[ad_1] Here is Lesley reading her own story aloud. Why I believe open source is the best and worst thing about WordPress. When I first discovered WordPress in 2016, it was merely a tool for me. It was the cheapest and most flexible way to get a website started for my fledgling explainer video business, so I used it. As a long time blogger and website-maker, since the days of GeoCities, I was very confident I would find WordPress a breeze to use. I opened up a fresh new install of WordPress for the very first time in my life and was confronted with an intimidating admin interface. The stuff on the right seemed meaningless and unhelpful, and the stuff on the left was way more complicated than I was used to. What did media library mean and when do I use it? It was lucky that I’d been making websites and blogging since I was a child. It was also a good thing that I knew WordPress was really really popular. Had it not been for those two things, I would likely have given up. Instead, I powered through, confident that, if millions of people could figure it out, I could too. After some tinkering, and reading recommendations, I purchased and installed a page builder, Thrive Themes, and started building my site. I watched many tutorials, made tons of mistakes, and got frustrated countless times. But after a month or two, it finally felt like I’d gone from pushing a boulder uphill, to chasing the boulder downhill. Incidentally, I still use Thrive today! Why Open Source Matters I owe a big part of my journey to the open source nature of WordPress. Being able to play around for almost no money allowed me the freedom to experiment and make mistakes with little penalty. I didn’t have to worry about paying $50 or even $5 per month for each random side project I start, which allowed me to play around and really deepen my knowledge of building websites. I bet lots of other people attribute their web building journey to WordPress and open source too. And that’s likely to be a large reason for WordPress’ popularity. It’s free for anyone to use, so lots of hosts offer it as one of their default options. There are also loads of plugins out there that help you turn your WordPress site into anything you can possibly imagine. It means that a receptionist or a journalist can move from one job to another and easily log into their company’s website, update the opening hours or write a blog post, because everyone is on WordPress. It means a first-time business owner like myself can create their first website and not worry about making newbie mistakes since the cost of wrong decisions is low – it’s really easy to migrate from host to host, change themes, remove plugins and more. Where’s It’s Not Perfect However, open source is not without its drawbacks. Like I mentioned above, the first time I logged into WordPress I found it overwhelming. It’s hard to draw a direct line to the exact reason why, but here are some of the reasons that came to mind: Firstly, there isn’t a dedicated team with KPIs to hit who are focused on making onboarding super easy for complete beginners. In commercial software, this is typically a top priority as customers who can’t get onboarded, will usually churn, which loses money for the company. In contrast, in WordPress, we have contributors who are typically seasoned WordPress pros. They no longer remember what it’s like to use WordPress for the first time. And because of the contributor model, we also don’t have enough teams with dedicated UX researchers, product managers, and more for each aspect of WordPress. In addition, WordPress is largely built by developers with a developer-first mindset. Thus, the teams are conceived from a developer standpoint (performance, multisite, etc) rather than from a user standpoint. For example, it would be wonderful to have teams focused on the experiences around onboarding, dashboard, plugins, themes, which is how the average user mentally structures WordPress. Also, it’s impossible to keep track of usage data, so there’s no way to know where people are struggling across the entire WordPress project. This matters because the best way to justify having teams focused on certain aspects of WordPress is to present numbers. However, since we don’t have numbers, it’s impossible to present a strong case. The final issue is that WordPress is gigantic. It powers everything from The American Whitehouse website, to small businesses in Singapore (like mine). This pins WordPress in a very tricky spot, because the needs of the Whitehouse are very different to the needs of a small business on the equator. And any updates that are made to WordPress have to take the breadth of use cases into consideration. Ultimately, I’m glad that WordPress is open source, even despite the drawbacks. It helps so many people grow their businesses, communicate, and simply share their thoughts with everyone on the internet. There is no such thing as only good without the bad. And I’m glad WordPress exists. Related [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingTag Archives: wordpress
WordPress Custom Taxonomy | How to create custom taxonomies in WP
[ad_1] Organizing your content is one of the core features of a content-management system (CMS) like WordPress. As such, WordPress contains “taxonomies” to help you keep your content easy to find for both you and your visitors. Today we’re focused on why and how to make a WordPress custom taxonomy. Even if the term “taxonomy” is new, WordPress’s two default taxonomies—“categories” and “tags”— should be familiar. WordPress custom taxonomies are similar to these default taxonomies in that they organize things. The difference is that they can be anything you choose, from “Difficulty” to “Product Type.” We’ll start this article by explaining a bit more about taxonomies, and then we’ll get detailed about how and why to create your own WordPress custom taxonomies. Before we dive in, an invitation. If you’re looking to more deeply understand WordPress’s data structures—and WordPress development in general—we’ve written the best guide out there: The Best Way to Learn WordPress Development Up and Running is our complete “learn WordPress development” course. Now in its updated and expanded Third Edition, it’s helped hundreds of happy buyers learn WordPress development the fast, smart, and thorough way. Here’s what they have to say: “I think anyone interested in learning WordPress development NEEDS this course. Watching the videos was like a bunch of lights being turned on.” —Jason, WordPress developer “Other courses I’ve tried nearly always lack clear explanations for why WordPress does things a certain way, or how things work together. Up and Running does all of this, and everything is explained clearly and in easy-to-understand language.” —Caroline, WordPress freelancer Understanding Taxonomies in the WordPress CMS A taxonomy is simply a system of organizing information. A WordPress taxonomy, specifically, organizes WordPress posts. If you’re using WordPress as a blog, you’re already using taxonomies—you just may not know them by that name. A taxonomy is simply a system of organizing information. A WordPress taxonomy, specifically, organizes WordPress posts. All WordPress sites give posts two taxonomies by which they can be organized: Categories and Tags. These two ways of marking our posts in WordPress have a lot in common. Both can be applied to posts in a “many-to-many” relationship. That means that one tag can be applied to many posts, one category will contain many posts. This is true of both categories and tags. Some people will tell you to limit the number of categories you give a post, often to one. They’ll also give you the advice to use many tags per post. But strictly speaking this is not a technical difference between the two taxonomies, just a cultural difference. Flat vs Hierarchical: Seeing How WordPress Stock Taxonomies Differ But there is an important difference between categories and tags in WordPress. You see, tags are considered a flat taxonomy: all tags are equal, and no tags are members of other tags. This makes it great for quick entry of possibly-relevant data, but makes it hard to be organized and disciplined about what tags mean. You might think to tag a dog with things like “brown,” “furry,” “soft,” “cuddly,” and “cute”. All of these apply, but they don’t all fit into a single way of thinking about dogs. In contrast, categories are a hierarchical taxonomy: elements can be nested such that something in your “Five Paragraph Essays” category is automatically also a member of its parent category “Essays.” This allows your WordPress system of categories to convey and display extra meaning. To come back to dogs, you may know about biologists’ way of understanding all living things as a hierarchical taxonomy. Domestic dogs are often identified as Canis lupis (familiaris). Canis is the genus, lupis is the species. All species lupis are members of the taxonomical category of Canus, but the reverse is not true. Coyotes also belong to the Canus genus, but are not either dogs (or wolves). All living creatures are put into the taxonomical system of scientific classification. If you learned “kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species” in a biology class ever, that’s what we’re talking about here. The scientific classification system is a hierarchical taxonomy, just like categories. It’s unlikely your WordPress content needs as extensive an organization system, but it might. 😉 Why Make a Custom Taxonomy in WordPress? A custom taxonomy is a custom organizing system that you create, which could be either flat or hierarchical. So we know that tags and categories are taxonomies, and we know that tags are flat and categories are hierarchical. A custom taxonomy is a custom organizing system—either flat or hierarchical—that you create for your posts. You would create additional taxonomies when you think they’ll be useful to either you or your readers. For example, on WPShout we think that some of our readers may want to see only “Beginner” (like this) or more advanced content, so we created a new taxonomy called difficulty. But this doesn’t make sense on every, or even most, sites, so it’s not rolled into WordPress by default. Other examples: if you have a travel blog, you might use a flat (tag-like) custom taxonomy called “Country,” which captures which country (or countries) you were in when you wrote each post. This way they wouldn’t be mixed into your use of WordPress’s ordinary tagging system to tag your posts with, say, “Local cuisine” and “Major landmarks,” while also letting you define, separately, whether a given post was written while you were passing through Italy and Slovenia. A film blog might want a hierarchical (category-like) system called “Genre,” which captures that a given movie is, say, a “Comedy,” and possibly also a member of the “Romantic Comedy” subcategory. You could use this system separately from WordPress’s default “Categories,” which might capture instead whether a given article was a “Movie Review” or just a “Detailed Plot Summary.” In all cases, when registering a taxonomy you want to just ask yourself if it will be necessary or helpful for the sites ongoing readers and maintainers. If it’s useful to any, it’s probably worth making. But be realistic, it’s so quick to make
Continue readingStarting on Backend WordPress Development • WPShout
[ad_1] WordPress, the content management system the internet loves. You can use it for years without needing to tackle PHP, but eventually you’re finding yourself needing it. You go to Bing and search “php for beginners” and you find yourself here. The journey to learn PHP for WordPress development is long, but let’s start! We’ll kick off this WordPress coding tutorial with a little summary of PHP’s role in WordPress, and then start to build up from there. Using PHP in WordPress: Useful for Everyone, Necessary for Developers You don’t really need to ever write PHP code as a WordPress user, WordPress business owner, or other similar role. A minority of the people who use WordPress on a daily basis even know what PHP is, never mind know how to write code in it. But WordPress developers, WordPress developers must use PHP. But I’m getting ahead of myself… WordPress Runs atop PHP on the Server Before we jump fully into our PHP for beginners tutorial, some background: Web servers, it turns out, are just computers. And those computers need to have underlying layers they can run on. For most WordPress sites, that breaks down to be: Linux (the operating system, like Mac OS or Windows), Apache (the web server, thing your browser talks to), MySQL (the database, where posts live), and PHP (which coordinates with the database, OS, and files to build web pages). I wrote a lot more about this in our “WordPress LAMP” article: A WordPress LAMP?! An Introduction to WordPress Infrastructure PHP is a Programming Language So, hopefully the above made you aware that PHP is something that WordPress uses under the hood. It’s a programming language, and the language that WordPress server-side code is written in. (In the web browser of both administers and visitors, WordPress often also involves languages called HTML, CSS, and JavaScript). PHP was one of the first and most popular languages that people used to build HTML documents (aka “web pages.”) Its popularity is a little more complex than I want to cover here, but I did write a “Why PHP” article over on Thoughtful Code for those who are interested in that. In short: PHP is a logic-programming language which you can use to control which HTML a page shows, either in WordPress or outside of it. The files that make up both WordPress themes and plugins are mostly using PHP to build the pages that you see when you visit a WordPress site in your web browser. Learn PHP for WordPress and You’ll be Able to Modify Themes, Make Plugins As we just covered, both WordPress plugins and themes use a lot of PHP. (Though in 2022, the amount of PHP you’ll see in themes has just gone down…) Essentially, everything in a plugin is enabled by the PHP code you write. For a WordPress theme, some functionality is coming from WordPress PHP and some will be in HTML you write into your theme template files. You’ll generally need less PHP expertise to make good themes than good plugins for WordPress, but it’s an important skill in either case. While we won’t get into this much in this introductory PHP WordPress tutorial, for those wondering, the basic way that WordPress plugins work is with WordPress hooks: actions and filters. If you already understand what PHP function, variable, and strings are, you can jump right into that with this guide: WordPress Hooks, Actions, and Filters: What They Do and How They Work A Beginner’s PHP Tutorial for WordPress Alright, now that we’ve got that WordPress stuff out of the way, we can start in earnest on our short PHP programming for beginners tutorial. We’ll focus on a few core things: what PHP looks like, what things you must understand to make any sense of PHP, and what next steps make sense. PHP 101: Where We Start on a PHP Tutorial for Beginners So, PHP as we mentioned above started as a way to create more dynamic HTML. As such, you’ll know you’re writing PHP, and not HTML, in a .php file because it’ll be boxed in by what are most commonly called “PHP tags.” Those PHP tags are things that fence off PHP from your HTML, and vice-versa. Although there is still some interaction. Here’s an example: <!– file.php –> <html> <?php echo ‘Hi from PHP’; ?> </html> What would loading file.php up from your web server show you in your web browser? It’ll show the words, “Hi from PHP”. (The word echo in PHP essentially lets something exit PHP-interaction-land and show on the page. What’s more, if you viewed the page source in that browser, you’d also see that the <html> opening and closing tags come through. Where not controlled, all HTML from a PHP file just shows in your browser. Last note: that first line, which starts <!– is an HTML comment. Comments are lines in code which shouldn’t do anything, but may help you or another programmer make sense of the program later. In PHP, most comments are broken out with to forward slashes, // comment here, or fenced with /* */ characters, like this: <?php /* Nothing in these lines will show or do anything */ echo ‘Not a comment’; // What’s to the left will run, but this text itself won’t // Neither will this ?> You’ll also want to note that our echo line ends with a semicolon. All lines of PHP will generally end with a { (of which more later) or a semicolon ;. Statements like echo should always end with a semicolon. This is a kind-of-strange convention across many programming languages. Variables, Integers, and Strings, Oh My! We just showed your first PHP data type: the string. A “string” is a common programming-language term for a sequence of characters. In our specific case above, our string was the sequence of characters “Hi from PHP.” In PHP, a string can be differentiated from other words (the ones that are just the program
Continue reading15+ of the Best Travel WordPress Themes (2021)
[ad_1] A quality website is a must-have for businesses in the travel industry, including travel bloggers. Your website should inspire travel and get visitors excited to see the world and experience what you have to offer. WordPress is an ideal platform for travel websites because it’s affordable, easy to set up for a DIY approach, and provides all the functionality you need thanks to a community that offers thousands of quality themes and plugins. Here, we’ll highlight some of the best travel WordPress themes to consider for your website. We’re breaking it down into three different sections: travel agency themes, travel blogger themes, and hotel themes. We’re only showcasing our favorite travel WordPress themes rather than overwhelming you with a huge number to choose from. Travel Agency WordPress Themes If you run a travel agency, or if you’re designing a website for a travel agency, there are a number of WordPress themes that serve as an excellent starting point. Some themes have been created specifically with travel agents in mind, while other multipurpose themes could be used for this type of business, or for just about any other site. Here are our favorite WordPress themes for travel agency websites. 01. Embark Embark is a well-designed theme specifically created for the travel and tourism industry. There are six different pre-made designs you can choose from, plus you can customize any of the designs or create your own from scratch. Embark is made to be compatible with the Elementor page builder (our review), so those who have experience with Elementor will feel right at home with Embark. Most importantly, Embark includes some powerful features for travel agencies and tour operators. Visitors can book and schedule tours or events, and complete payment. The theme integrates with WooCommerce and it’s easy to accept payment via PayPal, Stripe, and other payment gateways. You can easily create custom booking forms and form fields to meet your needs, with no coding required. Embark also integrates with Google Calendar, Apple, and Outlook so you can manage bookings efficiently. As one of the top-selling travel themes on ThemeForest with an average rating of 4.93 out of 5, Embark is an excellent choice. The quality of design, flexibility (thanks to integration with Elementor), and ability to take bookings and payments make Embark a top choice. 02. Triply Triply is another outstanding travel booking theme that combines beautiful design and stellar functionality. You’ll get four pre-designed templates to choose from, plus different listing styles, single page layouts for tour details, and travel destination designs. All of the layouts and designs are very well done, making it easy to get a professional-looking travel website at a very affordable price. Like Embark, Triply was also created to integrate nicely with Elementor. It’s easy to customize the starter templates or even create your own custom designs from scratch with the drag-and-drop builder. While Triply looks amazing, it also offers critical functionality for your travel booking website. The theme uses the BA Booking plugin to power its booking functionality. You’ll also get advanced features for site-wide search, filtering options, maps, plans for tours, and a calendar. Both in terms of design and functionality, Triply deserves a place among the best travel WordPress themes. 03. Grand Tour Grand Tour is another beautifully designed theme that offers multiple options for the look and feel of your site. There are multiple pre-designed homepages, as well as inner pages, tour lists, and tour detail pages. You can also use the intuitive content builder to customize existing layouts or create your own. Pre-designed colors and styles are available, allowing you to customize the design quickly. There are three different booking options available: A booking form powered by the Contact Form 7 plugin A WooCommerce booking form A custom URL booking form With WooCommerce integration, working with your choice of payment processors is easy. Grand Tour also includes advanced search capabilities, search autocomplete, and the ability to filter tours or trips by popularity. You can also allow visitors and customers to review their trips or tours. Getting your site up and running is quick and easy, thanks to the one-click demo import from Grand Tour. All you’ll need to do is replace the filler text and photos with your own. 04. Divi Divi is an all-purpose WordPress theme, and it’s also one of the most popular themes on the market. Unlike the previous themes we’ve looked at, Divi was not created specifically for travel websites. Instead, it’s a general theme that can be used for just about any type of site, including a travel agency. There are more than 100 pre-made websites and almost 1,000 different page layouts available with Divi. This includes a full website pack for a travel agency website, as well as a layout pack for a travel blog. Divi doesn’t include the booking functionality of the themes previously mentioned, but you can always use a plugin like BA Book Everything for that. The pre-designed template for travel agencies makes it easy to get a great-looking site, or you could use one of the other pre-made designs and customize it to suit your needs. You can also create your own layout and design with the powerful Divi Builder. This visual drag-and-drop builder allows you to create custom page layouts, and you can even design other aspects of your site like the header, footer, archive pages, and more. To get access to Divi, you’ll need a membership to Elegant Themes. The membership also provides access to the Extra theme, as well as few plugins from Elegant Themes. If you create websites for clients, you’re sure to love Elegant Themes’ pricing and licensing. The basic license allows for use on an unlimited number of sites, including client projects. It represents one of the best values in the WordPress community, especially the option to purchase a lifetime license. 👉 See our full Divi Theme review💲 Use our exclusive Divi Theme coupon to get 20% OFF 05. Ultra Ultra is another popular multi-purpose WordPress
Continue readingHow to Choose WordPress Themes for Free Download (Without Compromising Your Site)
[ad_1] We all know that choosing a theme is an important consideration for any WordPress website. Though, just as crucial is how much you spend on the theme itself. Of course, while free and premium solutions exist, it’s tempting to use either ‘flavor’ without understanding why. Choosing WordPress themes for free download is good decision in lots of cases. Even among free WordPress themes, you can find sub-categories. For example, you have freemium themes designed to make you upgrade. There are also free themes with big scopes and plenty of integrations. Of course, there are also simplistic, one-trick pony themes that are great for small blogs and niche sites. Selecting the right one will take some thought, although it’s not a complex task. As such, this post will discuss how to choose WordPress themes for free download, and what to look for. Before this, we’re going to talk about why a free theme could work for your website. Why Themes for Free Download Can Be Ideal for Your Site Free WordPress themes get a bit of a bad rap. This is, in part, due to design choices for the WordPress Theme Directory. It’s not intuitive, and the previews don’t give you the true scope of a theme. You can understand why every theme uses a default layout set by WordPress, but a number of themes can suffer. In other words, the presentation of free themes isn’t optimal, and it’s hard as a result to see the benefits of them compared to premium solutions. In our opinion, there are a few positives for using themes for free download: They cost nothing to use, which is the ultimate in a budget-friendly solution. A free theme could perform better than a premium version because it’s often presenting a stripped back feature set. Less elements to load means a faster site all around. Because a free theme can be more basic, you’re able to better customize your site using code and plugins. For some of these points, we’re offering a generalization to some extent. In fact, this is a good opportunity to talk about the differences between WordPress themes when it comes to cost. The Difference Between Free and Premium WordPress Themes Of course, the main difference between free and premium themes is the cost. Though, even here there are a few caveats to consider based on the type of theme you’re looking at. First though, let’s give you a quick rundown of how these themes differ in a broad sense: Free themes often give you no customer support. What’s more, there’s no update guarantee. It’s the classic ‘as-is’ warranty. With premium themes, the price you pay goes towards dedicated support, regular updates, and more customer-facing features. A premium theme means that a developer can dedicate more time and effort to the project as a whole. Because of this, you often get new features on a regular basis. There’s also more longevity. Within the broad scope of free and premium themes, you also get freemium solutions. These are often WordPress themes for free download, but with some kind of reduced feature set. The idea is that more desirable features require a payment to use. It’s fair to say that the majority of ‘useful’ themes within the WordPress Theme Directory are freemium, but there are great ‘free forever’ options too. Where to Find Free WordPress Themes for Free Download Speaking of the Theme Directory, this is a good time to discuss where to find WordPress themes for free download. Of course, the first place we recommend is the WordPress Theme Directory: This is the largest and most-focused collection of themes for free download around, so it makes sense to begin here. Each theme will show the same information: The developer, a version number, when the theme had an update, how many active installations the theme has, and a set of user ratings: There’s also a blurb for the theme, and some other details relating to translations, the number of downloads a theme has per day, and more. The point here is that each theme sits on a level playing field (which has pros and cons as we discussed). Elsewhere, you could also trawl theme developer websites for free solutions. We would recommend targeting those developers with good premium themes and reputations. It’s likely that a company will put a comparable amount of effort into all of its products, as it could impact user trust. For example, our sister site MeridanThemes has Meridian One: Though, hoping to stumble across a stellar free theme isn’t a viable strategy, especially if you’re short on time. Reading trustworthy WordPress blogs can help you here. Of course, WPKube offers lots of roundups on free themes, as do a number of other blogs. Though, you have to assess whether a blog has affiliations or other biases that may promote themes for reasons other than that they’re good. This isn’t always a red flag, but it helps to know this information before you opt for a theme. How to Choose WordPress Themes for Free Download (Without Compromising Your Site) While you may think choosing a WordPress theme for free download takes less effort than a premium solution, this isn’t true. In fact, it’s harder to see the relative merits and drawbacks of a free theme in lots of cases. This means you need to carry out more in-depth research for each one you consider. To do this, we have a four-point checklist for you: Settle on the key features and functionality your theme needs. Check out how much you can customize a theme, as this will give you more flexibility. See what other integrations are available for your theme, such as page builders, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and forms. Read user reviews, weigh up the ratings a theme receives, and check out any other relevant information you need to make a decision. There’s lots to get through here, so let’s go! 1. Decide On What Your Theme Needs to Do For
Continue readingConsulting WP Business WordPress Theme Review and Setup (2021)
[ad_1] Consulting WP is a powerful and dynamic WordPress theme that aims to solve two common problems faced by newly established consultancy firms and similar businesses. On the one hand, it’s no secret that if you’re ever going to thrive in today’s digitally-dominated industry, your online presence has to really look the part and stand out from the crowd. On the other, burgeoning businesses hoping to bootstrap their way to success rarely have the kind of capital needed to spend thousands on a bespoke design. At the same time, some may even struggle to splash out hundreds for a top-of-the-line premium WordPress theme. This is where Consulting WP really comes into its own. The theme developers have spent countless hours researching the ins and outs of the business, finance, and consulting industries in order to come up with a product that provides everything your firm could possibly need to succeed. The result is not only a visually stunning, well-designed theme that is going to strike the right chord with your potential customers but also one which delivers that top-of-the-line premium quality at an entry-level price, with 50 themes, over 500 theme options, and more than 35 key features. Below, we’ll look at the ins and outs of this popular theme to help you decide if it’s the right fit for your new venture. Consulting WP Business WordPress Theme Review Consulting WP has been designed to give business owners everything they need to build a standout website for their consulting firm or services company. This means Consulting WP has all the standard features a high-quality premium theme is expected to have, as well as industry-specific features to aid you in building a well-designed and highly functioning business website that is sure to draw more clients and customers than ever before. Perhaps the best part (or certainly one of the best parts) is that it does all this at such an affordable price. Article Continues Below The whole theme package currently retails at just $59 for a one-off, standard Envato license, with an optional six months extra support available for just $17.63. This means that even if you’re just getting started with your new business, you’ll still be able to get a high-value theme that’s well within your budget. When we say high-value, we really do mean it, too, as Consulting WP features all of the main key features you’d expect from a much more costly package. These include: 50 Customizable Demos Whereas other themes feature maybe a handful of demo styles that all look similar to others you’ve seen on the net, Consulting packs in an impressive 50 demos, with new ones continuing to be added. This doesn’t just add a tick in the win column for value-for-money, either. Each one of the demos offers unique, attractive, and on-brand designs that pretty much guarantee to represent your brand in the best possible light and that are packed with plenty of design features and functionality to compel passing visitors to get in touch. We’re not just talking about the homepage here, either. Each demo also contains very stylish templates for portfolios… Blog posts… Article Continues Below And other mission-critical pages. Customization Options If, after browsing through the 50 demos, you decide that even your favorite doesn’t perfectly reflect your brand the way you want to, you’ll find a wealth of customizable theme options that help you to tweak and fine-tune it to your liking. For example, choose from one of four predefined skin colors and personalize your website to match your brand. More so, take advantage of the advanced theme options menu and change things such as header layouts, footer content, post types, typography, menus, social media elements, and more, all from one convenient location. Page Builder Integration To help with even further levels of customization, or even to build brand new pages and templates within your theme, Consulting WP also effortlessly integrates with both WPBakery Page Builder (formerly Visual Composer) and the ever-popular Elementor page builder. This means that regardless of which page builder you’re most comfortable with, you can quickly put to work in building brand new layouts, adding content, and generally making your new site your own. Speaking of Elementor, the latest version of Consulting WP includes the new Elementor Header Builder as well as Pearl Header Builder tools to offer even more customization. Bookit and Other Premium Plugins Elementor and WP Bakery aren’t the only premium plugins that you can use to optimize your site. Strengthening its case as one of the top value-for-money theme packages around, Consulting WP also comes with some of the best WordPress plugins for businesses, including a free copy of the Bookit plugin, which on its own is valued at around $39. Bookit can serve as the heart of your online booking system, allowing clients to book consultations and other appointments with ease. Article Continues Below For more advanced users, the plugin can be seamlessly synced with your existing Google Calendar set-up to help you manage your appointments, while integration with popular payment platforms like Stripe and PayPal help you to help your customers pay for their consultations with zero hassle. What we like best about this plugin, though, is that it’s remarkably easy to use, featuring a fresh, clean, recently upgraded design which ensures that even absolute WordPress beginners can take to it in no time at all. Beyond that, Consulting also ships with a free copy of Stylemix’s Cost Calculator builder as well as the eRoom Zoom Meetings & Webinar plugin to help you manage online communication via your website. On a final note regarding plugins, it’s worthwhile mentioning that the theme is also fully compatible with all of the following: Display Multiple Locations Proving itself to be the gift that keeps on giving, Consulting WP also offers the ability to offer location-specific content to people in different areas. This can be done via a simple drop-down menu displaying all of the locations in which you currently operate. While seamless
Continue reading8 Best WordPress Donation Plugins for Fundraising + More (2021)
[ad_1] Searching for the best WordPress donation plugins so that you can raise funds for your website or cause? Whether you just want a simple PayPal donation button or you’re looking for a more advanced fundraising solution that can help you run full campaigns and manage donors, you can find some excellent WordPress plugins to help you get going. In this post, we’ve collected our picks for the eight best WordPress donation plugins: Three of these plugins are full-service fundraising tools that work great for charities. They can help you create multiple campaigns, raise money towards goals, and more. The other five plugins are more limited in scope, such as adding simple donate buttons/forms or letting you accept donations via your WooCommerce store. Ready to get started? Let’s dig in! Eight Best WordPress Donation Plugins Compared in Detail 1. GiveWP Active on over 100,000 sites, GiveWP is the most popular donation plugin at WordPress.org. It offers a full fundraising solution. Collectively, organizations use GiveWP to raise more than $100 million USD per year. It helps you create stylish donation forms and campaigns. If you create a campaign, you can create a dedicated fundraising page for that campaign that showcases your progress towards your goal(s). You’ll also get a complete donor management and reporting system on the backend. You can keep track of all your donation activity and you’ll be able to view a complete history of each donor, along with the ability to generate tax-deductible receipts. Beyond those core features, you get plenty of other options including the following: Support for 18+ payment gateways – PayPal is free, while the rest cost money. One-time or recurring donations – visitors can choose to make their pledge ongoing. Custom donation amounts – enter preset amounts and/or let people donate a custom amount. Fee relief – ask people to cover the payment processing fees. Integrations – integrate with your favorite email marketing services and CRMs. There’s also a catch-all Zapier integration. 💵 Price: Free core plugin. Premium add-on bundles from $249. 👍 Pros: Well-designed interfaces on frontend and backend. Best-in-class donor management. Advanced features and integrations. Comes from an established team. History of success – GiveWP users collectively raised over $100 million in 2019. 👎 Cons: The free version is limited – only one-time payments via PayPal. Expensive compared to other plugins. No peer-to-peer fundraising feature. Get GiveWP 2. Charitable Like GiveWP, Charitable is another full-featured WordPress fundraising plugin that makes a great option for non-profits or anyone else who needs a true fundraising solution. You can create great-looking donation forms, as well as full fundraising campaigns that display the number of donations and progress towards your fundraising goal. Charitable also supports peer-to-peer fundraising – you can let other people register on your site and create their own fundraising campaigns. For example, if you have a charity 5k event, participants could register on your site to create their own fundraising pages. Or, they can register as a team and raise money together. Here are some other notable features in Charitable: Donation management. Flexible donations – preset or custom donations, along with one-time or recurring donations. Support for 5+ payment gateways – PayPal is free, while Stripe, Authorize.net, and others require paid add-ons. Fee relief. Email marketing integrations – connect to Mailchimp and other popular tools. 💵 Price: Free core plugin. Premium add-on bundles from $129. 👍 Pros: Affordable for its features – it’s cheaper than GiveWP. Peer-to-peer fundraising. Easily modifiable via code snippets. 👎 Cons: The free version is limited – only one-time payments via PayPal (same as GiveWP). No donor management/history – you can only see a list of individual donations, not full donor profiles. Limited integrations as compared to GiveWP. Get Charitable 3. PayPal Donations PayPal Donations is a 100% free plugin that makes it easy to add a simple PayPal donate button to your WordPress site. You can see a real example in the image above. When you set up the plugin, only have a few options: Pick the currency. Choose the default amount (you can customize this for different buttons). Choose different button styles or use your own custom button image. To connect to PayPal, all you need to do is enter your PayPal email address – there’s no need to mess around with the API or anything: To place your button(s), you can use a shortcode. That’s it! 💵 Price: 100% free. 👍 Pros: 100% free. Very simple setup. No need to use APIs – just enter your PayPal email. 👎 Cons: It literally just lets you add a donate button – nothing more. Get PayPal Donations 4. Stripe Donations Stripe Donations gives you an easy way to accept donations via the Stripe Payment gateway. However, unlike the PayPal Donations plugin above, it goes beyond just adding a simple button (though it’s still nowhere near plugins like Give and Charitable). If you’re a non-profit, Stripe is a very attractive payment gateway. The “normal” processing fee is 2.9% + $0.30/transaction, but registered non-profits can get a preferable 2.2% + $0.30/transaction rate. To collect donations, you can create a customizable form that includes the payment fields, as well as the option to add a custom title, description, and image. You can also send a customizable email to donors and create a custom thank you page. What’s more, the plugin will store a list of your donors. 💵 Price: Free. There’s also a $19.99 premium version that adds more features. 👍 Pros: Free version should work for most people. Easy setup. Default form design looks good. 👎 Cons: While you get basic donor management, it’s limited as compared to GiveWP and Charitable. Get Stripe Donations 5. Donorbox Donorbox is technically a SaaS donation platform, rather than a native WordPress donation plugin. However, it’s very easy to integrate into your WordPress site thanks to its dedicated integration plugin at WordPress.org. If you’re ok with that SaaS approach, you can get a lot of advanced features Customizable payment options – add multiple
Continue readingBeaver Builder vs Elementor Pro: Comparing WordPress’ 2 Top Page Builder Plugins
[ad_1] Choosing a page builder plugin is less certain than it was even a couple of years ago, as there are lots of solutions on the market. Even so, for many users, the options boil down to Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro. As such, this is good place to start your journey. Both of these plugins have a long-standing and distinguished pedigree among WordPress users. Each has a wealth of features and functionality, along with reasonable pricing. As such, your decision will be based on how each solution suits you and your workflow. In this post, we’ll look at Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro in a few different areas. By the end, you’ll understand which option is right for you and why that is. A Quick Primer On Page Builders Before we move the comparison, let’s get on the same page (pun intended). For the unaware, a page builder is a way to create your site using a visual interface, rather than through code. You’ll work using a so-called ‘front end builder’. This means you’ll see the site as it will appear to users in the browser. The built-in WordPress Block Editor is great for writing blog posts and other content. Though, when it comes to layouts and site design, it’s still a baby. This functionality is improving, but you can’t yet rely on it to help you build you entire site. Enter page builders. These are third-party solutions for building your site’s layout and content. You’ll often have the functionality to customize almost every aspect of your front-end display. Some solutions will let you build custom headers and footers, and more. You’ll also find features to help you add in advanced elements such as interactive buttons, pop-ups, animations, and more. The goal of a page builder is to help you create your site without the need for code, yet with the same flexibility and scope. With regards to Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro, both page builders have plenty to offer here. Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro: Introducing Both Plugins The comparison is coming up, but before that, let’s introduce both Beaver Builder and Elementor Pro. Note that we’re talking about the premium versions of each plugin. While both offer free tiers, these vary in scope and functionality. In any case, most users will often opt for the fuller-featured premium solutions, so it makes sense to talk about these in the first instance. Beaver Builder Beaver Builder is the ‘elder statesman’ of page builder plugins. It’s been around for a number of years, and was one of the first page builders on the market. It’s a drag-and-drop builder, with a collection of modules that lets you add almost any piece of functionality or formatting to your site. For example, you can add a Call To Action (CTA), basic forms, video embeds, and much more: We’ve talked about Beaver Builder on the blog before. This article is worth reading to get some more context and information on how Beaver Builder works on a day-to-day basis. Elementor Pro Elementor is a relative newcomer when it comes to page builders. While it hasn’t been around for too long, it has developed a stellar reputation among end users, site owners, developers, and even investors. It’s also a drag-and-drop page builder that works as though you’re viewing your site’s front end. Much like Beaver Builder, you pull modules (‘elements’ here) into place, and work on the attributes and properties of each one. Again, there are lots of elements to choose from – you shouldn’t need to go hunting for additional elements to build your site. Because Elementor is so popular, we’ve also featured the page builder on the blog before. For a more in-depth look at how the plugin works, we encourage you to check out that post too. Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro: Comparing Both Page Builder Plugins We’re now into the thick of this Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro comparison. Over the next few sections, we’ll take a look at each solution and compare them in the following areas: Features, functionality, and Ease of Use 🧰. We’ll look at what each plugin can offer, along with any additional functionality provided. Support and resources 🙋. Here, we’ll look at how much support is on offer for each plugin. We’ll also look at any further resources available to help you build and manage your site. Pricing 💵. This straightforward section will look at the cost factor for each plugin. It will also touch on any free tiers, although it’s not a fair comparison (as we’ll explain). There may be some cross-over between sections. For example, ease of use and features will overlap in an organic way. As such, while we encourage you jump around the post to read about aspects that interest you, taking in the full post will let you learn the full story of each page builder. Features, Functionality, and Ease of Use 🧰 Because both Beaver Builder and Elementor Pro are popular and powerful, this comparison will be close. Each page builder offers a drag-and-drop editor as a matter of course. Elementor looks more modern in our subjective opinion, although Beaver Builder looks more like a native WordPress feature. With Elementor, you edit from the sidebar at all times. There are three panels to choose from: Layout, Style, and Advanced. This is a nice way to separate different aspects of your design, but you sometimes get the feeling there is too much for this sidebar to handle. For example, there’s also a ‘hamburger menu’ full of site-wide options, along with further menus and sub-menus. Though, we do like that there’s always a link to the Elements screen. This gives you access to all of the functionality for your site, and you can even add aspects such as Lottie animations and forms. For the latter, there’s a dedicated builder that will often mean you don’t need a plugin to do the job: As for Beaver Builder, it took us a while to
Continue readingWordPress Contributor Teams Seek to Curb Spam Pledges in Five for the Future Program – WP Tavern
[ad_1] The Five for the Future program, an initiative Matt Mullenweg proposed in 2014, may soon be addressing the problem of spam and outdated pledges that appear on the program’s dedicated website. The idea behind the program is that organizations and individuals will contribute five percent of their resources back to WordPress development, ensuring the future of the project. Five for the Future launched a website in 2019 to display pledges and has always relied on the honor system of self-reporting tools for individual and organizational pledges. In a discussion post suggesting iterations on the project, Andrea Middleton identified two major issues with the program’s current implementation that she said “have kept it from reaching its full potential:” Spam or dormant pledges Disconnect between contributor teams and pledged contributors “Two years later, there have certainly been more ‘spam’ pledges than anyone would want, and surprisingly (to me) few reports of fake or spam pledges,” Middleton said. “What that tells me = either people don’t go surfing around in the pledge lists, checking for accuracy, the Report feature is too hard to find (unlikely), or people don’t really care whether pledges are accurate or not.” Middleton said the existence of spam pledges diminishes the value of active pledges, which necessitates disclaimers on the site if it is to continue without a regular spam cleanup. She suggests starting bi-annual or annual spam checks mediated by contributor team leaders, who would report if they have ever worked with or seen participation from a specific list of pledged individuals. WordPress.org could send absent contributors an email prompting them to re-confirm their pledges are not spam. Ian Dunn, a full-time contributor to WordPress, suggested automating the effort to combat spam and dormant pledges. “I think it’d be best to tackle this first, because it won’t matter how good our recruiting docs are if team reps have to dig through hundreds of inaccurate pledges in order to find the 5% of them that will contribute,” Dunn said. “I worry that a manual approach would add too much work for team reps, and wouldn’t be done consistently, especially after the first 6-12 months.” He suggests sending all people who are pledged regular emails for re-confirming their commitment, automating props wherever possible, and removing pledges after 6 months of no activity. Contribution tracking isn’t as straightforward for things like Community team efforts but there may be some innovative solutions for these types of contributions. “As a team rep, I’d love a way to call in contributors that have pledged to the team,” Courtney Engle Robertson said. Robertson contributes 20 hours per week to the Documentation, Marketing, Test, and Training teams. “I’d like them filtered a bit based upon team roles matched with what folks say they are interested in helping with. They could opt out if they need to change their commitments.” This suggestion would help address Middleton’s concern about the disconnect between contributor teams and pledged contributors. The discussion has been active for a week and is still in the the idea sharing stage. If you have any feedback on the ideas proposed or new ones to contribute, jump in on the comments of the post. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
Continue readingA Block-Based WordPress Theme by Anders Norén – WP Tavern
[ad_1] I have been secretly keeping tabs on Anders Norén over the past couple of weeks, awaiting the moment he pushed his first block theme to the WordPress directory. I first noticed it when he tweeted a screenshot two weeks ago. And, today was the day it happened. Tove landed in the review portal several hours ago, and I have been tinkering with it ever since. While it is not downloadable from the directory yet, the review system moves much faster than in times past. It should be available soon. In the meantime, anyone who wants to give it a spin can grab the ZIP file from its ticket. I called his last WordPress theme, Eksell, “the standard by which we should be judging all other” themes, and Norén has a history of releasing solid designs. Could he do for blocks what he has done for classic in years past? The truth is that going 100% blocks has limitations. Designers can experiment and test out some new things, but the underlying system is not up to par with what is possible with traditional theming. However, some feats are much easier to accomplish. Much of it depends on the creator’s goals and how well they work with the system instead of fighting it. At first glance, Tove was not any more impressive than most block themes I have installed and activated. It seemed pretty bare-bones, but I imagine this is what theming will look like far into the future. Many will be a wide-open canvas that allows users to build whatever type of site they want. Themes will primarily add personality. One area where they can and will shine is with custom block patterns. And Tove has over 40 of them. The theme is flexible enough for use with various sites, but its focus is on cafes and restaurants. Many of the patterns lean into this, such as custom menus, call-to-action-buttons, and more. Patterns are these pre-built pieces of a design that users can mix and match to lay pages out how they want. This also opens up things for theme authors by not having to make any hardline choices on how something like the front page, for example, should look. The theme is offering some suggestions and the tools to put it together. But, ultimately, the end-user gets to decide how it all comes out. With Tove, I had my homepage built in just minutes, as shown in the following screenshot. All I would need to do is fill it in with custom content. It felt empowering to simply mash up just a handful of the theme’s 40+ patterns and create a layout that I was comfortable with. This is what theming should really be all about: handing the keys over to users and letting them take the wheel. The theme’s job is just letting them drive in style. There are other things to love about Tove too. It has several custom user-selectable styles, such as horizontal separators for the Columns block. However, my favorite is the shaded style for adding a blue drop-shadow to several blocks. Shaded block style. The theme is not for everybody. The color palette is a bit on the flashier side and will not fit all sites. Few designers could pull off Tove’s scheme, which is why I think I love it so much. As Norén said in another tweet, it’s “like a plateful of macarons.” Some can work with pretty much anything. The rest of us are just fans. I would not call Tove revolutionary, but it has no need to be. It is built on top of an experimental system that still has many kinks to work out. However, it is nice to see what one of the WordPress community’s best designers can do with a limited toolset. Norén has definitely pushed the boundaries, which should elevate the block theme development space. I cannot wait until all the pieces of full site editing are in place, and we can open this thing up. Like this: Like Loading… [ad_2] Source link
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