’ Native Embedding Functionality First off, WordPress is adept at displaying a multitude of social media posts. In fact, it’s long been a Content Management System (CMS) that is good at displaying content from all the major social media networks, and the minor ones. Even better, it continues to do so regardless of whether you use the Classic Editor or Block Editor. We’ll offer you three different ways WordPress can provide native embeds for TikTok posts. Whichever you use is up to you depending on your needs. Pasting Into the Block Editor The simple way to embed any content in WordPress is to paste it as text into your desired editor. The CMS has been able to do this almost from the start, and it continues to be a great User Experience (UX) element for users who need it. To start though, you’ll need the link to your TikTok post. There are a couple of ways to do this – either take the URL direct from the browser bar, or open the Share icon for each post and click Copy Link: Once you have this, you can jump back to WordPress, and paste the link into your post or page like any other piece of text: From here, WordPress will convert the link to an Embed Block, then into a dedicated TikTok Block. In fact, you may want to go direct to the Block – we’ll show you this next. Adding the TikTok Block to Your Page In most cases, pasting the link to your TikTok video is perfect. WordPress will do the necessary to convert the link and add a Block to your post or page. Though, adding the Block yourself is a good idea if you’re building a layout and don’t yet know what TikToks you’re going to include. To add the dedicated TikTok Block, either click the Add Block icon on the editor screen, or pull up the sidebar from the top of the screen: You may need to search for the Block using the dedicated form here, but regardless of your approach, you should find the right Block. At this point, you can add the Block, then add the URL to the relevant field. Once you click the Embed button, WordPress will do its job to display your TikTok post. Adding a WordPress Widget to Your Page There’s one more way you can display TikTok posts in WordPress, and that’s through widgets. It’s more of a ‘hack’ than a dedicated method, but it works as well as the other solutions. To do this, head to the Appearance > Widgets screen in WordPress, and locate your chosen widget area: From here, scroll down the list of available widgets, and insert a Text widget into your desired area: Once you open the widget, you’ll see an ‘old-school’ Classic Editor panel: From here, the process is simple – paste the URL into the textarea, and it will embed as you’d expect: One thing

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How to Set Up an Email Address for Your Own Website Domain Name

[ad_1] Running a site often means branding it properly. The idea is to reach every nook and cranny with your site’s name, so that you’re visible to potential customers. You can inch towards this goal by setting up an email address for your own domain name. There are a surprising number of businesses that use third-party branding for email addresses, and this isn’t the most optimal choice. The good news is it’s not a hard task, and you can still use your favorite email client to boot. In this post, we’ll look at how to set up a dedicated email address for your domain. First, let’s get into why this is a crucial element for your site. Why You’d Want to Set Up a Dedicated Email Address for Your Domain As we noted, branding is important for any site. You want potential visitors, readers, and customers to notice your branding wherever they see it. Lots of times, this is a visual element, such as a logo or specific stylistic aspect. There’s another element of your branding you may not have considered before: your email address. Think about the number of emails you send day to day, and what a johnsplumbing@gmail.com address says about you. In our opinion, it sends out the following messages: You’re not taking enough care in building your online presence. You don’t have well-rounded business sense, which tells a customer you may have neglected other areas of your business too. You’re positioning your email provider as the most important factor of your business. This might seem an extreme viewpoint, but it’s one of the first things a user will see when you’re contacting them. You are making it harder for a user to find you, even if they don’t know how to get in touch with you. Let’s give you a bit more insight into what we’re talking about. In short, if your domain name doesn’t feature in your email, it’s a missed opportunity. It speaks for your vision as a business owner that you’ll let Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, and others have prominent positioning in a primary branding area. What’s more, it doesn’t make your email address unique to your business. Your email has an indirect air of being like other email addresses. On the whole, setting up an email address for your own website domain name is a way to make you stand out. It’s an opportunity you should seize. Hosting Your Emails (And Why Your Web Server Isn’t the Best Choice) There’s an aspect of setting up a dedicated email address that warrants further discussion. Without custom branding, your emails will be hosted at one of the many different provides available. We’ve mentioned Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, and there are countless more. When you switch to custom branding using your own website domain name, it would seem ideal to host emails on your server. After all, your site is hosted on the server, and if your emails end with the domain, they should too. This, for all its base logic, isn’t the best solution. Here’s why: Emails hosted on your server will be subject to the same fundamental security as your site. This may or may not be a good thing depending on your host. Deliverability suffers a lot from hosting emails on your web server. Spam filters are also not as efficient as other dedicated tools. There’s a User Experience (UX) deficit too. Many web hosts use robust open-source solutions to manage email (such as Horde or Roundcube). Though, the UX is often set by the web hosting control panel, and it lacks compared to modern providers. While you could run this email through a more suitable Graphical User Interface (GUI), the other drawbacks don’t make it viable. Our advice is to use a dedicated provider for your email, and let them handle it. Your sanity and deliverability rates will thank you. How to Choose the Right Username or Identity For Your Email Address Before we get into the technical nature of setting up an email address for your own website domain name, let’s give you some advice on choosing a suitable username. Of course, your domain name is set, so the username is where variety, uniqueness, and creativity come in. You can set the username based on your business ethos. For example, if you’re a serious and professional company, a simple info@mybusiness.com makes sense. In contrast, if you have a quirky element to how you present, hello@mybusiness.com would work. Of course, these can be adapted based on your desires. For example, “hey”, “contact”, your name, and “inquiries” are all viable options. Our advice is to keep things specific to a certain extent, and set up multiple email addresses for different tasks. For example, you could cover payments, support, sales, and more using dedicated emails. With the advice we offer in the next section, you can route mail from each of these addresses to a central inbox, so there’s no need for multiple accounts. How to Set Up an Email Address for Your Own Website Domain Name Next up, we’ll get to the technical information on how to set up an email address for your own website domain name. Because there are myriad combinations of registrar, web host, and Content Delivery Network (CDN), we won’t give you an exact process for one of them. Instead, we’ll offer the following steps: Throughout, we’ll highlight services that may be unique, or whether you may have a different experience with a certain combination of tools. 1. Set Up a New Email Address Using Your Domain First off, you need to create an email address using your domain within your host, or with an email provider. With some hosts this is simple (or at least possible). With managed hosting providers such as Kinsta, WP Engine, and others, there’s no way to create email accounts and addresses with them. This is because of the security and performance aspects we discussed earlier. It’s functionality some hosts stay away from,

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Wirecutter’s Website Builder for 2021: Wix • WPShout

[ad_1] This is an interesting little tidbit for “the web industry” generally, and where it interfaces with real people with non-internet-focused lives and careers. The Wirecutter—the de facto site for time-starved yuppies to quickly find an acceptable-to-great version of a product category (aka, how I buy almost everything)—recommends Wix for those looking to make a website. Now, if you’re reading this site (WPShout) you probably know of another tool or service: WordPress. They did look at WordPress.com. They did not look at “a WordPress site on (your favorite host) with Elementor/Beaver Builder/etc.” And nor do they seem to have been particularly worried about “ease of porting your site” or “ease of augmenting the site with nerdy features.” And you won’t find the term “open source” or “license” anywhere on the page. For those not following me, the last paragraph is some of the reasons us WordPress folks tend to like to use it. But neither Melanie Pinola (the page’s author) nor its primary audience is thinking about those things. And that’s fine. Good even! And as “a WordPress professional” you benefit from always keeping that gap in mind. The arguments and benefits that lead Wix (and after that, Square—the payments people) to be the best for Wirecutter readers are places and spaces that WordPress (or whatever other nerdy CMS you’re into) can and should go to stay vital and relevant in the industry. I think the Gutenberg project is continuing to play out as a long-bet for the future of WordPress, and I remain bullish on it. But clearly winning all the battles for the home for “people needing a website” is something that WordPress has not beat the whole world at. (Yet.) (Hat tip to the Post Status Newsletter for this link) Visit nytimes.com → [ad_2] Source link

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How to Migrate Your WordPress Website (3 Methods)

[ad_1] Despite the varied number of ways to create and design your WordPress website, there’s still much confusion over getting your files from a local computer to your live server. If you’ve ever wanted to migrate your WordPress website, you’ll know what we mean. WordPress has a number of moving parts, and each of these need some setup on your new server. As such, there are a number of plugins available, but you’ll still need to get stuck into some of the options. In this post, we’ll show you how to migrate your WordPress website, and pull from a previous article on the subject. However, we’ll also look at your options for getting the job done, and why you’d want to migrate your site in the first place. Why You’d Want to Migrate Your Website There’s a lot of (correct) advice that says, “Don’t develop a live site”. In reality, this isn’t strictly followed. For example, we all update plugins, and make tiny CSS tweaks here and there, and carry out many more small changes. However, this is a calculated risk. any one of these changes can ruin the User Experience (UX). For example, take a plugin update. If there’s a compatibility issue, this can take out the front end of your site, which means traffic can’t get to you. Given this, a better idea is to develop on your computer – i.e. locally – or in some instances, on a staging site. This lets you make any changes you like without impacting your live site. What’s more, you can edit to perfection before releasing it to the masses. This works in reverse too. You’ll usually need to migrate your live site to work on it locally. However, this isn’t as common – most developers will work on a staging version of a live site because there are more flexible options for migrating some dynamic data (comments, for example). What You’ll Need Before Migrating Your WordPress Website Depending on your overall goals with regard to migrating your WordPress website, there are a few prerequisites you’ll need. Here is the list of what you’ll need: Most of these elements will already be in place. However, if you don’t have a suitable plugin in mind, this may need some further attention. Choosing a Suitable WordPress Migration Plugin There are two ways to source a migration plugin for WordPress: the ‘decisive’ way, and the ‘considered’ way. In reality, neither are wrong, and both will get you to your desired location. Let’s quickly summarize them: Which one you choose will be down to whether this is a one-time migration, or a tool for your workflow. Even so, there may be some cross-over. For a one-off migration, you’ll arguably want to pick the most straightforward tool and get on with the task in hand. However, even here, you may need to do some research. For example, Duplicator is a ‘go-to’ WordPress migration plugin: It’s one we’ve covered previously on our blog. However, All-In-One WP Migration also has a huge number of fans: There are also a few premium solutions that come with rave reviews. If you’re already using the UpdraftPlus plugin to backup your site, you’ll be pleased to know this offers a migrator as a premium add-on. For development-focused migration, WP Migrate DB Pro by Delicious Brains also comes with great user feedback. It’s well-coded, and looks to make the migration process easy: Overall, if you’re looking to migrate your WordPress website, there are plenty of plugins available. The whole process should take around an hour at the most. However, it may be that you won’t need to touch your site at all, depending on your circumstances. How to Migrate Your WordPress Website (3 Methods) Usually, we’d walk you though how to migrate your WordPress website using a step-by-step approach. However, we’ve covered some of the methods below in detail elsewhere. Instead, we’ll go over some of the methods you’ll want to consider, and where to find the information to get up and running. Let’s quickly look at the methods we’ll feature: Consider whether your host can migrate your WordPress website. Install and activate a WordPress plugin to carry out the migration. Manually migrate your site (if you have the skills). Note that depending on why you want to migrate your WordPress website, some of the methods here might not fit your needs. If this is the case, feel free to skip to a method that suits! 1. Let Your Host Migrate Your WordPress Website First, your WordPress hosting provider could help you migrate your site. However, it’s worth noting that this isn’t going to be a good fit if you want to take your site to your local machine. Under most circumstances, hosts will only help you migrate your site from a competitor’s service for free. Some hosts will offer a premium migration service. For example, Kinsta (our review) offers a free migration service for selected hosts, but also provides a premium migration service too. Often, migrations are offered as a signup perk. Even where they’re a part of your overall hosting plan, you should be able to carry out migrations too. However, some hosts such as WP Engine (our review + 20% off coupon) offer a dedicated plugin to help you get your site to its platform: Similarly, SiteGround offers a migrator plugin to help get your site from one live server to another: However, these solutions don’t normally let your move from a local host to a live server. For this, you’ll need a different plugin. 2. Use a Dedicated Plugin to Migrate Your WordPress Website Most of the situations where you’ll need to migrate your WordPress website will involve going from your local computer to a live server. As such, you’ll need a plugin to help you. As we’ve noted throughout the post, WPKube has featured several of these tools previously: In fact, we’ve even covered how to use WP Migrate DB Pro (our review) in its dedicated review.

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Create food delivery website in less than 30 minutes

[ad_1] If you are looking for a reliable theme that can enable you to take your restaurant business online, this blog post is perfect for you. While there are loads of popular food delivery themes and plugins out there, they lack some essential functionalities. Some have suitable ordering mechanisms but fail to give a good UI or vice versa. This article will review the Lafka WordPress theme, which focuses on making burgers, pizzas, and food delivery easy with WooCommerce. Lafka Theme Review: Quick Overview Developed by AIThemist, Lafka is a highly customizable and powerful theme that offers seamless integration with WooCommerce. You can easily set up an eCommerce shop for your food or restaurant business with this theme. On top of the WooCommerce compatibility, Lafka comes with unique features that make product listing and customizations as easy as ABC. One thing that I found interesting is that the theme is designed after consulting real fast food business owners to provide a custom-made solution that fits the restaurant and online food delivery business real needs. Here are some notable features of Lafka: Combo Products functionality allows the website owners to up-sell products and offer their customers discounts and other benefits while maximizng the average order amount and profit. Variable Product add-ons – You can set free or paid product addons or even let your customers customize their products like ‘build your own burger’. New Order Push Notifications, so you never miss an order Highly customizable order hours functionality, so you can limit the order timings for online food orders based on the operating hours of your business. The automatic RDI calculator tells your customers the reference daily intake values based on WHO and FDA recommendations for a 2000 calories diet. Seven ready-to-use templates for fast food websites. You can get this theme for $59 from ThemeForest. These are just the most notable features of this theme. If you want to take a closer look at the features of this theme, read on! Lafka Review: Features Lafka is a well-designed niche theme for Fast Food businesses focusing on expanding their online presence and food delivery services. It hosts multiple features that can help you operate your online pizza/burger delivery.  Non-technical Features (Business Side) 1. Product Addons with Variable Pricing This is undoubtedly one of the most unique features of this theme. With variable pricing, you can set custom prices for different customization of individual food orders. For example, if you are running a pizzeria, you can set different prices for a single topping (say pepperoni) depending on the size of the pizza. Larger the size of the pizza, the more price you can ask for the same topping. You can set global addons based on product category (e.g. apply to all Pizzas), but there is also a possibility to exclude certain products and even цреате product-specific addons. Each addon can have an image (optional) and you can also set limits for each group (e.g. – choose up to 3 additional toppings for your pizza). You can set a radio group addons for single choice options, checkbox addons for multiple choice and a text block for additional information (imagine a custom cake with text wishes on it). Article Continues Below If you are a true business owner, you know the potential of these small features and how you can maximize them to grow your business. 2. Build Your Product Functionality Since you know it is possible to set variable pricing on addons, I am sure you must have guessed this one. This theme allows your customers to build custom products for their order by choosing their favorite ingredients as easily as clicking on checkboxes and radio buttons. For example, if you are selling burgers, you can give your users to select the type of patty, toppings, and even the bun. Lack of this functionality is why still most people prefer ordering on the phone or in person, and with this feature, you can reduce the manual work on your end and put things on automation. 3. Combo Products Having the option to upsell is always good, and with the combo products feature, you can offer discounts on bulk products like combo meals or even create custom products like “Half & Half” Pizza with different flavors on each half. For example, if your customer is placing an order for a burger, you can pitch in meal sides like fries and a drink for a discounted price. The best part is that you do not have to reduce the price manually and it works by combining products already existing in your shop. The system does it automatically for you. With that functionality, you can even set minimum, maximum or pre-defined quantities of products in the combo meal in order to get the discount. 4. Limiting Order Hours Since not all restaurants operate 24/7, you need a system that starts and stops taking orders during specific hours. With the Lafka theme, you can simply set up ‘order hours,’ and customers will only be able to place orders in that time frame. Also, it is worth mentioning, they can check out the products and the restaurant menu during the non-operating hours, so the audience is not deflected. You can set different hours for each day of the week by just dragging your mouse over the timetable and additionally set vacations, national holidays, etc. 5. New Order Push Notifications To make sure no orders slip through the cracks, the theme has push notificationс feature that fires off when someone places a new order. No matter on a computer or an Android phone, you always get the notification with a sound alert. Now that’s all with the business-side features. Now let’s take a look at the technical aspects of this theme. Leaving the extra WooCommerce features found in Lafka aside, for those who don’t really need online orders functionality, the theme offers a dedicated menu custom post type where you can list your menu items in different ways

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Comprehensive WordPress Vulnerability Website Scanner

[ad_1] We all know that website security is super important. Yet, Sucuri Website Hacked 2018 Report showed that 90% of the websites they scanned were infected with one or more vulnerabilities. While the WordPress core team is working tirelessly to make WordPress websites more secure, you too need to take some actions to reinforce your website’s security. In this article, I will review WPSec and will share how it can help you secure your WordPress website from thousands of vulnerabilities. WPSec Review WPSec uses deep scan technology based on WPScan to check WordPress websites for potential vulnerabilities. In addition, the service tracks and updates its database with the latest bugs and security features to make the website vulnerability scanner more robust. You don’t have to be a cybersecurity expert to use WPSec. It comes with an easy-to-use dashboard that makes running regular scans really easy. We’ll take a closer look at the dashboard later in this review. Why Secure Your WordPress Website? It does not matter if you are running an eCommerce store or a personal blog; a hacked website can cause severe damage to your business revenue and reputation. This is because hackers can use your data and confidential information like emails and passwords. On top of that, they can even install malware that can further harm your website visitors or users. In worst-case scenarios, you might end up paying ransomware to hackers just to regain access to your website. If your website does not meet the minimum security requirements, Google can even blacklist your website to protect visitors from losing their data. So to make sure Google does not end up penalizing you and your website functions appropriately, you need to pay attention to the security and protection of your users. WPSec Features Although WPSec is not a WordPress plugin, it offers many features with its vulnerability scanner to protect your website from attackers with malicious intent. Deep Scan Technology The service uses an advanced vulnerability scanner based on WPScan and their custom mechanism to check WordPress websites for any vulnerabilities. They have an extensive database of 22,000+ known vulnerabilities for WordPress websites, and more discovered bugs and security features are added to this list frequently. All-in-one Dashboard If you are managing multiple websites, keeping track of all websites individually can be a real challenge. With WPSec’s all-in-one dashboard, you can keep an eye on all your websites from a single space. You just need to add the website once, and your website will automatically be scanned for vulnerabilities regularly. Article Continues Below Instant Scans Scanning websites for vulnerabilities on WPSec is pretty straightforward. You simply need to enter the website URL, and it will be scanned automatically. If you want, you can get access to the report for free on WPSec’s homepage. Automatic Scans Not just quick scans, if you want to check if your website is safe or not regularly, you can automate the scans, and all the websites in your accounts will get scanned based on the scan frequency you set. Push Notifications The service will tell you via emails and webhooks that you need to update your WordPress website. You do not even have to be logged in to receive push notifications. Advanced Reports Once you have scanned your website for possible vulnerabilities, you will get a report stating all the improvements. The reports are easy to understand and clearly mentions what is wrong and how you can fix the issue. No Load on Website Most website vulnerability testing tools are plugin-based, which requires them to be installed on the website to function. This can add unnecessary weight and slow down your websites. While the difference is not that huge, for high-traffic websites like eCommerce sites, even a 10-millisecond improvement can boost the conversion rate. Hands-On with WPSec In this section, I’ll give WPSec’s pro version a test run and will check out its various features. Let’s dive in! Since WPSec is not a WordPress plugin, you do not need to install it. With both free and premium versions, you get access to WPSec’s dashboard. For the premium version, the dashboard looks like this: A clean and minimal layout with important details about website security on the homepage along with a left navigation section allows you to open different tabs. Let’s check out each tab. Dashboard Here you get a quick overview of all your websites, such as secure and vulnerable websites, as well as total scans performed. You also get an onboarding tab that helps you with onboarding. The second tab shows collective data with a chart on how most websites are hacked. Lastly, you get a quick link to enable or manage push notifications. More on this later. Article Continues Below Manage Scans Manage scans tab shows the websites submitted to the scanning engine. You can even add more websites with the “Add WordPress Site +” button. For every website, you get information like name, URL, date added, last scan, status, and link to view the last report for every website. View Reports To check the security reports of your website scans, you need to check the View Reports tab. You will find a list of all reports in chronological order. If you want to see the report for a specific scan, just click on the version — Web, PDF, JSON. Schedule As the name says, this tab helps you set the scan schedule for your websites. You can select between daily, weekly, or monthly scan cycles. Status In the status tab, you can get information about the checks and backend uptime. In addition, all new vulnerabilities added and bugs addressed gets added here. API Most probably, you wouldn’t be visiting this tab that often, but if you want to receive notifications about your websites’ security problems, you can set them up here. You can directly integrate them yourself, or you can use apps like Zapier or Slack to receive the JSON webhooks. Adding a New Website for Scheduled Scans Adding

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