Tag: WordPress Plugin

Best Lead Generation Plugins For Your WordPress Website

Posted on by Netrananda M

After developing a WordPress website the next important step is, you need how your website can generate leads to maximize your sales. Generating leads from website is not an easy task but some marketing strategies are there which simplify your work.

There are plugins available for a WordPress website and lead generation plugins comes to the picture. You need to install the best Lead Generation Plugin in your WordPress website to do the needful.

WordPress has a variety of lead generation plugins. These plugins help you to nurture, manage, and meet your potential customers at every step of their buying process. Lead Capture Plugin provides all the tools that are necessary to grow your email list fast and provides growth to your marketing.

Whether you are running a blog or online business or an e-commerce shop. Collecting information from the one showing interest in your services or product and selling your product to them is the main motto.

More than 75% of people who visit your website, they don’t return once leave. In such cases, you lose many opportunities. And as most of the traffic is anonymous, you can’t sell your website to anyone who you don’t know.

In this scenario, WordPress Lead generation plugins help to generate leads. You can grow the email list, develop a long-lasting relationship with your customers, and more. You need to choose the right lead generation tools to get more customers and sell easily to grow your business.

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What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is defined as the process of how you attract your potential clients to your WordPress website and convert them into your long-term customers.

With Lead Generation tools you are generating the interest of your prospective customers. It can be done in various ways. Lead Generation on your website means getting visitors into you’re:

  • Email newsletter
  • Contact submission or inquiry form in your website
  • Improving contact with your customers through live chat
  • Book a call with your sales team.

Therefore, Lead Generation becomes essential for all online businesses. It helps you to have a strong process of converting your leads into customers.

A good lead generation strategy can target and locate your valuable prospects and initiate the journey of your sales pipeline. A good lead Generator tools is effective for your marketing sector.

WordPress Plugin(Source – Brndle)

Once you generate these leads, you can engage or re-engage with them at each stage of the customer’s journey. The more leads you develop, the amount of sales increase. Also, the better you manage the lead, the speed and the quality of sales also increases.

A lead generation tool and WordPress plugin are connected directly with the website and provide new features and functions. You should think of these plugins as apps that can be loaded into your iPhone or Android device. You can install any app and all will provide these unique services.

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What are the best WordPress lead generation plugins?

With a WordPress lead generation plugin, you can connect it directly to your website and provide new features and functions. You need to consider these plugins as an app that is loaded to your android or iPhone device. You can download several apps and they all offer you some unique service.

An ideal lead generation strategy includes a combination of tools each working together to improve the sales pipeline. You cannot get avail to a one-size fit- for all plugins. You get a better return when you invest in any individual tools that work best for any unique business model

CRM Plugin:

WordPress CRM Plugin(Source – wordpress.org)

CRM Plugin refers to the Customer relation plugin that helps you to organize and store information of your prospective customers. The system manages all the aspects of your relationship with each customer. Whether it means monitoring the engagement with any of your cold email campaigns or tracking the personalized messages that are sent to long-term clients.

By using a CRM plugin, you can automate tasks like email creation, form builder, and data analysis that are used to improve communication with each prospect at an affordable range. This stored information provides an insight into the potential business efficiency and you can act based on that information.

Lead Capture Plugin:

Lead Capture Plugin(Source – wordpress.org)

Lead capture is defined as the process that helps in attracting and collecting all necessary information about your customers. So you can develop a business relationship.

For example, you might get the email address from the capture form that is attached to any free Webinar or E-book. As the clients put all their information (that is collected in your CRM), you can use this data to increase communication and start your marketing journey.

WP Forms:

WPForms(Source – wpforms)

It is the best drag and drops Plugin form WordPress. You can easily get simple contact forms and also more powerful forms like survey forms and e-commerce order forms.

Contact forms are a great way of capturing leads. It is one of the most used and the oldest way of collecting emails to be in touch with the users. Apart from the contact forms, interactive forms such as survey, quiz, polls, etc., that helps to gather the Email address and improve sales.

It comes with more than 100 pre-built form templates that can be used as a starting point. You can easily customize your form to match all your needs. This is an easy-to-use plugin that can be used to create forms by using the drag and drop builder.

HubSpot:

Hubspot CRM Plugin(Source – wordpress.org)

HubSpot is the ultimate WordPress plugin to grow your mailing list, generate leads and manage contacts. The plugin will automatically collect the form submission from your website and add it to the fully integrated WordPress CRM. With HubSpot, you can measure the growth of your business. You can also create live chat and chatbots, manage your contact database and provide the drag and drop email feature.

OneSignal:

OneSignal Web Plugin(Source – wordpress.org)

This plugin allows you to easily create push notifications for various situations. Such as the signature of any new entries at the end of a new subscription, etc. With these plugins, you can send the targeted notification, increase the engagement of the user, opt-in for push notification, and provide real-time analytics. With OneSignal you can enjoy the free plan which covers upto 30,000 desktop subscribers and unlimited plans on mobile.

Thrive Leads:

It is a popular lead generation plugin that is used to grow your email list. It is a pre-designed template and drop editor, with easy to use and drag. You can create highly converting optin forms.

This flexible lead generation plugin allows you to develop mobile-optimized forms, with 2 steps options and the widgetized forms can be placed throughout your website.

Thrivethemes(Source – Thrivethemes)

FAQ:

What is a lead generation plugin?

A lead generation plugin is used to collect email addresses and other necessary details of your potential customers. So you can develop a healthy relationship with them and convert them into customers.

Why do you need a lead generation plugin?

Lead generation is defined as the process that provides visibility, trust, credibility, and interest from a particular group of people (potential leads). Hence by focusing on lead generation, you can drive traffic from the high-quality prospects that provide high-value customers.

What is the best lead generation plugin for WordPress?

The best Lead Generation Plugin for WordPress are:

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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Conclusion:

Lead Generation is important for any business. But you need the right set of plugins to streamline your sales pipeline. It doesn’t matter if you are running an eCommerce store, simple blogs or a business website, you can grow your business with it by converting lots of visitors into subscribers and leads. With these plugins, you can attract more priority clients and provide them a better user experience, all of that can improve the conversion rates.

If you are finding any difficulty in choosing the right lead generation tools for your business. Or want to collect more information for integration of your WordPress website, you can contact us, we will serve you with the right solution for your WordPress website.

How To Customize WordPress Website Theme

Posted on by Jay

It’s always great to have a website for your business and if that is with WordPress, then you are one step ahead of your competitors. Because the CMS WordPress offers easy customization options with outstanding features and plugins to make your website user-friendly and search engine friendly.

After successful installation of WordPress theme, if you find it’s not the right fit for your business and needs customization for an engaging website. I’m sure it’s not annoying, as there are several options available for you to customize your WordPress themes.

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Here are some facts and figures of WordPress below,

  1. WordPress commands 39.6% of the internet in 2021, it was 35% in 2020. Thus the growth of nearly 5%, which is also 1% better than the previous year.
  1. If you count only CMS-build sites, 64.1% of them are powered by WordPress – a 4% increase from 2020 (60%)
  1. Over 60 million websites are hosted on the Custom WordPress Development Services platform.
  1. The website base of WordPress increased by nearly 3.2% between 2019 and 2021.
  1. Some of the popular WordPress plugins such as WooCommerce get as many as a million installations per week.
  1. Over 14% of the top 100 websites on the internet are powered by WordPress.
  1. As of 2021, WordPress.org has more than 54,000 plugins and over 7,000 themes.
  1. Over 13% of all WordPress websites use the WooCommerce plugin. The plugin has been downloaded over 60 million times and installed by 3 million websites worldwide.
  1. WordPress is preferred and recommended by over 50% of CMS users and web designers.

(Source – blog.sagipl.com)

But the major challenge is finding the most right way.

So here are several options that you need to follow for the customization of your WordPress theme. This article definitely helps you to identify the right one for you.

Options To Customize Your WordPress Theme:

Before diving in and start making changes to your theme, you need to know the best options that are available for customizing of your WordPress themes.

Here you go,

  • If you want to add functionality to your WordPress theme, install WordPress Plugin.
  • Use the customizer to your WordPress admin screens for customizer fonts, colors, and layouts, depending on the theme you choose.
  • If you work on a page builder theme, use its feature for customizing the design of your WordPress website.
  • When you install a framework theme, you can use a child theme that is available to customize your site.
  • As your theme is specific to your site and you are comfortable with it. You can edit the theme’s code directly.
  • As you want to edit the code of the third-party theme, you can go with the child theme.

If you want you can edit the code, there are a number of options available to you. You can go with the block editor, to the customizer, all you need to do is some editing.

Why Do You Need To Customize Your WordPress Theme?

With a customized WordPress theme you can change the website appearance completely. It is a great form of promoting your own unique style. It will help you to stand away from the crowd.

Most of the top brands make sure to have distinct designs of their website. Their unique touch helps them emerge as a unique brand. With WordPress themes, you are not only adding design and features to your websites but it is also a way of promoting your business.

Also, sometimes you come across many themes that have poor design layout, poor build, bad color combination, and are not well optimized. All these factors may impact website’s performance.

No single theme available which can be 100% perfect to fulfill all the requirements. However, customization helps here.

How To Customize WordPress Themes?

There are many ways, you can customize your WordPress theme but the only effective method is the one on which you are comfortable with. Some of the common methods are:

  • Default WordPress Customizer
  • Customization with codes
  • Customizing WordPress theme with a page builder tool

By default, WordPress provides an inbuilt WordPress customization feature that helps the website admins to customize some part of the website easily. But if you have WordPress developer who is good enough with coding, then you can do endless modification according to your need.

Premium WordPress themes are also allowing to do customization.

But before you move into customizing your WordPress themes and start using codes. It is better to develop a child theme first and do changes whatever you want rather than creating any kind of mess by editing the parent theme file.

Create A Child Theme And Make Your Changes To It:

It is the best solution to avoid any kind of data loss to your WordPress theme customization or update to develop a child theme. It is one of the best ways to have custom codes or snippets and avoid them from being erased.

The child theme has all the same functions and features as that of a parent theme. But the WordPress theme will read the archive.php file from the child theme and not from the parent theme.

Also if you don’t want to mess with any theme files and codes, you can start the customization of your WordPress theme by using the default customizer.

How To Customize Your WordPress Theme With A Default Customizer?

Instead of getting into the coding and all, you can use the theme customization tools. All you need to do is, first visit your WordPress Theme repository and select a theme that you will use for installation and customization.

Then go back to the WordPress dashboard, go to the Appearance menu section to get more options on the left side of your dashboard menu.

Theme Customization(Source: Stack Overflow)

Taskbar, Appearance > Themes> Select Theme> Install > Customize

Some common features that you can customize in the WordPress theme by using WordPress customizers are:

Add Identity To Your WordPress Website:

Adding an icon, title, and logo to your WordPress website will help in promoting and developing a brand with a tagline that will highlight the motto of your brand.

Customize Your WordPress Theme Color:

There are some WordPress premium themes available that don’t allow the users to customize the theme. They may ask extra money for the customization. It completely depends on the theme you are choosing.

If your theme allows you can easily get colors and dark mode options available in the WordPress customizer panel.

Lots of customization you can do with your personal and business website. Some themes allow you to add widgets while some other allows homepage settings. With WordPress any type of customization you can do based on your requirements.

FAQ:

How To Create A Custom WordPress Theme?

To create a custom WordPress theme

  • Go to WordPress Admin Panel
  • Then go to pages
  • Click on Add New.

You can see the new custom page template that is listed on the right side. There you can create a new page and set the template in the page with outside bar. Once you are done, publish it.

How Can You Change Your WordPress Theme Without Losing Your Content?

To change your WordPress theme without losing your content by following the simple steps:

  • You need to set a staging copy of your website
  • Install the new theme and preview it.
  • You can activate the new theme
  • Solve the issue and replace the missing elements
  • Push the staging website into live.

Can You Customize Your WordPress Theme?

Yes, WordPress themes can be customized in many ways. It depends on the extent to which you want to change your theme look and feel.

I’ve worked with the team at Andolasoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

LEARN MORE

You can develop powerful theme customization settings that are built right into the WordPress customizer, to add WordPress plugins and have real-time CSS Editors such as Site Origin CSS

Conclusion:

One of the best parts of building a website with WordPress is you can take control over the way you are developing it and this will let you know how much customization is required.

A theme is an important part of your website. Also, many users stick with the same WordPress theme for a very long period. Minimal things like breadcrumbs and schema markup can do a lot more to your WordPress Website’s Dedicated wordpress app developer and rankings.

There are lots of things to customize in your WordPress website.

You can customize your WordPress on your own, but if you feel difficulty in doing so, we are here to help you. With Andolasoft dedicate WordPress developers, you can customize as per your business requirement.

Are you looking to customize your WordPress theme or want more information on WordPress website customization! Book a free consultation with Andolasoft experts.

How Much Does A WordPress Website Cost?

Posted on by Jay

WordPress being an open source software is affordable and really value for money.

Are you planning to develop a website for your business?

If yes, this blog will help you to decide on the best option available.

Here I’m sharing the details regarding the WordPress website development cost.

Also you can get an idea of how to develop a WordPress Website with a minimal cost and avoid overspending.

Since it is free being an Open-Source Software, it gives you the freedom to install it for any kind of website.

Then the question arises, from where does the cost arise?

Here you go, the cost for a WordPress site includes,

  • Buying a Domain
  • Spend for WordPress Hosting
  • Buy Plugins and Extension (Apps), if any
  • Buy ready-made theme/customize designs

The WordPress website can start with as low as $75.

What is required to develop a Website?

For developing a website you need a domain name, a hosting plan, themes and other basic criteria that will help you to develop a better website.

The first thing you need is a domain name. It will be your website address on the internet. This is what your users will enter in the browser to visit your website.

The standard cost of a domain is pretty much affordable. The cost starts as low as $12 for each year for a typical .net, .com, .org and many more.

Next, if you’re planning to develop a self-hosted WordPress website, you need to buy a web hosting plan, which helps you to store your files.

There are various hosting plans available for every kind of website. You need to choose the one that suits best of your requirements and fits to your budget.

In WordPress, you get a wide range of ready-made templates that you can choose for your website.

However, if you want to customize you can purchase a template and deploy a developer to do the customization or go for a Custom WordPress development Company.

There are more than 58k+ free plugins available for WordPress, which provides features like contact form, gallery, etc.

So, it depends on you, whether you want to build a website by just hosting, the domain cost will add up accordingly. But you might need to pay for extra tools and services. It confuses people to find the real cost to develop a WordPress site.

WordPress Website Cost(Source – Sag IPL)

Design and Themes:

WordPress provides various themes available for every user. For some themes you have to pay. These themes are best for beginners, but these themes don’t provide all the necessary features for serious business owners.

WordPress provides a massive library for themes. You need to browse to find what you are looking for. You can make the changes later using the WordPress Plugin. It helps you to find a theme that fits your website.

You need to decide whether you want your website to be a simple one or a professional one.

Also you can filter the search results using these features, layout, and subject related to the vision.

But it is not compulsory to use WordPress’s premade templates. If you want to use another template you can get it from different websites like Template monster.

Also, while choosing a WordPress theme for your website, make sure it’s a mobile-friendly theme.

Most users go for premium themes to get maximum features. Some premium themes come with membership packages that are purchased either annually or for a lifetime that come with a minimum of $57. Some themes have pro upgrade features that start from $54.

However, you can buy themes from a third-party SaaS company like ThemeForest, elegant, etc. It doesn’t integrate automatically with the native plug-in that you want for your website.

The WordPress professionals usually charge depending on the specific task and the work your website needs. For example, a 5 page website (that consists of home, about, contact, blog, pricing) will charge you at a minimum cost of $100 as a one-time price you pay for a basic set-up and design.

Also, if you are adding any custom work to your websites the cost increases. For customization in your website you need to hire WordPress developer.

Sometimes the user doesn’t get satisfied with any of these themes. In such cases, you can take the service of a WordPress Web Developer like Andolasoft to develop your customized theme.

Plugins and Extension:

The WordPress Plugin is the smallest bit of coding that you apply to develop your business website. Some extensions or plugins are free. The premium extensions can run from anywhere and it starts from $100.

By using a plugin to your WordPress your website becomes successful. But you need to install the plugin that is important for your business. The less number of plugins you install the faster your website will run.

How much does a WordPress Website maintenance cost?

A WordPress website maintenance cost depends on the service you chose for your maintenance.

If you are choosing in-house website maintenance, it starts from $25. But if you are choosing freelance website maintenance then it will start from $45.

WordPress Website Maintenance Cost(Source: FixRunner)

Final Calculation:

In the end, the total cost you spend ranges at a minimum cost of $ 25.  The price depends on the things you want to add for your business website. Your website cost depends on the traffic and the speed you want for your website.

WordPress is capable of handling traffic, opt-ins, leads, conversations, and customers. You need to use the right theme and the right plug-ins.

If you want to know how your WordPress website is built, then follow our latest blog: How to develop your WordPress website in 2021?

FAQ:

How much does a WordPress website cost?

The cost of WordPress website depends on the types of features you are adding to your website. However a website will start at a minimum range of $11.

How much time will it take to create a WordPress website?

If you are planning to build a typical brochure website without any advanced function. Then it takes six various page templates. For an advanced custom web design.

Most probably it takes around 25 hours to develop a website with basic features from a dedicated WordPress Developer. You can also develop your WordPress web Application from a professional WordPress Web Application Developer.

Is WordPress premium worth getting?

A lot of advantages are available when you upgrade to WordPress premium. The price tag comes with many additional features.

These features are helpful and with WordPress website development, your website becomes more easy and convenient to use. With Premium you get more support, a lot of themes and more security is available.

What is the difference between WordPress personal and premium?

The WordPress Premium plan also includes hosting. The only difference between the Premium and Personal plan when it comes to hosting, is the Premium plan provides 13 GB space and the personal plan offers only 512mb of storage.

Conclusion

Most top brands use WordPress. By spending some amount will help you build a perfect business website. You can get more traffic and customers.

Choosing a dedicated WordPress development agency is important. A good WordPress development company will definitely guide you in developing the best WordPress website for your business at an affordable price.

With Andolasoft you can develop your own website. Being a WordPress outsourcing service we provide professional developers that help you build your website the way you want it. Contact us to hire dedicated WordPress Developer.

How To Develop Your WordPress Website In 2021?

Posted on by Netrananda M

The Covid-19 Pandemic has led many businesses to switch to digitalization, including websites. With a business website, you can reach more people and keep your business running in the event of any future pandemics.

Few years back it was nice to have stuff but it has become a must have feature for every business.

So, here is the suggestion for every business to build a website to pitch your business on the World Wide Web and just won’t fall behind in the competition.

Why Choose WordPress?

Everyone knows it is open source, easy to customize and simple to maintain. We have published the top reasons for using the WordPress framework previously.

It provides you complete control over your website. WordPress web application provides great advantages like plugins, free tools, and themes with full media support.

However, to make a website live, you need to go through a process.

Developing a website can be daunting, especially when you’re not a programmer. But, this is not a concerning point anymore.

As you can build a website using the WordPress CMS framework by following a few simple steps.

Let’s start;

Make Website Guide(Source: WpBeginner)

What are the necessary things to do to develop your website in WordPress?

Here is a list that needs to be included.

  1. Purchase a domain: The price starts from $15 per year
  2. Hosting acquisition: The price begins at a low price of $8 per year
  3. WordPress Theme: It depends on the level of customization and the features you want to include in your website. You can choose a theme that comes free forever. On another note, some enterprises choose some highly engaging themes to build their website. It costs based on the theme and its features.
  4. WordPress Plugin: Most of the plug-ins are free, but if you want to have advanced options. You need to upgrade to a particular plan.

It signifies that a simple website starts on the basic annual plan. If you want any advanced features the price increases accordingly.

Website Construction(Source: Organic themes)

Choose the Domain Name:

The domain name may be the name of your business or product. Names are a powerful element of your business.

You need to choose the name of your website wisely. If you are finding it difficult to choose the name, you can use tools it helps you out.

Tricks and Tips to choose a website name: As you want to give a name to your new website. The name should hold meaning and importance.

The name needs to be unique and easy to remember. It shouldn’t give any weird meaning in English or other popular languages, if you want your business to go international.

List of Relevant Keywords:

You need to list relevant keywords for the product or business. You need to think about the users, how they will feel after they use the services or product.

You can use a tool like Namelix or Novanym, this helps to generate domain name ideas.

Understand the meaning:

As you found your domain name, check out the meaning. Google it and then go for the Google images and understand how it matched.

You might find a singer or some artist related to that name. This will provide you with a brief understanding of the domain name you choose.

  • You can also search for the domain name on Facebook or LinkedIn. Check if there are any business names with it.
  • Check if any website domain name is available for sale. Many websites prefer “.com”. It is a top-level domain, followed by “.org”, “.net”, or “.in”.
  • Purchase your domain name. You can purchase it through a domain registrar like GoDaddy or a hosting provider.

Choose a Web Hosting

Every website is hosted from a server. It states that you need to acquire web hosting from a hosting provider.

As you start creating a WordPress website, you need to choose a hosting plan using WordPress.com. You can also choose from a third-party hosting provider.

But before you proceed, you need to know that there is WordPress.com, which helps you to host and build a website.

The other one is WordPress.org, which helps to acquire plug-ins and themes for your website. You can choose you’re hosting from a third –party.

There are three major hosting services: VPS, managed to host, and shared hosting. In the first situation, the server resources were split with more sites. When the sites grow, you might come across performance issues.

Also, you might realize the need for a VPS service or a managed hosting plan.

You need to understand the business goals while choosing the hosting provider. As you go with VPS hosting, the resources need to be shared, but you will gain some control over it.

Also, you can observe improvement in security and performance.

With a website, things can become more complicated, but proper planning will help you with a successful website for your business.

While you analyse your plan take a look at them:

  • Storage
  • Pricing
  • Performance
  • Support

Also, many hosting providers have extra features provided like domain offering (ex: Namecheap), website builder (ex: Go Daddy), e-commerce options, etc.

Also, you have observed many websites using “HTTP” or “HTTPS”. So what are those?

HTTP is a modern web. This connects the browser and servers. It functions on a request-response basis

However, the extra “s” on the “HTTPS” means the connection with the website is encrypted and the data that is shared in the website remains secure.

In technical terms, we called it SSL certification.

Suppose a user makes any kind of transaction on your website or gets logged in to your account. The information provided by the user will remain private; it is safe from getting hacked.

It takes place through SSL technology. The SSL stands for “Secure Sockets Layer”. Consumers see “HTTPS” as a signal of trust. It helps to protect privacy and data. This means you need to acquire an SSL certificate.

Also, make sure the connection plan has this as well:

This time you get a hosting plan and set up the login details. The only thing missing is WordPress itself.

Many hosting providers allow you to install WordPress through the wizard/dashboard. It’s pretty intuitive.

Logging into the website is also easy. You need to type the website address and add it on the “/WP-admin”.

Choose your WordPress Theme:

Next, you have to decide the theme for your WordPress website. There are many themes available. These themes are available for free and some are paid.

As you select your theme, try to ensure that the theme creates sense with the topic of your website. Also, it engages with the layout and the content you publish.

Theme Directory(Source: WP Engine)

The WordPress premium choices provide a set of ready-made options for several topics. It includes services, business, fashion, beauty, photography, education, food, and others.

Each of them will provide an excellent base to your site that you have always dreamed of.

Configure the Plugins:

A WordPress Plug-in is defined as a program written in the PHP script language. It adds a specific set of features or services to the WordPress website.

Wordpress Plugin(Source: Dreamhost)

A WordPress plug-in offers a great deal of flexibility and customization to your WordPress site. It adds value and features to your visitors.

At first, you don’t begin with a ton of plug-ins. But as you grow with WordPress applications, you get to use more Plug-in that benefits the site.

Some of the popular Plug-in are Yoast SEO and JetPack.

Complete the Administrative Page:

The important page in your website is the about page, contact page, privacy, and the disclaimer page. You need to focus on it, before adding content to your site.

It is easy to add now and then later. Once you have done the publishing, you can add other exciting stuff. These pages also serve to protect your site visitors and you.

Post Your Content, Rinse and Repeat:

Once you get the important administrative pages published, it’s time to start adding interesting content. Whatever the niche is, you need to make sure it has plenty of quality content for the readers.

It increases the page’s visibility. This gives a rich look to your page. Keep it a priority to add new content daily, monthly, or weekly. Keep a content calendar that helps you to remain on the right track.

Never forget marketing:

Marketing your website is an important step. It helps to get more traffic. There is an availability of SEO optimization but make sure the page has relevant keywords in the description, title, and body.

Promote your sites in every possible way. Also, there are many free options available to use the Social Media sites, emailing a regular newsletter and forums.

You also need to consider guest posting, comment on the blogs, communities, and forums to develop social connection and link popularity.

WordPress Development(Source: PC Mag)

Backup your site:

As content is an important asset, it is important to have a backup of your site. You need to have a backup of your content in case of a crash. So, you don’t have to begin from scratch.

If you don’t back up all the posts, affiliate links, and plug-ins, it will take a while to get back on your feet. So you need to have a regular backup, the web host should offer an alternative.

FAQ:

Is WordPress Free For Websites?

WordPress.org is completely free. You can download and use it in any way you like. It can also be customized, redistributed or extended. You can even sell it until you have the GPL License.

How to create a website on WordPress?

You can create your Website on WordPress by following these steps:

  • Signup to WordPress.com
  • Confirm your Email and activate your Blog
  • Setup the blog
  • Select and customize your WordPress theme
  • Connect with Twitter and Facebook
  • End the process
  • Visit your new website

Does WordPress require Coding?

No, you don’t need to have HTML knowledge or other programming languages for a website.

Many WordPress users don’t have any programming or coding skills and they have been using WordPress for many years.

Can I develop a WordPress Website without hosting?

Yes, you can develop a website with WordPress without hosting. The basic version of WordPress is free and it allows you to create a website without any hosting.

You can also develop a WordPress Website without a domain name.

Conclusion:

So, here is a small view of the ways to prepare your website using WordPress.

A website is a key to your business growth. It follows several steps such as choosing the domain name, Plug-in, WordPress theme, and several other features.

Also, after developing the website, you need to update and maintain it with regular updates.

In case of any difficulty in developing your site, Andolasoft WordPress developers are happy to help you. Contact to Andolasoft.com and develop your successful business website.

If you are enjoying our blog, subscribe to Andolasoft blog to get the latest updates.

Why Use WordPress? 11 Good Reasons For Your Website

Posted on by Netrananda M

WordPress is a free and powerful software to develop websites. It’s a CMS (Content Management System) for managing content without getting involved in the complexities of the web architecture. It is very simple and easy to use, even for beginners.

41.4% of the top 10 million websites & 60% of all CMS are powered by WordPress. These impressive stats continue to dominate the web-development industry.

In 2003, it started as a blogging tool, now it has become the platform to build any kind of website.

Everyone is talking about WordPress these days. Its many effective features have made it the favorite among many big brands.

This platform is leading the market. The popular brands like Bloomberg, TechCrunch, BBC America, are using this CMS as their core web platform

Agencies are also recommending this for business websites, because they are well aware of the wordpress cms development services.

But why is there so much demand around this platform?

Here you go.

What is WordPress?

“WordPress.com is the only service of its kind that not only lets you export your data, but gives you an open source package you can run on pretty much any web host out there to run your own instance of the software. So the freedom is really in your hands.”

– Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic Inc.

WordPress is a CMS or a Content Management System that developers use as a framework o create web applications/portals.

This simple CMS can be used by anyone, you can modify and make the necessary changes. To use it you don’t need any technical knowledge.

This framework is not only used to develop websites but it is the best blogging platform.

It is also a Marketing tool. So this helps to easily get noticed among your customers and rank in search engines.

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Why use WordPress Website?

Everyone wants to have a place in this ever-growing digital world. Gone are the days when one must know how to code to put their website online by building everything from scratch. WordPress theme services makes it too easy to start building a site with just a few clicks.

WordPress is not only used to build web pages faster but also to manage the content effectively. Whether it’s a one-page blog or an eCommerce marketplace, WordPress is the one-stop solution for everything.

“At present there are more than 74 million websites that are developed using WordPress. This website uses WordPress to post new content every hour.”  – The ThemeForest

Also, the use of WordPress highly depends on it’s easy to use features. Including this WordPress provides many effective features which make this framework more and more popular.

“Using WordPress is a no-brainer. There’s a reason 34% of the web uses it.” by Kinsta

Everything from big platforms like Squarespace to Wix are some of the wonderful tools. But here we will describe why use WordPress over these tools to develop your website.

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  1. Use it for free
  2. Easy to use
  3. It rules the CMS market
  4. Google friendly
  5. Adaptability
  6. Safe and secure
  7. Multi- user Ability
  8. Big Brands use WordPress
  9. Supports Multimedia

WordPress(Source: Webster Digital Marketing)

1. Free to use

Yes, WordPress doesn’t cost a penny to try. Whether you are creating a commercial site or a personal blog, with this it doesn’t cost you a penny.

Download and install it locally on your system and start using it straight away. Understanding the dashboard and various ways to edit & publish content is what WordPress is all about.

There is a huge collection of per-build themes and plugins to test out.

It is one of the reasons why people use it more.

Once you get to know the workflow, it’s time to go online by just buying a domain name and a hosting service depending on the scale of the website.

WordPress(Source: Wpbeginner)

As WordPress framework is an open-source, you can alter or develop the source code the way you like, customize the website functionality and the overall look.

Although it is free, you need to spend some amount for other features. However, the premium paid ones provide numerous features to your websites.

2. Easy to use

Most businesses suggest the use of WordPress because it’s easy to use. It comes with easy to install templates that are available with complete customizable code.

It has an editing interface that requires no HTML experience for any changes, to alter the layout and more features to create any changes into your WordPress website.

You can update your company information, product information, or modify content on your website using this, by following some easy steps.

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3. It rules the CMS market

It is not just a popular CMS, it creates more competition.

WordPress Platform(Source: quicksprout.com)

According to the usage statistics from W3Techs more than 59.5% of all websites that choose Content Management Systems use WordPress.

It has a huge percentage of market share. Along with the market share the large number of supportive tools help this framework to become more efficient and effective.

4. Google Friendly

As this is a CMS based framework, Google and other search engines crawl into these websites that help to rank. Most businesses developed their website using this framework, to take this advantage of WordPress.

To get ranked in Google is the main motto of every website. With this website you can easily enjoy this advantage of WordPress.

Some of the experts say, using the WordPress framework can boost your ranking.

There are plugins that optimize the pages to drive more traffic. If you don’t know anything about SEO, just install the recommended powerful SEO plugins with few basic settings and WordPress will take care of its own.

5. Adaptability

It is also flexible to customize. You can accommodate your website using the extensions and Plug-in.

Whether you are using WordPress for your personal use or for creating a small business website or for a large business website doesn’t matter.

By using this framework you can customize and add extensions to your website according to your choice.

You get total control on the coding. So it can be easily customized to any per-made themes and design.

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6. Safe and Secure

Security is given first priority when it comes to WordPress development and rightly so. No matter how easy it is to build anything, it is unacceptable for any platform to compromise with security. WordPress implements every security measure to prevent any possible breach of information and stay protected.

WordPress Security

The popularity of WordPress website design has gained the interest of hackers.

So, to control this issue the core team of WordPress software has strengthened the security measures.

According to a Q3 2017 study by Sucuri, a multi-platform security company,

“WordPress continues to lead the infected websites they worked on at 83%. This is up from 74% in 2016.”

This CMS has taken strong security measures to preserve its user’s trust. For high-level security, it is recommended to install security plugins and keep updating it with the latest updates. Security plugins automatically generate cryptic passwords and implement Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) which are too hard for hackers to crack.

This CMS has taken strong security measures to preserve its user’s trust.

However, the users need to be more careful while downloading the WordPress plug-ins from any trusted source.

7. Multi-User Ability

It works best for multi-users. If your team size is large or has multiple teams, freelancers, agencies who are working on your websites and you need to give access to them.

With this you get total control over those who get access to your Business website. You can develop new accounts, by giving specific permissions to the accessibility of user’s and keep them out of the area that is required.

The permissions include:

  1. Admin
  2. Super Admin
  3. Author
  4. Editor
  5. Subscriber
  6. Contributor

8. Big Brands Use WordPress

It has power to more than 35% of all websites. There are around 1.7 billion sites using WordPress.

Every hour there are thousands and more content that are delivered to the site visitors by using this.

It has not remained limited to only small to medium-sized businesses. Many popular brands suggest the use of WordPress for their websites.

Some of the big brands are- Etsy Journal, TechCrunch, Microsoft News, TED Blog, PlayStation, BBC America, Walt Disney Company, Skype, Star Wars Blog, yelp and more.

Andolasoft has also developed its Blog site through WordPress.

9. Supports Multimedia

Adding media files to your websites has become a necessity now-a-days. With media files attached, it creates more traffic.

With the uses of blogs and various content, you can add various types of multimedia. Any type of media files can be added such as Audio, Images, Documents, and Video.

You need to add high quality images and videos to your websites for better engagement and google ranking. 

10. Bloggers paradise

Initially built as a blogging platform, WordPress still holds firm to its roots. It leads the race to be the most preferred blogging platform.

Bloggers Paradise(Source: wordpress.org)

Because it is literally painless to create, edit, publish and manage blogs using the set of tools inside the popular blog editor. The drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to handle media contents too.

The blog owner can set different permissions for different user roles.

Finally, WordPress has a feature called taxonomies, that lets the blog creator add categories and tags to a content, which helps the reader to navigate to contents that are similar and inter-linked.

11. Responsive flawless experience

More than 60% of web content is viewed on phones. So, it’s very important to create websites that are device friendly. WordPress automatically detects the types of device and renders the content accordingly.

WordPress Responsive

Google says,

“Mobile-friendly sites show up higher in search results and if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, visitors are 5 times more likely to leave.”

Responsive Web Design (RWD) is one of the most important considerations for developers in web development. WordPress has in-build options to simultaneously design web pages of different screen sizes whether it is a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, or a mobile phone.

What Ways do you need to follow to Use WordPress?

WordPress means you can create any type of business website.

Starting from a simple website to an eCommerce marketplace or for the personal blog, for any purposes, this framework helps you with this.

Here are some examples of different websites you can create with this:

  • Online Store
  • Blogging
  • Membership Website
  • Online Courses
  • Online Marketplace Websites
  •  Podcast Website
  •  Dropshipping Website
  •  Coupon Website
  •  Affiliate Website
  • Online Forum Websites
  •  Social Networking Websites

So, these are some of the websites that you can create using this framework.

I’ve worked with the team at AndolaSoft on multiple websites. They are professional, responsive, & easy to work with. I’ve had great experiences & would recommend their services to anyone.

Ruthie Miller, Sr. Mktg. Specialist

Salesforce, Houston, Texas

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FAQ:

What is WordPress?

This is a Content Management System that is used to develop websites. It is also available in Open source and .com. So anyone can develop any kind of website.

How to build a WordPress website?

With this you can develop a business website and use it as a blogging platform. You need to follow these steps:

  • Sign up for a web Hosting
  • Choose a domain name for your website
  • Install free WordPress software
  • Select a WordPress theme
  • Develop your first page
  • Install all the essential plugins to your WordPress website
  • And then start marketing your website

What is WordPress used for?

With this you can develop your own website. WordPress custom theme works by combining various core files. Files are added, installed and database. It provides dashboards that let you manage the entire work.

Is WordPress easy for Beginners?

It is a simple to use tool. Even beginners can use it very easily.  It is easy to set up and run. Several web hosts come with what are called as one-click auto-installers. It is simple to use, unlike Microsoft.

Is WordPress Free to use?

This core software is free to use. You can download it for free and use it for any way you want to. You can customize it, extend it, redistribute it or it can also be sold until you use it as GPL License.

Conclusion:

WordPress framework is a powerful content management system. It is strongly followed globally to develop many amazing websites.

It provides you with complete control over your website. This web application provides great advantages like plugins, free tools, and themes with full media support.

With more content, demands more maintenance and scaling it is as simple as a new WordPress website. It is advisable to frequently back-up your entire website in case of any unfortunate accidental loss of data. It also supports 169 languages worldwide.

Automattic, the company behind WordPress has even bigger plans in future. It has come a long way since its inception and has experienced exponential growth. Since then it has created a world of its own. We have concluded that, with WordPress, possibilities are endless.

The best way to experience these features is by using them. Let us help you build your website.

So you can enjoy your business and develop your website using Andolasoft.

Your current host might charge you extra cost and time, get it back with Andolasoft.

Well professional wordpress developers will help you develop your own websites according to your preferences at an affordable range.

Want to develop your own business websites, contact us to hire our developers to design your professional websites.

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How To Create A Custom WordPress Plugin

Posted on by Jay

Custom WordPress Plugin act as add-ons with additional functionalities or extending any existing functionality to a website without modifying the core files. It helps the installation of future updates without losing any core functionalities or customization.

Why Would You Want to Create a Plugin?

All WordPress themes contain a functions.php file, which includes code that adds all the functionalities to your site. It operates very similarly to the way a plugin works. you can add the same code to either a plugin or functions.php file, and both will work for you.

Consider this scenario.

You have decided to change the look and feel of the website so you need to change the theme, the custom code that you have added will no longer work since it was there in the previous theme.

On the other hand, plugins are not dependent on a  specific theme, which means that you can switch themes without losing the plugin’s functionalities. Using a plugin instead of a theme also makes the functionality you want to create easier to maintain and it will not be impacted during the theme updates.

Types of WordPress Plugin:

Plugins can carry out lots of tasks. It adds extra functionalities to your site which makes the website more user-friendly.
Types of WordPress plugin include:

  • WordPress Security and Performance Plugins
  • Marketing and sales plugins for things like SEO, social media, etc
  • Custom content plugins such as custom post types, widgets, short-codes, contact forms, image galleries, etc.
  • API plugins that work with the WordPress REST API
  • Community plugins that add social networking features like the Forum feature.

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How to Run Your Plugin Code: Options

Few methods are there to activate your code in WordPress like, 

  • functions
  • action and filter hooks
  • classes

Let’s deep dive on the above points.

Functions

Functions are the building blocks of WordPress code.  They’re the easiest way to get started writing your own plugins and the quickest to code. You’ll find plenty of them in your themes’ files too.

Each function will have its own name, followed by braces and the code inside those braces.

The code inside your plugin won’t run unless you call the function somehow. The simplest (but least flexible) way to do that is by directly calling the code in your theme or somewhere else in your plugin.

Here’s an example function:To directly call that function in your theme, you’d simply type andola_myfunction() in the place in your theme template files where you want it to run. Or you might add it somewhere in your plugin… but you’d also need to activate the code that calls it!

There are a few limitations to this:

  • If the function does something that isn’t just adding content somewhere in a theme template file, you can’t activate it this way.
  • If you want to call the function in multiple places, you’ll have to call it again and again.
  • It can be hard to keep track of all the places you’ve manually called a function.

It’s much better practice to call functions by attaching them to a hook.

Action and Filter Hooks

By attaching your function to a hook, you run its code whenever that hook is fired. There are two types of hooks: action hooks and filter hooks.

Action hooks are empty. When WordPress comes to them, it does nothing unless a function has been hooked to that hook.

Filter hooks contain code that will run unless there is a function hooked to that hook. If there is a function, it’ll run the code in that function instead.

This means you can add default code to your plugin but override it in another plugin, or you can write a function that overrides the default code that’s attached to a filter hook in WordPress itself.

Hooks are fired in three ways:

  • By WordPress itself. The WordPress core code includes hundreds of hooks that fire at different times. Which one you hook your function to will depend on what your function does and when you want its code to run. You can find a list of WordPress hooks in the developer handbook.
  • By your theme. Many themes include action and filter hooks that you can use to add extra content in key places in your website’s design. And all themes will include a wp_head and wp_footer hook. Combine these with conditional tags, and you can run specific code on certain types of pages in your site.
  • By your plugin or other plugins. You might add an action hook to your plugin and then add functions in your include files that attach code to that hook. Or you might write a filter hook and then have a function that overrides its contents under certain circumstances. Alternatively, if you’re creating a plugin to complement another plugin, you can hook your functions to the existing hook in the third-party plugin.

Some of this is more advanced, but with your first plugin, you’ll probably be hooking your functions to an action or filter hook output by WordPress itself, most likely an action hook.

Classes

Classes are a way of coding more complex features, such as widgets and customize elements, that make use of the existing WordPress APIs. 

When you write a class in your plugin, you’ll probably be extending an existing class that’s coded into WordPress. This way, you can make use of the code provided by the class and tweak it to make it your own. 

An example would be the customizer, where you might write a class including a color picker, making use of the color picker UI that’s provided in the existing class for the customizer.

Using classes is more advanced than functions, and it’s unlikely you’ll do it in your plugin.

If you do write classes, you’ll still have to use actions or filters to get them to run.

Let’s start with the basics first.

WordPress plugins are stored inside the wp-content/plugins folder which can be accessed from WordPress root directory.

Creating a simple “Hello World” plugin in WordPress can be done in 3 easy steps:

  • Creating the plugin’s main folder and the plugin file
  • Creating plugin headers in the created plugin  file (headers: information about the plugin, version, and the author)
  • Writing custom functions to display “Hello World” text inside an admin page in WordPress panel

Prerequisite

  • Some knowledge in basic installation & setup of WordPress, to develop custom Plugins is necessary.
  • Always use the latest WordPress version available.
  • Coding knowledge for PHP is required.
  • The Plugin needs to be tested in a clean WordPress setup.
  • An Editor of your choice might be required.

Steps:

  • Enable debug mode for bug tracking. You can do so by adding ‘define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true)’ to the ‘wp-config.php’ file.
  • Use wp_enqueue_style() and wp_enqueue_script() to add style sheets and scripts to a Plugin; This prevents scripts   from being loaded multiple times.
  • All the Plugins will be there in the wp-content > plugins folder.

 Step 1: Create a New Plugin File

To start creating a new plugin, you will need access to your site’s directory. The easiest way to do this is by using SFTP, which is a method for viewing and editing your site’s files when it’s located on an external server.

Create a folder andola-hello-world inside the plugins folder.

Note: Keep the name unique, so that it doesn’t conflict with other Plugins used in the website.

The Main Plugin File

The main plugin file is essential. It will always be a PHP file, and it will always contain commented-out text that tells WordPress about your plugin.

Create a file named andolasoft-hello-world.php where we can write our Plugin functionality code.

[code language=”php”]
<?php
/**
* Plugin Name: Andola Hello World
* Plugin URI: https://wordpress.org/plugins/
* Author: Andolasoft
* Author URI: https://www.andolasoft.com/
* License: GPLv2 or later
* License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
* Description: This is the very first plugin I ever created.
* Version: 1.0
* Text Domain: andola-hello-world
*/
[/code]

You can see that the information provided in the plugin file is used to populate this entry and provide links.

Other information about the plugin is contained in the README.txt file, which is used to populate the plugin’s page in the plugin directory:

Are you looking for a WordPress developer

Contact Us

This tells WordPress what your plugin does, where to find out more about it, and who developed it. It also gives information about the version number and the text domain.

WordPress takes this information and uses it to populate the plugins screen in your site. Here’s how it looks on that screen:

[code language=”php”]
if ( ! defined( ‘ABSPATH’ ) ) die( ‘Error!’ );

add_shortcode(‘hello-world’, ‘andola_hello_world_function’);

function andola_hello_world_function(){
return "Hello World! This is the very first plugin I ever created.";
}
[/code]

That’s it, your plugin is ready!

Step 2: Activate Your New Plugin

Login to your WordPress Dashboard, go to ‘Plugins’, your “Hello World” plugin is there. All you need to do now is activate it.

Step 3: Start Using Your Own Plugin

Create a new post and insert short-code ‘[hello_world]’ into it:

Then this is how it will appear in the front end:

Plugin Best Practices

Before you start coding your plugin, it helps to understand best practices for plugins so your code can be high quality right from the start.

These include:

  • Write your code according to WordPress coding standards. If you want to submit your plugin to the plugin directory, you’ll have to do this.
  • Use comments throughout your code so other people can work with it—and so you remember how your code works when you come back to it in the future.
  • Name your functions, hooks, and classes using prefixes so they are unique to your plugin. You don’t want to give a function the same name as another function in a different plugin or in WordPress core.
  • Organize your folders logically, and keep your code separated so other people can understand it and so you can add to it over time without it becoming a mess.

You might think that using best practice isn’t necessary because it’s just you working with the plugin. But your plugin might grow over time, you might let other people use it, or you might sell it. Or you might come back to it in two years and not be able to remember how the code is organized!

FAQs

Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about WordPress plugins.

Why can’t I just add the code I need to my theme functions file?

It’s tempting to simply keep on adding code to the functions.php file, and there is some code that should be there.

But if your code is related to functionality in your site, rather than the design or the output of content, then you should code it into a plugin. This means that if you switch themes in the future, you still have that functionality. And you can use the plugin on another site running a different theme.

I’ve added code to my plugin. Why is nothing happening?

This is probably because you haven’t hooked your code to an action or filter hook. Until you do that, nothing will happen.

When I edit my plugin and check my site, I get a white screen. Help!

You’ve probably added some code that’s got an error in it somewhere. PHP is an unforgiving language, and this might be as minor as a semicolon in the wrong place.

Try turning on WP_DEBUG in your wp-config.php file, and you’ll see a message telling you where the error is. Then you can fix it.

When I activate my plugin, I get an error message telling me too many headers have been output. What does this mean?

All this normally means is that there are too many empty lines in your plugin file. Go back and check there are no empty lines at the beginning of the file.

If that doesn’t fix it, try turning on WP_DEBUG.

Conclusion

Developing a custom plugin is a way to add functionality to a WordPress site that currently available plugins don’t offer. It can be a simple plugin that implements minor alterations or a complex one that modifies the entire site.