If you’re planning to launch an ecommerce store, selecting the right platform to run your online business is one of the most crucial aspects of the process. This is because it will determine a lot of what you can and can’t do, how you’ll do it, and what it’ll cost you. While there are various options available, WooCommerce and Shopify are two of the most commonly recommended platforms. Given the conflicting opinions you get when comparing Shopify vs WooCommerce, it can be tough to know what to believe. To help you make an informed decision, we have compiled an in-depth comparison of these two ecommerce heavyweights.
If you're starting an ecommerce site, you'll need a platform that can help you run your online business efficiently. There are many options available, but WooCommerce and Magento consistently show up on short lists. To cut through the fog and simplify things for you, we've put together a detailed comparison of these two popular ecommerce platforms.
One of the best things about WordPress is that there is no shortage of quality themes available for the platform - most of which are free. However, investing in a premium WordPress theme can be a smart move for certain types of users, as they can really elevate a website to the next level. In this article, we'll take a look at some of the best premium WordPress themes on the market today, and explore the key features that make them worth the investment.
If you're using Elementor to build your website, then you're probably someone who is highly motivated to create something that not only functions well, but is visually stunning. However, with so many "best Elementor themes" out there, it can be difficult to know which one to pair with this popular page builder. Well, you can rest assured that all of the Elementor themes featured on this list will not only look good, but will also provide you with the functionality you need to achieve your goals - whether that's to build a blog, an ecommerce store, or something else entirely.
If you have a location independent source of income and are ready to book your next one-way flight, then this is the page for you! In this article, we're going to share our list of the best cities for digital nomads, organized by seven criteria - cost of living, visas, internet, weather, cuisine, safety, and lifestyle.
Wondering how to measure traffic to a website – any website? Well, you’ve landed on the right page! Enter the almighty website traffic checker – a tool you can use for that exact purpose.
Optimizing image alt tags can do more than improve your WordPress site’s SEO … in fact, even more important, is the fact that it can, and will, make your content more accessible to every user who visits your site.
It’s often said that “an image is worth a thousand words.” But how do you describe those images in your alt tags? Do you need a thousand words? Do you even need to use image alt tags?
In this tutorial, we look at how to optimize alt tags for SEO and accessibility, and show you how to write perfect image alt tags in WordPress … every time!
Picture This …
You’ve set up, configured, and optimized a WordPress site for your own use or for a client.
Your site needs content. A good content strategy is to ensure that all the elements on your page appeal to human readers and search engines.
Adding the right images to content can help to attract more readers, encourage them to stay longer on your page, and strengthen your message. We also want to make sure, however, that these images will help you rank higher in image search results and improve the accessibility of your website.
This is where image alt tags come in.
Alt tags let you optimize images for SEO and web accessibility.
What are alt tags?
An “alt tag” or alt attribute is an alternative text used to describe an image or what the image represents if the image can’t be displayed for some reason (such as a slow connection or an error in the src attribute), or if users can’t view it because of visual impairment, surfing the web with images turned off, etc.
Alternative text displays when images don’t show on your site and helps visually impaired users.
This alternative text information is useful for humans using screen readers when browsing the web, as these will read out the alt tag image text and make your image accessible, and for improving image SEO, as alt tags help search engines figure out the context of images in the page content and get these properly indexed for search results when users search online for images.
Alternative text improves indexing of your images by search engines.
Alt Tags vs Title Tags
While both attributes use alternative text to improve how images are used in your content, an alt attribute should describe what the image represents to help users understand what the image is doing on the page (i.e. its purpose), while a title attribute is used to show a tooltip when you hover over the image.
Use Title Tags to create tooltips for your images.
Here is what the complete syntax of an HTML image tag looks like:
You can add alternative text as soon as you upload images into WordPress via the Media Library …
Add alternative text after uploading images to the Media Library.
And when editing images (you can also add a title tag to your image during the edit process) …
Check that alt attributes are filled in when editing images.
How To Write Perfect Image Alt Tags in WordPress
Now that we have covered the basics of alt tags, let’s look at the types of images we will normally add to content and the guidelines for using alternative text with different types of images.
To help put things in context, we’ll create an example post in WordPress and apply “best practice” guidelines for using alt tags with different types of images to try and achieve the best outcome for search results and accessibility.
So, here’s our initial post, with some text and the first post image …
Let’s optimize this puppy!
Before we decide what to do with the image on this post, let’s take a look at best practice guidelines for optimizing images using alt attributes.
Using Alt Tags For WordPress SEO
The basic guidelines for the alternative text attribute are as follows:
The text should describe the image if the image contains information.
The text should explain where the link goes if the image is inside an <a> element.
Use alt="" if the image is only for decoration.
Google’s image best practices say that when choosing alt text for your images, you should focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately in the context of your page content. It also warns against engaging in the dark art of ‘keyword stuffing’ by filling alt attributes with keywords, as this results in a negative user experience and may cause your site to be seen as spam.
In fact, here’s what the former head of the web spam team at Google, Matt Cutts, had to say about using Alt tags to improve your site’s search results …
According to Google, then, here’s the relationship between using alt tags and the image below …
Want more traffic to a pic of a pup in a cup? Add alt tags yo … what up!
Bad (keyword stuffing):<img src="puppy.jpg" alt="puppy dog pup pups puppies doggies pups litter puppies dog chihuahua puppies dog training puppy training cute puppy"/>
Better:<img src="puppy.jpg" alt="puppy"/>
Best:<img src="puppy.jpg" alt="chihuahua dog puppy in backyard"/>
If the image is purely decorative, however, no alt tags should be used.
Hence,
<img src="puppy.jpg" alt=""/>
While the above seems fairly straight forward, when you take into account questions of accessibility, things can start to become a little bit more confusing.
Which brings us to the different types of images that we can use in our content.
Different Types Of Images You Can Use In WordPress
WordPress lets you add all kinds of images to posts, pages, and custom post types. According to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), images fall into the following categories for accessibility purposes:
These are images used for representing concepts and information graphically, like pictures, photos, and illustrations.
Informative images can be used to:
Label other information (e.g. a picture, image, or icon of a telephone or email for contact details)
Supplement other information (e.g. explain something contained in the image)
Convey succing information (e.g. provide instructions depicted in the image)
Convey an impression, expression, or emotion (e.g. a picture of a happy family accompanying content or information about a family-friendly product)
Convey file format (e.g. PDF or ZIP file icons)
The suggested approach to using alt tags with informative images is to include at least a short description conveying the essential information presented by the image, as shown below.
A black and white example of an informative image.
Examples of decorative images include images that:
Are used as part of the page design (e.g. borders, section dividers, etc.)
Are used as part of a text link (e.g. to draw the user’s attention to a clickable link or enlarge the clickable area).
Have an adjacent text alternative (i.e. text displayed next to the picture is sufficient to explain why the image is there).
Are used to purely to create ambiance or improve the look of the page (i.e. “eye candy”).
The consensus seems to be that when an image serves no purpose, or when its only purpose is to add visual decoration to the page instead of conveying important information that would help readers to understand the page, then its best to provide a null text alternative (i.e. <img src="image.jpg" alt="">).
A purrfect example of a decorative image that serves absolutely no purrpose!
An image with an empty alt attribute will be skipped over by assistive technologies like screen readers.
Many image SEO guides suggest that if an image serves no purpose and is purely included in your design for decorative purposes (e.g. a background image), then you should create the image using CSS, not HTML. If you really can’t change these images, then give them an empty alt attribute (alt="").
Note, however, that an image could be interpreted as being informative, decorative, or something else depending on the context it is used. The decision is up to the author’s judgment and their reason for including the image on the page.
For example, take the image of Dr. Sigmund Freud in our example below …
Thanks to Freud, everything WordPress stores has an Id.
Dr. Freud is mentioned in the content as someone who ‘did not underestimate the power of early love.’ While Dr. Freud’s sombre stare into the camera lends the article an air of credibility and authority, is his photograph informative or purely decorative?
How would we consciously (or subconsciously) optimize this image with accessibility in mind? Do we leave readers guessing what Freud’s motive is for being in our post? Do we let things slip?
If we decide that the image is decorative, the guidelines suggest leaving the alt tag empty. Screen readers would then skip the image and visually impaired readers may not be made aware of Sigmund’s significant contribution.
Decorative:<img src="sigmund-freud.jpg" alt=""/>
If we decide the image is informative, then we must say something in the alt tags to explain the image.
Informative:<img src="sigmund-freud.jpg" alt="Dr Sigmund Freud recognized the significance of early love."/>
Alternatively, we might decide that the image is decorative, but we will make Dr. Freud’s recognition of the validity of “the proverbial durability of first loves” salient to all users, including visually impaired readers, by combining text in image attributes such as the img alt tag and img caption field.
Adding alt tags to images is hard work. But one day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
Functional Images
Functional images don’t convey information … they are used to initiate actions.
Examples of functional images include buttons, links, and other interactive elements, such as a printer icon to represent the print function or a button to submit a form.
The text alternative for functional images, then, should convey the desired action you want to elicit from your reader (i.e. the purpose of the image), instead of providing just an image description.
For example, for the button image shown below, the text alternative should be something like “click button to find love” instead of “image of clickable button”.
An image of a functional image depicting a clickable button for dysfunctional people who haven’t clicked with anyone yet!
Because functional images are essential to the functionality of the content, missing or empty alt values create problems for screen reader users. Assistive technologies like screen readers normally announce the image file name, the image URL, or the URL for the link destination, so if the alt tag is missing, users will have difficulty understanding the action that will be initiated by the image.
Images of Text
Images can often display text that is meant to be read. In this case, the alt tag should include the words used in the image.
This image contains white text meant to be read.
<p> <img src="relationship-banner.png" alt="For professional counseling to discuss relationship issues, call 0123 456 7890:"> 0123 456 7890 </p>
Accessibility guidelines suggest avoiding the inclusion of readable text in images unless the image is a logo. Instead, you can style text with CSS3 and use embedded fonts rather than depicting text as an image.
If you have to depict numerical expressions using images because of the difficulty of presenting equations and special mathematical symbols with HTML, then make sure the alt tag provides sufficient information for readers to be able to do the math.
For example, the screenshot below displays an image that uses recurring decimal numbers …
Wait … is that last digit meant to be a six or a nine?
Here is how you could write the alternative text for this image:
<img src="0dot6666recurring.png" alt="0.6666 recurring. (The recurrence is indicated by a line over the '6' in the fourth decimal place)">
Complex Images
Complex images such as graphs, charts, maps, diagrams, and illustrations often contain more information than can be conveyed in a short phrase or sentence and may require long and detailed text descriptions.
Complex images used to be simple before SEO and web accessibility were put on the map.
Accessibility guidelines provide various approaches for making long description information in complex images available to programs like web browsers and search engines (e.g. using HTML5 elements like <figure> and <figcaption> and assistive attributes such as longdesc and aria-describedby).
One approach you can use when adding a complex image to your content is to include the long description on the same web page as the image and refer to its location in the alt attribute.
Here is the alternative text that we could use for our example graph using this approach:
<img src="love-hiatus.png" alt="Line chart showing rates of young couples taking relationship breaks since 1988. Described under the heading Does First Love Last?">
When using alt attributes for complex images, make sure to provide clear and accurate location information in the alternative text field to help users find the content more easily.
Groups of Images
When multiple images are used to represent one piece of information, only one of those images needs an alt tag to describe the entire group. The other images should have a null (empty) alt attribute so that they will be ignored by assistive technology.
An example of this is using a group of star icons to represent a rating …
I know what you’re all thinking … how did this cute little puppy get such a paw star rating?
Here’s how the alt tags for the star icons used in the example above would look like:
Rating: <img src="star-full.png" alt="3.5 out of 5 stars"> <img src="star-full.png" alt=""> <img src="star-full.png" alt=""> <img src="star-half.png" alt=""> <img src="star-empty.png" alt="">`
Of course, you can just use a plugin to add star rating images in WordPress, but you get the picture!
If a group of images is used to represent a collection or thematically related images, then you should add a text alternative describing each image and its relationship to the group.
Huh … what?
Here let me break it down into simple steps.
Here we have a group of images being used to represent a collection of thematically related images …
It’s an image gallery of dog pics, for pup’s sake!
Note that if you insert images into WordPress posts or pages using an image gallery, you will not be able to view the alt tags of your images in the content editor screen …
Freud was right about Jung love … even collective images have Ids!
However, if you view the source code of your published post or page, (right-click on post and select Ctrl + U if using Windows & Google Chrome web browser, or Option + Cmd + U with iOS & Safari) …
All shall soon be revealed …
You will see that WordPress includes all attributes in the content’s HTML using the correct markup structures …
And there’s our text alternative describing each image and its relationship to the group!
Image Maps
If images with multiple clickable areas (hotspots) are used, you should provide an overall context for the set of links and alternative text for each individual clickable area of the image describing the purpose or destination of the link.
This is an alt chart of baloney information … clicking anywhere on this image map will only lead to heartache and disappointment.
Typical uses for image maps include organizational charts linking to pages with individual profile information and interactive images with hotspot areas, highlight sections, descriptions, links,etc.
There are various plugins you can use to create image maps in WordPress. Just search for “interactive image” in the ‘Add Plugins’ screen of your admin area (Go to ‘Plugins’ > ‘Add New’). Or, check out our tutorial on how to build a CSS image map.
Alt Tag Tips For Better SEO & Web Accessibility
Images can improve your search results, help make content easier to understand for people with cognitive and learning disabilities, and provide cues to visually impaired users, but they can also create barriers if they’re not optimized for accessibility.
In addition to making your content more indexable for search engines, accessible images benefit people using screen readers and speech-enabled websites (text alternative can be read aloud or rendered as Braille), people using speech input software, and mobile web users browsing sites with images turned off (especially for data-roaming).
Here are some useful tips that will improve your SEO and make your content more accessible when adding alt tags to images:
If you’re not sure about the type of image you’re adding to your content, refer to this alt decision tree.
If your image has no purpose, leave the alt tag blank.
Keep your alternative text as concise as possible and put the most important information at the beginning.
Use punctuation in the text alternative to makes the information easier to understand.
Add space characters in the alt text when there’s no space character between the image and adjacent text to avoid words running together when read by a screen reader.
If you use a null (empty) text alternative (alt="") to hide decorative images, remove any space characters inside the quotes, as some assistive technologies will announce the presence of an image if space characters are detected between the quotes marks.
You don’t need to include words like “image”, “icon”, or “picture” in the alt text, as those who can see will know this and screen readers will announce the presence of an image. Unless it’s important to distinguish between paintings, photographs, illustrations, etc., best practices recommend avoiding the more generic use of the terms in alternative text.
Go through each image on your web page to determine if the alternative text is appropriate. As you do this, imagine reading the web page aloud over the phone to someone who needs to understand the page. This will help you judge the alt text information in context and decide what (if any) function or purpose the images serve.
Getting everything right on this page is so doggone tiring!
Check Your Alt Texts
After you’re done adding content to your posts or pages, there are checks you can make to assess the accessibility of your web pages.
There are also tools you can use to perform automated tests to check if any alt text is missing on a page.
Just type the website address in the field, click the button and your web page will display in the browser with icons and tags and a summary report section …
If an alt tag is detected, a green icon will display for that image. Click on icons to view more information …
If an alt tag is missing for an image on your page, you will see a red icon …
Go through the report section and click on icons on the page to view the alt attribute information …
Fix any issues on your page, then republish and refresh the tool to make sure everything is ok. Rinse and repeat until every issue on the page has been fixed.
Congratulations! Your article is now pawfect!
One last thing …
Optimizing your images for SEO and web accessibility takes dogged determination. Take the time to craft a proper alt text for every image you add to a post or a page on your site. Site users, sight-challenged users, and search engines will thank you for it!
Share the love with all users by making your website inclusive and accessible to everyone!
If you’re wondering what the best WordPress image optimizer is, look no further than our very own Smush Pro. Combine it with Hummingbird and SmartCrawl SEO, all three can dramatically improve the performance of your images. You can try all three on your site with a free 30-day trial.
Have you ever been at a party and heard someone (who’s probably had a few too many) blurt out that WordPress isn’t an actual CMS, and you then get incensed (probably because you’ve had a few too many too!) and an overwhelming need to step in and defend WordPress kicks in and other partygoers have to restrain you from taking on this ignorant stranger?
Well, I have … too many times to remember!
So, in case you ever get challenged privately, publicly (or even socially on Instagram or Snapchat) about WordPress being an “actual” CMS, here are some facts to arm yourself with for such an occasion.
Can WordPress manage all this? Read on to find out!
What Is A CMS?
Rather than use the definition of CMS that my elderly mother thought she heard me say once during a family dinner (“Can’t Manage My Sister”), let’s turn to the stalwart of the online community for seeking actual and factual enlightenment, Wikipedia:
“A content management system (CMS) manages the creation and modification of digital content. These systems typically support multiple users in a collaborative environment, allowing to perform document management with different styles of governance and workflows.”
Now, I could quote Wikipedia all day long, and so I will once more. The above quote continues thusly …
“Usually the content is a website … and the term commonly refers to web content management systems. Web content may include text and embedded graphics, photos, video, audio, maps, and program code … that displays content or interacts with the user. By their nature, CMSs support the separation of content and presentation.”
Read the above definition in its totality and take a moment to contemplate the plurality of “CMSs” and to breathe in the combination of fricative sibilance, alliteration, and rhyming consonance in the final sentence “CMSs support the separation of content and presentation.”
Before we dissect this definition further, here’s what Wikipedia also has to say about the structure of a CMS, or a Content Management System:
“A content management system (CMS) typically has two major components: a content management application (CMA), as the front-end user interface that allows a user, even with limited expertise, to add, modify, and remove content from a website without the intervention of a webmaster; and a content delivery application (CDA), that compiles the content and updates the website.”
You could defend WordPress’ (not WordPresss) honor as an actual CMS armed with just the above information, regardless of whether you’re engaged in a text message war with an ignorant luddite or facing a mob of drunken social influencers at a party in Ibiza.
But, let’s not stop there. Let’s bring in the ultimate show stopper of factual honest to goodness truth … charts!
CMS usage distribution for websites using CMS technologies.
According to trends, intelligence, and internet research company BuiltWith, WordPress is the world’s leading platform of choice for websites using CMS technologies. WordPress powers over a third of the web’s CMS websites and blogs.
In fact, as the chart below from W3Techs.com – a company driven by a vision to provide the most reliable and most extensive source of information on web technology usage shows (and they spare no expense when it comes to graph and chart design), no other CMS platform even comes close to WordPress in terms of market dominance.
This diagram shows the market position of WordPress in terms of popularity and traffic compared to the other most popular content management systems …
WordPress market position.
W3Techs.com even anticipated the fact that doubters may disregard charts as “alternative facts”, and so they committed their results to print …
Usage statistics and market share of WordPress.
Just to restate the above …
“WordPress is used by 61.2% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 34.5% of all websites.”
There it is, those three sweet words again … “content management system.”
If around two-thirds of all the websites whose content management system “we know” use WordPress and WordPress is used to power over a third of all websites, then please try the following right now:
Look at your website.
Look at the website on your left,’
Look at the website on your right.
One of these is a CMS website running on WordPress.
And it’s happening right now as you are reading this with your mouth hanging open in astonishment. Folks are downloading and installing the free self-hosted version of WordPress like they found an ATM that’s spitting out free money …
Before we attempt to prove conclusively and once and for all if WordPress is an actual content management system, try and see if you can actually spot an actual CMS website built with WordPress.
You see, WordPress has long been stuck with the “oh yes, that blogging platform” status.
Although WordPress did start out as a “blogging” platform, it has evolved way beyond a technology for publishing blogs.
Businesses of all sizes use the WordPress CMS platform to power their sites, even big businesses …
Glassdooor.com website.
You can check which web technologies are being used to power websites using various online tools. For example, here is what W3Techs.com has to say about Glassdoor.com …
Glassdooor.com website – Powered by WordPress CMS.
But it’s not just businesses that are using the WordPress CMS to power their sites. Governments are in on it too …
State.gov website.
Once again, this is confirmed by checking a technology identifying tool like W3Techs.com …
Boston University website – powered by WordPress CMS
It’s not just business, government, university and college websites, however, that are using the WordPress CMS to power their online presence. If you want true validation of WordPress as an actual CMS, then check out the websites of those who have dared to boldly go where no one has gone before … celebrity and fashion websites!
May WordPress live long and prosper as a CMS! (Source: https://williamshatner.com/ws)
Whenever those we respect, idolize, and venerate take up a cause they believe in or promote something to make bucketloads of money, it becomes de rigueur for the rest of us all to follow suit. Planetary and interplanetary leaders are using WordPress as a CMS. If this is not validation of WordPress as an actual CMS, then what is? If not them, who? If not now, when?
To see many other examples of websites and blogs being powered by a WordPress CMS to serve all kinds of purposes for all kinds of people and institutions in all kinds of industries and walks of life, just visit the WordPress Showcase section.
WordPress is an actual CMS … believe it!
WordPress As A CMS (More Than A Gut Feeling)
Now that the Word’s on the street and everybody’s talkin’ ’bout it (and bloggin’ and publishin’ with it too!), it’s time to turn our attention inwards and take a gutsy look at the guts of the WordPress platform.
If we transform Wikipedia’s definition of a CMS into a really cool infographic, it would look like this …
A really cool infographic depicting a CMS
Anatomically speaking, WordPress has an almost identical (yep!) structure to the CMS defined by Wikipedia, with advanced website features for managing web design (i.e. themes) and site functionality (e.g. plugins, widgets, blocks, etc.)
In fact, we could rewrite Wikipedia’s definition of a content management system to describe WordPress …
“WordPress manages the creation and modification of digital content. WordPress supports multiple users in a collaborative environment, allowing to perform document management with different styles of governance and workflows. Usually the content is a website (or blog) and the term commonly refers to web content management systems. WordPress sites may include text and embedded graphics, photos, video, audio, maps, and program code (such as for applications) that displays content or interacts with the user through posts, pages, and custom post types. By their nature, WordPresss support the separation of content and presentation.”
(Source: A wise guy)
Under the “Common Features” section of its CMS page, Wikipedia lists a bunch of features that content management systems typically provide. Let’s go through and compare these features with what WordPress offers:
Search engine optimization: This can be easily achieved using permalinks, categories, tags, SEO plugins, anchor text hyperlinks in content, internal linking, etc.
Integrated and online documentation: WordPress provides official documentation (Codex), including support forums, and many sites include video-based and online WordPress tutorials.
Modularity and extensibility: We call’em ‘plugins‘.
User and group functionality: WordPress has built-in user roles and capabilities, collaborative features, comments and discussions, and can enhance user and group functionality through all kinds of plugins.
Templating support for changing designs: Yup, we call’em themes.
Installation and upgrade wizards: Easy peasy cee-em-ess-eze! WordPress can be installed in just a few clicks and the same goes for upgrading its core software, plus any installed themes and plugins. Many plugins even come with setup wizards.
Integrated audit logs: Yup, got those too! From system and debugging reports, to stats in the dashboard that stare right back at you as soon as you log into the admin section.
Compliance with various accessibility frameworks and standards, such as WAI-ARIA: Pretty sure WordPress’ got this!
Reduced need to code from scratch: Who needs to code with WordPress when you got plugins, widgets, blocks, and shortcodes?
Unified user experience: United we stand … hooks, lines, and filters. We don’t <div>
Version control: WordPress has no aversions to versions. In fact, WordPress releases a new version approximately every 3 months (it’s like version control is out of control!). Check ’em out here: WordPress History
Edit permission management: With WordPress user roles and capabilities, admins can assign default permissions to different user groups and customize these using various plugins and modifications.
Indexing and search: WordPress has its own built-in search functionality, and all content, posts, pages, etc. are indexed and archived in the database and can be easily retrieved, filtered, and sorted internally (e.g. Table of Posts) and externally (e.g. tags, categories, calendar widgets, etc.)
Format or style management through themes: You haven’t lived until you’ve installed and activated a new WordPress theme.
Web-based publishing: WordPress doesn’t just publish, it can also get your site automatically indexed in search engines and your content syndicated to social networks and other sites and directories using built-in features like pinging services and RSS feeds, and various plugins and integrations with 3rd party services.
Given all of the above, it’s hard to dispute that WordPress is an actual content management system.
So, next time you’re at a party and everyone’s had a few too many and some old timer is reminiscing about reviving Frontpage or harping about the merits of some other CMS, you can deliver the kicker … WordPress is not only an actual content management system, it’s so much more!
WordPress is becoming more than a CMS, or even a web publishing platform! With the ability to use REST APIs to create a Headless WordPress CMS and developments like ‘blocks’ introduced with the release of WordPress 5.0 (aka WordPress Gutenberg), the entire platform is shapeshifting to something that even William Shatner would be proud to blog about on his WordPress site.
To quote Einstein had he been smart enough to blog before blogging and content management systems became relatively popular, WordPress = CMS2.
Depending on what your business or client needs and is trying to achieve, there are a number of feature-rich WordPress membership site plugins you can use … completely for free!
Are you trying to set up a WordPress membership site on a budget for your business or a client’s website? Should you use free WordPress membership plugins to set up a membership site or members’ area? Which plugins should you use? What features can you expect from ‘free’ membership plugins? Are there any downsides to using free membership plugins?
In this article, we explore ways to add a members area to your WordPress website using the best and most popular free membership plugins, useful free membership plugin features to look for, and what you need to know before using free membership plugins on your WordPress site or blog!
If you are looking for ways to protect your content and provide different levels of access to registered users, there are many great plugins you can install and configure to create a fully functional and professional membership site or members-only area using WordPress. Some plugins are free, some are not and some offer partially free features with upgrades to more advanced options if required.
While the obvious plus side of using free membership plugins is the cost (or lack thereof), there are potential downsides to be aware of.
Can Your Membership Site Handle Growth?
If you are building a membership site to generate revenue, for example, what happens if membership numbers start to increase? Will the plugin be able to help you handle the growth, or will you just be burdened with more manual administration?
And what if members demand new features to improve their user experience and ensure they remain loyally subscribed? Will the free plugin you depend on to run and grow your membership site be able to accommodate members requests for new features? If not, will you be able to migrate easily from your existing plugin to a more robust membership platform with minimal to no disruption?
Being able to grow your membership site sustainably and handle sudden increases in membership numbers without a hitch is essential when choosing a WordPress membership plugin, especially if you plan to start with a free plugin.
Can Your Membership Site Be Customized?
In addition to providing valuable content, your membership site should be editable, configurable, or customizable enough to accommodate and suit your needs. While most settings and options can be configured using themes, plugins, and widgets, there are some aspects of setting up a membership site that will depend on the plugin being used.
For example, if you want new or existing members to experience or complete certain processes during registration or when accessing their content and other membership information, then you must make sure that the plugin you choose is flexible, configurable, or customizable enough to support the processes and the experience you would like to create for users.
What About Technical Support?
What happens if members experience issues inside their members area? Or new versions of WordPress reveal incompatibilities, security vulnerabilities, or expose bugs in the plugin powering your membership site? Will you have access to responsive technical support from the plugin developers, or will you be left stranded to deal with the problems and unhappy members on your own?
Something else to keep in mind when research free plugins for your membership site are the developers behind the plugin. Have they been around for a while? Do they have a good reputation? Are they known in the WordPress user community? Is the plugin regularly updated? Are there any user reviews of the plugin? Are these reviews favorable? Are other users happy with the level of support they have received from the developer?
As with all free plugins, having access to technical support when you need it the most is crucial, especially if you plan to grow your membership site and actively promote it online. Paid plugins incentivize developers to support and maintain their plugins and add new features, whereas free plugins do not.
What Features Does The Free Plugin Offer?
If you have done your planning correctly and are currently researching features that will make running and growing your membership site easier, then free membership plugins can be an option, depending on what you want to do and offer to members.
For example, when thinking about features for your membership site:
Do you want to build a fully automated membership site?
Does your site need to provide several or unlimited membership levels?
Are you planning to set up multiple membership sites on different domains?
Will new members need to be redirected to different sections of your website according to their membership level?
Does the site need to restrict access to content on common membership pages to different member levels?
Do you need to start with advanced options like custom registration fields, download folder protection, secure RSS feeds, etc. and if not, will these options be required later?
If you plan to run a paid membership site, do you need to offer different payment options, trials, subscriptions, etc. to get new members signing up?
And what about integrating your membership site with third-party services, add-ons, payment processors, eCommerce, social media, or email services like autoresponders, newsletters, etc.?
When thinking about WordPress membership plugins and the features you’d like to use in your membership site, keep in mind that many advanced features are found only in Freemium, Paid, or Pro versions, and that different free WordPress membership plugins offer different features.
We’ll refer to the above points when comparing various free WordPress membership plugins (see further below).
Why Set Up A Membership Site In WordPress Using Free Plugins?
Before we present various free membership plugins you can use in WordPress, let’s briefly explore some of the reasons for using free plugins to build a membership site:
Budget Constraints
If you have a great idea for a membership site but have little to no money to get started, choosing a free WordPress membership plugin makes sense … kind of (see the section above on things to watch out for when choosing to use free plugins!).
Since most WordPress paid, pro, or premium plugins tend to be reasonably low priced, if you are starting a membership site on a low budget, we recommend choosing free (or freemium) membership plugins offering paid upgrades for additional options, advanced features, and access to support.
Simple Membership Required Only
As discussed in this post, one of the strongest reasons for choosing a free WordPress membership plugin is that you or your client only needs a simple or basic membership setup. If this is the case, then one of the free WordPress membership plugins listed in the ‘Free WordPress Membership Site Plugins’ section below should do the trick.
This all relates to better membership site planning and doing sufficient research before investing your money into building your site. The better you understand your business model and how to achieve your goals, the easier it will be to recognize the plugins, software, or solutions that will help you get there faster, more easily, and more cost-effectively.
If you want to use a membership site as a way to build a list, then any free WordPress membership site plugin will work just fine, even if it has no email subscriber option. All you have to do is make sure that new members sign up to your list before they can register as a member, as shown in the diagram below …
How to build a list using a free membership plugin.
Here is how the simple process shown above can be used to build a list using a free (or any) membership site plugin:
Subscribe to an email marketing service (e.g. MailChimp, Aweber, etc.)
Set up a membership site or a member-only area on your site using a plugin.
Add your content (e.g. a downloadable report or video) to a post or page and protect it using your membership software or plugin’s protection settings.
Set up a landing page with an embedded email capture form (use Forminator Pro to help you with this step).
Send all prospective members to the landing page with the email capture form.
Direct your newly registered email subscribers to the member registration page.
Redirect newly registered members to the download page where they can access or download the content.
Users get access to exclusive or protected content and you’re building a list. Simple and effective!
Test Your Membership Model
Another reason to build a membership site using a free WordPress membership plugin is to test whether the plugin is the dolution you need or even if the business model can be profitable.
One of the benefits of building a membership site using WordPress is that you can easily export member data to other applications, so if you start with a free or even a freemium membership plugin and decide that you need to upgrade to a more robust and fully-featured plugin or a different solution altogether, you should be able to transfer your member community easily across to the new membership setup by exporting and importing data.
Free WordPress Membership Site Plugins
Below we have compiled a current list of over a dozen of the most popular free WordPress membership plugins you can use to build a membership site, with a brief description of main plugin features, number of active installations, ratings by the WordPress user community, and whether the plugin is compatible with the latest WordPress version (at the time of writing), with links for more information and downloading.
Ultimate Member – User Profile & Membership Plugin
Ultimate Member – User Profile & Membership Plugin
Ultimate Member is a fairly comprehensive yet lightweight user profile & membership plugin for WordPress. The plugin is designed to help you create advanced online communities and membership sites with a focus on easy member signups, beautiful user profiles to your site and a number of customizable features allowing you to create almost any type of site where users can join with ease.
Ultimate Member is free to install, well documented and supported and offers a number of paid extensions that allow you to enhance your membership site, including a purpose-built theme for websites with logged in and logged out users.
Active installations: 100,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
Paid Memberships Pro is a complete members management and membership subscriptions plugin for WordPress, designed for premium content sites, clubs/associations, subscription products, newsletters and more! If you are looking for a way to add a new revenue source to your site, then this plugin is flexible enough to fit the needs of almost all types of businesses.
This plugin can be used for membership sites that need unlimited levels with flexible membership pricing (including accepting recurring payments), a choice of payment gateways (PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.net, Braintree and 2Checkout are built-in) and the ability to offer product subscriptions or members-only product discounts. It also offers extensive options for content restriction, customizable reports and member dashboards, over a dozen Gutenberg blocks, and more!
The full version of Paid Memberships Pro is offered with no restrictions or additional licenses required and over 60 premium add-ons to extend and customize your membership site.
Active installations: 80,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
Simple Membership is a flexible, well-supported, and easy-to-use WordPress membership plugin that lets you easily protect your posts and pages so only your members can view the protected content, and can be used to offer free and premium content from your WordPress site.
This plugin lets you set up unlimited membership access levels, the ability to protect posts or pages while creating or editing these, one time and recurring/subscription payments, and more!
Additional features includes membership payments log, prompting non-members to login or register for accessing protected content, enabling email activation or email confirmation for free memberships, sidebar login widgets, language translations and a host of other features.
Setup documentation and plugin support is also provided.
Active installations: 40,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
Membership & Content Restriction – Paid Member Subscriptions
Membership & Content Restriction
Paid Member Subscriptions offers a complete membership solution, allowing you to accept member payments, manage members, create subscription plans and restrict access to premium content.
The plugin integrates with WooCommerce, allowing you to restrict product viewing and purchasing to members-only as well as offer special discounted product price based on subscription plans.
It also includes features like shortcodes for member registration, login, content restriction and managing membership plans, and various membership modules (content restriction, membership payments, subscription plans, members management, member emails and messaging, free trials and sign-up fees, reports and exports, WooCommerce integration, and many other powerful add-ons).
Active installations: 10,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
The WP-Members membership plugin turns your WordPress site into a membership site by restricting selected WordPress content to registered site members only. You can restrict premium content, create custom registration fields, and more!
WP-Members puts the registration process on the site’s front end so it is part of your content instead of the native WP login page. The plugin requires no modifications to your theme, yet it’s also customizable and scalable so you can change the look and feel and restrict only some of your content.
The plugin includes a number of features, such as the ability to restrict or hide posts, pages, and custom post types, integrate user login, registration, and profile into your theme, login widget, custom registration and profile fields, admin notifications and manual approval, automatic post excerpt teaser content creation, and more.
A full Users Guide is available outlining the installation process, and how to use all the plugin settings. An upgrade paid option provides access to premium support and all of the plugin’s premium extensions.
Active installations: 80,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
WP User Frontend – Membership, Profile, Registration & Post Submission Plugin for WordPress
WP User Frontend
WP User Frontend is one of the best frontend builder plugin for WordPress. It includes frontend dashboard, frontend editor & publishing, and frontend uploader for WordPress user profile, post submissions, and memberships.
Active installations: 20,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
The s2Member® Framework (free) integrates with PayPal Website Payments Standard (also free). Sell “Buy Now” or Membership access to your site. Restrict access to Roles, Capabilities, Posts, Pages, or anything else in WordPress.
Protect your WordPress Posts, Pages, Tags, Categories, URIs, BuddyPress/bbPress, and even portions of content within Posts, Pages, themes, plugins. Easily configurable & highly extensible. You can even protect downloadable files and streaming audio/video. Store files locally, or use s2Member’s integration with Amazon® S3/CloudFront.
s2Member is powered almost entirely by WordPress shortcodes, making complex integrations quick & easy. Sell recurring (or non-recurring) subscriptions with lots of flexibility. Or sell “Buy Now” access in various ways. You can also sell specific Posts/Pages, sell access to file downloads, or sell Custom Capabilities that provide highly configurable access to specific portions of your content.
Active installations: 20,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
WCFM Membership – WooCommerce Memberships for Multivendor Marketplace
WCFM Membership – WooCommerce Memberships for Multivendor Marketplace
A simple woocommerce memberships plugin for offering FREE AND PREMIUM SUBSCRIPTION for your multi-vendor marketplace (WC Marketplace, WC Vendors, WC Product Vendors & Dokan).
You may set up unlimited membership levels (example: free, silver, gold etc) with different pricing plan, capabilities and commission.
Active installations: 10,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
Restrict User Access – Membership Plugin with Force
Restrict User Access – Membership Plugin with Force
Restrict content and contexts to control what your users get exclusive access to, or drip content over time. Create an unlimited number of Access Levels and override user and role capabilities.
Use this plugin to quickly set up a membership site where your users can get different levels such as Gold, Silver and Bronze. Then, restrict access to e.g. posts tagged “Premium”, articles written by specific authors, or all your free products.
No coding required.
Active installations: 10,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
WP User Manager – User Profile Builder & Membership
WP User Manager
WP User Manager lets you create highly customizable user profiles together with custom user registration, login, password recovery and account customization forms to your WordPress website.
WP User Manager is the best solution to manage your community. Powerful and flexible, yet easy to setup and use. With WP User Manager you can create almost any type of website where your visitors can join and become members.
Active installations: 8,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
MembershipWorks is an advanced all-in-one membership, directory, events, and donation platform for chambers, associations, professional, networking and other membership groups. This plugin integrates your MembershipWorks account to your WordPress site. MembershipWorks is free for small groups and also free to try with the 50 member/account plan.
Active installations: 20,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
WooCommerce is a flexible, open-source eCommerce solution built on WordPress. Whether you’re launching a business, taking an existing brick and mortar store online, or designing sites for clients you can get started quickly and build exactly the store you want.
Active installations: 5+ Million
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
In addition to the free WordPress membership plugins described above, there are also free add-ons you can install for certain plugins that allow you to extend the features of your membership site.
For example, check out the add-ons below:
Simple Membership After Login Redirection
Simple Membership After Login Redirection
If you install the Simple Membership plugin, this add-on allows you to configure an after login page for each membership access level you create. It will automatically redirect members to the appropriate page after they log into your site.
After installing this add-on, edit your membership levels and specify the redirect pages and the add-on will take care of the rest.
Active installations: 10,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
Do you want to set up a membership site and sell products on your website and get paid with cryptocurrency? This plugin allows you to do this. It integrates with a number of popular platforms and eCommerce and payment solutions, such as WooCommerce, WP e-Commerce, BBPress, PaidMemberships Pro, Give Donations, AppThemes, Jigoshop, and more!
Active installations: 6,000+
Tested to latest version (at time of writing): Yes
As you can see, there are plenty of free WordPress membership plugins to choose from. To view more free membership plugins, just log into your WordPress dashboard, go to ‘Plugins’ > ‘Add New’, and type in ‘membership’ or ‘membership site’ into the Keyword search field.
Experiment with some of the membership plugins and add-ons described above and let us know how you go in the comments section below.
Learn how to set up a membership area on your website using built-in features of WordPress in this nifty step-by-step tutorial!
Let’s say that you (or your client) want to set up a membership area on a WordPress site with little to no money to spend on web development (sounds familiar?)
Whenever I hear someone mention that they want to set up a members-only area on their site (it happens a lot when you mingle with businesses who want to go ‘fully digital’, trust me!), the first thing I want to do is find out what they need and want to achieve.
Do they really need a fully automated membership site hosted on a dedicated server with all the bells and whistles, or just a basic way to protect access to some content for a specific user group?
The first step is to understand exactly what is required when the word “membership site” comes up. And the best way to do this is to make sure that you (or your client) have completed all the steps in the checklist below.
Running A Membership Site – Checklist
Membership Site Planning
Do you (or your client) know what a membership site is?
Why do you (or your client) need a membership site?
Do you (or your client) understand how a membership site works and the benefits of using membership sites?
Are you (or your client) aware of the different types of membership sites and membership models that can be set up?
What kind of membership site do you (or your client) want to run?
Will the membership site offer free and/or paid membership options?
Will the membership site incorporate other types of monetization besides member registration?
Do you (or your client) plan to sell or give away download links, or member-only access to information/physical products or services?
Do you need to restrict all of your content to members-only access, or just some of it?
Where will the member content be stored, accessed, or downloaded from?
Will you (or your client) require members to make single or recurring payments?
How will payments be processed and collected from new and/or existing members?
Will free/trial periods be offered to new members?
Do you (or your client) plan to deliver information or access to information about single or multiple products or services?
Will members get access to information all at once, or drip-fed over time?
Will new members have access to information that was made available to previously existing members?
Will your (or your client’s) membership site need different levels of membership or price points to be set up?
Will restricted access to certain types of users or member groups be required?
Are there any special features that your (or your client’s) membership site will require to run?
Who (and how many people) will administer and manage the membership site?
Membership Site Building
Will your membership site run on WordPress or a different platform?
Will your membership site be installed and set up under a different domain, or will it integrate with other areas of an existing site?
Are you (or your client) aware of all the components and processes required to make a membership site effective?
Do you (or your client) understand what plugins are and how plugins work in WordPress?
Do you (or your client) understand the main benefits and differences between using free, freemium, and paid plugins?
Have you ticked all the boxes in the checklist above?
Great! Then you should have a better understanding of things like how membership sites work and why you need one, what type of membership site you want to build, and the main features your site will need to manage and grow a membership effectively.
Preferably, you also have WordPress already installed on your domain with a reliable hosting provider.
Ideally, all you would have to do now is decide on the membership software that will be used to set up a member’s area on your or your client’s WordPress site.
But, with little to no money to spend on web development, what choices do you really have?
Well, you can use free WordPress membership plugins (we’ll discuss this in another tutorial), or you can use the “cheaper than free” method to build a simple members-only area on your WordPress site using the humble WordPress password-protect feature, which I’ll show you in just a moment.
Or … you can just watch the video below and jump right in!
Before we look at this method in more depth, let’s do a quick recap of some of the most important things to consider before setting up a membership site or members-only access area.
Why Do You Need A Membership Site?
Someone once said that there are two types of people: those who buy tickets to go to events, and those who create or run events and sell tickets.
Every time I pay my electricity bill or watch a movie on Netflix, I think about this. Although I enjoy being able to switch the light on, make popcorn in the microwave, and watch a movie on my laptop, I would also love to be the one collecting recurring dollars every month from millions of ‘switched on’ customers.
A membership site can be a ticket to ‘selling tickets’, but it doesn’t have to be something so big and it doesn’t have to generate income.
At its most basic, a membership site allows you to restrict specific content that you only want certain people to access. This can be premium information like news articles or niche content, tutorials, videos, e-books, digital downloads, or even special discount codes, wholesaler pricing lists, or access to a cloud-based service.
A membership site should fit your business model, not the other way round. For example, if you plan to sell t-shirts online, there are eCommerce solutions available with built-in membership functions that you can use to sell your t-shirts and restrict access to purchase information to customers (i.e. members) only.
Most eCommerce solutions include a member’s area for customer orders and account details.
Alternatively, your business model could be to grow a membership site based around a specific product or service and make t-shirts with your site’s logo available for sale to members. Both types of business models sell t-shirts online, but the way you would build your site and integrate a membership component into your business would require a different approach and different solutions.
Selling items to members inside a membership site.
Additionally, you may or may not even want or need to monetize your membership site. This could be more about giving access to information to members of a local club or organization, instead of a way to generate recurring subscriptions and passive income.
The same thinking applies if all your business needs is a way to build a list of subscribers. You don’t need a membership site to build an email list, you can do this with just an autoresponder service.
Why Add A WordPress Membership Site?
If your business model does suit having a membership site, then you will need a platform that can support building and growing your membership community on.
This is where WordPress comes in.
WordPress is the ideal platform to build and run a membership site.
WordPress is the ideal platform to build and run a membership site.
Let me save you weeks of research comparing different platforms for building your membership website or member’s area … use WordPress!
However you plan to structure your membership site, whether you need partial or full content protection, intend to sell just one or multiple membership levels, allow members to join for free, for a one-time fee, or charge a regular subscription, deliver content all at once or through a sequential drip-feed, WordPress is the ideal platform for setting up your membership site.
WordPress already comes with built-in functionality like user roles, user registration, mySQL databases for storing data, and privacy features and options that allow developers to extend, build and offer advanced membership features through easy-to-install, easy-to-use, and easy-to-customize plugins.
A WordPress membership site plugin builds on the native functionality and built-in features of the WordPress platform using hooks and filters to restrict access to content published in posts, pages, custom posts, RSS feeds, etc.
What Membership Plugin Features Does Your Site Need?
Many advanced features of WordPress membership plugins are only found in Freemium, Paid, or Pro versions and different WordPress membership plugins offer different features.
When planning your membership site and researching plugins, therefore, it’s important to know what you need and why, what you plan to offer and how it will be delivered, and how to take things to the next level if you want your membership site to grow.
There are three essential elements that all membership sites must have:
Membership Levels
The first essential element of a membership site is the ability to offer membership levels. Membership software or plugins should allow you to create at least one membership level. The best membership plugins allow you to create unlimited membership levels, but these are typically only available for premium (paid) plugins.
Membership Registration
The next essential element of a membership site is the ability to register new members. This is usually done through a registration form. If you are offering a free membership, you may want the registration page to be visible to all users. If offering a paid membership, you may want the registration page to be hidden from view or hard to access, especially if newly registered members are redirected or taken straight through to the content download section.
Content Protection
Having the ability to protect or restrict access to content so that only certain groups of users can have exclusive access is another essential feature that separates membership sites from other types of websites.
Different plugins will offer different content protection options and additional features such as partial content display, protected RSS feeds, etc.
Additional Features
When it comes to additional membership site plugin features, WordPress is only limited by the developer’s imagination.
Some of the features typically found in WordPress membership plugins, include:
Fully Automated Membership System
Easy Member Management
Approve Members Manually
Automatic Membership Upgrade
Login Redirection
Custom Registration Fields
Download Folder Protection
Integration With Payment Processors, Autoresponders & eCommerce
Multi-Site License
And so much more!
Basic membership site features.
The ‘Cheaper Than Free’ WordPress Membership Site Option
If all you need is a simple way to protect or restrict access to content like an ebook, PDF report, a video or a downloadable file like a price or contact list that you would like to provide to a select group of users like clients, customers, subscribers, friends, or even just your Mom, then you don’t need to install a WordPress membership plugin … just lock your content behind a password-protected page and send users the password via email.
Here are just some examples where setting up a simple members-only access area on your website can be useful:
A business has a trade or wholesale price list for agents or distributors that gets regularly updated.
An office or department wants to share a PDF with an updated list of passwords, codes, credit card numbers, etc. for internal use only.
An organization, community group, church, etc. wants to distribute information for staff or members only.
A school or sports team wants to give parents access to a contact list with details of other parents.
You want a really simple way to sell access to an information productor keep content on a download page hidden from site visitors.
Let me show you just how easy this is to set up:
First, create a new post or page …
Create a new post …
Note: If you choose to protect your content using a ‘page’, you can nest it inside other pages to create an additional layer of protection …
… or create a new page and hide it under Parent Page layers.
Next, add your content to your post or page …
Add content to your member’s only post or page.
Set the visibility of your post or page to ‘Password Protected’ …
Password-protect your post or page.
And ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ your post or page …
Publish your post or page.
This is what non-members (i.e. users without the password) will see when they visit the post or page containing your restricted content …
Password protected page.
To access the content, users will need to unlock the post or page using the password you’ve sent them.
Benefits Of Using This Method
The above method is useful if you plan to restrict content access to a specific group of users (e.g. clients, distributors, office or sports team, school class or their parents, etc.) and don’t mind them using a shared password.
Depending on what kind of information you provide in the protected content area, you can also change the password on a regular basis (e.g. monthly), and if you need to exclude access to individual users at some point, just change the password of the post or page and make sure only users who should have access to the content receive the new password.
You can also use the above setup to sell (or give away) one-time or sequential access to single or multiple information items.
Here is how to do this:
If you plan to sell access to your content, set up a landing page on your WordPress site with payment processing using an ecommerce plugin or a payment button (e.g. a PayPal button) and an email capture form to build a list. You can use a plugin like Forminator Pro Form Builder to capture contact details and collect payment.
A simple WordPress membership site using password-protected content.
With the above setup you can easily sell access to restricted content … even a subscription to sequential content!
For example, let’s say you want to sell monthly access to a year’s worth of content.
Here is how you would do it using the same basic membership structure:
Choose an ecommerce solution or plugin that offers subscriptions.
Create a landing page to charge users a monthly recurring payment and capture their contact details.
Create 12 separate password-protected posts or pages (for Month #1, Month #2, Month #3, etc.) and set a unique password for each of these posts or pages.
Add content to each of your password-protected posts or pages (add Month #1 content to Month#1 page, Month #2 content to Month #2 page, etc.)
Create an autoresponder sequence for each monthly instalment, so if you are selling a 12 month subscription worth of content, create 12 autoresponders set to fire off at monthly intervals and include the unique password that will unlock each month’s content in your email sequence (Month #1 = Password #1, Month #2 = Password #2, etc.).
Set up your autoresponder to send an email containing password #1 to new members as soon as they confirm their subscription (make sure they are only added to your email list after their initial payment has been successfully processed). Subscribers should receive password #2 a month later, then password #3 in Month #3, etc.
If a subscriber cancels their payment or subscription, remove them from your email list. You may need to do this manually, unless you use a plugin that integrates and automates ecommerce with list-building.
Basic membership with sequential content.
Obviously, the solution presented here has many limitations as it is designed for users with little to no budget, a single membership level, and no automation or advanced features. If all you need is a simple way to protect some content and provide access to a group of users and you don’t mind doing a bit of manual administration to manage things, then this tutorial will help you set up a simple members-only access area using the built-in password protection feature of WordPress.
If you do want something more advanced on a low budget, however, then WordPress membership plugins are the way to go, and we’ll cover these in another tutorial.
Can you see other uses for the setup shown above, or an even better or smarter way? Does your site need to restrict access to certain content? Do you use the password-protection feature in WordPress? Are you currently using any WordPress membership plugins? Post your comments below and let us know what you think!
I hope you have found the above tutorial useful. To learn more about setting up a membership site with WordPress and ways to grow your business online using membership sites, make sure to subscribe at the bottom of this page for fresh WP updates sent directly to your inbox.
School and university websites are about as challenging of a web design and development project as you could ever take on. A university website not only has to attract and recruit new students, it also needs to serve the individual needs of existing students, facilitate the distribution and exchange of information for faculty and staff, and promote fundraising and donation campaigns to alumni and the community at large.
As you can imagine, creating, managing, tracking and providing up-to-date content about courses, job openings, events, admissions, accommodation, research and development, social activities, discussions, and so much more across different segments of what ultimately must operate as a unified digital presence, can become very complex and extremely time-consuming.
Fortunately, universities and colleges, large and small, can manage all this quite easily if their web presence is built using the WordPress open-source platform.
WordPress powers over 30% of all websites worldwide. In fact, more websites today run on WordPress than any other platform. According to WordPress.org, almost 3.5 million schools, universities, colleges, and educational or learning institution sites worldwide are powered by WordPress. This includes sites at many prestigious universities like Harvard Law School, Cornell University, MIT, Duke, Vanderbilt University, the University of Berlin, Georgetown University, the University of Texas, and almost 50,000 other institutions for higher education worldwide.
(Just like Harvard Law School, many university websites are now powered by WordPress!)
To learn more about some of the top universities that use WordPress for their websites, see this article:
WordPress provides many features that make it the ideal platform for running a large university or college website, including a built-in content management system (CMS) and the ability to allow faculty and students to run separate websites for unique purposes such as discussion boards, college news, magazine websites, and learning management solutions to deliver courses online on their own servers using a multisite network.
As we will see in a moment, WordPress is not only an ideal platform for web developers to build amazing-looking, functional and sophisticated enterprise-scale websites, WordPress also makes it incredibly easy for university administrators, faculty members, and students to add media-rich content, collaborate on projects and assignments, and keep their information updated.
It is no wonder, then, that more educational, academic and learning institutions are turning to WordPress to power websites for schools, colleges, and universities.
Having said all this, however, there are a number of challenges that all large universities, colleges, and educational or higher learning institutes face when it comes to setting up and running an effective web presence. We address these challenges below and provide cost-effective solutions and links to useful resources and additional information that will help you understand and navigate through these challenges, and even provide you with a sound blueprint and strategy for building, growing, and managing a web presence for a large university, college, or educational organization.
And if you prefer, watch a video overview of this post here!
Challenge #1: Flexibility & Cost
One of the main challenges of choosing a platform and planning a website for a large university is flexibility.
(A university website is a complex digital ecosystem.)
A university website is a complex digital ecosystem. It is an interconnected amalgamation of different platforms that need to communicate and share information organically with different user groups (e.g. staff, faculty, alumni, and students), with different sections serving different purposes and performing different functions. And each of these sections and functions needs administration, management, and special access privileges.
For example, a university website may comprise of the following subsections:
Fixed Content vs. Dynamic Content Sections
Sections like an ‘About Us’ page tend to mostly contain ‘fixed’ information that is unlikely to change – perhaps with updates only every so often. In contrast, most university departments need to regularly publish and update ‘dynamic’ content in areas like news, research findings, program deadlines, etc.
Typically, traditional ‘websites’ are used to deliver information via fixed content pages, whereas ‘blogs’ are used to deliver dynamic or changing content. WordPress lets you set up sections under the same installation and domain name that can perform as a website, or as a blog.
Using the Harvard Law School website as an example, the site’s ‘About Us’ page comprises of a web page that has mostly fixed content…
(Most of the information on this page is not going to change that often!)
In comparison, the ‘Harvard Law Today’ section displays dynamic news articles, which are published on a regular basis and administered separately by different university faculties, departments, or individual lecturers, functioning, therefore, more like a ‘blog’ …
(This section of the university website displays dynamic content, like a blog!)
Information Delivery vs User Engagement Sites
Although most popular content publishing platforms allow you to set up both fixed websites and dynamic blogs under the same domain, no other platform can help you create a website that is as flexible and cost-effective as WordPress when it comes to delivering different types of information and allowing users to engage and interact directly with this information.
For example, consider what it would take to code and add a ‘Calendar of Events’ section to an existing university website …
(https://hls.harvard.edu/calendar)
Or develop and incorporate a separate program to add, update, and display current information about a curriculum or a catalog of courses and academic programs…
Now, multiply the time and development costs to build and integrate additional sections like:
Faculty or student directories
Student discussion boards and news bulletins
Private access to forms, services, and members
Online courses and online course content delivery platform
Content uploading/delivery/messaging/support
Career and job boards,
Handbooks and documentation sections for university policies, admissions, submissions,
etc.
Developing each of the above sections and then integrating these seamlessly with an existing website would be a very complex and expensive undertaking…unless you start with a platform designed to be modular and dynamic from the outset.
(Setting up a network of modular and customizable sections = the smart, effective & dynamic way to build and manage a university website!)
WordPress is that platform. WordPress is built to be modular, dynamic, and completely customizable. Because WordPress is an open-source software platform, it allows developers like WPMU DEV to create new functional extensions and ‘plug and play’ add-ons (called ‘plugins’) that behave like apps on a mobile phone, making the entire WordPress ecosystem versatile, flexible, scalable, and cost-effective.
The flexibility and cost-effectiveness of WordPress also extend to areas like template design and website navigation.
WordPress uses a unique ‘theme-based’ approach to web design, which allows users to change the entire look and feel of a website without affecting the underlying content and while preserving all of its functionality, like enhancements, menus, navigation sections, internal and external links, etc.
Planning and designing a website for a university using WordPress, then, is kind of like having shapeshifting abilities. WordPress gives you the freedom to start wherever you are and build whatever you need within your budget, add new sections whenever you need these as things grow and evolve, and then modify and customize anything and everything, anytime you need to, without losing any of the internal content, linking, or navigational architecture.
The best way to understand what a WordPress theme is and how it behaves is to imagine a ‘skin’ covering every element of the website that is visible to users. You can change a WordPress theme in a couple of clicks and the entire website’s appearance and layout will be completely transformed without affecting the organs, muscles, and bones of the organism within.
WordPress, however, lets you take things even further by allowing you to fully configure and customize both the exterior (web design) and the interior (functionality) of your web presence.
This flexibility and versatility makes WordPress the most powerful and cost-effective web platform available for building a large university website. You can start with ‘off-the-shelf’ themes and plugins and then add, remove, modify, enhance, and expand any and every aspect of the site as your organization’s needs grow and evolve.
For example, if we compare different university websites built using WordPress, you will quickly realize after looking at just a few sites how flexible and cost-effective the WordPress platform really is.
As you can see, no two websites powered by WordPress need to look alike using the same template, or behave in the same way using the same limited applications or functional elements.
One of the benefits of being an open-source program is that thousands of highly skilled professional developers (like the team here at WPMU DEV) have helped to build WordPress into what it is today.
But the power and flexibility of WordPress doesn’t even end here!
If you go back and study the above sites in more detail, you will see that some of the sections of these university websites were not built using WordPress. WordPress is so flexible that it can be installed separately under the same domain and then customized to display a seamlessly integrated web design that will match an existing section built using a different web platform (e.g. Drupal), while retaining its unique functionality.
To learn more about why WordPress is the obvious platform of choice when it comes to website flexibility and cost considerations, see the articles below:
As we’ve just seen, a university website is a complex digital ecosystem. WordPress makes it easier to plan, build, host, manage and maintain a website for a large university, college or school of higher education.
Here are just some of the reasons why:
Planning A University Website
Ideally, you want to fully plan out your website before you begin to build it. This includes all the website sections, web pages, web design (including color schemes, page layout, site navigation, typography, etc.) and other important areas such as digital administration (i.e. who is ultimately responsible for looking after all aspects of the web presence, including domain names, software licenses, etc.), digital management (web hosting, website and content management), and digital marketing (content, promotion, SEO, traffic, etc.).
(WordPress lets you change anything on your website … at any time!)
The open nature and scalability of WordPress means that you don’t have to be so rigorous and meticulous with your website planning, as you can easily add, change and reconfigure just about anything and everything on your web presence at any time. This allows you to build an effective web presence that is responsive to the needs of your users, instead of building a fixed website that will require spending additional time and money later to redesign, fix, or improve.
Building A University Website
Building a website for a large university with WordPress can also be a flexible, scalable, and modular experience. WordPress allows for multiple installations of the platform under your domain using subfolders or addon domains (such as “yourdomain.com/site1”, “yourdomain.com/site2”, or “library.yourdomain.com”, etc. ), a ‘multisite’ installation (one installation with multiple self-administered sites and a super administrator to rule them all!), or a combination of both.
For example, the illustration below shows how four separate installations of WordPress under the same domain (YourUniversity.com) can be set up for different uses (e.g. main website, news site, private access/membership site, and a multisite installation for separate faculty websites):
(A university website can comprise of multiple WordPress installations for different purposes)
Each of the WordPress installations shown in the example above can support sites that can expand with unlimited subsections, including WordPress Multisite.
What is WordPress Multisite?
Multisite is a core WordPress feature that allows you to create and run a network of sites on a single WordPress installation. With Multisite installed and activated, each site can have its own separate users and content editors and can be run for their own purpose (e.g. as a website or blog for each university faculty, school, or division), and everything is controlled by a ‘Super Admin,’ who can create new sites and set up accounts for individual users, and install, manage, and control which themes and plugins are made available to all other sites on the network (note: site administrators cannot install or make changes to themes or plugins on their sites, only the ‘Super Admin’ can do this).
Running a WordPress Multisite installation, however, has special requirements, which is why we recommend using our Enterprise Hosting services if you are thinking of setting up a university website with WordPress Multisite.
To learn more about WordPress Multisite and why nobody does multisite better than WPMU DEV, see the articles below:
When it comes to planning, building, and running a large university website, hosting is one of the most important technical considerations, especially if a network of sites and multiple WordPress installations will be used in your configuration.
In addition to fast, reliable, and secure hosting, large enterprises like universities, colleges and schools of higher education or other large learning institutions need to look at cost-effective enterprise-level dedicated servers and 24/7 technical support.
As WordPress is the world’s most popular and widely used platform for running CMS (Content Management System) websites and blogs, many hosting companies now offer enterprise-level dedicated WordPress hosting support and services.
In addition to having technical WordPress hosting expertise, the dedicated WordPress hosting team you choose to look after your site or network of sites also needs to have expertise in areas like WordPress security, development, and design.
Traffic can spike around the first day of classes or special events, and your website will be critical for your community should the unforeseen emergency or natural disaster occur. For these reasons, wherever you host your websites, you will want to ensure load balancing, auto-scaling, redundancy and more. You will want to ensure that at least some of your web presence is hosted ‘in the cloud’ or off-campus as well.
(CampusPress – A complete hosting solution for universities, colleges, and schools!)
CampusPress has been used since 2005 to power WordPress Multisite networks, websites, learning platforms, course blogs, ePortfolios, student projects and more for educational institutions, faculties, departments, schools, districts, and student organization sites around the world.
To learn more about the benefits of hosting your university site with our expert WordPress hosting services and solutions, visit the sections below:
Dedicated WordPress Hosting – Learn about our unique WordPress hosting services, including support, features, plans & pricing, enterprise-level hosting, security, optimization and backup automation solutions, site migration, access to our all-inclusive membership plugins, and more!
Managing & Maintaining A University Website
Managing a large university website can seem like a complex and overwhelming undertaking, but with WordPress, it doesn’t have to be.
WordPress comes with many built-in features that allow even non-technical users to easily manage and maintain a network of sites. Some of these features include:
A central administration area (called the ‘WordPress Dashboard’) with easy-to-navigate menus, admin toolbar, and help sections.
One-click and/or automated software, plugin, and theme installation and updates.
User roles and privileges (see next section) with individual user logins.
Customizable and configurable menus.
Customizable and configurable sidebar, header, and footer layouts.
A new modular architecture called ‘blocks’.
And many other automation features.
Speaking of automation, when it comes to managing WordPress sites, we recommend using The Hub, our streamlined site management solution.
(The Hub – Complete WordPress Site Management Solution)
The Hub makes managing every aspect of running multiple (unlimited, actually!) WordPress sites incredibly easy, including 24/7 access to support and exclusive members-only community, plus access to a central dashboard where you can generate reports, update core software, plugins, and themes, monitor site uptime and performance, run security scans and audits, perform backups and even improve your sites…all from one place!
Challenge #3: Site Administration, Content Management & User Training
Imagine your university website is all set up. Your network of sites is now up and running on a reliable, fast, secure, and optimized hosting environment and you have the peace of mind of knowing that, should anything go wrong, an entire dedicated team of WordPress experts is available 24/7 to help things keep running smoothly.
All that would be left to do now is:
Administer your sites,
Manage your content, and
Train users responsible for looking after the above areas in how to use WordPress effectively.
WordPress Site Administration
In the previous section, we touched on some of the requirements and built-in features of WordPress for managing just one or a network of sites.
To administer a WordPress website, however, also requires having access to specific privileges and permissions that other users shouldn’t have, like the ability to change login passwords, install or delete software, make global changes that affect page layouts, navigation menus, web design, etc.
WordPress addresses this challenge with a built-in system of User Roles & Permissions. Every WordPress installation includes a fundamental set of ‘out-of-the-box’ user roles with special privileges and permissions. These include:
Administrator – These users have access to all administration features and privileges on the site and can perform all the necessary functions associated with running the site.
Editor – Users assigned this role can review, edit, approve, schedule, publish, and manage their own and other users’ posts and pages.
Author – Authors can publish and manage their own posts and pages.
Contributor – Can write and manage their own posts, but not publish them.
Subscriber – Subscribers can only manage their profile and access specific areas of the site (assigned by an administrator) when logged in, that is not accessible to general site visitors and non-registered users. Typically, this role is used for customers or registered members of a membership or directory site. In the case of a university or college website, this role would be assigned to users like students, staff, or alumni for accessing or editing private/personal details, but not contributing content to the site.
Note that in WordPress multisite installations, the additional user role of ‘Super Admin’ is created. Super Admins have access to all sites on the network (administrators can only access their own site), including access to all backend features and can perform all functions.
WordPress Content Management
Some of the challenges of managing content on a WordPress site can be easily solved using the Roles & Permissions feature described above.
Every role below ‘Admin’ except for ‘Subscriber’ is essentially involved in managing content published on a WordPress site. This makes it easy to run a digital publishing department of any size, including an enterprise-level network of sites, such as the one that would be required by a large university or college.
For example, sites set up to publish information specifically related to all the various faculties, schools, departments and even student organizations, can assign roles and privileges to individual staff members, lecturers, students, alumni, or even third-party users like outsourced publishing departments, digital marketing service providers, professional or freelance content writers, etc.
This not only allows subject experts to author or contribute content to one or more sites providing university sites and blogs with user-generated content, it also allows groups of users like editors to edit, format and style the content, add links to other related articles, internal pages, or external sites, and other sections of the university’s digital ecosystem.
WordPress is made for creating, editing, and publishing media-rich content. Users can type or paste in text and compose, edit, or format content of any length, insert headings, images, videos, audio files, tables and other content elements using a visual editor or ‘blocks’, retrieve older auto-saved revisions, organize the content into nested pages, assign categories and tags, add excerpts, allow or disallow comments and replies, password-protect posts or pages or make these private, save the content as a draft or schedule to publish these at a later date, and so much more.
Additionally, WordPress makes available many plugins that are specifically made for advanced-level content publishing, including plugins that allow publishing departments, content calendars, content schedules, and content collaboration to be set up and run remotely, third-party integrations with various content services and service providers, and plugins that allow administrators to modify or customize user roles and permissions.
When it comes to creating, publishing, and managing content, therefore, WordPress provides universities, colleges, and large educational institutions with unlimited possibilities and configurations at every level of the content creation and publishing process.
WordPress User Training
The last challenge of running a large university website is training users to effectively manage and use the site. Fortunately, WordPress is easy to use and, thanks to a large community of enthusiastic WordPress developers and end-users, there is a whole lot of information available online on how to use WordPress and all its features, including detailed step-by-step written and video tutorials, podcasts, training manuals, guides, tips, and documentation.
Get Your University Website Running On WordPress
If you have been tasked with setting up a website for a university, college, school, learning institution, or even a large organization with a network of sites and a seemingly complex content publishing structure, then hopefully this article will have helped you understand just some of the many reasons why your site(s) should be running on the WordPress platform.
To recap:
Over one-third of all websites around the world are built with and powered by WordPress. This includes millions of websites and blogs worldwide, and over 3.5 million schools, prestigious universities, colleges, and educational or learning institution sites. Top universities host their sites on WordPress and we host thousands of CMS websites and blogs and learning platforms for schools, districts, and universities on CampusPress.
WordPress is built using open source software, which makes it completely scalable, flexible, and customizable. You can build just about anything you can imagine with WordPress, and once you have built it, you can then easily add new functionality, or change anything and everything at any time. We provide many award-winning premium plugins that are currently enhancing the functionality of hundreds of thousands of WordPress sites around the world.
Some of the main challenges of running a university website include flexibility and cost, web hosting and site management, site administration, content management, and user training. Fortunately, WordPress comes with many built-in features that can help you address these challenges. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of WordPress site owners choose our services and solutions (like dedicated WordPress hosting, site management, optimization, security, marketing, plugins, and support) to manage and grow their WordPress sites more effectively.
We hope that you have found this information useful. If you are new to WordPress and don’t know where to start, we recommend setting up a WPMU DEV account and trying all our services for FREE for the next 30 days, 100% risk-free! Click here to get started now…
If you’re planning to launch an ecommerce store, selecting the right platform to run your online business is one of the most crucial aspects of the process. This is because it will determine a lot of what you can and can’t do, how you’ll do it, and what it’ll cost you. While there are various options available, WooCommerce and Shopify are two of the most commonly recommended platforms. Given the conflicting opinions you get when comparing Shopify vs WooCommerce, it can be tough to know what to believe. To help you make an informed decision, we have compiled an in-depth comparison of these two ecommerce heavyweights. 
If you're starting an ecommerce site, you'll need a platform that can help you run your online business efficiently. There are many options available, but WooCommerce and Magento consistently show up on short lists. To cut through the fog and simplify things for you, we've put together a detailed comparison of these two popular ecommerce platforms. 
One of the best things about WordPress is that there is no shortage of quality themes available for the platform - most of which are free. However, investing in a premium WordPress theme can be a smart move for certain types of users, as they can really elevate a website to the next level. In this article, we'll take a look at some of the best premium WordPress themes on the market today, and explore the key features that make them worth the investment. 
If you're using Elementor to build your website, then you're probably someone who is highly motivated to create something that not only functions well, but is visually stunning. However, with so many "best Elementor themes" out there, it can be difficult to know which one to pair with this popular page builder. Well, you can rest assured that all of the Elementor themes featured on this list will not only look good, but will also provide you with the functionality you need to achieve your goals - whether that's to build a blog, an ecommerce store, or something else entirely. 
If you have a location independent source of income and are ready to book your next one-way flight, then this is the page for you! In this article, we're going to share our list of the best cities for digital nomads, organized by seven criteria - cost of living, visas, internet, weather, cuisine, safety, and lifestyle. 
Wondering how to measure traffic to a website – any website? Well, you’ve landed on the right page! Enter the almighty website traffic checker – a tool you can use for that exact purpose. 
