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Using AJAX and PHP in Your WordPress Site Creating Your Own Plugin

Good design is invisible! It’s like an air conditioner set on automatic temperature control. Until you feel too hot or cold, you don’t pay any attention to it, concentrating instead on the task at hand, or just enjoying your time.

For users surfing the web, Ajax is like an automatic air conditioner. It makes websites smoother and faster to use, resulting in a pleasurable experience. And most importantly, it just works!

If you prefer a video instead, you’re in luck!

Learn how to use Ajax Easily:

What is Ajax Exactly?

Ajax is a web development technique that stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. It’s used to create dynamic web applications that are interactive and fun. With Ajax, you don’t have to wait for the web page to reload to see a change. Everything’s taken care of automatically in the background without disrupting what you’re doing, thereby enhancing your user experience.

Ajax at work!

You’ve probably come across Ajax on the web already. Google Search’s autocomplete feature is perhaps the most popular one. Google Maps is another. Live refresh of tweets, Facebook comments, Reddit posts, YouTube likes, all these incredible user experiences are made possible thanks to Ajax and related technologies.

In this post, I’ll give you a quick intro to Ajax, list its advantages, explain how it works in WordPress, and then we’ll dive headfirst into creating a simple WordPress Ajax Plugin.

Sounds fun? Let’s get started.

The Basics of Ajax

Ajax uses a combination of programming languages such as HTML/CSS, JavaScript, XML/JSON, and a server-side scripting language (PHP, ASP.NET, etc.). It works by sending data from the browser to the server, which processes it and sends back a response. This response is used by the browser to update the web page without reloading it.

Here’s how it usually goes:

  • A user action triggers an event in a browser (like a button click).
  • The Ajax call activates, which sends a request to the server, using XML/JSON.
  • The server-side script processes this request. It can also access the database if it needs to.
  • The server then sends a response back to the browser.
  • A second JavaScript function, called a callback function, receives the response and updates the web page.
infographic illustrating the basics of Ajax

The Many Advantages of Ajax

  1. Minimizes bandwidth usage and optimizes network operations, as the servers won’t be required to process loads of data.
  2. Saves time for both the users and the server, as the user can see the response from the server immediately.
  3. Increased performance. Since no full-page data is being sent, Ajax improves the performance, speed, and usability of web pages/apps.
  4. Increased responsiveness. By eliminating full-page reload, websites will be swifter and highly responsive, thus more user-friendly.

Skills Needed to Work with Ajax in WordPress

  • Knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (jQuery is enough)
  • Basic familiarity with XML or JSON data interchange formats
  • Know-how of PHP for server-side scripting

If your jQuery or PHP knowledge is touch and go, don’t fret! You can still follow the tutorial logic. Feel free to hop into the comments section if you’re stuck or need help with something :)

Intro to Ajax in WordPress

The core of WordPress already uses Ajax, but only in the admin screens. For instance, when you’re moderating comments or adding/deleting items from categories or posts, you can see instant updates thanks to Ajax. It’s also the tech behind the much loved auto-save functionality.

Ajax is most commonly used with jQuery functions on WordPress, as it’s much simpler when compared to VanillaJS. Moreover, WordPress core already comes loaded with the jQuery library.

Here’s what the process for using Ajax in WordPress looks like:

  1. The user triggers an Ajax request, which is first passed to the admin-ajax.php file in the wp-admin folder.
  2. The Ajax request needs to supply at least one piece of data (using the GET or POST method). This request is called the action.
  3. The code in admin-ajax.php uses the action to create two hooks: wp_ajax_youraction and wp_ajax_nopriv_youraction. Here, youraction is the value of the GET or POST variable action.
  4. The first hook wp_ajax_youraction executes only for logged-in users, while the second hook wp_ajax_nopriv_youraction caters exclusively for logged-out users. If you want to target all users, you need to fire them both separately.
  5. Plan the hook functions for graceful degradation. It ensures that your code will work even on browsers with JavaScript disabled.
Infographic illustrating how Ajax is used with WordPress

Let’s Create a WordPress Ajax Plugin

Every great journey begins with a single step, and so does our learning. Let us build a basic WordPress plugin called Post Likes Counter with the following features:

  • Logged-in users can like posts.
  • The plugin keeps a tally of the total number of post likes and displays them.
  • The post likes counter is updated instantaneously on the front-end.
  • Logged-out users will be shown an error message if they attempt to like a post.

To start, create an empty WP plugin and activate it. If you need help with this, you can refer to our WordPress plugin development guide. WordPress Codex also has a detailed page on writing a WP plugin.

Find Your Theme’s Post Template

After that, you need to find your theme’s single.php post template. It’s used when a single post is queried, which is where we want our post likes counter to be. This file can be found in the root folder of your active theme. Keep it open for editing.

Get the Post Template Ready for an Ajax Call

Let’s create a link here to let users like posts. If a user has JavaScript enabled, it’ll use the JavaScript file we’ll create later; if not, it’ll just follow the link directly. Place the code given below in your single.php file.

Loading gist 1379ac822720e8c8c1860209a2bfe323

Alternatively, you can add this code to any of the template parts your single.php file includes. For instance, if you’re using the official Twenty Nineteen theme, you can insert this code in your theme’s content-single.php file. For testing this plugin code, I inserted it in this file at the very end of its div.entry-content section.

Addressing the Ajax Call Without JavaScript

Clicking the link created above will take you to the admin-ajax.php script, but you won’t see any useful output as you’ve not created any function yet to run your action.

To do that, create a function in your plugin file and add it to the two hooks that were created by WordPress for you. Follow the code shown below:

Loading gist 5b77823b65250637eee4396d8abcc5a0

If everything checks out, when a logged-in user clicks the Like this Post link, the like counter above it should increase by 1 automatically. For browsers with JavaScript disabled, the page will refresh, but it’ll still show the updated like count.

The function to handle logged-out users doesn’t do much here except for throwing up an error message. It’s only meant to serve as an example. You can, of course, build on this and give your visitors more helpful options.

Finally, Adding Support for JavaScript

It’s a good practice to add support for JavaScript towards the end, as it makes things much clearer. To use Ajax on WordPress, you need to enqueue jQuery library as well as your plugin’s custom JavaScript file. For this, go to your plugin and append the following script:

Loading gist c4ba96f5ac2997b294c70c90b82d43d3

Once that’s done, it’s time to create the liker_script.js JavaScript file. Then you have to upload this file to the location referenced in the previous code (hint: it’s your plugin’s root folder). Here’s the code for liker_script.js:

Loading gist 9d3183eeca419da10b9ff997ef236b87

The my_user_like() function defined in our plugin should send our browser a response as a JSON-encoded result array, which can also be used as a JavaScript object. Using this, we can update the post like count without reloading the web page.

And that’s it! Hurrayyyyyy!

You’ve now enabled Ajax functionality for your plugin. Of course, you can expand on this and add more features as per your liking. Go ahead, tweak it till you make it!

Screenshot showing our simple post like counter on the frontend of a post. "Like this post" link that increases the count each time you click it.
Our simple post like counter. You can add styles, animations, and other scripts to level it up.

Notable WordPress Plugins Which Use Ajax

Need some Ajax inspiration to fire you up? Check out these amazing WordPress plugins that use the power of Ajax to build powerful features and smoother user experiences.

  1. Lazy Load Plugins
    Lazy Loading is a web development technique used to improve initial page loading time. It’s done by delaying the loading of resource-heavy assets that aren’t visible to the user in their browser’s viewport. These assets are loaded automatically when the user scrolls down the web page. The free version of Smush supports lazy loading.
  2. Forminator
    A completely expandable form maker plugin that also supports polls, quizzes, order forms with payment options, etc. It has an option to enable form submissions with Ajax, making it a seamless experience for the users.
  3. Login With Ajax
    Power your WordPress site with smooth Ajax login and registration effects with this feature-rich plugin. If you’re looking to give your users a better login and registration experience than the default WordPress one, look no further.
  4. WP-PostRatings
    This simple plugin adds an Ajax rating system for your WordPress website’s posts and pages. It also adds shortcode support for the ratings, so that you can display them anywhere you want.
  5. YITH WooCommerce Ajax Product Filter
    An extremely helpful and powerful plugin for WooCommerce that lets you apply the exact filters you need to display the product variations you’re looking for. Ajax makes sure that it all happens in a jiffy.
  6. Ajax Search Lite
    A responsive, live search plugin for WordPress, powered by Ajax. It also includes Google autocomplete and keyword suggestions. Give your users a better search experience on your website with this plugin.
  7. Simple Ajax Chat
    Have you ever wondered if you could chat with other users on a website, live? This Ajax-powered plugin is the answer to that. It’s mobile compatible and is built to be extremely customizable as per your liking.

Head over to WordPress.org’s plugin repository for more brilliant Ajax implementations.

Keep Calm and Ajax On!

What’s good for the <body> is good for the user and server too, but you need to balance it out. Ajax is a powerful tool in your arsenal to enhance website performance and user experience. But you should only use it where it’s necessary. Always focus on the user experience aspect. It’ll be a bit rough in the beginning, but once you’ve mastered the basics of Ajax, there’s no stopping you!

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The Top eCommerce Trends To Keep An Eye On in 2019

New eCommerce trends emerge at a staggering space. It’s hard to keep up-to-date with them all, so we’ve researched and collected the hottest eCommerce trends of 2019 in this post.

eCommerce sales will account for 10% of money spent by shoppers this year. If you run or manage an eCommerce store, it’ll help you a great deal knowing the latest trends in your industry. After all, knowing is half the battle won!

While you don’t have to follow all the trends listed here, the knowledge can help you identify areas in your online store where you can improve.

Let’s go!

Get Chatty

They’re almost everywhere now. The global takeover of chatbots is imminent. Over the last year, Chatbots recorded a massive 24.3% growth (CAGR). In a end-user survey, 45% of users preferred chatbots as their first choice for raising customer service requests.

In another study by Drift, 38% of consumers preferred engaging with a bot over a human.

Say hello to our new chat overlords!

2020 is going to be a big year for chatbots. Salesforce’s global “State of Service” survey (August 2019) found that 53% of service organizations are planning to use chatbots within the next 18 months.

With the rise of messenger apps such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, chatbots are slowly invading users’ mobiles too. And for a good reason.

Chatbots help you reach your customers in a fun and meaningful way. And it happens with the least friction possible. There’s nothing to download or install, no registration or login page. It’s right there for the users to jump in right away.

Think Inside The Box

Everyone uses email—to keep in touch with friends, family, and their favorite brands. There’s a new use for emails now: email checkouts. It’s a way for consumers to complete their purchase directly from an email.

Interactive emails were popularized by a startup named RebelMail (acquired by Salesforce recently). It has grown in usage tremendously since then.

Interactive emails with checkout feature directly in the inbox
Checkout without leaving your inbox.

Interactive emails allow subscribers to take quizzes, review products they’ve purchased, and even checkout abandoned carts, all within the body of the email itself.

For instance, Old Navy used it to let customers view photos of a product, choose its color & size, add it to their cart, and then finish the purchase.

Here’s a cool interactive email from Harry’s that suggests a product based on your choices (this ties into the personalization trend too).

Despite the rise of other communications channels, emails are still the most used medium. It makes sense then that brands will maximize its potential by letting customers buy directly from their inboxes. Its scope is so huge, that it just may give rise to a new eCommerce category—emailCommerce.

It’s Time To Get Personal

Delight your customers with how unique they are to get great marketing results. A study by Experian Marketing Services found that personalized emails achieve 6X higher transaction rates than those that aren’t.

To win at personalization, you need to cover your customer’s journey from start to finish. A majority of shoppers do research before committing to a purchase, so help them with that. Build personalized content and search features to attract your target audience.

Reward your customers for sharing their personal information. You can then use this data to personalize their shopping experience. And later, you can customize your customer loyalty schemes too.

Guide your customers throughout their online shopping journey.

For instance, Victoria’s Secret guides you with a sports bra selector interface. The North Face helps you find the perfect jacket. Bodybuilding.com helps you find the right supplement in just three easy steps. IKEA’s planner tool helps you plan your dream home.

Victoria Secret's Bra Selector interface
Know your customers’ secrets to serve them better!

Personalizing the consumers’ shopping experience helps simplify purchasing decisions by helping them find exactly what they’re looking for.

Brands that learn how to do this will have better chances of winning against their competition.

Keep Your Users Hooked

Instagram’s ad revenue more than doubled in 2018 and generated 9 billion dollars. This growth is mostly due to its new eCommerce push, and is expected to continue through 2019.

Currently, Instagram is the No.2 social media platform with 768 million monthly active users (MAU), right behind its parent company Facebook. By 2023, it’s expected to reach more than 1 billion MAU.

Instagram's new Checkout on Instagram eCommerce feature Yet another Insta-hit in the making. (Source: Instagram)

Instagram’s eCommerce-friendly features are growing by leaps and bounds. Their product tagging feature and shoppable Instagram Stories stickers have been a huge success with brands and marketers alike.

Early this year, they announced the Checkout on Instagram feature (still in beta), which allows shoppers to buy products they see on Instagram without leaving the app. Nike, Adidas, H&M, Prada, and Burberry are some of the top brands testing it out right now.

All Hail The Supreme Leader Of Marketing

If content is king (or queen), videos are the supreme leader.

55% of online users watch videos every day.

90% of consumers think product videos are helpful in making a buying decision.

Facebook generates more than 8 billion video views daily.

Having a video on your landing page increases conversion rates by 80%.

The math is simple. Invest in video marketing.

WPMU DEV's YouTube Channel Screenshot Have you subscribed to our superhero league yet?

Another area to pay attention to is Live Video Streaming. According to Social Media Today, live videos drive 300% more engagement than regular videos. It’s slated to be the next big trend in video marketing for driving engagement and conversions.

Create A Seamless Shopping Experience

Mobile is still on the rise. By 2021, 53.9 percent of all eCommerce sales are expected to happen on smartphones. A majority of consumers browse products or services on their mobiles, but finish their purchase on a desktop.

An top view of a desk with a person holding tablet. Also seen are a laptop and a smartphone along with various gifts.
Be there for your customers on all major devices and platforms.

Hence, it’s important to have your eCommerce store present on all devices. This is called an omni-device eCommerce strategy. It helps customers switch shopping easily between their various devices.

Even inside a physical store, 80% of shoppers used a smartphone to look up product reviews or compare prices. They usually visit social media pages, YouTube, and review sites to feel confident about their intended purchase.

Thus, it becomes crucial for brands to have a presence on all platforms. Even if they’re majorly a retail brand. This is called a omni-channel strategy.

An omni-platform and omni-device strategy puts your customers at the center of your marketing efforts, rather than your brand. It aids them in their shopping journey, no matter which device or platform they’re on.

If you already have an eCommerce store, it’s worth checking out the benefits of Progress Web Apps (PWA). PWAs are websites that work pretty much like apps, but they’re platform independent. So, they work on almost all devices. They’re heralded to be the future of mobile apps.

Super Progressive Web Apps is a highly-rated WordPress plugin that you can use right now to convert your WordPress site into a PWA.

The Future Is Unreal

Virtual Reality gives customers an experience that’s equivalent to traditional shopping. Well, almost. Plus, there’s no hassle of traveling and being physically present at the store. If you’re wondering how, here’s a cool in-store VR demo by inVRsion.

According to a survey conducted by Frulix—a virtual reality startup that helps create VR videos right inside your browser, 72% respondents said they’d be interested in buying things through a VR experience. 58% thought that VR could be a game changer for retailers.

As per IDC, spending on virtual and augmented reality is predicted to surpass $20 billion in 2019. IKEA, Converse and Lego are some of the top brands who have invested heavily in VR and AR.

Conver's AR app to try their shoe styles virtually with your phone
Converse’s AR app lets you try their styles virtually.

As the VR space picks up pace, eCommerce brands will need to create better experiences for their consumers. It’s definitely a trend to keep an eye on (pun intended).

Raise Your Voice

Voice-commerce accounted for $2 billion in sales last year, according to OC&C Strategy Consultants. This number is estimated to grow to $40 billion by 2022.

Voice assistants like Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa are growing popular day-by-day. They can be used hands free while doing other things, and also help you get answers and results faster.

"Alexa, Play Despacito" meme
And buy me a bag of chips while you’re at it!

Naturally, using them for purchasing things is just a matter of time. More than 62% of households that own smart speakers have used voice assistants to buy groceries. And 35% of them have used the same to buy retail items.

As the tech matures, eCommerce businesses are eager to leverage this new platform to create dynamic shopping experiences for their users.

EMarketer predicts that smart speakers market in the US will grow to 76.5 million by 2020. This combined with consumers’ preference for smart assistants would mean that voice-commerce will play a significant role in the growth of eCommerce industry.

Move Fast And Don’t Break Things

On the internet, slow speed kills. First, it kills businesses by damaging their conversion rates. And then, it kills them by damaging the site’s reputation.

According to a user study by Google, 53% of smartphone users abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. And 79% said that they won’t return to a site with poor performance.

That was a major reason behind Google’s Speed Update to their search algorithm last year. With all things being constant, the faster your site loads, the higher it’ll rank in Google’s search results.

WPMU DEV Hosting's landing page screenshot
Get your eCommerce store a partner that makes it fly!

Hence, if you’re running an eCommerce store, you need to go with a reliable hosting partner that delivers (hint: WPMU DEV Hosting is blazing fast).

Online shoppers are looking for speed and performance. Just make it happen!

Let’s Go (Social) Shopping

More people today shop online, buy items on social network platforms, become brand ambassadors and contribute to other users’ purchases through User-Generated Content (UGC) and buying recommendations.

Instagram, for example, let’s you set up a mobile shopfront, tag products in photos, videos, and stories, and turn posts into opportunities for millions of users to buy from your store. You can display your Instagram shop and products on other social platforms like Facebook and on your WordPress eCommerce store.

With a little creative thinking, you can launch UGC initiatives like competitions asking customers to share photos and stories of themselves consuming, wearing, or engaging with your products and services. Users can share products they want with their social network and get feedback and suggestions on purchases from their friends.

Wallis website with user generated content request notice highlighted
User-Generated Content marketing campaigns are a growing social eCommerce trend.

Did You Just Propose To Me?

How do you tell customers that both they and your business are special and deserve to be together? Successful eCommerce businesses are finding ways to do this by combining their Unique Selling Proposition (USP) with personalized user experiences.

Focusing on micro-markets, building a community, and holding in-depth conversations with potential and existing customers are just some of the ways businesses are accessing better user data to figure out what customers are looking for, deliver them a unique and special experience, and create the perfect match.

In a recent BazaarVoice survey, 70% of retailers listed personalization as a top priority [PDF]. With trends like dropshipping, vendors can craft a unique selling proposition, set up online stores focused on micro selling, and use personalization tools to improve customer engagement on their website.

Laptop screen with illustration of a group of people holding signs.
Customers want to buy special things from special places that make them feel, well… special!

Sell Once, Get Paid Forever

Frictionless shopping is all about making the buying process faster, simpler, less stressful, and more enjoyable to consumers. Subscription-based eCommerce is a perfect example of this.

According to global management firm McKinsey, subscription eCommerce has grown by more than 100 percent each year for the past five years. Online subscriptions alone generated more than $2.6 billion in sales in 2016 (up from $57.0 million in 2011).

Whether customers buy online to avoid running to the shops all the time or to save themselves the embarrassment of asking for personal products over the counter, more companies are offering auto-shipped products, allowing users to subscribe and get anything and everything home delivered.

Amazon subscribe and save store page.
With subscription services, you never have to run out again and inconvenience yourself.

If It Looks Like A Duck And Thinks Like A Duck…

New eCommerce experiences are combining artificial intelligence (AI) with augmented reality (AR), particularly in areas like mobile commerce.

AI and AR are separate but complementary technologies. AI-based predictive technologies can learn and identify users’ buying patterns and behaviors to tailor-make customized shopping experiences and generate timely offers, and 3D-based modeling with AR tools can be used to let users visualize, ‘test out’ and ‘try’ things like homeware products and clothing apparel or accessories before they buy.

By 2022, BusinessWire predicts that global retailer spending on AI will reach $7.3 billion per annum by 2022 (up from around $2B in 2018), and PR Newswire estimates that over 120,000 online stores will use AR to offer their customers a richer buying experience and that by 2020, 3% of all eCommerce revenue with be generated by AR experiences.

image of camera showing augmented reality picture of a couch.
Augmented reality lets you couch things in different material perceptions and try before you buy. Source: augment.com

One eCommerce Channel To Rule Them All

How can you target your ideal customers online when there are so many places they can be found? Businesses today need to have an online presence everywhere and be able to deliver an exceptional level of personal service that will make customers feel special and want to return and buy again and again.

The key is to be very targeted in your marketing efforts and concentrate on building your business using a multichannel (omnichannel) approach that provides customers with a seamless, consistent, and personalized shopping experience no matter where they are located or how they interact with you.

So… if you want to get somewhere with them, be everywhere and be there for them!

Omnichannel marketing illustration.
Wherever they are, be there and be ready to serve them!

Something Old And Something New

If you believe that the growth of eCommerce will lead to the demise of brick and mortar stores, think again. Retailers are embracing eCommerce and finding new ways to augment the online experience with physical stores.

Many brands are profiting from ‘brick and click’ stores that combine retail and eCommerce, require less physical footprint areas and employees to operate, and offer a more personalized and interactive in-store visit. Amazon’s “4-Star” stores, for example, let customers interact with top-selling devices and products in person.

Digital kiosks allow users to engage directly with the store. Pop-up shops, trade shows, and mobile field reps are embracing flexible technologies like POS-enabled tablets, mobile card readers, on-site/on-demand printing, and flexible space leasing arrangements.

Customers today can order meals in restaurants through interactive menus, and fashion retailers are placing tablets inside change rooms, so shoppers can request more clothing items to try on. Some retailers are even integrating virtual shopping experiences of their physical stores and showrooms using AR technologies.

Tesco virtual store inside a Korean subway station.
Buying groceries from virtual stores underground is a totally ‘off the wall’ experience.

We Know What You’re Searching For

Remember the good ole’ days when you spent hours online researching gaming laptops to find one that fits your budget and used keywords like “Alienware 13 Gaming Laptop PC i7–5500U GeForce 960M” to search for it in your favorite computer store website?

Well, you no longer have to. Typing long keywords to search for products is so 2018! Intelligent search algorithms and filters are getting better at learning what customers are looking for, even if they misspell the words or just search for things like “gaming laptop under 2000”.

Smart technologies like dynamic filters allow customers to quickly sort and find what they want on sites with huge product catalogs and many variations like prices, size, color, budget, brands, makes, models, and more.

We’re not quite at the “Think It – Found It” stage yet of product search, but we’re definitely getting closer…

Amazon product results page.
Smarter search technologies know what you need… probably better than you do.

eCommerce Security: No Blankie Solutions

With eCommerce, success ultimately depends on customers feeling confident, safe, and secure when buying online. It’s estimated that retailers will lose around $130 billion in digital CNP (Card-not-Present) fraud between 2018 and 2023.

There are no blanket solutions that can address all online security concerns, but eCommerce security methods and standards are evolving.

More businesses are now implementing multilayered fraud management strategies to reduce risk, improve data security, and increase consumer trust and confidence. This includes choosing eCommerce platforms with secure shopping cart software that meets PCI security standards, sensitive data encryption, multiple firewalls, and no credit card data being stored on sites.

Image of man with credit card making an online purchase.
This website is PCI compliant? Then shut up and take my money already!

Has eCommerce Lost Its Head?

eCommerce began as a way to order and buy products online through desktop computers and web browsers. When people began making digital purchases using mobile phones and wearable technologies to ‘tap and pay’ for purchases, companies realized they had to rethink their approach to eCommerce.

The solution? Headless commerce. This is where the frontend and backend use different services and platforms to handle eCommerce processes. Customers interact with the frontend like a browsing a website, mobile app, or scanning a QR code label on the back of a wine bottle, and a separate platform handles backend areas like managing and tracking inventory, processing transactional data, payments, shipping and fulfillment, invoicing, and other functions using various web services and Application Programming Interface (API) calls.

The benefits of headless commerce for web developers means spending less time putting together an entire eCommerce solution for clients, focusing on creating a better experience for their users instead, and then easily joining the frontend and backend together to get projects done faster.

Simple diagram to illustrate headless commerce.
Headless commerce lets you grow your eCommerce business without getting a head.

Next Steps… A Roadmap To eCommerce Success

The eCommerce trends listed above have a common thread. It’s all about making the customer’s online shopping experience safer, more convenient, and more personalized.

While the idea of using innovative technologies like chatbots, AI, AR, virtual reality, and voice search to engage customers in your online store may seem a little daunting, the basics of business haven’t changed. It’s still all about delivering on the promises you make.

If your eCommerce store runs on WordPress, we can help you. We are the all-in-one WordPress platform that can provide everything your business needs to run an online store on WordPress, from super-powered hosting to technical support, site management, and award-winning plugins. Just ask some of the tens of thousands of members who choose our services for WordPress security, performance, SEO, marketing, and more!

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How to Install WordPress on AWS

Cloud computing has taken the world by storm. It’s the most cost-efficient, secure, and reliable way to host any online project. And Amazon Web Services (AWS) sits right at the top, showering us with its amazing and powerful cloud infrastructure.

Amazon is known for its online shopping portal, but if you dig deeper, you’ll realize that they’re way bigger than you’ve imagined them to be. AWS is a powerful cloud computing platform that lets you harness their superior infrastructure for your own online projects. In fact, it’s so powerful that quite a few top companies in the world use it, including Netflix, BBC, LinkedIn, and even Facebook.

AWS is usually reserved for larger projects, but you can still take advantage of its power and scalability if you’re up to the task. In this step-by-step tutorial, I’ll show you how to install WordPress on AWS in just a few minutes.

Let’s deploy!

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a flexible and secure on-demand cloud computing platform. Think of it as renting a bunch of computers to do with them as you wish, including setting up a server to host your WordPress website.

AWS uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, so you’ll only pay for the cloud infrastructure and resources you end up using. Depending on your use case, this can be a huge advantage or a big drain on your pockets.

Why AWS for WordPress?

There are many advantages of going with AWS for hosting your WordPress site. Here are the most important benefits:

  • Complete Ownership: AWS gives you total access to servers, storage, databases, and other application services. While AWS only owns the hardware for running these services, you’re in complete control of the server, including all your data.
  • Agility: Though the era of move fast and break things has kinda come to an end, the philosophy still endures. The cloud gives you easy and fast access to a broad range of technologies, so that you and your team can innovate faster.
  • Better User Experience: The AWS service is blazing fast, as its maintained by Amazon in multiple locations all across the world. This means lower latency and faster load times, and thus a better experience for your users.
  • Highly Scalable: With AWS, you have access to as much or as little computing infrastructure. You can scale up and down at the click of a button as per your website’s needs.
  • Cost Savings: The cloud allows you to own a server without any capital expense like data centers, servers, etc. And since Amazon takes care of all the infrastructure at scale, they can provide the service for you at a significant discount.

Some Considerations

This tutorial is the quickest and most economical way to get WordPress up and running on AWS. It’s perfect for websites with low traffic or no strict high availability requirements. If you’re looking to set up WordPress on AWS for a high traffic site, you can still scale up this deployment later easily.

Let’s Deploy WordPress on AWS

Step 1: Sign Up for an AWS Free Tier Account

AWS Free Tier gives you a 12 months free, hands-on experience with most of the services offered by AWS platform. It’s the best way to get started with AWS. Sign up for an account here.

Step 2: Go To Your AWS Management Console

To start off, log into your AWS account and open the AWS Management Console.

Step 3: Launch an Amazon EC2 Instance

In your AWS Management Console, find EC2 under Compute, and double-click on it to open the EC2 dashboard. Here, click Launch Instance to create and configure your EC2 instance.

Step 3: Install WordPress on your EC2 Instance

The AWS Marketplace has a lot of Amazon Machine Images (AMI) that you can use to quickly setup a good deal of common software. The AMIs are usually pre-configured with the ideal settings for running on AWS. We’ll be using one such AMI to install WordPress.

Click on AWS Marketplace on the left menu, search for WordPress, look for WordPress powered by BitNami, then hit the blue Select button.

Step 4: Confirm the Pricing for Your Instance

You’ll be presented a detailed pricing page. Don’t fret. Here, the price will be $0.00 for the software, regardless of the size of the instance that you use. Scroll to the bottom and select Continue.

For this tutorial, we will be using a free-tier eligible t2.micro instance. Click on t2.micro in the Type column, then click Next: Configure Instance Details. It may take a few seconds for it to load.

On the following screens, click Next: Add Storage and then Next: Tag Instance.

Step 5: Set the Key and Value Pair

Set a name for your instance. Enter Name in the Key box and WordPress in the Value box. Click Review and Launch to continue.

Step 6: Review the Instance One Last Time

Here, you can review your instance configurations before clicking Launch. This will start your Amazon EC2 instance running WordPress.

Step 7: Configuring Key-Pair for SSH

Key-pairs are how you can connect to your EC2 instances with a terminal program using Secure Shell (SSH). If you don’t know anything about SSH, you needn’t worry. Just keep in mind that you need to have a key-pair to log in to your terminal. We’ll not be setting a key-pair here.

Select Proceed without a key pair, and check the box to confirm that you know you need this key to access your EC2 instance.

Click Launch Instances to launch your instance. It may take a few minutes to start the instance.

Step 8: Your WordPress Instance is Running?

Click View Instances on the bottom right (you may need to scroll down). Then select the WordPress instance, make sure the Instance State says running. If Instance State says launching then AWS is still preparing your WordPress instance.

Step 9: Test Your Site

Once your instance is running, you can now test your WordPress website. Find the Public IP for your instance at the bottom of this page.

Copy the Public IP into a new tab in your web browser, and you should see the familiar Hello World WordPress home screen (the theme may vary depending on the installation type).

And there you go! You’ve successfully installed a new installation of WordPress on your AWS EC2 instance.

Step 10: Configuring Your WordPress Website

Now that you have your WordPress site up and running, it’s time to log into its admin page, so you can customize its settings. But to do that, you must find your admin password first. Here’s how you do that:

Go back to your EC2 dashboard and select your WordPress instance. Then, click the Actions button. In the drop down menu, select Instance Setting > Get System Log.

Scroll through the system log window to find the password. Hint: You can find it surrounded by hash marks. Copy the password to an external file.

Go to your WordPress website. Add /admin to the end of the URL, so it looks something like 55.192.55.555/admin. Hit enter. This will take you to your WordPress site’s login page.

To login, enter the default username (user) and the password that you just copied.

Congratulations! You can now manage, customize, and configure your WordPress site as you like. I suggest you to change your username and password right away.

Next Steps

You can work on this WordPress site to finalize its content & design, but once done, you’d want to point it to your custom domain name so that your users can access it by typing it in their browsers. Here’s a simple guide by Amazon on how to do that. It’s also recommended to set up monitoring and notifications for your instances.

Deploying a Highly Scalable WordPress Site on AWS

The site we built here is good for a simple blog or a low-traffic business website, but if you’re looking to build a WordPress site for a business with high traffic, you need to go further. And this doesn’t come cheap. Here’s a great guide by Amazon on how to deploy a production-ready WordPress website on AWS.

Further Reading: This white paper by Amazon details how to improve both the cost efficiency and the user experience of your WordPress deployment. It also outlines how to address common problems associated with scalability and high availability requirements.

Great Freedom, Greater Responsibilities

Hosting your WordPress site on AWS can give you complete freedom over your server along with amazing performance, but setting it up is highly challenging. And maintaining it is even more so.

On a cloud host, you’re responsible for updating your server’s software packages and maintaining its security patches. You’re also in charge of making sure that the server’s resources are properly scaled as and when needed. And lastly, you need to take care that you don’t go broke when you finally see the bill. All this on top of making sure that your site is live at all times.

There’s a common joke in sysadmin communities. “Being a sysadmin is as easy as riding a bike. Except, the bike is on fire, and you’re on fire, and the road is on fire too. In fact, everything is on fire!”

That’s where a managed WordPress hosting solution like WPMU DEV Hosting comes in. It gives you the same performance as cloud hosting, but without worrying you about maintaining the server or its security. The pricing is fixed too. Everything’s taken care of for you by experts who live and breathe WordPress.

However, if you think you can take on the challenges of being a server admin, more power to you. Sysadmins rule!

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How to Reset WordPress Websites Quickly (Including Multisite)

Life has no CTRL+Z, but thankfully, your WordPress site does. Whether you want to test various themes and plugins quickly, or you just want to wipe the slate clean and start over, resetting your WordPress site is the way to go.

Deleting WordPress and re-installing it is such a hassle. Why not hit the reset button instead and return it to how it was when you first installed it?

In this post, I’ll show you how to reset your WordPress site in a few simple steps.

The second half of the tutorial will cover how easy it is to reset your WordPress site with a single-click on our Hosting, even if it’s a Multisite. This solution is particularly helpful for everyone, since the free reset plugins don’t work with WordPress Multisite installations perfectly.

Ready…Steady…Let’s go.

Still having trouble resetting your WordPress site after reading this post? Let our experts help! Big or small, our awesome support team can help you with any WordPress issue — and for FREE! Whether it’s Monday lunchtime or peak party hours on the weekend, our team is available 24/7.

Prefer a video instead? We have you covered.

How WordPress Works

Before we discuss the solution, let’s understand how WordPress works. You can, of course, skip this section and head to the solution right away, but I suggest you stay a bit.

WordPress is a series of files on your server working in tandem with a database (MySQL or MariaDB) to store and retrieve information.

An inforgraphic showing a quick overview of how WordPress works
The left side serves the right. The right side makes requests to the left.

By default, WordPress ties every installation to a single database on your web host. This database stores all the information of your WordPress site: settings, blog posts, pages, comments, usernames, passwords, links to files, where to find them, etc.

It stores all this information as values under distinct tables in the database.

Think of a database as a huge box with multiple books inside it, aka tables. And each book stores particular information, like comments or settings. And each entry in the book is a value, like your username, email, etc.

If you could reset all the tables in the database to their initial values, aka erase all the pages of all your books, you’d be resetting your WordPress installation.

But this won’t delete the files you’ve uploaded or downloaded to your WordPress site, such as media, themes, plugins, etc. However, most WordPress reset plugins provide an option to delete these files, either selectively or all of them.

Now that you’ve understood the theory, let’s move ahead with the practicals!

How to Reset a WordPress Site
(Standalone Installations)

Step 1: Install and Activate the WP Reset Plugin

The first step is to go to your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > Add New, search for WP Reset plugin by WebFactory Ltd., and then click Install Now and Activate it.

WP Reset Plugin Download Page Screenshot
You can also download and install the plugin manually.
Screenshot showing How to Install and Activate the WP Reset Plugin
Search for “WP Reset” in WordPress.org’s plugin repo.

If you’re wondering why I chose this plugin over others, it’s the highest-rated WordPress reset plugin with the most installs. It’s well-supported by its developer with regular updates, and it’s totally free!

Step 2: Go to WP Reset Dashboard

Next, go to Tools > WP Reset to open the WP Reset dashboard.

The WP Reset Dashboard, it's warning users what will be deleted and what not on resetting WordPress

You’ll see a warning here saying that resetting will delete all your site’s posts, pages, custom post types, comments, media entries, users, and all the default WP database tables.

However, your media files, plugins, themes, any other uploads, your site’s settings, the logged-in user’s account, they will all remain as is.

You should keep in mind that the media files will not show in your media library even after the reset, though they’ll still be present on your server. We’ll cover how to delete them quickly later.

Step 3: Hit the Reset Button

Scroll down to the last section in the WP Reset dashboard called Reset.

Now, before you type in “reset” and hit the Reset WordPress button, in the section above Reset, you’ll find the Post-reset actions section.

Here, you can instruct WP Reset to Reactivate the current theme (off by default), Reactivate the WP Reset plugin (on by default), and Reactivate all currently active plugins (off by default).

I’ll go with the default options, but if you plan to install the same theme and plugins later, and just want to reset all the other content, checking these options here will save you time later.

Warning: You need to take note that this is 100% destructive. It will wipe out your current WordPress site completely, and there’s nothing you can do to get it back. THERE is NO UNDO! Unless, you’ve taken a backup of your site. If you haven’t, I recommend it highly. You can use UpdraftPlus or Snapshot Pro to do the same.

3...2...1... Reset. And we’re done. It’s that simple!

Cleaning Your Old WordPress Files

The Reset WordPress button is great to restore your site’s database to its initial condition. This ensures that your WordPress installation is back to its shiny new self. But it doesn’t clear out all your site’s old files.

To help you with performing a clean wipe, WP Reset comes with additional Tools in a separate tab.

Warning (Again): WP Reset is not a backup plugin. There is no CTRL+Z. Proceed with extreme caution if you have taken no backups.

Delete Transients

Delete all transients of your WordPress site

Transients are WordPress options with an expiration time. They help with speeding up your site and/or reducing stress on your server’s resources. It perfectly suits transients to act as a cache for the right data. This option deletes all transient-related database entries, including expired, non-expired, and orphaned transient entries.

Clean Uploads Folder

Delete all files and folders of your WordPress site's Upload folder

This will delete all the files in your /wp-content/uploads folder, including any sub-folders and files inside them. It’ll also delete all your media files.

Reset Theme Options

Reset your WordPress site's theme options

If you’re looking for how to reset WordPress themes, this is it. This option will reset settings for not just your active theme, but all your installed themes. However, for this option to work, the theme should use the official WordPress theme modification API. If the theme developer is using some custom methods to save the theme options, this won’t work.

Delete Themes

Delete all the themes in your WordPress site

Clicking this will delete all your themes, including the active one.

Delete Plugins

Delete all the plugins in your WordPress site

This option with delete all plugins except for WP Reset, which will remain active after it deletes all the other plugins.

Empty or Delete Custom Tables

Empty or delete all the custom tables in your WordPress database

If you have any custom tables in your database with wp_ prefix, this option will either empty or delete them. Emptying (truncating) removes all content from the tables, but keeps their structure intact. Deleting (dropping) removes the tables completely from the database.

Delete .htaccess File

Delete the .htaccess of your WordPress installation

This action deletes the .htaccess file in your WordPress installation’s root folder (not recommended unless you know what you’re doing). If you just want to edit the .htaccess file from your dashboard, you can use the free WP Htaccess Editor plugin from the same authors. Plus, it automatically creates backups of your .htaccess file as you edit it.

Advanced WordPress Reset with WP-CLI

You can execute all the tools available in the WP Reset plugin interface with WP-CLI. Run wp help reset to get a list of the commands available.

Using WP Reset through WP-CLI command line interface

Additional help for every command is available via the default WP-CLI help interface. Do note that you need to confirm all your actions for the sake of security.

If you want to skip confirmation for the commands, use the --yes option. remember though, as with GUI, there’s no going back here too!

How to Reset WordPress Multisite

There’s no free plugin, including both the highly rated WP Reset and Advanced WordPress Reset, which reset WordPress Multisite installations perfectly.

In a Multisite setup, WP Reset plugin disables itself in the Network Admin dashboard. This is to prevent unnecessary harm to the entire Multisite network, since it’s not tested to work with it.

WP Reset is not totally compatible with Multisite
WP Reset team warns users against using it in Multisite setups.

WPMU DEV Hosting to the Rescue

When you use WPMU DEV Hosting to convert your standard WordPress installation to a Multisite network (WP-MU), he automatically takes a backup of your complete site.

A very smart and time-saving feature!

You can identify this backup by its Type value “Pre-Convert to Multisite.”

The WPMU DEV Hosting Dashboard
Easy, automatic backup pre-Multisite setup.

Thanks to this backup, you can reset your WordPress Multisite to how it was before. I recommend you to take a New Backup before you restore the old backup, just in case you change your mind and want to go back.

To reset the WordPress Multisite, click on the three dots icon on the far right end of the backup listing, and then select Restore from the drop-down menu.

Restoring backups at the click of a button in WPMU DEV Hosting
‘1-Click Restore’ will change your development life forever.

And………tadaaaa!!! WP Reset has revived your WordPress Multisite as a single entity. As long as you have a backup, you have unlimited lives to play out this game!

Subsite Resets in a WordPress Multisite

What if you don’t want to reset the entire WordPress Multisite network, but just reset one subsite on it? You have two options here:

1. Complete Reset: Delete the subsite and re-create it with the same name. Not only will your subsite be as good as new, you’ll also delete all its media, themes, plugins, and any other uploads. A total reset of your subsite.

Resetting a Single Subsite on WordPress Multisite network by deleting and recreating it
Deleting subsites is a breeze in the latest WordPress version.

2. Database Reset: Use a plugin such as WP Reset to restore the subsite to its initial state. You must follow the same instructions as you would with a standalone WordPress installation. With this method, you won’t lose the subsite’s files. However, just like resetting non-WP-MU sites, the media won’t be visible in your subsite’s media library after the reset.

Fret not! You’ll still have the option to delete them all, under WP Reset > Tools tab. Note that the WP Reset team suggests, “We don’t recommend to resetting the main site.” It’s up to you though. As long as you have a reliable backup and the will to take a risk, it’s worth it!

WP Reset says that "we don't recommend to resetting the main site. Sub-sites should be OK."
Don’t use WP reset on the main site of your Multisite network.

Warning (Yet Again): Take backups before you try to reset anything. I can’t stress this enough.

Live. Die. Reset.

Debugging WordPress is hard, time-consuming, and often frustrating. It can take hours to find, test, and fix even the smallest bugs. Resetting your WordPress installation with just a single click makes your life easier, so that you can test and debug various themes and plugins quickly and efficiently.

WPMU DEV’s Fully Managed WordPress Hosting is made by developers for developers. No bloat or fluff added. Just the tools you need to get your job done without pulling your hair out.

Also, it’s the closest you’ll come to feeling as badass as Tom Cruise, unless you’re actually Tom Cruise. In that case, we can definitely fulfill your need for speed, should you accept this mission.

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Why is WordPress Free? Who Pays For It? How Much Does It Cost?

Millennia ago, a cool compassionate dude took a few loaves of bread and fish and multiplied them to feed thousands of hungry folks. Or so the myth/belief goes, depending on how you view it.

Almost 2 thousand years later, humans would invent technology that would pretty much allow the same: Code.

So, “what does this have to do with WordPress?” you may wonder.

A lot, actually! We’ll come back to this in a bit.

Is WordPress Really Free?

This is a question many who are looking to create their first website ask.

And the answer is YES.

WordPress is a free and open-source software (FOSS) that you can use, modify, and redistribute as you wish.

Note: By WordPress here, I mean WordPress.org, the self-hosted, free, open-source platform. Not WordPress.com, it’s a related but totally different commercial cousin. You can read more about their differences here.

“But I Still Have to Spend Money to Use It, Right?”

Also YES.

While WordPress, the software, is free, using it to create a live website does incur some costs.

This isn’t a limitation of WordPress as such. All websites hosted online work this way, whether you use WordPress to build them or not.

You need to rent resources on a web host to serve your WordPress site to the world.

WordPress hosting costs as little as $4/month to 1000s of dollars depending on your site’s needs. Most website owners settle for something in between, striking the perfect balance between value and cost.

Note: If all you want to do is try WordPress out, just to experiment or learn, you can do it without spending any money by installing WordPress locally on your PC.

But Why is WordPress Free?

This is easier to grasp by reading the license.txt file included with every WordPress download.

“This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.”

What Exactly Does “Free Software” Mean Though?

To understand this, we have to go back in history and take a look at the origin of free software movement (FSM). It’s a social movement with a goal to guarantee certain freedoms to software makers and users alike.

It’s inspired heavily by the traditions and philosophies of the 1970s hacker and academia culture, which encouraged sharing knowledge and DIY.

FSM was founded in 1983 by Richard Stallman by launching the GNU Project at MIT. It was (and still is) a mass-collaboration, free-software movement, the likes of which humanity had never seen before.

Its turning point came in 1985 when Stallman established the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to support FSM. A few years later, in 1989, Stallman wrote the GNU General Public License (GPL or GNU GPL) for use with programs released under the GNU Project.

But Why Free?

Code isn’t like tangible goods. For instance, if you have an apple, and I take it from you, I now have an apple and you don’t have one. However, if you have software and you share it with me, we both have the software now.

In a way, code is an intangible thing like knowledge or ideas. You don’t lose your knowledge or ideas if you share them with others. On the contrary, it only makes them even more widespread. Free software is meant to do the same.

Another ethical argument put forward by FOSS advocates is that since the software can be copied and distributed at scale with minimal resources, the super high profit margins make it unjustifiable beyond a certain point.

Most of the richest companies in the world today are software companies. Many of them use FOSS tools in their daily work, while still keeping their core software locked. And they keep getting richer and richer.

These two arguments are essentially the main reason why FSM activists want code to be free.

On GPL and Free Software

GPL has gone undergone two major revisions since its inception in 1989 (v2 in 1991 and v3 in 2007). But its core philosophy has remained the same. It’s defined by its adherence to 4 Fundamental Freedoms that are considered essential to any “free software”:

  • Freedom 0: Run the software for any purpose.
  • Freedom 1: Study how the software works through open access to its source code, and change it to do what you want.
  • Freedom 2: Redistribute copies of the software to anyone without any restrictions.
  • Freedom 3: Modify the software, and redistribute the modified software to anyone.

WordPress.org lists these freedoms as their philosophy too.

One core tenet of GPLv2 license is that if you make any modifications to the software licensed under it, the modified code MUST also be licensed under GPLv2, and released along with build & install instructions.

Note: As per FSF’s definition, not all open-source software is “free software” (free as in freedom, not free as in beer). But all “free software” is by definition open source.

Some prominent software licensed under the GPL include:

  • Linux Kernel — powers the Linux OS, which in turn powers most web servers
  • MediaWiki — the wiki software on which Wikipedia runs
  • Android OS (major parts of it) — the most used mobile OS in the world, uses the Linux kernel
  • WordPress — powers more than 33% of all the websites

With these stats, I’m not exaggerating when I say that free, open-source software has changed the world.

WordPress as a Free Software

WordPress was born out of the same philosophy as FSM. It was created in 2003 by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg.

They started it by forking a popular-but-abandoned blogging platform called b2/cafelog.

You may find this hard to believe, but the most popular blogging platform today was itself conceived in a blog post by Matt, and its co-founder Mike, was the first one to comment in support of it.

"Fortunately, b2/cafelog is GPL, which means that I could use the existing codebase to create a fork, integrating all the cool stuff that Michel would be working on right now if only he was around. The work would never be lost, as if I fell of the face of the planet a year from now, whatever code I made would be free to the world, and if someone else wanted to pick it up they could. I’ve decided that this the course of action I’d like to go in, now all I need is a name. What should it do? Well, it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right?"

– Posted on January 24, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg on his b2/cafelog blog.

"Matt,
If you’re serious about forking b2 I would be interested in contributing. I’m sure there are one or two others in the community who would be too. Perhaps a post to the B2 forum, suggesting a fork would be a good starting point."

– Comment by Mike Little on Matt’s post

They could fork b2/cafelog because it was released under the GPLv2 license, so anyone was free to do with it as they wished. As such, WordPress was also released under the same GPLv2 license (and still is to this day).

The WordPress founders established The WordPress Foundation in 2010 as a charitable organization to further the mission of open source, GPL software.

It’s also a way to distance themselves from it to avoid conflicts of interest since they also have a commercial service running in parallel called WordPress.com.

Today, WordPress is updated continuously and maintained by The WordPress Foundation and thousands of contributors from all walks of life.

What About WordPress Themes and Plugins?

As per GPLv2 license, all derivative works, such as plugins or themes of WordPress, should inherit the license too.

Drupal (another popular CMS platform), which uses the same GPL license as WordPress, has a well-drafted Licensing FAQs page that explains what a “derivate work” means clearly.

However, in practice, this is much harder to enforce. There’s some legal gray area when it comes to what’s derivative work or not. According to WordPress.org’s licensing page: “we feel strongly that plugins and themes are derivative work and thus inherit the GPL license.”

How Do People Who Make WordPress Make Money Then?

This is a question that has been troubling many FOSS developers for decades.

How does one make money while providing the code they work on for free?

The simple answer is that you don’t make money by selling the code alone. There are many other ways to do so.

WordPress contributors and developers can follow any of the business models of open-source software. They can use their knowledge and expertise to serve as consultants and/or provide support. Or perhaps, they can build custom applications on top of WordPress for clients ready to pay for their professional services.

Some WordPress developers also make money by creating valuable themes and plugins. These can be completely free (supported by voluntary donations or crowdfunding), free with restricted features (paid premium add-ons), or totally pay-to-use.

A few of these developers have gone on to found successful multi-million dollar enterprises. Some even offer hosting solutions optimized for WordPress.

Automattic Inc., a company started by WordPress founder Matt, is the perfect example of this. It’s notable for its WordPress.com platform, which provides an easy way for everyone to build a website without worrying about hosting and other tech-heavy stuff.

WPMU DEV, the company whose blog you’re currently reading, is another example of a successful business built around WordPress. If you’re looking for more inspirations, here’s a list of some of the most successful WordPress businesses.

Hello, WordPress!

WordPress marches on as the most popular platform to build websites. Whether you want to build a simple personal blog or a complex website selling thousands of products, WordPress can do it all with ease.

There are 54,000+ free plugins listed on WordPress.org’s repo alone, some of which are exceptionally excellent. As our commitment to the free software movement’s mission, we’ve released free versions of our most popular pro plugins on WordPress.org.

You can also find many beautiful free themes for WordPress and build any kind of website in minutes. And if you want to go even further, WPMU DEV offers top-notch premium plugins and supercharged hosting, not to mention our stellar 24/7 support.

If you’re using WordPress in any way, take pride in knowing that the spirit of the free software movement lives on through you!

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The Definitive Free WordPress Plugins List (2019)

Ever wondered if you can make your car fly? Perhaps, all you need is a set of wings, a new engine, a control stick, and air safety features. While I can’t guarantee that your car will fly after those upgrades, the right set of plugins can definitely skyrocket your WordPress site to new heights.

There are 54,000+ plugins available on WordPress.org repo alone. And they’re all either free or follow a freemium model. Either way, they’re free for you to use.

If you’re new to WordPress, this makes it extremely tough for you to find the perfect plugins for your website. Heck, I’m an experienced WordPress developer and even I struggle to find the right one sometimes!

To help with this, I’ve scoured the depths of WP.org’s repository to find these golden set of free WordPress plugins. And I’ve tested them all to make sure that they work as advertised and are updated constantly.

These plugins are arranged by category (rather than listed randomly) so that it’s easier for you to go through them. Some plugins may have overlapping features, but that’s fine. I trust you to use better judgement.

Your goal should be to install as few plugins on your website as possible. This ensures that your site’s performance isn’t affected by too many plugins. With that being said, let’s begin.

Form Plugins

Forminator

Forminator is the only free form maker plugin that allows you to create forms AND polls, submissions, quizzes, and order forms. Its drag-and-drop interface is a breeze to build the form exactly as you envision it. You can also submit blog posts from a form if you want.

Its powerful API can also be accessed for free to build your own custom extensions.

Forminator supports integrations with third-party apps such as Zapier, Google Sheets, Mailchimp, and many other email marketing apps. You can even collect payments with Stripe or PayPal through it.

There’s no free form plugin for WordPress that has these many features available for free. You really need to try it to believe it.

Get Forminator Here

SEO Plugins

SmartCrawl SEO

SmartCrawl boosts your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) with its one-click setup, automatic sitemaps, improved social sharing, a real-time keyword and content analyzer, scans, reports, and much more.

It is designed to increase your site’s traffic without making it hard for you. This gives you more time for concentrating on other areas of your website. As your website grows, SmartCrawl’s autopilot features help it grow along with you, making sure that it always has your back.

Get SmartCrawl SEO Here

Yoast SEO

The OG WordPress SEO plugin since 2008. It’s still going strong after a decade, having 5+ million active installations as of this writing. Though many worthy competitors have emerged recently, it’s still the go-to choice of many WordPress developers and designers.

Yoast SEO tries hard to do everything, and it succeeds in many ways to please both search engine spiders (bots) and visitors. As of now, it’s the #1 rated SEO plugin on WordPress.org’s repository.

It’s huge popularity has a downside though. With so many users out there, it’s hard for their team to give dedicated 24/7 support to all of them.

Get Yoast SEO Here

Speed & Optimization Plugins

Hummingbird

Google recommends that your site should load within about two seconds. Hummingbird makes sure that it does. Hummingbird scans your site and provides one-click fixes to speed it up. It does this through various performance-boosting techniques such as caching, minification, compression and merging.

With Hummingbird, you can see the overall score for your site’s speed, and if it’s lacking in some areas, it suggests you the most appropriate fixes for them. In no time your site will be running as fast as a Hummingbird flaps its wings. Faster load times mean higher search rankings and happier visitors, which further means even higher search rankings, and so on.

Get Hummingbird Here 

WP-Optimize

WP-Optimize is an all-in-one site optimization plugin that cleans your database, compresses your images, and caches your site. It’s simple, popular and highly effective to keep your website fast and thoroughly optimized.

Its minimal setup is easy for beginners to get used to, but if you’re looking for more features down the line, it’ll be a hassle to install a new plugin and set it up. Overall, WP-Optimize brings most optimization features together in a single lean and efficient plugin.

Get WP-Optimize Here

W3 Total Cache

Trusted by over 1+ million websites, W3 Total Cache improves the performance and user experience of your site by reducing load times. It uses features like caching, minification, CDN integration, and the latest best practices to get it done. And it does it all without you having to change your core files, theme, plugins, or how you produce your content.

W3 Total Cache is a web host agnostic Web Performance Optimization (WPO) framework for WordPress, which means that it works on all types of WordPress hosting setups. It’s no wonder that it’s trusted by millions of website owners and developers worldwide.

Get W3 Total Cache Here

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress site. After an HTML file is created, your web host will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier WordPress PHP scripts.

As most of your visitors will be served static HTML files, this will decrease the load on your server. Thus, your users get to experience faster load times and performance. Its simple mode is easy to set up and makes your website load pretty fast. However, if you’re looking for more, there’s also an expert mode which gives you more options at the cost of complexity.

Get WP Super Cache Here

Media, Gallery & Slider Plugins

Smush

Smush is an award-winning image compression plugin. It has been benchmarked and tested to be the leader for speed and quality. Smush is the most popular image optimization plugin for WordPress, and also the most popular WPMU DEV plugin. I’m not exaggerating when I say that you need to add this to your must-have WordPress plugins list!

It not only compresses your images, but also meticulously scans every image you upload – and the ones you’ve already added to your library. Thus, all the unnecessary data is eliminated even before you even see it on your site. Your user’s data plan will also thank you for its exemplary service.

Get Smush Here

Photo Gallery by 10Web

Photo Gallery is a popular plugin for building beautiful, mobile-friendly galleries. Its simple interface makes it possible to create them in just a few minutes. Photo Gallery comes packed with amazing layout options, gallery and album views, multiple widgets, and a bunch of other extensions that.

It’s a great choice for photography and media-heavy blogs. If you have a site that needs robust image galleries with easy navigation, give Photo Gallery a try.

Get Photo Gallery by 10Web Here

Smart Slider 3

“Smart Slider 3 is a gift from the gods.” I heard one of our developers remark that in the chat recently, and they couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s the most powerful and intuitive slider plugin for WordPress. Its intuitive live slide editor makes creating slides fast, easy and efficient.

The sliders you create with it are fully responsive, SEO optimized, and work with almost any WordPress theme. Creating beautiful slides to tell your stories has never been this easier.

Get Smart Slider 3 Here

SVG Support

SVGs are the bomb! Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) are becoming a rage in modern web design, but WordPress doesn’t support this file format out of the box yet. That’s where this plugin comes in.

SVGs allow you to embed vector images with small file sizes that are scalable to any size. And without losing quality. Apart from enabling SVG support, this plugin also adds features that allow you to add styling and animation to your SVG elements.

Get SVG Support Here

Security Plugins

Defender

Defender is layered security for WordPress. And it’s amazingly easy to setup. Defender scans your server and files, and then it adds all the hardening and security tweaks your site needs in just a matter of minutes, if not less. It’s highly efficient at blocking brute-force attacks without any noticeable impact on your website

It’s also one of the few free security plugins that support 2-Factor Authentication. The 2FA is also very simple to set up. Defender’s 2FA keeps you and your sites better protected than any simple IP blacklisting security plugin.

Get Defender Here

WordFence

With over 3 million active installs, WordFence is the most popular firewall and security scanner plugin for WordPress. Its firewall and malware scanner is built from the ground up to protect WordPress.

Wordfence constantly updates itself with the newest firewall rules, malware signatures, and malicious IP addresses. This keeps your website safe at all times. It’s perhaps the most comprehensive free WordPress security solution available.

Get Defender Here

iThemes Security

iThemes Security gives you 30+ ways to secure and protect your WordPress site. It works round the clock to lock down attacks on your WordPress site, fix common holes, stop automated attacks, and strengthen user credentials.

Experienced users also have access to advanced features which  they can use to harden their WordPress sites even better.

Get iThemes Security Here

Marketing Plugins

(Newsletter Signups, Popups, CRM, etc.)

HubSpot All-in-One Marketing

HubSpot’s All-in-One Marketing plugin is essentially a form and pop-up builder with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. It also includes live chat and an integrated free contact database (CRM). This helps you can capture your visitors’ information easily.

HubSpot will collect submissions off any form you have on your WordPress website (even if it’s built with our free Forminator or Hustle plugins). It then automatically adds those new leads into your CRM.

You can also segment your contact database into lists and personalize your emails using any CRM property. And all of this for free! It then generates a report on your email’s overall success and let’s you see how each contact interacted with your email campaigns, all thanks to its built-in analytics.

Get HubSpot All-in-One Marketing Here

Hustle

Hustle is the ultimate marketing plugin to grow your business. It lets you easily grow your mailing list or display targeted ads across your site with pop-ups, slide-ins, lead generation forms, social media share bars, widgets, and shortcodes.

Since it’s made by the same awesome developers here at WPMU DEV, it integrates perfectly with the equally amazing form builder plugin Forminator. Thus, you can embed your forms, polls, and quizzes into popups and slide-ins for interactive lead generation. Grow your following faster and capture more leads with Hustle.

Get Hustle Here

Mailchimp for WordPress

This plugin does one thing better, and that’s it. It helps you grow your Mailchimp lists and write better newsletters. MailChimp for WordPress also allows you to create good looking opt-in forms easily.

It integrates with any existing forms on your site, including those created by Forminator. The developer has also made it easy to modify and extend its default features with various filter & action hooks.

Get Mailchimp for WordPress Here

Analytics Plugins

Google Tag Manager for WordPress

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is Google’s free tool for everyone to manage and deploy analytics and marketing tags. Currently, GTM is Google’s recommended method to add Google Analytics tag to your websites. This plugin helps you place the GTM container code snippets onto your wordpress website easily.

You can also insert multiple GTM containers with this plugin. It complements your GTM setup by pushing page meta data and user information to your DOM’s data layer. It also lets you add your Google Optimize container with the recommended code.

Get Google Tag Manager for WordPress Here

Google Analytics Dashboard by MonsterInsights

With 2+ million active installs, MonsterInsights is without a doubt the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It’s the simplest way to properly connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics. MonsterInsights also allow you to enable all advanced Google analytics tracking features.

But the best part of MonsterInsights is its Google Analytics Dashboard widget for WordPress. It shows you actionable analytics reports right inside your dashboard. Thus, you can see exactly what’s working, what’s not, and take immediate action. No more juggling around!

Get Google Analytics Dashboard Here

Social Media Plugins

Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons

This plugin lets you add share buttons and icons for over 200+ social media platforms. Some of the popular ones include RSS, Email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube, and ‘Share. You can even upload custom share icons of your choice.

You can pick from several design options and make your icons ‘float’ or ‘sticky’. The plugin also scours the respective social media platform’s APIs to display the proper like/share numbers beside your social media buttons.

Get Social Media Share Buttons and Social Sharing Icons Here

Comment & Spam Reduction Plugins

Akismet Anti-Spam

I have just two words for you: get this! Akismet comes standard with most WordPress installations, and it’s for a reason. It checks your comments and contact form submissions against a global database of spam to prevent your site from publishing malicious content.

If any spam is detected, it’s sent to the review section under Comments in your dashboard. The more you help clear spam or identify false positives, the better Akismet gets at what it does best. Say no to spam!

Get Akismet Anti-Spam here

Disqus Conditional Load

Disqus is a great commenting system platform, but there’s one major drawback with it: it’s super bloated, especially so on WordPress.

Disqus Conditional Load is an advanced version of Disqus Commenting System, which boosts your page loading speed. This free plugin adds advanced features like lazy loading, shortcodes, comment widgets, script disabling, and more to your Disqus-powered website. And the best part, it uses pure JavaScript.

Get Disqus Conditional Load Here

Backup & Migration Plugins

UpDraftPlus

I can’t stress enough the importance of setting up automated backups of your website. Thankfully, we have free plugins like UpdraftPlus that make automatic site backups and restoration a child’s play. With 2+ million active installs, it’s the most popular scheduled backup plugin for WordPress.

With UpdraftPlus, you can backup your files and database into the cloud. You can also restore the backups with a single click. It supports backing up to popular cloud storage solutions like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Amazon S3.

Get UpdraftPlus Here

Duplicator

Duplicator enables you to move, migrate or clone your WordPress site between domains or hosts. And with zero downtime. It can also clone a live site to your localhost setup for development.

The most useful feature of Duplicator is to transfer a WordPress site from one host to another. You can perform a full WordPress migration without any messy import/export sql scripts.

If you’re planning to bundle up an entire WordPress site for easy reuse/distribution/backup, Duplicator also supports that.

Get Duplicator Here

All-in-One WP Migration

All-in-One WP Migration does what it suggests. It exports all the things in your WordPress website, including the plugins, database, media files, themes, and everything else.

Once exported, you can then upload it to a different WordPress installation. Do note that there’s a limit on the file size in the free version. If your site is more than 512MB, you need to look elsewhere. For smaller WP sites though, this plugin is perfect!

Get All-in-One WP Migration Here

Admin Management Plugins

User Role Editor

User Role Editor allows you to change user roles and their capabilities easily. Just select a user role and turn on/off the capabilities you wish to, and then update to save your changes. That’s it, no need to mess around with complex PHP scripts anymore!

You can also add new roles and customize its permissions according to your needs. Unnecessary roles with no users assigned can be deleted to keep things simple. The best part, Multi-site support is provided for free with this plugin.

Get User Role Editor Here

WP Reset

Ever messed around with your WordPress site so much that you wished you could reset it all and start over? That’s exactly what WP Reset does. It quickly resets your site’s database to the default installation values, without modifying any files.

If you’re testing out different plugins and themes, WP Reset is extremely helpful. It speeds up your testing and debugging greatly. WordPress developers will appreciate this plugin very much.

Get WP Reset Here

Duplicate Post

There are some plugins which you think you don’t need until you’ve used them. Duplicate Post is one of them.

It allows you to clone posts of any type quickly, or copy them to new drafts for further editing. That’s pretty much it. Give it a try, I’m sure you’ll love it!

Get Duplicate Post Here

Regenerate Thumbnails

This plugin helps you regenerate all thumbnail sizes for images in your Media Library. This is extremely useful if you’ve changed your theme or have added a new feature on your website which uses a different image size.

Regenerate Thumbnails also allows you to delete old, unused thumbnails to free up server space.

Get Regenerate Thumbnails Here

DIY Page Builder Plugins

Elementor

Elementor is the most popular free page builder for WordPress. As of now, it has 3+ million active installations and mostly 5-star reviews.

So, what makes it unique? It’s a live page builder that lets you create high-end page designs and advanced capabilities like never before, without touching a single line of code. You had to be a web developer or designer before to get these effects on your website: Box Shadows, Background Overlays, Hover Effects, Animations, Gradient Backgrounds, etc.

Not anymore. Elementor makes it easy for everyone to build websites. Yes, for everyone!

Get Elementor Here

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is like a mature, elder brother (or sister?) of Elementor. Likewise, it’s a flexible drag-and-drop page builder that works on your WordPress site’s front end. Beaver Builder grants you complete design freedom with no coding involved, and it is all fully responsive as well.

The best part of Beaver Builder is that it doesn’t output any confusing shortcodes or bloated HTML. With Beaver Builder, building beautiful, professional WordPress pages is as easy as connecting LEGOs. However, you should note that its free version isn’t as feature-rich as Elementor’s.

Get Beaver Builder Here

Bonus: Here’s a detailed list of the top page builders for WordPress.

Theme Customization Plugins

Custom Sidebars – Dynamic Widget Area Manager

Custom Sidebars plugin is a flexible widget area manager for WordPress. It allows you to dynamically display custom widgets on any page, post, post type, category, or archive page.

It is light and integrates well with any WordPress theme. Thus, Custom Sidebars plugin grants you tons of possibilities to customize your website even futher.

Get Custom Sidebars Here

Simple Custom CSS and JS

Adding custom CSS and JS code to your WordPress site is no more hassle with this plugin. These changes stay even if you update or change your theme.

Simple Custom CSS and JS features a text editor with syntax highlighting. Also, you can add your custom CSS or JS code to the frontend or the admin side, and you can add as many codes as you want.

Get Simple Custom CSS and JS Here

Ecommerce Plugins

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is a flexible, open-source eCommerce plugin for WordPress. If you want an eCommerce store on your WordPress website, look no further. It’s made by the same good folks who make WordPress.

Whether you’re launching a business, taking an old retail store online, or designing a site for your client, WooCommerce can help you build exactly the store you want.

Get WooCommerce Here

Booster for WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an amazing eCommerce plugin for WordPress and there’s no denying that. You can get most of the features you want in your online store with it.  However, it still misses the mark when it comes to some essential features. That’s what Booster for WooCommerce rectifies.

It supercharges your WooCommerce store with awesome powerful features (100+ modules) like PDF Invoicing, Bulk Price Converter, Wholesale Price, Crowdfunding, Upsells, Custom Payment Gateways, and a lot more.

Get Booster for WooCommerce Here

Easy Digital Downloads

If you’re looking to sell only digital goods on your WordPress site, Easy Digital Downloads is a better eCommerce solution for you. It provides a complete system for effortlessly selling your digital products.

Selling software, photos, ebooks, songs, videos, graphics, or any other digital file for that matter, is a breeze with this plugin. The core plugin supports PayPal Standard and Amazon Payments gateways, but almost all major payment gateways are supported through 3rd-party developers or premium extensions.

Get Easy Digital Downloads Here

Live Chat Plugins

LiveChat

Want to add live chat support to your WordPress website quickly and easily? LiveChat is the solution you’re looking for. It allows for instant communication with your site’s visitors and enables swift resolution to their questions and/or concerns.

You can use its built-in ticketing system to provide 24/7 customer service to your customers. Increase your sales and build better relationships with your customers with this fully functional live chat plugin.

Get LiveChat Here

Tawk.To

Tawk.To is a free live chat app for WordPress used by 250,000+ companies worldwide. You can use it to provide real time support and service to your customers.

With tawk.to, you never have to lose another lead or sale again. It lets you monitor and chat with your site’s visitors from anywhere, even your mobile. The best part is that its developer promises that “it’s truly free and always will be.”

Get Tawk.To Here

Membership & Forums Plugins

Go here for an extensive in-depth analysis of all the popular (and free) membership plugins.

bbPress

bbPress is a lean, mean, and feature-rich forum or bulletin board plugin for WordPress. It is focused on easy integration, simplicity, strict adherence to web standards, and speed.

It’s one of the first plugins which showcased the versatility of WordPress, and it’s still going strong! That’s quite an achievement. With bbPress installed, you can use WordPress to run an efficient and professional forum.

Get bbPress Here

BuddyPres

BuddyPress helps you set up a modern, robust, and sophisticated social network on your WordPress site. What WooCommerce did to setting up an eCommerce store on WordPress, BuddyPress does the same with setting up a social network or community-based forum.

Members can register and create user profiles, have private conversations with each other, create and participate in groups, and much more. It also works perfectly along with Akismet and bbPress. If you’re looking to build an online home for your school, company, a sports team, or any other niche community, BuddyPress is perfect for you.

Get BuddyPress Here

Jetpack

Sometimes, I ask myself, What exactly is Jetpack? It’s a security, performance, and site management plugin, all rolled into one. And it’s maintained by the same folks who lead WordPress.org’s development. They also happen to be the owners of WordPress.com platform, from where it picks up most of its features.

It has a lot of impressive functionality built in, like site stats, a high-speed CDN for images, showing related posts, downtime monitoring, brute-force attack protection, automated sharing to social media, sidebar customization, and so much more.

Jetpack has so many things going on that many consider it to be bloated, and for a good reason. If you could give up almost every plugin listed here and only make do with Jetpack, perhaps that would justify its use. It does however let you turn on or off its modules as per your requirements.

Get Jetpack Here

Free as in Freedom

WordPress’ main goal is to give you the freedom to build anything you want, and these free plugins are an extension of that goal. From hobby blogs to some of the biggest brands in the world, WordPress and its free plugins are used by everyone.

At WPMU DEV, we’re driven by the same philosophy. We build beautifully coded free and premium WordPress plugins that’ll make your WordPress sites fly.

Fasten your seatbelts. It’s now time for your site to take off!

Posted on

The Top 13 WordPress Page Builders Compared (2019)

Say you’re planning to bake a pizza. What will the base, sauce, cheese, and toppings be? Thin or thick crust? Marinara or pesto sauce? Mozzarella, cheddar or Parmesan cheese? Pepperoni, mushrooms, anchovies? And let’s not even talk about pineapple here!

There are so many variations to choose from. If only there was a way to mix and match them to get exactly what you want. Oh wait…there are several food chains who’ve exploited this very need.

If you’re planning to customize your WordPress website, using a page builder is similar to customizing a pizza. You choose the elements you want in your page, add content, set their alignment, background, colors, fonts, etc. And voila! Your page is ready to be published, for the entire world to savor.

What is a WordPress Page Builder?

In WordPress, a page builder is essentially a plugin that lets you design your site’s pages and posts without any coding involved. It’s a given nowadays for most page builders to come with drag-and-drop functionality. Thus, you can create detailed web page layouts pretty fast, like building a complex structure out of legos.

Why Use a Page Builder for WordPress?

There are many advantages of using a page builder. Here are the 4 primary ones:

No Coding Knowledge Required

Many website owners find it difficult to make even minor changes to their website’s page layouts or styles. You may know exactly what you want to change, but may not know how. With a page builder, you don’t need to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or PHP to make these changes.

This enables you to achieve high-end web pages without any coding involved. What would’ve taken days or weeks earlier, including hiring a professional web developer, can now be done by yourself in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

Feature-Rich

Another amazing advantage of page builders is that they come loaded with tons of on-page widgets and features: Sliders, image carousels, galleries, content grids, social sharing buttons, pricing tables, charts, CTA buttons, forms, animations, etc.

Want the same functionalities without using a page builder? You’d have to install quite a few dedicated plugins, premium or otherwise. First, you’d need to research to find the right plugins. Then, you’d have to learn how to use them. And after that, you’ll have to make sure that they’re all up-to-date and work perfectly with one another and all the other plugins you’ve installed.

Imagine doing that with half a dozen plugins, or even more. A page builder eliminates that hassle and helps you keep it simple.

Pre-Built, Attractive Templates

Most page builders come with beautifully crafted templates for standard website pages such as Home, About, Services, Products, Contact, etc. These templates are a great way to kickstart your designing process.

Some page builders also allow you to mix and match sections from multiple templates, thereby giving you virtually unlimited page design options to choose from.

Easy Customizations

Page builders are fast and intuitive. With user-friendly features such as drag-and-drop support and a live preview mode, you can add modules to your pages easily, and then rearrange and resize them quickly as you like. You can also change their styles such as background, font, color, padding, margin, and border effortlessly.

Any changes you make will be reflected immediately in the live preview section, helping you fine-tune your site.

With so many page builders for WordPress out there, we decided to compare the top ones and list them all, so that you can decide which will be the right fit for you.

Let’s begin!

The Top 13 WordPress Page Builders

  1. Beaver Builder
  2. Elementor
  3. Divi
  4. Visual Composer Website Builder
  5. WPBakery Page Builder
  6. Oxygen
  7. SiteOrigin Page Builder
  8. Themify Builder
  9. Themeum WP Page Builder
  10. Thrive Architect
  11. Generate Press Premium
  12. MotoPress Content Editor
  13. Brizy

Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder markets itself as “a complete design system.” It’s a flexible drag-and-drop page builder that works on the front-end of your WordPress website, so you can see the changes live as you’re making them. You can also click on individual elements to edit their properties.

If you’re new to page builders, Beaver Builder also includes an intuitive onboarding tour that will explain all its features one by one, helping you get familiarized with its user-friendly interface.

There are modules for adding almost any element you may want on a page, including content sliders, maps, testimonials, galleries, slideshows, accordions, pricing tables, etc.

And if you want to get a headstart with your designing process, it also includes more than 50 finely-crafted templates for landing and content pages. They’re all mobile-friendly, responsive layouts. You can even save your custom templates for use in other sections of your website, or on a different website altogether (all WordPress developers say yay!).

Beaver Builder plugin works great with almost every WordPress theme and Gutenberg. And if you want to uninstall it for any reason, it doesn’t leave behind a mess. If you’re a WordPress developer or an agency, you’ll appreciate how Beaver Builder can help you build some flexibility into your workflow.

Take Beaver Builder for a spin here and see for yourself whether it’s the right fit for you. There’s also a lite version of the plugin available for free on WordPress.org repo (with limited features though).

Pricing: Starts at $99/year (Unlimited Sites) / Lite Version Is Free

*Check out the WPMU DEV members-only discount!

Elementor

Elementor is another front-end focused page builder plugin for WordPress. It prides itself on its fast live design and inline editing capabilities. And deliver it does, which probably accounts for its 3 million+ active installations!

With Elementor, you make changes to the page and instantly see exactly how it looks like. It makes the whole process of designing and editing web pages a seamless experience. Elementor also works perfectly fine with or without Gutenberg.

While the free version of Elementor plugin includes over 100 designer-made templates and just 30 basic widgets, the Pro version takes it to a whole new level with 300+ pre-built templates and 50+ advanced widgets.

Elementor Pro also tacks on a theme builder, a popup builder, a visual form builder with popular marketing integrations, WooCommerce builder with 15+ shop widgets, dynamic content & custom fields capabilities, and motion effects.

It’s certainly one of the most ambitious page builders for WordPress out there.

Since Elementor is released under Open Source and GPL, other developers are free to create their own extensions for it. Check out these amazing add-ons for Elementor on WordPress.org repo.

Elementor Pro pairs well with free themes such as Hello Elementor, Astra, OceanWP and GeneratePress.

Pricing: Starts at $49/year (1 Site) / Free (Only 30 Basic Widgets)

*Check out the WPMU DEV members-only discount!

Divi

Divi labels itself as “the ultimate WordPress theme and visual page builder.” Its visual page builder has a pretty slick, easy-to-use interface and comes loaded with tons of features out of the box.

While the Divi Builder plugin works best with the Divi All-in-One theme, you can also pair it up any theme of your liking. It works just fine. And just like Beaver Builder and Elementor, Divi Builder employs a front-end, drag-and-drop WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor.

It comes with 40+ website elements and 800+ pre-made designs, including 100+ full-website packs. Furthermore, Elegant Themes adds brand new layouts to Divi Builder almost every week. All these features come together to help you create amazing designs with surprising ease.

When it comes to pricing, Divi has the sweetest deal of all the premium page builder options out there. Not only does it come with a great theme and the standalone page builder plugin, it also includes all the other products by Elegant Themes.

Try the Divi Builder Demo and see it in action for yourself.

Pricing: Starts at $89/year (Unlimited Sites), $249 for lifetime access

Visual Composer Website Builder

Visual Composer Website Builder is a drag-and-drop solution to create websites you’ve always wanted. Just like the options mentioned above, it sports a live front-end editor, which allows you to make changes to your website instantly and see how it looks before hitting the publish button.

It comes with 200+ premium templates and content elements, enabling you to design spectacular landing pages or page sections in minutes. To give you an idea of its extensive customization options, just its button element comes in 30 unique styles.

While Visual Composer sports a clean and minimalistic interface, its actual user experience leaves much to be desired. It does need some getting used to, but once you’ve figured it out, it’s a breeze from there on.

Unlike with other page builder plugins listed above, it also lets you edit the header, footer, sidebar, and other theme features. This is why it’s called a website builder, rather than a page builder.

Visual Composer Website Builder is made by the same team behind WPBakery Page Builder plugin, which confusingly enough was named Visual Composer before. They had to rebrand their old product to avoid trademark restrictions set by Envato marketplace. In case you were confused about this, now you know!

Pricing: Starts at $59/year (1 Site), $349/year (Unlimited Sites)

WPBakery Page Builder

WPBakery is both a front-end and back-end page builder plugin for WordPress. Its front-end user interface is quite similar to that of Visual Composer Website Builder, which isn’t surprising as it’s made by the same team.

Some users prefer its old-school back-end editor to the new front-end ones. You can also move back and forth between the two editing interfaces as needed.

It includes 50+ premium content elements, 100+ pre-built layouts, 200+ 3rd party add-ons, 40+ grid design templates, and much more. And it works with any theme, making it a comprehensive page builder solution.

However, you should note that WPBakery is a shortcode-based plugin, which means that all your customizations through it are tied to clunky shortcodes. It can slow down your website considerably if not used smartly.

WPBakery originally started its journey on Enavato’s marketplace CodeCanyon, where it’s still available. It’s also the most sold WordPress plugin on there. If you’ve ever bought a premium theme from ThemeForest, chances are high that it came preloaded with WPBakery Page Builder plugin.

Pricing: Starts at $45 (1 Site)

Oxygen

Oxygen is the new kid on the block of WordPress website builders. It’s designed from the ground up to be a full site builder, as opposed to being just a page builder. Oxygen’s templating engine lets you design every part of your WordPress site – headers, footers, pages, any post type, and any taxonomy.

With Oxygen, you’re essentially building a custom WordPress theme from scratch (though the team behind it doesn’t like to call it as such). But instead of hand-coding it, you’re using an intuitive, live visual editor to do it. This makes the process much simpler and quicker.

The elements in Oxygen are “more flexible, more customizable, and more powerful.” In a way, it lets you do more, but with less! It sounds counter-intuitive, but that’s how I can describe Oxygen in a nutshell.

The Oxygen design library includes premade design layouts for almost everything you can imagine. You can import complete websites from it with just a single click. Not happy with the existing designs? You can mix and match sections from any website template to create beautiful pages with a uniform style.

The end result is an optimized WordPress website with minimal bloat, thus making it load faster.

With that being said, Oxygen is meant for advanced, professional website designers. You need to have at least some knowledge of HTML/CSS/JavaScript, and a rudimentary understanding of PHP and WordPress CMS to make the most out of it.

The best part about Oxygen though is its current pricing, which seems almost too good to be true.

Pricing: $99/lifetime for Unlimited Sites (limited-time introductory pricing)

SiteOrigin Page Builder

SiteOrigin Page Builder boasts almost 2.5 million downloads and 1+ million active installs on WordPress.org repo. While its user interface isn’t that easy to use, it’s nonetheless a highly popular page builder plugin. This can be attributed mostly to its price (which is free), while still delivering full-fledged page builder features.

It works with any theme, supports live editing, row and widget styles, and is available in 17 languages. Page Builder uses standard WordPress widgets as its content elements, so combined with its widgets add-on bundle (also free), it should take care of most of your page designing needs.

One cool aspect of this plugin is its History Browser feature, which lets you roll forward and back easily through any changes you make. This gives you the freedom to experiment with your page layouts and designs without worrying about breaking the content.

While I wouldn’t recommend SiteOrigin Page Builder to anyone, especially newbies, it still needs to be acknowledged as it’s used by many out there.

Pricing: Free / Premium Add-ons start from $29/year (1 Site)

Themify Builder

Themify Builder is both a front-end and back-end page builder plugin for WordPress.It is included with all Themify themes as part of the Themify framework, but the standalone Themify Builder plugin works with all WordPress themes and is available for free.

Its compact back-end interface lets you to drag-and-drop modules around quickly and easily, while the front-end interface allows you to preview your design live (WYSIWYG).

Themify Builder comes with 40+ professional pre-designed layouts for various website types such as blogs, shops, portfolio, services, etc. All of these website templates can be imported with just a single click.

Most of the standard modules are included for free (text, post, gallery, video, widget, menu, slider, button, map, icons, etc.). However, you can extend its capabilities further by purchasing an add-on bundle which includes 25 extra premium modules.

If you’re looking for a free page builder for WordPress with a simple, easy-to-use interface, you should give Themify Builder a try.

Pricing: Core Plugin is Free / $39 for Add-on Bundle

Themeum WP Page Builder

Themeum is known for its high-quality, user-friendly themes, and their WP Page Builder plugin is no different. Its sleek and simple front-end interface is easy to understand, even if you’ve never used any page builders before.

WP Page Builder calls its modules add-ons, and they’re all unique and perform a specific task. As of now, it includes 30+ add-ons, with more slated to be coming soon. All your WordPress widgets can also be used as an add-on. Apart from that, you have plenty of pre-designed blocks and page layouts to choose from to get started.

Its library feature lets you save any part of your page design as its own template, which you can replicate on other pages or websites easily with just a single click. You can also import or export entire page layouts.

The free version of the plugin includes everything you need to get started. The Pro package gets you 15+ premium layout bundles, that also includes 83+ readymade page layouts. And if you ever want to create custom add-ons or add custom blocks and layouts to WP Page Builder, you can do that easily by following their developer guidelines.

Wanna see it in action? Try the live demo of WP Page Builder.

Pricing: Core Plugin is Free / Pro starts at $39/year (1 Site)

Thrive Architect

Thrive Architect is an intuitive drag-and-drop front-end page builder for WordPress. What sets it apart from the rest of the page builders is that it’s focused on building landing pages that convert.

Want to change something on your page? Just click on it and start editing instantly. Wanna move something? Click to select, and then drag and drop where you want it to be.

Thrive Architect comes bundled with 300+ beautifully designed landing page templates that are 100% focused on conversion. And to eliminate the WordPress plugin hellhole, it includes conversion-focused elements such as attractive CTA buttons, dynamic actions and animations, pricing tables, testimonials, lead generation forms, countdown timers, and more.

Plus, all of these features integrate with your favourite marketing tools, so that you can concentrate on growing your business, and not how your website looks and works.

Thrive Architect works with any WordPress theme. If you’re looking to create professional looking sales pages, webinar pages, or opt-in pages, this is the solution you’re looking for.

Pricing: $67 (1 Site), $19/month (25 Sites)

GP Premium by GeneratePress

GeneratePress is one of the most popular and well-reviewed free WordPress themes. It’s built with a focus on speed and user-friendliness. And thanks to its strict adherence to WordPress coding standards, it works well with all major page builders, including Beaver Builder and Elementor.

Now, you might be wondering why a free WordPress theme is included here. Well, that’s because GeneratePress also offers a premium package called, well, GP Premium.

GP Premium builds on GeneratePress theme and adds 14 premium modules, including the Site Library, from which you can import entire demo sites with just a click. Its Sections premium module acts as a tiny page builder, allowing you to build complex web page layouts with a basic back-end interface.

While it’s not the most intuitive page builder solution mentioned here, it still needs a mention due to its performance advantage.

Most page builders add considerable bloat to your site’s frontend, but GP Premium retains its fast and lightweight nature, thereby giving your site a boost in page load speed and performance.

Pricing: $49.95/year (Unlimited Sites)

MotoPress Content Editor

MotoPress Content Editor is a drag-and-drop page builder plugin for WordPress that’ll help you create better websites with any theme. With its front-end editor, you can easily design your site’s posts, pages, or custom post types.

It includes 30+ content modules and various styling options for you to choose from. However, if you want to display videos, Google Maps, pricing tables, or add a simple contact form, you need to purchase those add-ons separately.

Its straightforward page builder interface can help you streamline your website building process, helping you design your pages swiftly. The designs you build with this plugin are optimized for all viewports, meaning they’re all responsive and mobile-friendly layouts.

This plugin also lets you create custom reusable sections, widgets, and pages. Thus, you can transfer your designs to other websites in no time, saving you a lot of hassle.

There’s no shortcode lock-in with MotoPress Content Editor, which means that even if you choose to deactivate the plugin, your content will still be safe.

Try MotoPress Content Editor here and see for yourself whether it’s the right fit for you.

Pricing: Core Plugin is Free / Premium Add-ons Available

Brizy

Brizy is a relatively new entrant to the WordPress page builder plugins scene. Built from scratch and focused on usability, its intuitive and clutter-free interface ensures that you only see what’s needed for the task at hand.

Like Elementor, Brizy is an ambitious venture and has set its goals pretty high. The first thing you’ll notice about Brizy is its modern, minimalistic design.

It works pretty much like any other front-end page builder plugin for WordPress. You set your page layout, and add or remove page elements as needed. But the area where Brizy truly sets itself apart is how you customize on-page elements. This is where it shines.

For example, if you’re using Beaver Builder or Elementor, you’ll be doing it via a sidebar or a popup. But Brizy lets you edit the element properties inline, right where it is, which seems more intuitive and natural.

Another area where Brizy trumps other page builders is its cloud save feature. You don’t have to worry about saving your changes anymore. It’s all taken care of automatically. And if you ever want to roll back any changes, you can do it easily.

Brizy works with all WordPress themes.

Pricing: Starts at $49/year (3 Sites) / Lite Version is Free

Other Notable Mentions

These page builder plugins were shortlisted, but just missed the mark from making the cut. You can check them out if you’re curious.

How to Choose the Best WordPress Page Builder for You?

With all being said and done, you’re still left with picking a WordPress page builder from a pretty big list. To lock down on any one plugin that’s the best fit for you, look out for these five main factors:

  • Ease of Use – how intuitive and fast is the builder interface to use?
  • Compatibility – is it compatible with your existing setup (theme, plugins, etc.)?
  • Flexibility – does it let you create layouts and apply design styles that you want?
  • Price – is it within your budget?
  • Final Output – does the end result look good, is responsive, and is optimized for performance?

Start with Your Dream Site Today

WordPress has always been a platform that promotes openness and DIY. With a page or website builder, you can start building a powerful website in minutes, without compromising on design, flexibility, or functionality. This saves you a lot of time and money, as you don’t have to hire a professional web developer or designer.

Using the right page builder, you can create websites that can compete with many professionals out there. Get started with building your dream site today!

*The discounts for our members that we mention in this post are there because they are products that we know our members love. No affiliate links, kick-backs, special treatment, or anything like that :)

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How to Build Order Forms with Payments for Free in WordPress

You lose 100% of the sales you don’t ask for, and the same holds true for having a clunky checkout experience. Order forms help you to collect order information and process payments efficiently, thereby increasing your conversion rates significantly.

Forminator makes it easier than ever to build an order form and accept payments on WordPress. Oh ya…and the best part is, it’s completely free! And that includes PayPal and Stripe payment gateways!

Whether you’re planning to sell merchandise, collect donations or get rooms booked, Forminator does them all without skipping a beat. His simple drag-and-drop interface means that you don’t need to know any coding whatsoever. It’s truly the one form maker plugin to rule them all!

**Long live Forminator!**

In this post, I’ll show you step-by-step how to use Forminator to build an order form from scratch and have set it up to collect payments effortlessly with Stripe and/or PayPal.

Introducing the Fantastic Forminator

Forminator is a powerhouse of a form plugin. He supports conditional logic, stores all the form entries in an easily accessible database, sends emails to both the user and the admin, and does it all without reloading the page.

To supercharge your forms, Forminator integrates with popular third-party tools such as Mailchimp, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, Google Sheets, Zapier, and Slack. Here’s an integration guide to automate your form workflow with Zapier.

He’s also GDPR compliant and works seamlessly with WordPress’ new Gutenberg block editor. If you can think of a form, Forminator can almost certainly get it done.

Let’s Build an Order Form

For this demo, we’ll build a simple order form, like the one below, to sell a custom notebook. We’ll make it so that the users can enter their personal information (such as name, address, email and phone number), and then at the very end, place an order by completing the payment.

Screenshot of the order form we'll be building

Follow the steps below and/or enjoy the video we’ve put together to accompany this post:

 

Step 1: Install Forminator

To install Forminator, just go to your WordPress Dashboard, and under Plugins, choose Add New and search for Forminator. Click the Install Now button and Activate the plugin after installation.

If you’re a WPMU DEV Member, you can also install and activate Forminator Pro directly from the WPMU DEV Dashboard. If you’re not a member yet, what are you waiting for? Try it free for 30 days!

Using the free WordPress.org version of Forminator is totally cool too. This tutorial works perfectly fine with either version.

Step 2: Access the Forminator Dashboard

Go to Forminator’s Dashboard. This will give you a quick overview of all your forms, quizzes, and polls.

Forminator’s minimalist yet easy-to-use Dashboard.

You won’t see any data here now, but as you start creating forms and collecting user entries, the dashboard will start populating with views, submissions, conversion rates, and other interesting data.

Step 3: Let’s Create a Form

Go to Forminator > Forms and click either of the blue Create buttons to begin making your new form. You can also do the same directly from Forminator’s dashboard.

A popup will appear where you need to enter your new form’s name. Keep the form name unique and memorable so that you can recall it easily. Click the blue Create button after entering your form name.

By default, every form in Forminator comes with the following predefined fields: First Name, Email Address, Phone Number, and Message.

The default form fields can be edited or deleted, and with the option of adding many other fields, you have unlimited customization possibilities.

Note: The fields marked with a red asterisk (*) at the end are Required fields. The form won’t submit until the user fills them up.

Step 4: Adding the Order Form Fields

We’ll keep the First Name, Email Address and Phone Number fields, and delete the Message field which we don’t need for this form.

In the First Name field, click on the gear icon and select Duplicate. This is a faster way to insert multiple fields of the same type without accessing the Insert Fields menu repeatedly.

Rename the duplicated field as Last Name.

Drag the Last Name field to the same row as the First Name, to its right, so that they appear side by side in the form.

And just like that, you have a two-column row in your form.

All Forminator fields can be dragged and dropped into rows and columns, so you have maximum flexibility in designing your forms just the way you want them.

Next, click on the purple Insert Fields button. It should open a popup with all the field options you can add to the form. There’s also another Insert Fields link at the bottom of the form.

Select the Address option from the popup window, and click the Insert Fields button.

Once inserted, click on the Address row to open its field settings. In the Labels tab, you can activate or deactivate the different address subfields (they’re all enabled by default).

Underneath the Settings tab, mark all the address subfields as required since they’re essential to ship the product.

Finally, click on the gear icon of Message field and hit Delete.

You can retain the Message field if you want to give users an option to add a comment or preference.

Step 5: Adding the Stripe Payment Button and Integration

Click on the purple Insert Fields button and select the Stripe option.

Stripe enables you to supercharge your online sales with its hassle-free and secure payment gateway.

Note: You need an activated Stripe account to configure the Stripe field. Otherwise, it won’t let you edit it. If you need help to set it up, use Forminator’s documentation as a cheatsheet.

You can configure Stripe by going to Settings > Payments > Stripe under Forminator.

Once Stripe is configured, under the Stripe field settings, we need to set the payment amount. Since this is a single product with an all-inclusive price and no variations, we’ll select the Fixed payment option.

When user inputs affect the price (ex. different sized t-shirts or customization options), or if there is a calculation such as tax or shipping that will be added to the original price, the Variable option should be used instead.

Select Fixed in the Stripe field settings and enter the amount.

Also, note the Test and Live mode options mentioned on the top here. We’ll be using the Test mode for now.

Don’t forget to set your brand logo, company name and product description under the Checkout tab. It’s great to have a self-branded payment gateway popup.

The below image shows how the self-branded popup will look like. Cool, isn’t it?

Next, change the Submit button label from Send Message to Order Now.

Preview the form and ensure it’s working as you intend. You can edit the default placeholders in the form if they’re not to your liking.

The order form is good to go!

Step 6: Let’s Jazz It Up

Forminator lets you make basic style changes to the form easily. The Appearance section helps you set your form’s Design Style, Colors, Fonts, Padding, Borders, Spacing, etc.

Click on the Appearance button to move on to its settings.

You can choose your preferred style here. I like the look of the Flat style more than the Default one, however this choice is up to you. It also offers you a way to add Custom CSS for your form.

As for the Colors and Fonts, I prefer the theme defaults and will leave them as is. Save your form draft after making your changes.

Step 7: Form Submitted. Next What?

Forminator is like a cool and casual professor. He’s fun and intelligent, but he also makes sure that the forms behave properly.

In the Behavior settings, you can define how the form will behave after the user successfully submits the form, or in this case, places an order.

By default, the form will show an inline message that will close automatically within 5 seconds. Change the message here to better reflect an order form.

You also have the option of redirecting the user to a new page or hiding the form altogether.

If you’re collecting payments, it’s highly recommended that you have the “Require SSL certificate to submit this form” option checked. It’ll enable your form to collect payments securely.

The rest of the Behavior settings can be left as is.

Step 8: Email Me Please, and to the User Too

After finishing up with setting the Behavior, move to the Email Notifications settings.

By default, every form will send you (the admin) an email with details of all the form fields entered.

You can change it and/or add multiple recipients too. You also have the option of adding Cc and Bcc fields to the email.

It’s good practice to send an automatic order confirmation email to the user. This option can be enabled in the Email Notifications settings.

Make sure that the recipient here is set to Email Address, which is the label for the email address entered by a user in the form. For example, if a user enters username@gmail.com as their email address in the form, the order confirmation email will be sent to that address automatically.

Forminator also lets you set Integrations with various third-party apps, and change the overall form settings. For this order form, we won’t be adding any Integrations, and will stick to the default settings.

Step 9: Hit the Publish Button

Preview the form one last time before pressing the Publish button.

Hey, give yourself a pat on the back. You just created your first order form!

After hitting the Publish button, a popup will present you with the form’s shortcode. Copy and place this shortcode anywhere in your site to display it to users.

You can also copy the shortcode later from Forminator’s Dashboard.

Step 10: Add the Order Form to Your Sales Page

Create a sales page if you don’t have one yet. It should contain all the important product details such as name, image, description, price, etc.

If you’re using the Classic Editor plugin, you can copy and paste the shortcode to add the form to your post/page. For sites that are using the default Block Editor, adding a form is much simpler.

To place the order form at the bottom of your sales page, in your WordPress post/page editor, click the Plus icon and add a Form block.

Next, select your order form from here to add it to the page.

Publish or Update your sales page after you’ve added the order form to it.

Visitors to your website can now use this form to place an order. It’s that simple!

Important Note: The Stripe field in your order form is still set to Test mode. This is to help you make test payments and make sure that everything is working fine. Before accepting actual orders, you need to change it from Test to Live.

Once an order has been placed, you’ll be notified of it via mail. Forminator also stores all the form submissions in a database so that it’s easier for you to sort through them later.

To view all of a form’s submissions, visit Forminator > Forms in your dashboard. Click on the gear icon and select View Submissions.

You can click on any individual submission row to get its complete details. You can also push the Export button to download all the submissions as a .csv file.

Reach > Engage > Convert

Running an online business comes with a lot of challenges. Anything that helps you engage with your potential customers and get paid easier is a welcome addition, and that’s exactly what Forminator does.

What we’ve built here is the simplest of order forms that you can make with Forminator. With its support for conditional logic, it can do much more! You can set taxes, shipping rates, product variations, and then have the form calculate the final order amount automatically.

You can check out a few of the order form and payment demos here and see how versatile Forminator really is.

Start creating!

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How to Migrate a WordPress Multisite: A Step-by-Step Guide

WordPress Multisite has been a highly beneficial addition. While you can’t use it for every new web development project, it’s highly valuable when all the right variables are in place.

In the Ultimate Guide to WordPress Multisite, we talked about how to enable Multisite and create a network of sites from within a single installation of WordPress. If you’ve followed our recommendations, then you should have a fully functioning WordPress Multisite up and running.

But what happens when someone changes their mind and wants to move their site out of the multisite network? Or what if you have a new idea for a site and you want to add it to the network’s umbrella of sites? Or perhaps you rebranded the Multisite network altogether and now need to get all these sites over to the new domain name. What do you do when you want to migrate a WordPress Multisite?

In the following step-by-step guide, I’ll show you how to complete each of the three Multisite migration types.

WordPress Multisite Migration Guide

You have a WordPress Multisite, but you realize something needs moving. There are three kinds of migration scenarios you might consider for a Multisite network:

  • Migrating a single website into an existing WordPress Multisite network.
  • Migrate a single website out of the WordPress Multisite network.
  • Migrating the entire WordPress Multisite network from one domain to another.

While you might be hesitant to move anything around within your network, there’s no need to be. Sure, the process will be a little more complicated than migrating a single site from one domain to another, but that’s expected. Follow along with the steps outlined in the three scenarios below and you’ll have your Multisite migrated in no time.

Scenario #1: Migrate a Single Site into Multisite

In this scenario, you want to move a new website into your Multisite network. Awesome! Here’s what you need to do.

Step 1

Back up both your single site installation and your Multisite network. You can do this with one of these WordPress backup plugins.

Step 2

Next, deactivate all plugins on your single site WordPress installation. This is something WordPress suggests you do in case one of your plugins conflicts with the export process (which is a possibility).

Go to Plugins. Select the bulk “Deactivate” option for all your plugins.

Step 3

One other thing the Codex suggests is that you delete any quarantined spam comments. There’s no need to save and carry that data over with you as you will (and should) never use it.

Step 4

Within your single site installation, go to Tools and click on Export. It is in here where you will export a copy of your site’s files for easier setup on the Multisite.

Select the “All Content” radio dial button and click Download Export File.

Save the XML file to your computer.

Step 5

Log into your Multisite WordPress installation. From here, you must create a new empty site into which you can place the migrated site.

Go to My Sites > Network Admin > Sites, and then click Add New.

Fill in the following details for your new Multisite subdomain:

  • Site Address (this will be the subdomain name on the network)
  • Site Title (which can be the same as it was previously)
  • Admin Email

If you have questions on how to configure this, check out this guide on how to activate and configure Multisite.

Then click Add Site.

Step 6

With the new site added, navigate to the new subdomain on the network. If you hover over “My Sites” in the top admin bar, you will see it there.

The first thing to do is go to the site’s Settings and edit the title and description. If it needs to differ from what it was before, you can change that now. Also, be sure to review the blog and permalinks settings. Anything you want to maintain from the single site, you update it from here.

Step 7

If the Multisite network does not use the same theme or plugins as the single site, you will need to set those up now.

Note that not all WordPress plugins are compatible with Multisite, so be sure that any new plugins you carry over are acceptable to be on the network.

To copy them over, you can do one of three things:

  • You can use a premium plugin (I’ve included a list of those below) to copy and migrate your theme and plugins.
  • You can reinstall all plugin and theme files from-scratch in Multisite (at least the ones that don’t already exist).
  • You can copy the files from your wp-content folder on the single site’s server and into the corresponding Multisite’s folders for this subdomain. To do this, make sure you know the ID number for your new subdomain.

If you’re unsure of what your new subdomain’s ID number is, go out to the Network dashboard. Click on My Sites. Hover over the new site you’ve created and click Edit. You’ll see the address bar something like this:

https://networkname.com/wp-admin/network/site-info.php?id=14

The “id=14” will provide you with the site’s ID number, so you know which database to edit in your directory.

Once your subdomain has all themes and plugins activated, configure and customize them to your liking.

Step 8

Check the subdomain’s Pages, Posts, and Media for dummy content created during the new site setup on the network. If it created anything, delete everything before you import content from the old site.

Step 9

To import the data from your single site, go to Tools and click on Import. Select the WordPress option from the list. (If you haven’t installed the tool yet, do it now).

Upload your saved XML file here.

You’ll next get a prompt about who you want to assign authorship to for your imported posts. You can either assign them to a current user on the network or a brand new one.

Click on the “Download and Import Attachments” checkbox and save your changes.

Step 10

If there were widgets from the single site you want to move into the subdomain, you can easily do this using a plugin called the Widget Importer & Exporter.

Basically, it’s doing the same export/import process as you just did for your site’s content, only just for widgets.

Follow the steps in the plugin and complete the export of your widget data.

Step 11

Now, hop on over to the new subdomain on your Multisite network and give it a look. Does everything seem okay?

  • Are all images in place?
  • Is the primary navigation the correct one?
  • Does it appear that all plugins are working?
  • Are there any theme customizations missed in this transfer?
  • Do the blog posts all have the correct author?
  • And so on.

Give your site a good checkup and make sure everything is as you expect.

Step 12

If you decide that you want to give the subdomain a custom domain (perhaps the old one from its previous single existence), you can use domain mapping to do this.

Step 13

With your site up and loaded on the network, you now need to get rid of the old WordPress site.

If you will not use a custom domain on the Multisite and the migrated single site no longer needs its own hosting, delete the WordPress site and cancel your domain and hosting account.

If you will use a custom domain on the Multisite, then you only need to delete the WordPress site and cancel the hosting account.

Scenario #2: Migrate a Single Site out of Multisite

Shipper lets you easily migrate a Multisite subsite to a single WordPress install in just a few clicks! Avoid the hassle of migrating manually…check out our tutorial here: Migrate Subsite to Single Site

Here is what you need to do to complete the reverse process.

Step 1

Back up your WordPress Multisite network.

Step 2

Purchase a web hosting plan and domain name for your new WordPress site. (If you already purchased a custom domain for domain mapping, then you’ve already finished with the latter part).

Step 3

Log into your new web hosting account and navigate the one-click WordPress install. From here, you can download and get started with WordPress for your new site.

You can also grab a copy of WordPress from here:

Step 4

The export and import of content for migrating out of Multisite is different, as you can only grab that data directly from your database tables.

You can do this by logging into your Multisite’s control panel and navigating to phpMyAdmin.

In the tables that appear under the Network’s folder, find the one that corresponds with the site you want to migrate out of the network. The ID number will match the one from the process described earlier. When you look at the list of sites on your network, click on the Edit button for the migrating site, and you’ll find the ID number appended to the end of the web address.

The URL will be like this:

https://networkname.com/wp-admin/network/site-info.php?id=14

Use the ID number to select all the tables pertaining to that site. Once you’ve selected all of them, click the Export button at the top.

Step 5

The file that exported will be in a .sql format. Make a copy and rename it.

You’ll now want to open it in a code editor like Atom to adjust your site’s domain (if you haven’t mapped it to the custom domain already). On the network, you’ll see the site referred to as:

https://networkname.com/subdomainname/

However, when you import this into the new site, you want it to say:

https://mynewsitename.com/

Do a search and replace in the file and save your changes once you’ve updated all instances of the domain.

Step 6

You must make one more change in this file. Remember that site ID from before? Well, it should not exist when in the database tables for a single WordPress installation. So, anywhere that you find “wp_[ID number]_”, replace it with “wp_”.

Save the file once more.

Step 7

Log into your new single WordPress installation. Because this site will no longer be part of a network of related sites, you’ll probably want to use your own WordPress theme and plugins here. So, go for it! Get those activated and customized before moving on to the next step.

Step 8

Now, you can import the database tables from your old subdomain. To do this, log into this new website’s control panel and find your phpMyAdmin.

WordPress will have automatically created several database tables for you upon installation. You don’t need those duplicates here as you’re about to carry your own over. Delete the following tables (all of them will have “wp_” at the beginning of their name):

  • commentmeta
  • comments
  • links
  • options
  • postmeta
  • posts
  • terms
  • term_relationships
  • term_taxonomy

Once you’ve deleted the tables mentioned above, you can now click the Import button at the top.

Select the newly saved .sql file and click on the Go button.

Once you receive your successful upload message, you’re good to go.

Step 9

If there were widgets from the Multisite network you wanted to copy over to the new domain, you can do so with the Widget Importer & Exporter plugin.

Step 10

Take some time to poke around the Settings of your new WordPress site. Configure your site’s metadata and blog settings as you see fit.

Step 11

Visit your new live website and do a full review of it to confirm that everything is as you want. Because you’re likely starting with a new theme and trying to create a unique experience from the Multisite, you may have already taken care of customization in the plugin and theme setup. But it’s still good to review and make sure everything is in its proper place.

Step 12

When you’re content with your newly migrated site, you can return to your Multisite network and delete your website from the list of Sites on your Network’s dashboard.

Scenario #3: Migrate WordPress Multisite to Another Domain

And finally, let’s talk about WordPress Multisite migration from one domain to another. It doesn’t require much in the way of installing new WordPress installations or configuring WordPress themes and plugins. Instead, this is about renaming all the backend files to reflect the new domain name of your network.

Here is what you need to do:

Step 1

The first thing you need to do: back up your Multisite installation.

Step 2

If you haven’t done so already, buy that fancy new domain name for your network. Then associate it with the same web hosting account that your Multisite lives on.

Step 3

Next, you must edit the wp-config.php file in the root directory of your site. You can access this either through your File Manager or FTP.

Once you’ve located the file, click on the Edit button to open it.

Now, when you configured WordPress for Multisite, you added some code above this line:

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

The line you want to update in this case is this one:

define('DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'yournetworkname.com');

Update “yournetworkname.com” with the new domain name you want to use.

You then need to add the following two lines of code above the “That’s all, stop editing!” message:

define('WP_HOME','https://newnetworkdomain.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','https://newnetworkdomain.com');

Save your changes and exit.

Step 4

The database files for your Multisite now also need to change to reflect the new domain name of the network. Log into phpMyAdmin.

From here, you will search for your network’s database tables. Specifically, these are the ones that will require an update from the old domain name to the new one (these are all preceded by “wp_”):

  • blogs > domain
  • options > home
  • options > siteurl
  • site
  • sitemeta > siteurl

In addition, you also need to update the following tables for each of the sites that exist on the network. The pound sign (#) below is where you will see the actual site ID number.

  • #_options > siteurl
  • #_options > home
  • #_options > fileupload_url

Once you have renamed the domain in every instance in which it appears throughout your database tables, you can save your changes and close. Your site should now be fully migrated to the new domain name.

Step 5

Don’t forget to change the name of your site and its web address within WordPress. If you want to do any rebranding and redesigning for this domain migration, you can do it now.

Simplify Your Multisite Migration, Ahoy!

There are many plugins you can use to streamline multisite migration, but there’s nothing better than using Shipper Pro to make your life easier.

With Shipper Pro, you can move WordPress sites from one host to another, development to live, local to production, etc.

You can migrate your entire multisite network securely with it to any location with a single click. Migrating WordPress sites has never been this simple!

Ready, Set, Migrate

A WordPress Multisite network isn’t set in stone. You can shift the network and the websites within it as you see fit—and you can migrate WordPress multisite almost as easily as a single site migration.

If you’re looking for expert help, our friendly live support team is ready to help you anytime with all your WordPress migration problems.

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How to Completely Customize the WordPress Admin / Dashboard Interface (2020)

Your home doesn’t really feel like yours until you’ve added your unique customizations to it, isn’t it? Some furniture here, a couple of paintings there, a few plants to liven up the space, setting up the book rack, you know, the usual.

Your WordPress dashboard is pretty much like your home. It’s where you do all your work. It’s where your site takes its shape and comes alive. So, why not make it uniquely your own?

Customizing your WordPress dashboard has various benefits:

  • It makes it leaner and lighter by removing distracting menu items and widgets.
  • You get to enjoy a user-friendlier and more productive admin interface.
  • Your clients will love an admin dashboard that’s personalized especially for them.
  • It’s optimized for better performance.

In this post, I’ll show you how to completely customize your WordPress admin dashboard using free plugins and/or code.

And, being WPMU DEV, we also provide an excellent plugin solution for this called Branda… so if you’d like to achieve everything below with a lot less effort, grab the plugin from the WordPress.org repository.

Sounds good? Here is a list of what we’ll cover in this article:

Backup Your Website

It’s essential to take a full backup of your site before you start modifying it. We recommend using free plugins such as Updraft Plus or BackWPup to do the same. Alternately, if you’re a WPMU DEV member, there’s nothing better than using Snapshot Pro to backup your site automatically.

Create A Child Theme

You can start editing your core WordPress files now, but every time you update WordPress or your theme, all the changes you’ve made will be reset. This is where having a child theme helps.

A child theme, as the name suggests, is a child of its main parent theme and sits atop it. Any changes you need to make to your site, you can do in your child theme. When you update your parent theme to the latest version, the child theme still says the same, thereby retaining all the changes you made earlier.

We highly recommend setting up a child theme. It sets a future-proof environment that’ll save you a lot of headaches. You can follow our guide on how to create a WordPress child theme to get started. The WordPress developers guide on Child Themes is also a great resource.

Customizing Your Admin Login Page

First impressions matter! Your admin login page is the first thing you see when you want to access your site’s dashboard. So let’s start with that.

We recommend using our very own Branda plugin for all of your customizing needs. She can create custom admin screens and incorporate your branding on all-things admin (and much more). To learn how to customize your admin with Branda and white labeling, check out this article.

For this tutorial, we’ll be using the Custom Login Page Customizer plugin for this. It lets you easily customize your login page directly from the WordPress customizer. With it, you can personalize almost any aspect of your login page and make it look exactly the way you want. What makes it amazing is that it shows you a live preview of the custom login page as you’re modifying it.

Once you have installed and activated the plugin, navigate to LoginPress > Customizer in your WordPress dashboard to start customizing!

Here are some of the features you can personalize with this free plugin:

  • Logo
  • Background
  • Login Form
  • Forget Form
  • Login Button
  • Error Messages
  • Welcome Messages
  • Form Footer
You’ll be using the default WordPress Customizer to build your custom login page.
This is what I designed with just a few minutes of tweaking.

Removing Widgets from WordPress Dashboard

“Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.” – Pablo Picasso

The WordPress dashboard is cluttered with unnecessary widgets. Thankfully, you don’t need to add code or use a plugin to remove them.

Go to your WordPress dashboard, click the Screen Options tab at the top-right of the page. It’ll reveal an options panel containing checkboxes to enable/disable the widgets.

I’ll uncheck all the widgets save for the Quick Draft one.

And just like that, all the clutter is gone.

You can do the same for all your wp-admin pages like Posts, Pages, Posts Editor, etc. Go make Marie Kondo proud!

Note: This method saves the widget visibility settings on a per-user basis. So, if you have a multi-author blog, you need to set it up for all of them. Or, you can use custom code to enforce it strictly for all your site’s users.

To remove the default WordPress dashboard widgets for all non-admin users, add this code to your child theme’s functions.php file:

Refer WordPress Codex on remove_meta_box function for more examples.

You might also have other widgets added by your theme, plugins, or even your hosting platform. To remove them, you’ll first have to find their div ID. You can do this by using a browser inspector (in Chrome, you need to right-click on the widget and select Inspect), then copy the div ID of the widget you wanna get rid of.

To the above-given code, add another remove_meta_box line, but its parameter ( dashboard_right_now, dashboard_plugins, etc.) should be the div ID of the widget you want to remove.

Adding New Widgets to WordPress Dashboard

While removing an existing widget is a breeze, adding a new one isn’t as straightforward. But on the plus side, you can display anything you want with your new custom widget.

To add a new widget for your dashboard, just add the following code to your child theme’s function.php file:

This creates the most basic widget with just a line of text. However, you can use the same template to take it to the next level using HTML and/or PHP. The only limitation is your imagination!

Check WordPress Codex on wp_add_dashboard_widget function for more information.

Decluttering the Admin Bar and Sidebar

The admin bar is the black floating bar you see at the top of the page when you’ve logged into WordPress. By default, it contains useful links such as viewing pending comments, adding new posts/pages, editing your profile, visiting the site homepage/dashboard, etc. It also houses the WordPress logo. The sidebar is the vertical menu on the left side of your dashboard.

We’ll be using the free WP Admin UI Customize plugin to get this done. After installing and activating the plugin, make sure to set the user roles you’ll be customizing for. If it’s for your own use, select just the Administrator role. If it’s for other users, choose suitable roles.

Next, go to WP Admin UI Customize > Admin Bar to modify the admin bar menu items. The admin bar is divided into left and right sections.

You just have to drag and drop the menu items where you want them in their respective sections. After clicking the expand arrow under a particular menu item, you can also rearrange or edit their sub-menus. This gives you precise control over how your admin bar looks.

Similarly, the sidebar can be modified by going to WP Admin UI Customize > Sidebar. The interface and functionality are pretty much the same, except here you don’t have to deal with two different sections. Drag and drop the menu items where you want them to be, or remove them altogether.

Removing the Posts menu from the Sidebar

Another free plugin I’d recommend to edit admin menus is Admin Menu Editor. It also includes various other cool features such as adding your own logo, setting custom branding colors, adding a footer text to your dashboard, etc. However, like with most free plugins, there’s always a catch! The functionality to edit the admin bar menu is only included in its pro version.

Changing Your Dashboard’s Color Scheme

The default WordPress color scheme is dull and monotonous. However, many users don’t realize that they can go to their Profile settings in the WordPress dashboard and change the color theme. As of now, WordPress comes with 8 different color themes for you to choose from.

But what if you want a different color scheme? Or you want to force a particular color scheme for all your site’s users? Fret not, for there are easy solutions to them too.

If you want more color scheme options, use the Admin Color Schemes plugin by WordPress’ core team. It adds 8 more unique color schemes.

For applying a custom admin color scheme, such as using your brand colors, you can use the Admin Color Schemer plugin.

To force the admin color scheme to all the users, you can use the Force Admin Color Scheme plugin. It’s pretty straightforward to use. Just tick the Force this admin color scheme on all users option under Admin Color Scheme in your Profile settings.

If you don’t want to use colored schemes in your admin area, there’s also the Grey Admin Color Schemes plugin.

Grey Admin Color Schemes
Choose the Grey Admin Color Schemes plugin for users who like things to be black and white.

Admin Themes

We’ve covered how to customize the dashboard features and its color scheme, but what if you want to completely change how it looks and behaves? Say you want a lighter interface instead of the regular and boring default one. Or maybe you want it to be more modern and enticing.

Whatever your motivation, you can make use of admin themes to make significant changes to your admin dashboard. Admin themes, despite their name, are plugins which totally modify the look of your backend. We’ll list down some of the best free admin themes below.

Fancy Admin UI

A clean blue and gray theme for the admin panel. It comes with a simplified interface. Its larger call-to-action buttons within the edit screens make things more accessible for you and your users/clients. You can also customize its primary and secondary colors by visiting Fancy UI > Settings > General. 

Slate Admin Theme

If the light and airy Fancy Admin UI isn’t up to your liking, you can move over to the dark side with Slate Admin Theme. Its minimalistic design is perfect for writing and editing without any distractions. It also comes with a few set color schemes that you can choose from.

Aquila Admin Theme

Inspired by Google’s material design language, Aquila is a complete redesign of the WordPress dashboard with a stern focus on user-friendliness. According to its author, it “cleans up the admin area from unnecessary or potentially confusing items for the end-user.”

Add Admin CSS

Don’t like any of the options listed above? Wanna try tweaking the appearance of your dashboard by yourself? This is the perfect plugin to achieve that. It lets you hide or move stuff around, change fonts, colors, sizes, etc. Any modification you may want to do with CSS, it can easily be achieved with this plugin.

The Future is Custom-Made

Customizing your WordPress’ admin screens gives it a more professional image and makes it stand out. It creates a more personalized experience for your clients or users, and it also helps them streamline their workflows better.

We’ve shown you how easy it is for you to achieve all this with just a few lines of code and/or a plugin.

And if you’re looking for more, go no further. Try Branda, the best and only white labeling plugin you’ll need to customize your WordPress dashboard. She does all the things listed above, and more, all in just one smart little package.

Put your dazzling shoes on and get started with your custom WordPress dashboard journey today!

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The No-Plugin Guide for a Multilingual WordPress Site Using Multisite

Don’t let the limits of language limit your website’s reach on the World Wide Web. People from all over the world visit your website. If you’re serving content in only one language, you’re pushing many interested visitors away.

Having a multilingual site has its perks. It lets you connect with an international audience and bring in new customers. A multi-language site also gives you a competitive edge. If there’s a potential multilingual market for your business, and your competitors aren’t taking advantage of that, you definitely need to go for it!

“Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Create a network of your site in different languages.

Creating a multilingual WordPress site isn’t hard with so many plugins out there.

But not so fast, my plugin-addicted friends! For this feat, I’ve moved away from multilingual plugins towards the Multisite of things.

A WordPress Multisite is like a network of many individual WordPress sites, all distinct yet connected together by a single WordPress core. This means that you don’t have to fuss about endless WordPress configurations to add or tweak a new language.

The power of the building a plugin-less multilingual site lies in WordPress Multisite.

In this post, you’ll learn how to create your own multilingual WordPress site without plugins…from scratch!

And I promise, it’ll be as easy as pie.

Creating A WordPress Multisite With Subdomains

WordPress Multisite lets you create multiple sites using the same installation. I’ll be implementing a French version (sacrilege!) of my website here, so I’ll be coding along with you.

Need help with setting up WordPress multisite subdomains? Go through our in-depth Multisite guide to get all caught up.

Why Subdomains?

After setting up your Multisite, the next step is to set up a subdomain. A subdomain is part of your parent domain, while the subdirectory is a folder within it.

For instance, fr.ioanadragnef.com is a subdomain, while ioanadragnef.com/fr is a subdirectory. If you need a quick refresher, we’ve covered the differences between Multisite subdomains vs. subdirectories in another post.

I’ll setup my website so that my French users can see their language code as a subdomain (i.e. fr.ioanadragnef.com). And since I have set my WordPress site up for over a month, I have to use the subdomain option. However, this restriction is only for the initial Multisite setup. You can easily switch between the network types afterwards.

You can set up a subdomain from either your hosting provider or from within WordPress. If you do it from within WordPress, you must change some DNS records to allow creation of wildcard subdomains.

Setting Up A New Language Site

I will create a French version of my site by going to My Sites > Network Admin > Sites, and selecting Add New.

Enter the fields at the prompt and choose a subdomain for your new site. If you’re making a multilingual WordPress site, it makes sense to have the subdomain be the language code (e.g. fr for French), but you can make it whatever you want.

Add your chosen language subdomain to your new site.

Be careful not to change the Site Language option here if you don’t speak the language. This will only change the language of your admin dashboard.

Once you’ve added the site, you’ll see it in the My Sites drop-down menu. You can manage it the same way you do the other by adding plugins, themes, and content.

Installing Your Theme And Adding Content

Once you’ve configured your subdomain, you’ll want to install the theme of your main website to your other-language site.

Remember, both the sites have to look as identical to each other as possible, which means using the same theme, brand colors, plugins, menus, etc. This way it won’t be confusing to your visitors when they switch the language.

The next step is to translate and add my content.

My website is fairly succinct, so luckily there’s not much to translate. However, if you’ve got a lot of pages, there are shortcuts—you can use the Multisite Post Duplicator or NS Cloner plugins.

Now, I know I mentioned earlier that this will be a no-plugin multilingual WordPress site, but we’ve completed that already. The plugins recommended above are for helping you with laying down your translated pages and posts.

Translating Your Content

Now you have a Multisite, a subdomain, you’ve configured your content and website structure. It’s time to get translatin’!

Even with significant advances in machine translation tech, there’s still no match for human translators. If you want details and nuance in your translations (and you should), I recommend getting professional help. Upwork and Fiverr are some platforms where you can hire skilled translators in various international languages at a great price.

But if you still want to go for automated translations, there are a few WordPress translation plugins that you can use to get it done easily.

Configuring Custom Menus

Once your website is ready and translated, all you have to do is add a link to it in your original-language website (i.e. your main network site). This way, your readers can switch back and forth between the various languages available!

To do this, we’ll be creating a custom menu. Since I’m only using a single language, I’ll link to the French version of my site in my menu.

To create a custom link within your website’s primary menu, go to Appearance > Menus, and then edit your main menu.

Under Custom Links, enter the URL of the subdomain and the navigation label. Now add the custom link to the menu via the Add to Menu button.

Custom links
Custom links within your existing site menu are best if you’re only using a single language.

Custom Menu For Multiple Languages

If you want to create a menu that contains multiple languages, create a new menu and add multiple custom links with the various language subdomains.

For example, if I want a Languages menu that has both French and Spanish, first I’ll create a new Languages menu.

I’ll then add my French and Spanish subdomains under different custom links, and use the name of the language as the navigation label.

Congratulations! You’ve now built a multilingual WordPress Multisite with no plugins.

One Egg Is Not Une Oeuf

A multilingual site enables you to reach more readers than ever before. It makes you look more professional and open you up to new opportunities. And since you’ve created your multilingual site via Multisite, you have more control over your sites than if you’d just used a plugin.

Using Multisite to do it has many advantages for you, the main of which is giving you ultimate control over your site. It allows you to create, tweak, and present your translated content however you want.

The trick here to avoid multilingual plugins is to use a Multisite along with a custom menu to direct your readers to the right subsites.

It’s never too late to add a new language to your site. After all, in the game of tongues, you either Spanish or Vanish!