Your potential customers are constantly on the lookout for shady websites, and by installing an SSL, you get a guarantee that your site is entirely secure. Green padlocks and branded URL bars are two ways to determine whether you can trust the site.

WP Force SSL gets you on-the-spot results and various features to help you save time, money, and potential customers. It also unites all the tools and options required for SSL configuration.

So you will not have to worry about managing numerous different plugins to reach the same results. Not to mention, all of these work smoothly with every single plugin and theme.

Installation of SSL Certificate

The plugin offers the option to install the SSL certificate through the Let’s Encrypt site, for free, of course. This is made so the users can go through a completely effortless, easy installation as they get all the needed information to go through the installation process from start to finish as quickly as possible.

The plugin conveniently includes all relevant information about your SSL certificate, such as:

• the confirmation of its current validity,
• which site it was issued to,
• who exactly gave it,
• and of course, from which to which date it can be considered valid.

Content Scanner

Not even the most skilled individuals can manually check every site page for mixed content. The plugin’s Content scanner feature scans the entire site’s contents in a matter of minutes. It looks for mixed content errors, such as HTTP and HTTPS content, that have been inadvertently mixed together.

For example, if the site is protected, the HTTPS mark should appear within the link. However, if there is even a smidge of content that uses the HTTP protocol, then that bit of content, and thus the entire website, is not entirely safe anymore.

Because it is not entirely within the HTTPS protocol and is unsafe, hackers or individuals skilled in extracting data from websites that do not use the HTTPS protocol may extract sensitive information.

So, besides sweeping for content errors, this plugin can mend these kinds of mistakes automatically.

However, it can also point out the weak spots and then choose which ones to fix and how exactly to do it. It displays the date and time of the most recent scan and the number of pages scanned.

Along with the page’s description, location, and status, you can determine whether you should be concerned about its safety or if it is sufficiently safe. After each scan, you get a detailed report you can study thoroughly to steer clear of mixed content errors in the future.

SSL Monitor

Another nifty feature the WP Force SSL plugin offers is monitoring the SSL. That means that the tool is inspecting the SSL certificate the entire time, keeping a check on more than 50 different potential errors.

The monitor will, of course, send you useful notifications, such as when your certificate is about to expire or when it detects one of the 50 possible errors. That way, you’ll be able to correct the errors as soon as possible.

Also, it shows you whether the site is secure or has some errors that require fixing for it to be completely safe. Furthermore, it will tell you when the last check was, the domain, the SSL date of expiration, etc.

WP Force SSL also includes a centralized dashboard. That means you won’t have to log in to each site separately. Instead, everything is in one place, including your licenses, purchases, sites, and SSL monitors

. In just a click or two, you can also check out your site’s or sites’ statuses, tweak some settings or get the help you need from the support team. Also, this saves you a considerable amount of time you can use to dedicate to your clients instead.

Ease of Use

In addition, the plugin is ridiculously simple when it comes to using it, and the user interface is clean and convenient.

However, if you do get into any trouble when using the plugin, you can get the best possible support to fix your problems in a heartbeat. The support team comprises many of the developers who worked on the plugin itself.

As a result, you won’t have to worry about delivering your ticket to someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. You also have the option to open a support topic on the official Force SSL forum for your question to be answered within merely a few hours.

The Free Version

There is also the free version of the plugin. The plugin generates a free SSL certificate for your site every 90 days in the premium version. Just like the premium version, it assists you in your intention to fix SSL errors, and the best part is it does not touch any of the code.

This way, it diverts HTTP traffic, which can be quite unsafe, and secures the HTTPS protocol in the process.

The SSL certificate converts your entire site to HTTPS. This works with any SSL certificate, whether free from the previously mentioned Let’s Encrypt site or a premium one.

Even the free version includes numerous SSL tests such as checking the SSL certificate and the date that it expires, WP URL status, and more.

Naturally, WP Force SSL includes a tool meant for testing the SSL certificate. It checks out whether the SSL certificate is viable, installed the right way, and that it did not expire.

The pro version includes even more features, such as checking for mixed content issues, determining whether SSL monitoring and 404 redirections are enabled, and so on.

It also gives you the option to force secure cookies, cross-site scripting protection, and fixing issues with mixed content in a heartbeat.

License Flexibility

At your convenience, you can check out all the sites using your licenses when you log into the WP Force SSL Dashboard. You can also transfer your license between different sites.

When you disable WP Force SSL on one of your sites, the license becomes visible and available in your license pool, which you can use to enable it on another of your sites.

Money-Back Guarantee

Seven days should be sufficient to demonstrate that the WP Force SSL premium version is a highly convenient and useful way to ensure the security of your website.

It is suitable for allowing your customers to shop in peace without fear of their data being compromised or stolen.

So, if you are not happy with the product, the total amount of the money you used will be refunded within seven days, unconditionally.

Furthermore, if you purchase WP Force SSL during the presale period, the policy is extended to 15 days. That is following the delivery of the final version of the plugin, of course.

However, over 200,000 satisfied customers bought the premium version, so chances are you will not regret the purchase or even require your money back

Conclusion

Even the free version of the WP Force SSL plugin has all of the features you need to help you secure your site or multiple sites as effectively as possible.

Not to mention that the premium version includes even more features for you to enjoy. It runs smoothly, and the user interface is easy on the eyes and as simple as it gets while maintaining an abundance of virtues for you to pick and choose from.

However, if you have any questions or perhaps problems with the plugin, the diligent and capable support team is on your side and will solve anything that might worry you.

The tool will save you plenty of time, money, nerves, and customers by ensuring your SSL is on par with the more secure sites on the world wide web.

So, if you get this plugin, both you and your site’s visitors can stop worrying about the site’s safety and do whatever you need to do.

The post WP Force SSL Review appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

Depending on the type of the site and the way you visualize the design, you may end up installing different plugins for different websites. It vastly depends upon the idea you are putting behind. On the other side, the quality a plugin brings with its functionalities.

People who have multiple numbers of websites tend to stick with some selected plugins over a long period because of those plugins work fine in a combination. Once you can find that collection or package of plugins. You can use them for multiple sites rather than looking for random plugins. Which always not seems to be as great as your personal favorites.

Regardless of which WordPress plugin you are using in your site. It is certain that plugins are a crucial part of WordPress. Since WordPress is an open-source CMS, you can use any plugin to craft your dream site.

When you look at the key elements that a site requires you to think of doing site SEO, social sharing, increasing the site performance, adding a table of content inside your article, widgets, pop-ups, info blocks.

There are so many things that your plain WordPress installation and theme can’t always provide. So the only alternative to bring all these features and optimize your site for user experience is you use plugins. And at the end of the day, thanks to these plugins, you can avoid core codings and complicated configurations.

With a few mouse clicks, you can install and activate a plugin. However, there should be a limit to using these plugins on your website. You should not load your site with a bunch of plugins to make the site super functional. But end up making it lazy, SEO unfriendly, and sometimes you may have to deal with plugin conflicts as well.

Installing a lot of plugins on your site increases the load on the web-server from where the site is hosted. Because, for every request, the visitors send to the server, it has to respond with a big packet of data. The more configuration you will put on the website greater will be the generated data. The size of the data packets will eventually increase.

As a result, the server will take more time to respond. Ultimately your website will take longer to load. The site bounce rate will automatically increase because of the bad user experience. You certainly do not want to do that. Hence, it’s good practice to lower the limit of your plugins. Lesser the plugins on your site better will be the site performance.

While discussing the plugins. You should also know how many plugins are too many so that you can set a limit of using plugins.

How Many Plugins Are Too Many?

We can’t define it just by telling the exact number, but your installed plugins count should not cross 15. Typically in the case of a regular website, the essential plugins will count up to the range of 9 to 12, and if your theme covers some of the visual or functional features, then the plugin count maybe even less.

In my opinion (considering your theme does not contain necessary features). You should try to limit the installation of plugins from at least 6. Keep the maximum level at 10 plugins depending on your website requirements. Remember, the theme which does not contain a lot of features are mostly light and fast (not always the case) + [6-10] plugins will be a better condition in terms of performance and usability.

While testing your websites on tools like GTmetrix and Pingdom, you can test that when your site cross 15 installed plugins loading time will start to increase and the page size gradually increases. It is because of the increasing load on the server that I have mentioned earlier due to increasing codes per plugin.

Site performance is one of the main reasons why website designers and developers get frustrated with the installed plugin count and always look for solving the issues in multiple ways.

As of now, you have figured out why reducing plugins is a necessary task; the following step will be to find out ways how you can reduce the number of plugins. I have been through this kind of situation. So I will try to share my ideas with you that works for me.

Note: These steps worked well for me doesn’t make sense that will work for you in the same way. There are a lot more dependencies like server speed, server Nodes, or you can say CDN, etc. All I hope these ideas will help you find out what could be the best possible solution to maintain your plugin counter.

1. Try Using SEO Plugins Comes With Complete Set Of Features

A plugin that is installed on your website should be supposed to cover all sorts of functionalities in that category. There are various kinds of plugins.

Some plugins are the result of an amazing project where the developers regularly update the plugin and try to include essential features as well as sub-features to make it all in one package. Such plugins are often well optimized and work perfectly with your website (Rare case is minimal).

On the other hand, you will see plugins that have some particular features of that category. For other features of that category, you will need to install one or two separate plugins.

A practical example would be if you are using an SEO plugin, you will want it to do all kinds of jobs related to SEO on your site. You must be familiar with Yoast SEO, which is no doubt a great SEO plugin for WordPress. But the free version, even though it provides quite a lot of essential features, you will need to go for the premium version for the full set of features to be experienced.

But there is another plugin called Rank Math (free), which includes almost all essential + secondary features an SEO plugin must have, including external link controls, 404 trackings, role management, which are not available in Yoast free version.

Moreover, Rank Math is a well-reviewed plugin by the users. It is an entirely free plugin that has more features compared to Yoast free version and a few lesser features than the Yoast premium. Rank Math’s content analysis and individual site analysis tools can help you get rid of the site analysis plugin as well.

So, when it comes to a free SEO plugin that can provide you all in one support, you should choose Rank Math over Yoast. However, if you have the premium version of Yoast. You can stick with it because Yoast premium gives you the best tools you would really like to experience while doing SEO. Still, there’s the condition, FREE or PREMIUM that based on your budget and planning.

2. Install an All in One Caching Plugin

A caching plugin is the second most important plugin of your website. There are various caching plugins which are capable of improving your site performance.

You can follow this guide on how you can implement the autoptimize plugin + async javascript to increase the performance of your site.

However, while choosing the caching plugin for your site. You should consider whether the caching plugin contains all kind configurations such as compressing HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Lazy load, deferring or async processing, automatic cache clearing, font configurations, and lot more.

At the same time, you must check whether the plugin has a specific tool to fix the possible conflicts that may appear during the site compression.

Your caching tools should contain settings for leverage settings for the website resources rather than installing a separate plugin for that. Image optimization is another feature you will want to have in your caching tool.

We usually install image optimization plugins separately, but some caching plugins like Lightspeed Cache, autoptimize contains powerful tools that can optimize images automatically.

CDN configuration is a part of site optimization as well. It’s a better choice to configure CDN on your site with the help of your caching plugin rather than installing a separate plugin. Most of the caching plugin provides CDN settings, so that won’t be an issue for you.

There is a popular database optimizer plugin for WordPress called “WP optimize,” which keeps your database clean, optimized, and helps the website to load faster with delay on database response.

However, the lightspeed cache plugin itself contains a database optimizer tool that does pretty much the same job as WP optimize plugin. So if you use lightspeed’s database optimizer you can reduce one more plugin to increase the site performance by a little… and that little is precious.

3. Try To Use A theme With Important Features Available In It

Your WordPress theme plays an important rule when it comes to installing plugins. Depending on the features available on the theme, you will need to install separate plugins. If your theme consists of basic and advanced features, you wouldn’t have to look for the respective plugins.

For example, if the theme has an option for social sharing, you should not install another plugin to add sharing buttons on your site. If your theme already has options for using custom codes in the header and footer, then you should not have to go for an external “header & footer” plugin at all.

Some themes also support Google analytics tracking id. It’s a better way to use tracking code. Because the Analytics API is already connected with your theme there is no need to include extra code block (analytics tracker code) to your website. It is a win-win method of using the inbuilt function and reducing additional script.

The only task you need to do is getting the tracking ID instead of the tracking code and use it where the theme asks for the ID. Placing the tracking ID instead of full tracking code is useful and recommended for site performance. You can find such themes for free inside the WordPress theme repository itself, and most of the premium themes include this feature as well.

4. Place Ad Codes Manually

It may not sound like a great trip. But it will help you to uninstall Ads management plugins in case you don’t bother to assign ads on your favorite spots of the website manually.

Placing the ad codes in your article and widgets areas is not a big deal. It becomes way more comfortable, especially when you are using the Gutenberg editor. You can easily place ads using the custom HTML block and let it appear in an appropriate position that you want.

To maintain the center position of square size ads, you can use <center>[ad codes here ]</center> to make it look cleaner and well optimized with the page look.

Similarly, Ads for the sidebar. Below the header or above the footer can be manually added with the help of a custom HTML widget.

5. You Can Use .htaccess File To Avoid Some Other Plugins

The .htaccess file is a semi core file of your WordPress site, which works as a bridge between your settings and core configurations. You can complete some of the tasks. Such as defining the expiry duration of caching of the static files inside WordPress by adding code to the htaccess file instead of using a plugin for that. The plugin will do the same thing; they will add those codes into your htaccess file.

The development codes inside the plugins and integration codes with WordPress can be avoided by not installing it. Just placing the important script inside the .htaccess file. Remember that the .htaccess file is a crucial core file. So placing wrong codes into it can also break your website.

So before using it, you need to learn how to use the file properly. For being more protective. You can always make a backup copy of the file and do the rest of the work on the live version of it. If anything goes wrong, replace it with the backup, and you will be OK.

But it’s a way you can reduce the number of plugins on the website. It would give you a glimpse of the example mentioned above. You can avoid the “leverage browser caching” plugin by mentioning the lifetime of the cache for website resource files such as javascript, CSS, images, etc.

<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On

# Images
ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access plus 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access plus 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/png “access plus 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/webp “access plus 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/svg+xml “access plus 1 year”
ExpiresByType image/x-icon “access plus 1 year”

# Video
ExpiresByType video/mp4 “access plus 1 year”
ExpiresByType video/mpeg “access plus 1 year”

# CSS, JavaScript
ExpiresByType text/css “access plus 1 month”
ExpiresByType text/javascript “access plus 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/javascript “access plus 1 month”

# Others
ExpiresByType application/pdf “access plus 1 month”
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash “access plus 1 month”
</IfModule>

This code will set caching parameters to inform the visitor’s browser what types of files to it need to cache.

6. Try To Marge Security Plugin With Website Backup Plugin

When you are running a WordPress site, a security plugin is a must. You never know who is spying on your website. You probably never dive deeper to track if your site contains some kind of malware in it. These threats can come with plugins and themes or by means of direct injection.

That’s why you should always avoid resources from untrustworthy sources + add a layer of protection. The most used security plugins for WordPress is WordFence followed Sucuri, iThemes Security, All in one WP security, etc.

Similarly, keeping your daily site backup is another mandatory thing for us, a website owner. Without backup, if the site goes down, we will never be able to regain it. So backing up your site on a daily basis is precious as well as it should be an automatic process to save your time.

Security plugins like WordFence come with site backup options that will help you avoid a separate backup plugin on your site. Moreover, you have another great option to use your WebHost’s automatic site backup tool. Only to prevent installing a plugin for doing the job for you.

I understand you might look for an automated way. But sometimes for website performance is more important than being autonomous in a non-frequent task like site backup. Moreover, nowadays, most of the web hosts provide the automatic backup tool, so that should fix the burden.

In case your hosting doesn’t provide a site backup tool, you can always contact the support team for a solution or use WordFence itself on your WordPress.

Wrapping Up

The lesser the number of plugins you will use, the less will be your responsibility. Things will be straightforward to handle with a lower number of plugins installed.

Above I have mentioned a few tips which I believe will help you reduce the number of plugins on your site. Moreover, as soon as the plugin count decreases, you will notice a decent growth in the site loading speed too.

If you have any suggestions/ideas regarding this topic on how to reduce the number of plugins! Please mention it in the comment tab below.

The post How To Reduce The Number Of Plugins For WordPress Sites? appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

To top it off, they’re stealing all that juicy traffic, reaping the rewards, yet you did all the heavy lifting—time to fight back.

We’re not going to talk about blog republishing, stealing, scraping, etc. in this article. This article is about a new WordPress tool that can play a part against copiers, and help us adapt and overcome specific pain points that come with the everyday challenges with our content being taken.

I want to talk about how a little plugin can play a big part in your copyright protection, link building, and marketing, and more. Let me introduce you to; Hicopy.

Everyone Copies & Pastes

Some people will swear by it; some rarely use the commands. Copying saves time, a lot of it. It has become fundamental to how we use computers and even smartphones today. It was created by the late Larry Tesler, who recently passed away at the age of 74 this past February.

How Hicopy Was Created By A Glitchy Keyboard

A little backstory with an ironic epiphany. One day I opened messenger and saw a buddy of mine was ranting in a group chat about how this one blog “stole his entire article.” Long story short, he wrote an article, five days later he found his article stolen and being used on an ad-heavy blog, we’re talking almost 98% of it was being used.

The difference between his article and the stolen article was that the stolen article was littered with ads, and had over 50 more comment replies than my buddies article, with tons of engagement on Facebook and Twitter as well. He was livid.

A few hours later, I was enjoying some light reading online, and I wanted to copy something I read. I went to copy a quote from one of my favorite philosophers, Seneca. When I went to paste the quote, my glitchy keyboard (I have a new one now) accidentally pasted the content twice.

The Epiphany. With my buddy’s story still fresh in my mind, the 1st thing that came to mind was, did this website attach a message to what I’m copying? No. But, as someone who comes from a web background, the land of possibilities to create a message to show when someone copies content had to be investigated. I asked my blog buddies in messenger one question;

“If there was a way for you to leave a message for anyone copying your content, would you find it beneficial for your blogs?”

The answers were all a resounding yes, as everyone found the idea a must-have if it was possible. After a few weeks of researching, trial, and error, I created Hicopy.

What Is Hicopy?

Hicopy adds your message to anyone copying text from your website. Let’s take a look at a more visual standpoint on what Hicopy does.

The first image is of the backend settings of Hicopy (Free version). Once installed, you can find Hicopy under your “Tools” icon. Hicopy Pro will have its own tab on the Toolbar.

In this image, we’re using “Hi, I’m Hicopy. Pretty Cool Eh? Download me [at] Hicopy.co” ​as the message we want to share with users on our website who copy or scrape our content. As you can see, there is an Off & On switch for anytime you want to turn Hicopy on or off.

In the second image, you can see the pasted content from the article and our added message attached that we created with Hicopy. Copying any part of the article will result in the same message. With Hicopy Pro, you can have a different message saying something different for each post and or page.

As you can see from the demo above, you’re now able to communicate loud and clear to users who copy any text from your website.

A Powerful Tool With Link Building and Marketing Built-In

Hicopy is a first of its kind tool designed to extend your website’s reach with users who copy your content. You’d be surprised at how many users copy your content without you even knowing it, now with Hicopy, you can. Hicopy includes a lifetime free version and a Pro version that unlocks the potential even further. Hicopy, a powerful must-have plugin for your WordPress website.

Why Hicopy Benefits Your Website

Ask yourself one question, how often are you copying something weekly? What makes Hicopy so elite is it allows you to reach your users like never before—being able to communicate a simple message for everyone who scrapes, copies, or uses your content.

You can remind users to source back to you, leave extra coupon codes, promote another article or a product. It’s a text box that allows emojis even. Since your blog is unique to you, only you know what your users want to hear.

Link Building and SEO

If you’re new to link building; Search engines send out crawlers across the internet. They crawl the links on individual pages on your website, and they will follow those links to other websites. Link Building and marketing can be fun, but it’s also a world of its own with many obstacles. Google loves it when we cross-link between articles and even linking to other blogs.

Let’s say you’re a content marketer who sells an ebook. Let’s take, for example, someone who copies a sentence from your website. Ok, they copied it and left. You’re powerless there.

Now let’s take the same example but with Hicopy installed. That same user is back ready to copy something they liked. Now, when they go and paste what they copied, they’ll see a message attached at the end. It could be something like, “Hey there, glad you enjoy my content. Here’s 10% off my ebook code”. What you just created was an opportunity. Even if they don’t buy, you still got the chance to try, unlike without Hicopy, you didn’t.

Let’s take one more example of having fun with your users and cross-linking articles, product showcases, etc. to help further your SEO. You see high bounce rates with your articles, so you want to generate a little more guidance and direction. Let’s say you wrote an excellent long article. You have about five cross-links included.

At the end of the article, you ask your users to copy their favorite part. What you’re doing is walking the user to your next article, product showcase, etc. The more you hold the hand of the user to guide them along a journey, the better results you can get. Users want to be guided online, or else our minds will wander, and we’ll do other things.

Hicopy (Free) vs. Hicopy Pro

The core of Hicopy is to share a message with users who copy your content. Three main differences separate Hicopy Pro from the free version of Hicopy: Unlimited Hicopy’s, creating a Hicopy for any post and or page, and mobile viewer support.

With Hicopy, free version. You’ll be able to create One Global Hicopy message across your entire website. This is the perfect starting point. It’s a forever free plan meaning no trials or time limits. Great for ecommerce stores, writers, etc. One message might be all you need across your whole website.

With Hicopy Pro. Sometimes you’ll find the need to want to create a different message on separate posts and or pages. Maybe you don’t want to show off a Hicopy on everything, so only display a Hicopy on specific pages or posts.

With both, you’ll also receive lifetime support. We can only support the plugin itself; we do not offer support for your theme or other plugins.

Also, with Hicopy Pro, you only pay once. No monthly, no yearly, just pay one time.

Conclusion & How To Get Started With Hicopy

Leave a comment below if you have any questions. If you found the article useful and want to try Hicopy to boost your link building and marketing, give it a go, you never know what kind of results you can achieve. It’s a very lightweight plugin that works behind the scenes, no frontend visuals at all. It takes less than one minute to install and get setup.

Installing. You can get started right from your WordPress plugin install directory. Search Hicopy. Or you can download the zip file at Hicopy.co.

To get started with Hicopy Pro, you can download it directly from Hicopy.co.

To kickstart your journey of copyright protection, link Building and marketing with Hicopy Pro, enjoy 30% off with coupon code LAUNCH30 at checkout.

The post Boost Your Link Building and Marketing When Users Copy Your Content – Hicopy appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

For this to happen, businesses are now going a step further and having user behavior analysis done on their sites.

Introduction to User Experience and Behavior

User Experience (UX), in simple terms, is the general feeling that a user gets when they interact with a particular website. UX underlines User Behavior. It means that the UX, in the long term, will determine user behavior.

What entails the best user experience, you may ask? Luckily, behavioral science offers nuggets of wisdom on this subject matter. There is a proven combination that, when used, promises to provide a working solution. To achieve the best user experience, one should purpose to do two things consecutively.

The first one is keeping the user design as simple as possible to ensure that the user experiences as little friction as possible while interacting with the website. The second aspect is integrating newness or a hint of excitement for users every time they interact with the website such that every time is different.

These two principles explain basic human nature. Firstly, humans prefer a pattern that they can adapt to quickly. The second one is as simple as no one likes to be bored even with a routine. A little excitement goes a long way in keeping someone’s attention and keeping them on their toes coming back for more.

Tracking User Behavior

The primary purpose of tracking user behavior is to understand when users interact with a website and why.

I mentioned earlier that businesses have leveled up and are analyzing User Behavior on their sites. However, you may have a question with regards to this. Is tracking User Behavior a simple thing to do, and what does it entail?

The traditional means that most websites use for tracking is Google Analytics. What does Google Analytics do? Google Analytics is a faithful servant that continuously records all activities that occur on your page. Thereafter you as a business can see the traffic on your page based on the data collected.

Unfortunately, Google Analytics lets you have quantitative data on the activities happening on your page, like say, for example, the conversion rates or the best performing landing pages of your website.

However, it does not answer the most important questions. Why are the users behaving in this particular way? These are the questions that a business needs answers to be able to make improvements.

Therefore, Google Analytics can be classified as a traditional means of visitor behavior analysis. A business needs to do much more to be able to fully understand its Users. Now to answer my question, is it simple?

Yes, it is. However, it most definitely needs a business to install a plugin (software that can be added to a site) to its website. This plugin is specially made for this particular task and will be able to answer the essential questions that a business owner would have.

HumCommerce Plugin for WordPress

HumCommerce behavior analytics plugin for WordPress answers all those questions that give business owners sleepless nights. Why is my conversion rate like this? Why are users bouncing off my landing page instead of exploring further?

HumCommerce provides real insights into these problems. In addition to that, it promises solutions to improve website conversion rates.

Let’s explore its features and have a deeper understanding of HumCommerce solutions and how a business can reap maximum benefits from its use.

Visitor Session Recordings

As a business, you want to be 100% sure that the investments you’re making to a website address a real problem and not a hypothesis made up in your head. This key feature enables a business to do just that.

Visitor Session recordings allow a business to all the movements made by Users who visited their sites. These recordings will enable a business to discover which parts of their website are not user friendly and thereby take corrective measures. It’s kind of like your website’s CCTV camera.

I already mentioned that Visitor Session Recordings is a feature on HumCommerce, but get this, it also has features. Hum Commerce is just the gift that keeps on giving.

1. It’s easy to set up. You won’t need any tech gurus to get this up and running.
2. It’s on autoplay. You just have to click start, and the videos will play back to back, imagine the convenience.
3. It enables you to fast forward. You get a quick overview and can get to the fun parts without having to wait.
4. Access to visitor logs on the same recording panel. Again, convenience.
5. Filtering capabilities. If you need to focus on a specific day or time, it lets you do just that.
6. It allows you to skip inactivity. Get to the fun parts quick

With all these features, it is easier to analyze the visitor’s activities on your website and hereby discover the pain point areas for your Users. These insights inevitably allow you to make the correct improvements for your website that naturally lead to better conversion rates.

Heatmaps

This feature lets you know where visitors usually go when they come to your website.

It allows you to map out how far users scroll on your website. What this piece of information offers is redesigning ideas for the business website. The owner can determine how he needs to piece his website to convince users to accomplish what he needs them to do.

Conversion Funnels

The conversion funnel can be described as the steps that a user is designed to take to be converted to a customer. It is like an inbuilt goal setting guide for you.

Furthermore, it allows you to track your goals and see the conversion rate per user journey. It gives you an in-depth look at the Users profile and detects where it is, and they deviated from your set goal.

With all this information available to you, it becomes easier to understand your Users’ journey and thereby optimize your site for maximum conversion.

Form Analytics

Any website worth its salt uses forms to get direct feedback from its Users. It could sign up forms, or perhaps even feedback surveys. What Form Analytics does, is that it allows you to monitor the relationship that your visitors have with the forms on your site.

The kind of feedback that you acquire through the use of Form Analytics is invaluable. You could get to know if different forms attract different types of traffic depending on the time of day. You could figure out if there are things that your Users find challenging and don’t quite understand.

This feedback, when implemented through corrective measures, could lead to a boost in the conversion rate, which is the ultimate goal.

Cart Abandonment

The word Cart Abandonment is a pretty self-explanatory word. It’s probably what most store/shop owners dread the most. The user gets to the check-out, sees the teller then changes their mind about making the purchase.

The HumCommerce behavior analytics plugin allows you to sort of investigating and find out the reasons why your visitors decide to drop out at this stage. It gives you a marking scheme to persuade them to stick to the initial plan and make the purchase as had been intended.

Surveys

With surveys, you can ask your website visitors why aren’t they purchasing? Get instant feedback to know what visitors feel about your website.

Use HumCommerce surveys to get a peek into the customer’s mind to know about things like – did they like the check-out process, do they suggest any new feature, etc.

HumCommerce Perfect Fit

All the features that have been listed and explained showcase that HumCommerce behavior analytics plugin is a product that had been developed after researching on the pain points that business owners with websites were experiencing.

HumCommerce incorporates behavioral science into its recommended solutions. This goes to say that all the features that it has blended in perfect harmony with human behavior.

Therefore, it reinforces the fact that it is the best plugin that any site could ever choose to invest in to analyze User Behavior.

Conclusion

The world is getting smaller by the day, and geographical barriers are no longer an excuse for any business. The Businesses that invest in their websites have a better chance of survival than those that rely only on the brick and mortar model.

A further extension of the survival rate will be for those businesses that choose to analyze user behavior and take corrective measures as advised.

HumCommerce behavior analytics plugin offers relief for those already on board this train. It has been built incorporating suggestions that alleviate the pain points that affect most websites.

There’s a good reason a lot of SEO and CRO specialists have embraced the HumCommerce behavior analytics plugin to help them reap maximum benefits from their websites. You should too.

Author Bio

Akshay Erande is a Digital Marketer, and he takes care of growth strategies, content creation, and outreach. When not at work you can find him in adventurous places.

The post Best User Behavior Analytics Plugin for WordPress in 2020 appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

Besides, the comments on a blog reflect how popular the blog is, how people trust the contents inside the blog, and, most importantly, how engaging the topic is! The more quality content you can provide, the better comments will attain to give you the courage to do more.

If you have a WordPress site that gets a good chunk of traffic week in and week out, it’s the most obvious case that you will get plenty of comments on your posts regardless of them being spam or real comments.

These comments are the frontend part, being the most popular CMS WordPress needs to have a backend system which manages the blog comments very well as well as provide you all the essential settings.

It’s not to be excited to know that WordPress has its default comment system (certainly, everybody who uses WordPress knows that). There are a bunch of different commenting systems available for WordPress too. All of them have their unique advantages and disadvantages, along with various features. Moreover, there are factors like being SEO friendly and competent in terms of appearance to be one of the best comment systems.

It’s challenging to identify which among all the comment systems available for WordPress is the best. However, in this article, we will look upon the WordPress default comment system of WordPress. Also, compare it to other comment systems. To get an idea of whether you should stick with the default comment system or go for others.

Understanding The Two Layers of WordPress Default Comment System

We know how WordPress has been making things easier for us with a couple of options that ultimately reflect the actual configuration we want as a webmaster. Along with other features, they have made the WordPress default comment system so easy to enable (or disable on necessary conditions) with a few mouse clicks.

By default, the comment system of WordPress is enabled regardless of the theme and plugins you are using. Now there is a point to be noted. They have made two layers of configuration in terms of the comment system.

1st one is the root layer, and the second one is the child layer. The root layer holds the global control of the comment system. What I want to say is that if you are enabling or disabling the comments (discussion) from the root layer that will be applied to the whole website.

Precaution: Disabling the discussion in the main settings (root) will entirely hide the comment system for your website. In such a case, adding a plugin or using any third-party API is not likely to bring back the comment system into your site.

On the other hand, the child layer is available for individual pages to handle the comment form. It’s entirely up to you whether you want to allow someone publishing a comment on your page or not. This control will be available under the Gutenberg editor panel. Unlike the general settings, it doesn’t altogether disable comments on the whole site except give you a dynamic control for each page.

The Advantages of Using the WordPress Default Comment System

There is no doubt one of the most substantial advantages of using WordPress is the full range of options available when it comes to giving your website a direction “your way.” You can do almost anything you want with WordPress. It’s packed with a sufficient amount of tools and options to provide you the dynamicity that is required to create an excellent website that everyone loves to be in.

But then it comes to the hype of people trying to overclock the functionality, features, and design of WordPress by using external plugins and 3rd party tools every possible way. I would not prefer to say that plugins are something we do not require; themes are not something we do not need to run a successful website. But, trying to get the best of the best in every possible way is overkill and should not be entertained with WordPress at all.

There are tasks like image SEO to do in WordPress. Why does it manually? Common, install a plugin and set it for automatic insertion of alternate tags, image names. Why use the default sidebar? Add another plugin and make it more elegant with a bunch of different options. And then, finally, why use the default comment system when you can use other comments plugins?

The default system out there works reasonably well. Without going for the other 3rd party applications, the default system comes out to be the best under various circumstances that are certainly there to impress you and improve your website as well.

As an example, you can see many blogs are popular enough yet stick with the default commenting system.

1.1 Loading Speed

It is undoubtedly one of (if not) the most important factors that you should be considering while holding on with your default comment system. You are already aware of the fact that speedy sites tend to perform better than slower websites and also have a lower bounce rate. A fast site can bring much positivity to your online business.

The default comment system is constructed with the core WordPress code and has a better compatibility of execution. It will load faster than other commenting systems. You can try to install additional plugins, but they are going to slow down your website if not built with better performance intention.

However, that doesn’t mean these comment plugins are always slow, but it’s tough to find such plugins designed for speed. In general, those plugins are built for adding more features such as grabbing social accounts, producing awesome hierarchical designs, like-dislike or voting systems, and many more. You can say it’s useful but not performance friendly.

The graph below shows the difference between the loading speed of the commenting system.

(Lesser the required loading time more useful the system is)

The main problem with the other commenting plugins is that they have to load several scripts, authenticate with their server to get a response for the comment system to function correctly.

1.2 Compatibility With Caching Plugins

If you are running a WordPress site, caching plugins is a must. It would be a massive mistake if you ignore the caching plugin and let all things work as it is. The caching plugin will be there to optimize your site, take care of the performance, look after the server load when you are manually not doing so.

The caching plugin should work on all parts of your WordPress site. If your whole site is supporting the caching plugin instead of the commenting system, then there is still room for optimization, and the site could perform better than now.

So it’s recommended to have a commenting system that is compatible with your caching plugin. There is no doubt your default commenting system will work fine with the caching plugin. The logic is simple. These are the same codes that have been used to develop WordPress. So basically, if the caching plugin is supporting the other part of WordPress. Then it has to support the comment system as well.

On the other hand, Facebook and Disqus are not fully compatible with the caching plugins. Both of them (other similar tools too) have their servers; they have their powerful standalone CDNs to help the commenting system work as quickly as possible.

But in reality, they work just fine with their platform. In terms of WordPress, these plugins need to fetch the required data from their server before they reflect them into WordPress comment that certainly increases the time delay.

1.3 SEO Friendly

When you are operating a website, SEO is always essential for you. If any part of the site is harmful to SEO, you should either remove or fix it as soon as possible. Without SEO, you can’t dream about growing a website to its maximum possible level.

One of the crucial benefits of using the default commenting system is it’s SEO friendly. The comments on a page will be counted as extra content, which is a positive sign for SEO. You can see that the blog comments can dramatically increase the volume and quality of content. Some targeted and insightful comments with relevant discussion can increase the words up to 2000 and doubling your page content + improving the quality of the page with more user inputs.

There is no guarantee that the other commenting systems also improve SEO quality and quantity with the comments since they are being hosted from a different server and on a different script. If they do, then it’s better, but there is always a question mark about it.

Again, that vast amount of comments only be a part of your website if you put effort into the comments. You will need an engaged community that will produce those kinds of high-quality comments on your blog. A well as you will need to be involved with your community to respond to them in their blogs and thus carry the discussions forward.

To make it real, you also need to be very effective in managing the comments you get. There are lots of spam comments nowadays that can reduce the quality of your page by injecting hundreds of bad links below your content. You need to be precise enough to remove those spam and poor quality comments. That’s not unique to WordPress comments, though; you are going to need spam protection plugins or software and manual moderation for every comment system you might want to use.

1.4 Spam Protection

Spam protection is not one of the most significant advantages of the default comment system though it does a perfect job along with a powerful anti-spam plugin called Akismet. Installing Akismet is easy, one-two steps, and your site is ready to block the spam comments.

Other commenting systems include spam protection along with it and much capable of protecting your WordPress site from non-relevant spam. In this criterion, the WordPress commenting system needs external software that brings another plugin to your website, which might decrease the balance between the performance and quality of your blog.

Though another plugin is necessary for spam protection. I believe the developers of Akismet focuses on making it light enough to support the site performance also. Additionally, this will provide manual control over the comments, which is not something familiar with other commenting systems.

1.5 Friendly for The Web Crawlers

It would be interesting to know how the comment system can be friendly to the web crawlers while others are not. The most excellent example comes from the loading speed of the commenting system itself. The WordPress comment system loads immediately with the primary page script. Thus a web crawler can easily fetch the content inside the comment.

On the other hand, the 3rd party comment system, such as Facebook and Disqus, needs an extra few seconds to load, and that comes after the initial page load. A web crawler generally avoids the scripts that take longer to load, and hence there is always a chance of those comments never being discovered by the web crawlers, which is, of course, not a good sign both in terms of SEO and site health. A similar thing happens to the Facebook commenting system when integrated into a WordPress site.

There is a plugin, Disqus lazy load. This is developed to fix this problem by ordering the crawlers to take some moments to get the comments. It also supports the performance of the website by deferring the comment script entirely. Yet again, not much effective as the default comment system.

1.6 Local Management

Technically there is another advantage of using the WordPress comment is that it stores the comment on the local database. You can manage them from your dashboard. It’s a significant benefit; you don’t have to open another platform; you don’t have to manage the comment from a 3rd party dashboard, especially when there are lots of comments to manage.

Usually, the other comment plugins require a login to their dashboard to manage the comments or API key to import the comments into your WordPress. In such a case, you would undoubtedly choose the local comment system rather than 3rd party plugins.

1.7 No Problem With Ads

The default commenting system also, as you might have expected, ads-free. It’s quite apparent that being part of the same WordPress system. The default comment doesn’t contain any advertisements in it. You neither have to pay for using it or see the ads in the comment box. In some sense, it’s quite annoying too to watch those ads near your comment.

Other comment plugins such as FB comment, Disqus, LiveFire don’t follow this strategy. Some plugins need to be purchased before using them. Some others don’t, but they are going to display ads on your comment.

When it comes to displaying ads, Disqus is the primary offender, and advertisements on the comment box hurt the user experience of the website. Increasing ads on a page will slow down the page additionally. When your page gets a large amount of traffic, then they can also charge you for using the service.

1.8 Customization Ability

Another significant benefit of the built-in comment system; for me, it is highly customizable. You can squeeze every single color, font, structure, and size of the comment system using your custom CSS or change them into the WordPress files involved. It’s quite easy to do. It means you have to control to match your comment section to your site perfectly according to your choice.

Other comment plugins, unlikely don’t allow this kind of customization. Most of them only have default a light theme or a dark theme. Furthermore, a maximum of two-three free templates that are available for free or allow you to set a few basic color options. Other than that, I doubt you can expect anything more.

Some stuff like a voting system, like or dislike options are only available in the 3rd party plugins. But personally. I prefer when my comments don’t allow disliking or downvoting for not matching other people’s opinions. And for me, that is where you can decide to go for a different comment system if your site needs to have extra curriculum rather than only discussions.

1.9 Free of Code Conflict

It is also worth mentioning that the WordPress comments system since it’s developed for WordPress. Is a part of the WordPress system is not going to create any code conflicts? It’s recommended to stay out of such conflicts because sometimes solving those can kill many hours. Installing a plugin might cause issues (not usually) with other plugins that associate with the same component of your page.

It’s not extremely difficult to get a plugin that doesn’t conflict with others these days. But by using the in-built commenting system. You are going to eliminate the possibility of being annoyed by a plugin conflict.

Disadvantages of Using a Default Commenting System

While discussing the advantages of the inbuilt commenting system, we should forget the downsides of it. By far, there are fewer disadvantages in comparison to the positivity it brings to a WordPress site.

2.1 Comments Are Very Basic

Being the inbuilt system, it only has the basic comment form; once approved, the appearance of the comments is OK but not something appealing. The Gravatar is just some pre-built avatars and can not display the original profile image for individual users unless they have registered account on Gravatar & WordPress.

That leads to no profile images for cross-platform bloggers. If you don’t mind the default avatars, then it should not be an issue. Otherwise, 3rd party comment systems can be a beneficial option for you.

2.2 Does Not Have Analytics

In case you are serious about what’s going on behind the comments and like to analyze it with some statistical data. Then the inbuilt comment system of WordPress is not something that you are looking for. Of course, it does not have comment analytics in it. I would personally prefer not to have analytics for comments, but for different businesses, it could be a requirement.

2.3 No Login Feature

You must already know that some site requires user login to publish a comment on a page. The WordPress default comment system does not have the “log in and comment” feature, and developers of such sites should look for other options.

Our Opinion

We have already breakdown the WordPress comment system based on what it’s useful for and for what it’s not. It not only helps you to choose your comment system wisely while setting up a WordPress website. But allows you to understand what the inbuilt system can bring into your project.

Although we have included almost every point of view to look after the default commenting system, there can be more to discuss. As for me, I would go with the inbuilt system for a blog or a website that shares information with the people. However, integrate Disqus or Facebook comments for a discussion-based website.

I want to encourage you to select your system when it comes to the comment part. I hope you will choose the best one according to your idea.

The post Should You Use the WordPress Default Comment System? appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

For instance, conversion on an e-commerce website will be ordering a product. For a gymnasium website, it could be signing up for a body transformation challenge.

The Conversion Rate Optimization process involves knowing how visitors move through the website. Therefore, a conversion always depends on the type of website and product or service. Statistics also say that very few sites are doing CRO, or they are doing it poorly.

Let us look at the crucial steps for the CRO program.

Step 1 – Data Gathering and Research

CRO requires us to gather data to inform the tests we are undertaking. Even though at this level, it can be quite a lengthy process. It is worth the time and energy investment.

We may begin with data by consulting the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). For example, Customer Acquisition Cost, Sales Cycle duration, and Monthly Recurring Revenue.

We can then start considering other data points. Quantitative data like Organic Traffic, Average Session Duration, CTR rates, Bounce Rate, etc. Will give a clearer picture of the website usage.

Data analytics will give us metrics such as traffic sources, top pages. We can have a clear idea about sources that are performing well. A website may have a great website, but if it has poor traffic that does not convert. It won’t have many sales.

Data gathering is a continuous process as long as our website is active for business.

Step 2 – Hypotheses

We can describe it as a tentative assumption for trying out the empirical and logical outcomes of a given action.

In Conversion Rate Optimization, it could mean a working theory (depending on the data and research analysis) of “If I vary Y, then X will change.”

Once we have all the data, it will uncover some glaring issues on the site. After the website’s analysis, we could come across two types of problems.

1. Problems that are immediately actionable.
2. Problems that require testing and hence hypothesis.

Type “1” problems are usually technical. We can fix them without having to put forward any hypothesis on the. Such issues need to be fixed immediately.

Type “2” problems are more diverse. They may not have a single way solution. Hence hypothesis is needed.

For example, – Changing website Headlines to make them more specific and smart to get better results. There is no particular font, color, size, etc. to create the best headline. However, it has a significant impact on CRO.

Therefore, we need to monitor each iteration and keep improving it with the hypothesis for better results. In addition, E-commerce stores can set up session recordings for most significant pages on the website and see how they perform.

After building the list of hypotheses, e must prioritize it with the most urgent to the less pressing.

We will delve into the in-depth in the coming stages.

Step 3 – Prioritizing Ideas

Priorities guide our life choices and help us to make better decisions. The things we focus on describe who we are. The process of CRO this applies as well.

Prioritizing hypotheses and ideas does not help in solving the issues. Give attention to the most pressing need for the business. It creates precedence for future optimization tasks. If done with great care, we will have an efficient test system ready for everything to run.

Isn’t it a wonderful thing to Prioritize? Let us look at some of the well-known prioritizing structures!  Not the sumptuous dessert but less for Potential for Importance, Ease, and Improvement.

Step 4: Testing and Implementation

Since we have prioritized the hypotheses and we understand what kind of most pressing tests. It is time to act on those hypotheses.

Ideally, game-changing CRO activities need an ideal tool at hand. For higher conversions on a website. Here are the few things that are a must for testing and improving conversion rates.

User Analytics

When it comes to CRO, a lot of data needs tracking. It gives us specific breakdowns of our data point. For example, visitors overview data, organic traffic sources, best-converting email campaigns, and device summary report.

Page Performance

When a visitor first clicks on a website, he will notice how fast it loads. A business online will want visitors to have meaningful interactions with the website.

Performance is all about retaining visitors on the website. Websites check and study the performance metrics that work best to enhance the conversion rate.

Heatmaps

It is a platform that offers a click map to understand real-time user behavior. It helps us know the quality of leads and visitors that traffic brings. One can understand how CTAs or any significant links are working on the website.

Create an optimization roadmap, run continuous experiments, and conduct visitor research. Heatmaps can identify frustration detection by identifying rapid clicks, dead clicks on the page. It then allows us to change what needs to improve on the site.

Session Recordings

It will allow us to see how exactly visitors navigate through the website. It gives us a stronger customer insight and analysis of on-page user behavior.

A/B Testing

It is among the number one experimenting platforms. It allows product and marketing teams to deploy tests and review digital experiences. Above all, A/B testing enables us to target the launch and to message in a more visitor-focused way.

It is difficult to find all the above functionalities in one place. But, if you have the Humcommerce CRO tool. You don’t need to find anything else for your e-commerce store.

It is one of the most comprehensive CRO – conversion rate optimization tools that provides behavioral analytics (Heatmaps, visitor session recordings, etc.) Besides conventional analytics (traffic source, traffic data, etc.).

This CRO tool enables you to change user experience through insight reports to increase conversions and engagement.

Step 5: Creating a Conversion Roadmap

When we make a list of common conversion problems (COP). We will need a roadmap to follow. We must address the central conversion problems first by looking at the data analytics, qualitative research, and also the heuristic analysis:

• Consider the areas of the website that are leaking the guests.
• Consider the health of various sections of the site.
• Learn the way visitors move from one section of the site to another.

Step 6 – Determine Issue Areas on the Webpage

Depending on the data collected, we have decided which page to optimize first.

We have done the polls, and we know some of the questions or concerns that visitors may have.

Do we have the information that visitors are looking for? Is the information displayed and well organized on that page with clarity?

Have you answered the questions visitors might have on certain things on that page? The good thing is you have done most of your work to assist you with identified issues on that particular page.

Step 7 – Analyze Pages With the Conversion Structure

How do you know the issues that are on the page?

This is for a 360 analysis to understand some of the problems identified on the page. This framework analyses all element of the page in the following areas:

• Confidence and Trust: Check if there are trust elements that are missing from that page?
• Incentives: Include incentives so that visitors can act in anticipation of a reward.
• Engagement: Could you include engagement elements to that page?
• Personas: If the page addresses different kinds of guest persona?
• Sales Sophistication: If the page provides all the information that page visitor requires to convert?
• Purchasing stage: Is the page that is designed for both early-in-the-funnel visitors as well as ready-to-convert guests?

The main reason for the framework is to determine whether:

• The element is not there.
• Elements are not identified and visible.
• If the element is present even though it is not effective based on the data.
• It is there and doing the required job.

Conclusion

Here, we learned the seven essential Steps of the CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization framework. For instance, a website needs relevant traffic for a good conversion rate.

Furthermore, we discovered many different ways to collect data. How to create a data-driven hypothesis, and we learned the need to put forward hypotheses. We also saw how to get those thoughts and put the ideas to the test using the ideal tools.

The post The 7 Step Framework of CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization in 2020 appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

I’m talking, of course, about WPForms.

WPForms is a popular and powerful WordPress form builder plugin. With its innovative and user-friendly interface, you can easily create beautifully and fully functioning contact forms, donation forms, and newsletter forms within minutes.

The Pro version comes with dozen of great features and options such as drag & drop form builder, pre-built form templates, 100% responsive, multi-page forms. Furthermore, conditional logic, instant form notification, form abandonment, Mailchimp forms, PayPal, and much more. Check out the full list of features included here.

Three lucky winners will receive a yearly WPForms Pro license, and each license is worth $199. So don’t miss this opportunity to win a Pro license by WPForms, one of the best drag & drop WordPress form builder plugins. Jump on the bandwagon and start sharing the WPForms giveaway to get a whopping amount of points to increase the chances of winning.

How To Win a WPForm Pro License

Participating in the WPForms giveaway is very easy. Just enter your email address, and you’re ready to rumble. Here’s what to do. Join and share as many entries you want; however, the more entries you join and share, the higher are your chances of winning these grand prizes.

The giveaway lasts two weeks. When the WPforms giveaway is over, we draw 3 random winners that we contact via the email address you logged in with and participated in the giveaway. We also present their names here in the post. So stay tuned.

So let’s get started and Share, Like, Tweet, Comment, and spread the word. The more entries you join and share, the higher your chances are to win!

Make sure to participate in the giveaway of 3 WPForms Pro licenses worth $199 each. So join, sit back, relax, and wait for the winning email (hopefully) coming your way.

The winners will be announced on 5 February 2020.

Good luck!

The post WPForms Giveaway – Win 3 WPForms Pro Licenses and Build Professional Forms for Your WordPress Website appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

The inclusion of Gutenberg in version WordPress 5.0 was widely discussed in the community. Many users were for Gutenberg, while others preferred the Classic editor. The discontent led, among other things, to the creation of a fork of WordPress. Scott Bowler launched ClassicPress in August 2018, and the primary purpose was to preserve the classic TinyMCE editor as the default option.

It is still, however, possible to use the Classic editor in WordPress by installing the Classic Editor. Yet, the plugin will only be supported and maintained until 2022.

So here we are. If you do not use ClassicPress, you will inevitably have to use Gutenberg sooner or later. I have to admit that I was skeptical of Gutenberg for quite a while. But I took the time to learn how the new editor worked. There were a bit of a learning curve, ups, and downs before I found the flow of writing articles. A good idea is to learn the keyboard shortcuts. It makes everything a bit smoother and faster.

However, in my opinion, Gutenberg still has its flaws, but it feels like, after each update, the editor feels better and faster. But a big minus is that there are still not enough blocks available as default.

10 Gutenberg Add-Ons to Bring More Functionality in WordPress

Nowadays, there are a plethora of Gutenberg add-ons available in the WordPress plugin repository with a wide variety of blocks for every conceivable feature you can think of for blog posts and pages.

In this article, I have tested the most popular Gutenberg add-ons, which can bring more functionality and boost the creation of your blog posts.

Let’s dig into it…

Gutenberg Blocks – Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg

Gutenberg Blocks is an addon to Gutenberg, the new WordPress editor. It is an addon from Brainstorm Force, which contains a set of unique and beneficial blocks that can be helpful when building and designing pages and posts.

Some of the blocks included in the package are Info Box, Advanced Heading, Price List, Testimonial, to name some of the blocks you can get for free. It is a massive list of blocks you can use to boost your creativity and build awesome pages and posts.

With over 200,000+ active installations, this is a popular and well-maintained addon to Gutenberg.

Page Builder Gutenberg Blocks – CoBlocks

CoBlocks is a plugin from Godaddy and is a set of page building WordPress blocks for Gutenberg, the new editor in WordPress. The plugin contains 20+ blocks to boost your page and post builder creativity.

The set contains some great and useful blocks like Search for Gifs, Dynamic HR, Logos & Badges, Food & Drinks, which can be appreciated and used for all restaurants. Furthermore, the set contains all the necessary blocks to create website awesomeness.

Do you also want to create galleries! No problem! The plugin also comes with CoBlocks Galleries blocks, which significantly simplifies handling when creating a Carousel, Masonry, Stacked, or Photo Collage.

CoBlocks is a plugin that I recommend. Easy to use. Loads quickly and with many features to build an awesome website.

The plugin has over 100,000+ active installations.

Kadence Blocks – Gutenberg Page Builder Toolkit

Kadence Blocks is a free Gutenberg page builder toolkit for creating and building custom layouts for your WordPress website. The toolkit contains 10+ blocks, and some of them are Row Layout, Advanced Gallery, Advanced Heading, Testimonials, and Icon List.

Kadence Blocks Gutenberg page builder toolkit is easy to use. But do not offer any direct surprises but do a well-done job as page and post builder to create more engaging content. It is a popular and well-maintained plugin with over 50,000+ active installations.

Atomic Blocks

Atomic Blocks comes with a collection of custom page and post building blocks for the new WordPress editor Gutenberg. The plugin contains 15+ blocks for both building pages and posts and for customizing the design with, for example, premade attractive layouts and sections, which is also my favorite block.

Atomic Blocks is a flexible block addon with many options to customize a lot of settings for each block you add. It makes it possible to adjust just about everything. It is a free plugin with 30,000+ active installs worth recommending.

Gutenberg Blocks and Template Library by Otter

Gutenberg Blocks and Template Library by Otter is a WordPress plugin and addon from ThemeIsle. It brings extra custom Gutenberg blocks to your website. With the blocks, you can create pages and posts for all possible niches such as blogs, business, e-commerce, and more.

The plugin comes with 12+ blocks, and some of the blocks included are Advanced Heading, Google Map, Sharing Icons, Pricing, Testimonials. All blocks work satisfactorily, and there is the possibility to customize the settings per block, which gives excellent flexibility.

The plugin currently has over 30,000+ active installations.

Advanced Gutenberg

Advanced Gutenberg is another free Gutenberg add-ons. With Advanced Gutenberg, can create or edit profiles, assign a user or user group to the profile. Select each block activation by user profile.

It is also possible to make custom settings for each profile and block so that all members in a specific profile use the same settings, which is an excellent feature and convenient so that, for example, a profile with writers uses the same settings for their articles.

Furthermore, this is an addon with a lot of opportunities and many useful blocks for creating pages and posts in an efficient, straightforward, and elegant way. Advanced Gutenberg works right out of the box, but it is possible to customize just about anything, which makes it a very flexible alternative. The plugin has over 20,000+ active installations.

Stackable – Gutenberg Blocks

Stackable is another popular free addon with over 10,000+ active installations that add more power to Gutenberg. With its ready-to-use custom blocks, it is possible to create beautiful designs.

No matter if you want to create or design a page or post, hence your entire website, you can achieve it with the Stackable blocks. You do not need any coding knowledge to use Stackable. Install the addon, activate it, and start your website, page, or post creation.

GT3 Photo Gallery / Video Gallery / Gutenberg Gallery Block

GT3 Photo Gallery is an add-on to the WordPress editor Gutenberg which adds more functionality to the WordPress image gallery. If you want to boost the look and feel of your photos and galleries, then this is a great free alternative.

In the free version of the GT3 gallery, you do not have access to all gallery options and features. Still, you can create Grid and Masonry galleries, and if you want additional galleries, there is the possibility to upgrade to the pro version of the GT3 gallery.

There are some settings you can use to customize each gallery type to display images and galleries, which provides additional flexibility. It is a great block add-on for creating beautiful galleries to add some visual creativity. The plugin has over 10,000+ active installations.

Block Gallery – Photo Gallery Gutenberg Blocks

Block Gallery is another plugin from Godaddy. It is a plugin that contains a set of gallery Gutenberg blocks. Especially for anyone who wants to display images in galleries in an organized and creative way.

With the drag and drop feature, you can build gallery types such as Carousel, Masonry, and Stacked. It is effortless to create beautiful galleries with self-explanatory options. Further options that I appreciate are that you can apply filters with grayscale, serpia, vintage, and more to the galleries.

It is also possible to transform or switch to a different gallery type on the fly with one click. It is a plugin that I recommend if you want to create beautiful and exquisite image galleries on your WordPress website. The plugin currently has 8,000+ active installations.

Ultimate Blocks – Custom Gutenberg Blocks

Ultimate Blocks is a collection with Gutenberg blocks to increase the flexibility to create more engaging content than the default blocks in Gutenberg have to offer.

Currently, there are 27+ blocks available, and some of them are Image Slider, Call To Action, Progress Bar, Review, Tabbed Content, and more. More blocks are in the making, according to the creator of Ultimate Blocks.

Also, these blocks from Ultimate Blocks are easy to use with every conceivable opportunity to customize each block. Not much more to say about this plugin, it does the job of building pages and posts satisfactorily. The plugin currently has 7,000+ active installations.

Qubely

Qubely is the brainchild of Themeum. Having 34+ Enhanced Custom Blocks, 150+ Predesigned Sections, custom blocks, and more it can currently be considered as the most powerful name among other Gutenberg plugins out there.

With Inbuilt Animations, Advanced Post Grid, and many other improved features this plugin lets its users create elegantly designed websites in no time.

However, it is among those plugin that offers regular updates with impressive and newer innovation, possible bug fixes every time. The best part of this plugin is it offers both free and paid versions. Whether website, portfolio, landing page, or any other online presence it brings all in one solution for each.

Everything you create with Qubely meant to be outstanding. It’s also proved itself as responsive regardless of all devices. So, everyone out there who are seeking for a user-friendly and feature-rich plugin solution for their website can definitely give it a try to Qubely.

The plugin currently has 4,000+ active installations.

Page Builder Gutenberg Blocks – Kioken Blocks

Kioken Blocks is the new kid on the block. This addon/plugin has received a lot of attention lately on significant blogs. I understand why after playing around with the Kioken Blocks for awhile. Using the blocks is very easy. Plus, you can create amazing looking pages, posts, or an entire website if you like.

With all the blocks available and all options to customize the settings for each block you add, this is a flexible way to boost the look and feel in the best possible way. Kioken Blocks comes with several unique blocks, but my favorites are the designed premade block layouts and templates.

ZeGuten

ZeGuten plugin is a multifunctional and the most trendy tool for building flexible blocks for Gutenberg. It is compatible with the latest WordPress version and with the Gutenberg editor. ZeGuten is a perfect match both for the beginners or experienced developers.

It has 14 SEO-optimized blocks, one of which is Section block. Section is a parent element for any other block, so you don’t have to worry about the responsiveness.

However, if you want to set a custom spacing, you are completely able to set margins and paddings for desktop, tablet, or mobile phone. Moreover, you can set various backgrounds for the blocks: color, image, video, gradient, or custom figure.

As for the post’s settings, ZeGuten provides you with 5 modern layouts: listing, grid, chess, masonry, and dynamic carousel. Choose one of them and arrange your posts. Use quick post query settings and apply offset. As for the typography, theme a bunch of properties. Enjoy building content with the top-notch tools at your hand.

Wrapping Up

These ten Gutenberg add-ons are the most popular in the WordPress plugin repository and have the most active installs. I’ve taken all the add-ons for a test run. Some plugins are more comprehensive, with more advanced features than others. But overall, all of Gutenberg’s add-ons above work satisfactorily and can help bring more functionality into the editor.

If I were to choose three add-ons that I think to stand out a bit from, the crowd is as follows Gutenberg Blocks, CoBlocks, and Atomic Blocks. My favorite blocks are premade layouts and sections, which makes it easy to add attractive and mainly finished sections, which simplifies and speeds up processes immensely.

Finally, if you are using the Gutenberg editor and are not pleased with the default block composition, I recommend you install one or more of the above Gutenberg add-ons to bring more fun and useful features to WordPress.

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When using WordPress, there are various methods to insert tables. The most straightforward way since Gutenberg, the new block-based editor in WordPress, was introduced in version WordPress 5.0 is to use the predefined table block. The table block is simple to use and works great. However, more choices and configuration options would be appreciated.

If you want more customization choices for creating tables, you should install a WordPress plugin, especially if you use software like ScraperBox so you can arrange the data to your exact preferences. There are some excellent table plugins. But the most popular is TablePress, with over 800,000+ installations. I use this plugin on several of my websites.

A while ago, I got an email about a plugin that caught my attention. WP Table Builder is the name of the plugin. It is a responsive drag and drop table builder plugin with the ability to insert five predefined elements in tables.

For you guys to see how WP Table Builder work, I wrote this tutorial on how to install and add tables with WP Table Builder and also my assessment of the plugin.

WP Table Builder – WordPress Table Plugin

WP Table Builder is a free WordPress table plugin you can download from WordPress.

It is a shortcode based plugin, which means that you create a table within the plugin, but you display the table by inserting a shortcode into a blog post or page on your WordPress website.

Furthermore, it is also a drag and drop based plugin, which allows you to drag and drop available elements into any cell to present data such as text, images, buttons, lists, and star ratings.

Some features included WP Table Builder

I tested the WP Table Builder plugin, and if you want to use a WordPress table plugin, this can be a suitable and creative alternative. Let’s find out what you can do with this plugin.

Install WP Table Builder

First of all, you need to install the plugin. You install the WP Table Builder plugin just like any other plugin. In your admin dashboard, go to -> Plugins -> Add New -> Add WP Table Builder in the search box -> Click Install Now and -> Activate.

For those of you who want to install via FTP do the following. Download the plugin and extract the plugin ZIP file on your local computer. Upload the plugin folder containing your plugin files.

The WP Table Builder plugin should now be visible in the list of plugins. Activate the plugin, and you are ready to go.

After you installed the plugin, in your dashboard menu, there is now a new tab named Table Builder. Also, two sub-tabs All Tables and Add New. Self-explanatory menus. You handle all the tables, and you create new tables with these tabs.

Create a New Table

We take the plunge and create a new table by clicking -> Add New. Start with the new table and select numbers of columns and numbers of rows. Click Generate.

Build and Edit the Table

You can now start building the table with available elements.

Elements available are Text, Button, Image, List, and Star Rating. By dragging and dropping the element into the table, you can easily insert any element wherever you want in the table.

Add text, images, and more. If you want to edit a table cell, select the cell you want to edit, and you can see configuration options above the table or to the left of the table, depending on which element you are editing.

My table is almost ready. I have created a small list with a couple of WordPress theme providers, as you can see in the picture. But I missing something and I want to add another column.

If you want to edit all cells in the table and add more columns or rows, click on – Manage Cells to the left of the menu.

A new view opens up, and you can easily add or delete columns and rows. I choose to add an additional column — all set.

In the new column, I add buttons with links to the particular websites represented in the table.

As you can see, there are several options in the menu on the left where you can configure each element in the table. For example, for buttons, you can change button size, change text color, add links, and select button alignment.

It is a lot of fun to play around with the elements avaible, change settings, colors, fonts, and more. It is straightforward to create attractive tables, and this is a plugin in my appreciation.

When you are feeling done with your table, you can preview it by clicking the Preview button.

If you are not satisfied, then continue to configure your table to best look and style.

Save the table with the – Save Table button.

Click the EMBED button, copy the code, in my case the code looks like this – [wptb id=30] and save it for later to insert it into a post or page.

Insert Table Into a Post or Page

When done with our creative table, it’s time to insert it into a blog post or page if you prefer.

Create a new blog post or page. Paste the code you copied earlier.

Here is what it looks like in the Gutenberg editor.

In the Classic editor. (Yes, there are a lot of people still using the classic editor).

The final results of my table look like this below.

Not too bad! However, with a little creativity and time, it is possible to create even more great-looking tables without any knowledge of coding.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Above all, I want to give a big plus to the user-friendly interface. All features and customization options are easy to find.
• The five elements available work well, and I like all the customization options, which allows you to customize the elements and cells with a variety of settings.
• All essential buttons like Manage Cells, Preview, Embed, and Save Table are prominent and visible.

Cons

• I lack the filtering options for tables. If you are building extensive and large tables, it is preferable to add filtering options so that visitors can easily filter the contents of the table.
• Although there are six contributors and developers involved in developing the plugin, there are several unsolved support tickets.

In Conclusion

When it comes to add tables in WordPress, it is essential to find a plugin that meets the criteria you require to present the data in the best way.

WP Table Builder is an excellent and handy WordPress plugin for building and creating tables with an appealing and user-friendly interface. Better than most plugins I have used.

Despite some shortcomings, such as filtering options (maybe an idea for future versions?), WP Table Builder is a WordPress table plugin that I recommend for its simplicity in creating attractive and great looking tables.

The post How to Add Tables in WordPress Using WP Table Builder appeared first on WP Pluginsify.

Barn2 Plugins (formerly Barn2 Media) based in South Devon, England, are the UK’s longest established WordPress company. Already in 2009, they started their business.

Since then, they have grown tremendously and now have an entire team of colleagues around the world, including two full-time plugin support engineers, a developer who works on the Barn2 website, and a marketing team.

Barn2 Plugins now sells WordPress and WooCommerce plugins to over 111 countries worldwide.

As the curious soul, I am, I contacted Katie and asked some questions about Barn2 Plugins.

10 Questions to Katie Keith from Barn2 Plugins

Let’s find out more about Barn2 Plugins, Katie and Andy Keith. Shall we?

Q1: Can you please tell us a bit about yourself and Barn2

I’m Katie, the business half of Barn2 Plugins. I run the company with my husband Andy (the technical half!). We’re based in a small town in South West England and have an 8-year-old daughter called Sophia.

Q2: How did you first get involved with WordPress?

I started building WordPress websites for clients back in 2009. While we started as a general web design company, we always chose to build websites with WordPress and ended up being one of the first UK companies to specialize in WordPress. It allowed the business to grow very quickly, as there was a shortage of WordPress experts back then.

We always wanted to sell WordPress products and switched to selling plugins in 2016. We now sell plugins to over 111 countries worldwide.

Q3: Barn2 build plugins for WordPress and WooCommerce; tell us why you choose that niche?

When building a product business, it’s essential to play to your strengths and focus on what you know. Since we already ran a successful WordPress agency, we were deeply immersed in the industry. We knew where the gaps, opportunities, and pain points were, which would allow us to build a successful plugin business.

We were aware of how fast WooCommerce was growing. How people are willing to pay more for plugins that will increase their sales – for obvious reasons! It naturally led us to focus on WooCommerce. This decision has proved to be correct, as the WooCommerce versions of our plugins sell much better than the general WordPress versions. For example:

• We have sold 5x more copies of our WooCommerce Protected Categories plugin than its generic equivalent – Password Protected Categories.
• We have sold 2x more copies of our WooCommerce Product Table plugin than its generic equivalent – Posts Table Pro.

This is particularly interesting given that the generic Password Protected Categories and Posts Table Pro plugins can be used for ANY WordPress post type. Whereas the WooCommerce versions only work with WooCommerce products.

When we launched WooCommerce Product Table and Posts Table Pro, I was convinced that Posts Table Pro would sell more because it has so many more potential use cases such as creating a WordPress document library, blog post index, member directory, audio library, and much more.

I think this shows the size of the market for WooCommerce products and the opportunities it brings.

Q4: What challenges did you face in building your business?

Our three biggest challenges have been time, time, and time!

Our daughter was born shortly after we started the business. As a result, we have grown the company against the backdrop of making sure we had the right work-life balance, and have never worked ridiculous hours. We do work hard, but not at the expense of family.

In many ways, we wish we had started working for ourselves much sooner when we had more free time. Andy and I are both perfectionists, and it has been hard to free up more time by building a team. We’ve never wanted to spend our time managing people, as that’s not what we enjoy.

While we still don’t have any in-staff. We have now built a team of colleagues around the world, including two full-time plugin support engineers, a developer who works on the Barn2 website, and a marketing team. When needed, we also bring in additional skills as required, for example, design work.

We have recently experimented with having other developers build some straightforward plugins for us. We hope to be able to get more help with the plugin development in the future – we’re very careful about this because it’s important that our plugins continue to meet our high standards.

Q5: You recently rebuilt and rebranded Barn2 – Can you tell us why, how the process went and what difficulties you experienced?

When we started selling plugins in 2016, we sold them on our existing website, which was previously used to promote our web design services. We added Easy Digital Downloads to the site, but never actually rebranded as a plugin company.

We had known for a long time that we would need to rebrand and launch a new website to take the plugin business to the next level. However, given the challenges I mentioned in the previous question, it took us a long time to prioritize this. We knew it would be a huge project which would distract us from building more plugins and improving our existing ones!

In the end, we started the project. It took us a long time to find a designer we were happy with because while we’re not designers ourselves, we know what we like – not an easy combination!

We weren’t happy with the work of the first designer we hired for the project and ended up using 99Designs for our new logo and website design.

The logo design went well. We were very pleased with one of the competition entries to design our new website. But, unfortunately, their work got worse and worse as we commissioned them to produce additional designs.

We later discovered that the original designer left the designer part-way through the project, which explains why the later designs weren’t as good as the original ones. We only got them to the standard we wanted by providing long lists of feedback and doing some of the work ourselves, which was the last thing we wanted to spend time on.

While the design part of the project was a struggle, we got there in the end and are delighted with our new branding. We were lucky to find a fantastic developer to build our new website. As we now work with on an ongoing basis.

You can read the full story of our rebrand in a transparency post I wrote – The Story Behind Barn2’s Rebrand & New Website.

Q6: What is your typical working day like at Barn2?

Andy and I work partly from our home office, and partly from an office. We rent at an ex-factory, which has been converted into a work hub.

After walking my daughter to school. I typically spend about half an hour cleaning the house and tidying up, before starting work in the home office.

Mid-morning, we will often drive to the work hub and work there. Since I work with my husband, we usually take time out to go for lunch or a walk in Dartmoor National Park. Which is right behind the office. We then return to the office and work until it’s time to collect Sophia.

While we rarely have face-to-face meetings with anyone other than each other. We work closely with the other members of the Barn2 team via email, Slack, and Helpscout. Due to time zone differences, the support team start work first and finish at about the same time as us. Our developer continues working after we have finished. There’s always some overlap, which is great.

Q7: What do you enjoy doing when you’re not working with WordPress?

Since being desk-based isn’t very healthy, I try to find the time to do some exercise each day. The only exercise I particularly enjoy is walking. We’re lucky to live in a beautiful part of the English countryside with the coast and a national park very close by.

I also use the treadmill in the garage (while watching Netflix) a couple of times a week and do yoga sessions on YouTube.

Q8: What does the WordPress Community mean to you?

The WordPress Community is hugely important to me. Like most home workers, it’s easy to become isolated and work in a silo. The WordPress community provides a broader perspective, lots of ideas

I’m proud to be quite active in the WordPress Community, particular in relation to other plugin companies.

I’m an active member of several Facebook groups relating to selling WordPress products, WordPress product support, WooCommerce, and Easy Digital Downloads. It has been a fabulous opportunity to get to know other people who run similar plugin companies. I often exchange messages and ideas with people who do similar work to me.

This morning I was invited to join a new group of people who run similar plugin companies so that we can learn from each other.

WordCamps are my favorite part of the WordPress community because they’re the only time that I meet other WordPress people face-to-face. I don’t have the opportunity to attend many WordCamps. But I make the effort to go to WordCamp London and WordCamp Europe where possible.

Now I know more and more members of the WordPress Community. I try to contact people who I know will be attending and arrange to meet them in person.

For example, for WCEU in Berlin this year. I helped to arrange a meetup with the owners of several WordPress plugin companies. It makes networking opportunities more relevant, although it’s fun meeting random people at WordCamps too.

Q9: What are your plans for Barn2 in the future?

I love selling plugins and plan to continue doing this for the foreseeable future. More specifically, we plan to continue growing the business by improving our existing plugins and launching more new ones.

We need to continue focusing on expanding our development capacity. Recruiting some highly experienced WordPress developers who we can trust to add new features, build new plugins, etc. – while being very careful not to sacrifice on quality. This will involve continuing to fine-tune and formalize our processes so that less is dependent on Andy as the sole developer.

Right now, we’re building what will be the best plugin on the market for adding EU VAT support to Easy Digital Downloads. This has always been a significant pain point for EDD stores, such as ourselves.

There are no high quality, well-maintained plugins available, so we’ve decided to “scratch our own itch” by building our own. As well as using it on our website. We will be releasing the plugin to the wider WordPress community, and we hope it will be useful to other Easy Digital Downloads store owners.

Q10: Whom should we interview next & why?

James Kemp from IconicWP. His company is quite similar to Barn2 as he is building a small team and specializes in selling WooCommerce plugins. I’m always impressed by his professional and business-like approach to building a plugin company, so he’s a good person to interview.

Final Words

I thank Katie from Barn2 Plugins for taking the time to attend and answer all the questions for this interview.

The post Interview with Katie Keith from Barn2 Plugins appeared first on WP Pluginsify.