Category: giveaway

It’s quite surreal to type that WPBeginner turns 15 years old today!

Time flies when you’re having fun especially with such an amazing community of website owners, small businesses, and web professionals. YOU ARE the best part of WPBeginner!

Like every year, I will take a few minutes to share all the major things that are happening in the business as well as my personal life.

But more importantly, to celebrate this big milestone, we’re doing a HUGE birthday giveaway with over $50,000+ in prizes. There will be 215 lucky winners!

Since this is a long article, you can easily skip to the section you’re most interested in:

My Personal Updates

As many of you know, I have been using WordPress since I was 16 years old, and I started WPBeginner in 2009 when I was in college at age 19.

Ever since then, I’ve been fully committed to the WordPress community, and WordPress plays a huge role both in my life as well as my family’s life.

My son Solomon is now 7 years old, and we attended WordCamp Europe together last month in Turin, Italy. The event was a lot of fun, and it was really cool to see Solomon attend the presentations, chat with sponsors, and really embrace the community.

We as a family are continuing our travels around the world, exploring new cultures, and meeting local WPBeginner readers.

Here are some photos from our travels:

One of the best parts about running a fully remote online company is the flexibility it offers us. We have team members in over 50 countries now, and my goal is to visit at least few more countries this year. Side note: yes we’re hiring.

Also if you didn’t get a chance to read my 2023 recap, I highly recommend checking it because I shared lessons learned from last year.

WPBeginner Updates

We have had quite an amazing year at WPBeginner, and I’m really proud of all the things we’ve been able to accomplish.

Of course, none of this would be possible without your continued support, so THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.

Here are some of the big updates that happened on WPBeginner in the last 12 months:

1. We Launched WPBeginner Pro Services

One of the top requests we got from our reader survey was to offer affordable WordPress development and website management services.

Well, I heard you loud and clear, and this year we launched WPBeginner Pro Services.

Our Pro Services offer affordable WordPress development and website management for businesses of all sizes.

Here are all the professional WordPress services we have added for you:

• Custom WordPress Design & Development: Looking for a custom website design? Stop wasting time on Upwork and other marketplaces. Let our expert team build your dream website for you.
• WordPress site maintenance: Struggling to manage your WordPress website? Let our WordPress experts handle the technical side for you, so you can focus on what really matters – growing your online business.
• WordPress speed optimization: A one-second delay in your page loading times can reduce your conversions by 7%. We’ll audit your site for speed and make it faster.
• Hacked site repair: If your website ever get hacked, you can hire us to remove any malicious code, clean up the hack, and restore your WordPress site in no time.

Ready to bring your dream WordPress project to life? Find out more about our professional WordPress services.

2. We Launched WPBeginner Solution Center

A lot of our readers rely on us for expert recommendation on the best WordPress plugins, web tools, and themes for specific use-cases.

This year, we launched the WPBeginner Solution Center where we’re writing detailed reviews of the best business tools for your website, and along with our expert review, you can also read reviews from actual users too.

Here are a few premium WordPress product reviews on WPBeginner:

• WPForms Review: a detailed review of the most beginner friendly form plugin that’s used by over 6 million users.
• Hostinger Review: a thorough review of one of the fastest growing WordPress Hosting companies.
• Divi Review: detailed analysis of one of the most popular multipurpose theme and page builder.
• MemberPress Review: expert analysis on the most popular WordPress membership and course plugin that’s helping creators earn over $1 billion dollars each year.

If you own a WordPress theme or plugin and want to get it listed on WPBeginner’s Solution Center? Simply submit an application form and our team will be happy to consider your product or service.

Also if you find a plugin in the list that you’re using on your website, add your review to help other readers.

3. Contributing to WordPress and Open Source

At WPBeginner, we have always been big supporters of open source.

As part of our Five for the Future commitment, we now sponsor 9 WordPress core contributors. These people spend 194 hours every single week helping to make WordPress the best content management system on the planet.

We also released a free Search & Replace Everything plugin on WordPress.org that makes it easy to do bulk updates on your WordPress site.

This is very helpful especially if you want to update a link on every page, change an image that’s used in multiple areas, or make bulk changes when you’re moving your site.

4. Global Sponsor for All WordPress Community Events

WPBeginner joined the WordPress global community sponsorship program in 2024. That means we’re sponsoring every WordCamp on the planet!

With our global sponsorship, WordCamps across the globe can spend substantially less time worrying about fundraising and focus more on bringing the best WordPress content for local WordPress communities.

5. New Acquisitions, Investments, and Product Launches

In 2018, I created the WPBeginner Growth Fund as a way to invest in awesome WordPress-focused companies that are solving the problems that you, our readers, want us to help with.

In the last 12 months, we’ve made several big acquisitions and investments in the ecosystem:

• We invested in GrooveHQ, a top-rated customer support help desk software. Over 2,000 businesses use GrooveHQ to deliver exceptional customer service. GrooveHQ comes with all the tools you need to deliver exceptional customer support including: a shared inbox, live chat, smart workflows, reporting, integrations, and cutting-edge AI features. Here’s the full background story.
• In October, Seahawk Media joined the WPBeginner Growth Fund. This premier WordPress agency provides development, design, maintenance, migration, support, and other world-class services to 1,000+ brands including DreamHost and GoDaddy. Here’s the full background story.
• Remember Envira Gallery and Soliloquy? Long-term readers will know that I built these product, but had to sell them at the end of 2017. I’m excited to welcome them back home. Along with that, we also acquired NextGEN Gallery and the Photocrati theme.
• We completely revamped WP Charitable, so it’s easier than ever to launch and run successful donation & fundraising campaigns. The plugin comes with a visual campaign builder, and all the powerful features like recurring donations, peer to peer fundraising (aka crowdfunding), actionable reports, and more. Here’s the full background story.
• We launched SEOBoost, a powerful content optimization tool that helps you use A.I. and NLP to grow your organic traffic and SEO rankings.
• We acquired LowFruits, an SEO tool that helps you find keyword ideas that are easy to rank for. This way you can start writing the right content that will bring traffic faster.
• We acquired Beacon.by, a professional lead magnet creator to help you generate more leads from your website. This tool helps you turn your blog posts into eBooks or design beautiful eBooks from scratch.
• We launched a free Chrome extension called All in One SEO Analyzer by AIOSEO. This allows you to perform an in-depth SEO audit of any page with a single click. Here’s the full background story.
• We also took an investment stake in Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Akismet, and more.

I’m really proud of how far we’ve come with the Growth Fund, and it’s really amazing to see the impact our companies are making both in the WordPress ecosystem as well as the larger open web.

Want me to invest in your business? Learn more about the WPBeginner growth fund.

Company / Product Updates

A lot of new readers ask me how do we make money at WPBeginner, when we give away all our WordPress tutorials for free?

Yes, we have a huge library of WordPress video courses that are completely free for everyone.

WPBeginner is funded 100% through the support of our readers like you.

My various companies develop premium WordPress plugins to help you grow your website. These plugins are built with the same beginner-friendly approach you know and love from WPBeginner, and they have powerful features to take your website to the next level.

When you buy a license for any of my premium plugins, you’re not only helping make your website better, but you’re also helping support WPBeginner and our mission.

My company, Awesome Motive, now has over 330+ team members across the world, and all of us are committed to help you build a better website!

Here’s a list of our plugins that you should check out. Collectively, they’re being used on over 25 million websites. Your support means a lot to us whether you use the free version or purchase a premium license — we are here to serve.

WPBeginner 15th Birthday Giveaway

To celebrate the 15^th birthday of WPBeginner, we’re running our biggest ever giveaway!

We are giving away premium plugin licenses worth over $50,000, to 215 lucky winners.

So, what kind of goodies are we giving away? Here’s the complete list:

WPForms, MonsterInsights, OptinMonster, AIOSEO, SeedProd, WP Mail SMTP, Smash Balloon, WPCode, Duplicator, UserFeedback, WP Charitable, Funnelkit, Smart Slider, WP SMS Pro, WP Statistics, PublishPress, Simple Author Box, WP Login Lockdown, Hostinger, SiteGround, FooPlugins, Themify Builder, Elementor, ManageWP, EWWW Image Optimizer, HeroThemes, ThemeIsle Hyve, Bluehost, GreenGeeks, WP Rocket, Really Simple SSL, LearnDash, Wishlist Member, MemberPress, WC Vendors, Wholesale Suite, Advanced Coupons, Visser Labs, AdTribes, Weglot, WP Engine, Omnisend, Solid Backups, and Solid Security.

Thank You, Everyone

I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported us in this journey. I really do appreciate all of your retweets, personal emails, content suggestions, and the interactions at the events.

I also want to say special thank you to everyone who’s using our plugins because that enables us to keep bringing more free tutorials on WPBeginner.

You all are AMAZING and without you, there is no WPBeginner.

I look forward to another solid year ahead of us.

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

The post WPBeginner Turns 15 Years Old – Reflections, Updates, and a Giveaway ($50,000 in Prizes) first appeared on WPBeginner.

Today is July 4th, which means WPBeginner is officially 14 years old. We’ve come a long way!

Like every year, I want to take a few minutes and do a quick recap of all the major things happening in business as well as my personal life.

Bonus: I’m also doing a massive birthday giveaway, and you’ll get a chance to win your favorite premium WordPress plugins worth $50,000. On top of that, you can also win a 1-on-1 mentorship call with me for 1 hour.

Since this is a long article, you can easily skip to the section you’re most interested in:

WPBeginner Story

I first started using WordPress when I was 16 years old and I fell in love with the community. This led me to start WPBeginner at age 19 with a single mission: to make WordPress easy for beginners.

Since then WPBeginner has become the largest free WordPress resource site for beginners.

For those of you who’re new, you can read the full WPBeginner story on our about page and use the Start Here page to get the most out of WPBeginner.

Personal Updates

My son Solomon is now 6.5 years old, and it’s quite cool to see him taking interest in WordPress. He attended WordCamp Asia with me earlier this year in Bangkok.

His favorite task in the company is coming up with mascot ideas for our new plugins at Awesome Motive.

We as a family are continuing our travels around the world, and it’s really awesome to meet our local WPBeginner users.

Since the last WPBeginner birthday, we have taken trips to Istanbul, Karachi, Alaska, Dubai, California, Mexico, St. Thomas, Maldives, Thailand, Canada, and more.

One of the best parts about running a fully remote online company is that I can work from anywhere in the world. We have team members in 50 countries now, and I’m planning to visit at least few more countries this year.

If you didn’t get a chance to read my 2022 recap, I highly recommend checking it out on my personal blog where I share lessons learned from last year.

Btw, here’s a preview of a mascot that Solomon helped come up with for our new plugin, Duplicator. The mascot’s name is Willie the Walrus.

WPBeginner Updates

Thanks to our awesome community, WPBeginner has continued to grow year after year. Aside from all the amazing WordPress tutorials on our blog, there have been several notable updates from last year that I’d like to highlight.

But before I do that, I want to share a huge milestone that I’m super proud of. We got featured on the NASDAQ billboard in Time Square for passing 25 million active installs of our products.

This was a huge celebration for our entire team — going from a blog to being in Time Square in New York City!!!

These milestones are proof that hard work does pay off.

Talking about hard work, here are some big WPBeginner updates that happened in the last 12 months:

1. We launched Five New Free Business Tools

Since last year, we have launched 5 new free business tools to help you do more with WordPress.

• Keyword Generator Tool: It makes keyword research easy by helping you generate 300+ keyword ideas in a click.
• Blog Post Idea Generator: It helps you come up with a year’s worth of content ideas in a second.
• Smart Headline Analyzer: It lets you write irresistible headlines that your users can’t help but click.
• Website SEO Analyzer: It finds critical errors on your site and generates a free SEO report to fix them.
• Keyword Density Checker: It enables you to find the primary keywords on any content to fix over-optimization. Also great for competitor research.

2. Larger community + More Content

Our community has continued to grow on all social media networks. Our WPBeginner Engage Facebook group now has over 94,000 members.

And the WPBeginner YouTube channel has passed 291,000 subscribers.

We also revamped our WPBeginner video site. Now you can access loads of step-by-step videos without hiring a developer for free.

You can follow us on various social media networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

3. Contributing to WordPress and Open Source

We have always been huge supporters of open source. This past year, we revamped our free Insert Headers and Footers plugin from the ground up and relaunched it under a new brand WPCode.

It was originally created to help you add code snippets in WordPress without editing your theme’s functions.php file or installing an additional plugin.

Now we launched a brand new snippet library from where you can find the snippet and add them to your site with one click.

You can also create your own WPCode profile to save snippets, create private snippets, and more.

See the full WPCode announcement to see why this is the most underrated yet MUST HAVE plugin for all websites, and it’s now being used by over 2 million websites!

4. New Acquisitions & Investments

In 2018, I created the WPBeginner Growth Fund to invest in WordPress-focused companies that are solving important problems that you, our readers, want me to help out with.

Over the past 12 months, we have made several big acquisitions and investments in the ecosystem.

• We acquired Thrive Themes, company behind some of the most powerful growth tools for WordPress. Over 200,000+ smart website owners use the Thrive plugin suite to easily convert website visitors into email subscribers, paying customers, and raving fans. Some of their plugins include landing page builder, quiz builder, course platform, and more. Here’s the full background story.
• We acquired Duplicator, a powerful WordPress backup and migration plugin used by over 1.5 million websites. You can use it to create automatic backups and store them on cloud. It comes with easy restore option to save time. It’s also the best solution to migrate your website from one hosting provider to another, or even from local server to live. Here’s the full background story.
• We acquired WP101, which offers professionally-produced WordPress training videos to help you learn WordPress, fast. It’s a perfect solution for business owners to offer WordPress training videos in their employee onboarding process. Here’s the full background story.
• We acquired Easy WP SMTP, which helps you solve email delivery issues and prevent your emails from landing in the spam folder.

Aside from the full acquisitions, we also invested in HeroThemes, a company that specializes in building tools to help users deliver great customer service on their websites. See more details here.

I’m really proud of how far we’ve come with the Growth Fund, and it’s really amazing to see the impact our companies are making in the WordPress ecosystem and the larger open web.

Want me to invest in your business? Learn more about the WPBeginner growth fund.

Product / Company Updates

Often readers ask me what is WPBeginner’s income, and how does WPBeginner make money by giving away all WordPress tutorials for free.

Well, we make money indirectly through our suite of premium WordPress plugins that are now running on over 25 million websites. Aside from that, we also have investments in a suite of other WordPress companies through our growth fund that I mentioned above.

Our team at Awesome Motive continued to set new records this year, and all of our products saw tremendous growth.

Here’s a list of our plugins that you should check out:

• OptinMonster – The #1 conversion optimization software that helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers. There’s also a free version here.
• WPForms – The most beginner-friendly WordPress form builder used by over 5 million websites. There’s also a free version – WPForms Lite.
• MonsterInsights – The most popular WordPress Analytics plugin to help you grow your business with confidence. I use this on all of my websites. Free version available: MonsterInsights Lite.
• AIOSEO – The original WordPress SEO plugin to help you get more traffic. Used by over 3 million websites. There’s also a free version of AIOSEO.
• WP Mail SMTP – The #1 plugin that helps improve your WordPress email deliverability. The free version: WP Mail SMTP Lite is sufficient for most website owners.
• SeedProd – The best drag & drop website builder for WordPress. You can use it to create custom WordPress themes, landing pages, and website layouts without any code. Try the free version of SeedProd.
• RafflePress – A powerful WordPress giveaway and contest plugin to grow your website traffic.
• Smash Balloon – The most popular social media feeds plugin for WordPress. A free version is available for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube feeds.
• PushEngage – The leading web push notification software for small businesses. It helps send over 9 billion push notifications each month.
• SearchWP – The most advanced WordPress search plugin. Completely customize your WordPress search form and search results algorithm to improve your content discoverability and increase sales. Trusted by over 30,000+ website owners.
• Easy Digital Downloads – the top-rated WordPress plugin for selling digital products and subscriptions. Easily sell eBooks, software, music, and more, protect digital downloads, accept payments, and more. Trusted by over 50,000+ website owners. Try the free version of EDD.
• AffiliateWP – The most popular affiliate management plugin for WordPress. Easily launch an affiliate program for your store. One-click integration with WooCommerce, WPForms, and 20 other payment plugins. Unlock a new growth channel without the middleman fees.
• WP Simple Pay – Easily accept payments online without a complex shopping cart setup. Great for simple one-time or recurring payments. Built-in support for credit card payments, ACH bank debit, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more. Try the free version of WP Simple Pay.
• TrustPulse – Leverage the power of social proof to instantly increase site conversions by up to 15%. Automatically show real-time purchase notifications and other website activity notifications to increase trust, conversions, and sales.
• WP Charitable – The top-rated donation and fundraising plugin for WordPress. Over 10,000+ non-profit organizations and website owners across the world use Charitable to create fundraising campaigns and raise more money online. Try the free version of Charitable.
• Thrive Themes: Powerful growth tool suite for WordPress to help you transform your website into an online business platform. The suite includes Thrive Theme Builder, Thrive Automator, Thrive Architect, Thrive Leads, and more.
• Duplicator: Secure your WordPress website with reliable backups. It also makes it easy to migrate and restore your website to your favorite locations. Try the free version of Duplicator.
• User Feedback: Easiest way to collect user feedback and make surveys on your website. Great HotJar alternative (free version here).

We’re a fully remote team of over 290+ people across 50 countries. Want to join our team and work alongside me in helping small businesses grow and compete with the big guys? We’re hiring.

WPBeginner Birthday Giveaway

To celebrate the 14^th birthday of WPBeginner, we are offering premium plugins worth $50,000.

The prize includes 10 licenses of each of the plugins listed here.

WPForms, MonsterInsights, OptinMonster, AIOSEO, SeedProd, Thrive Suite, Funnelkit, Uncanny Automator, MemberPress, Easy Digital Downloads, SearchWP, RafflePress, Formidable Forms, WPCode, Duplicator, Smash Balloon, WP Mail SMTP, WP Simple Pay, AffiliateWP, Pretty Links.

On top of that, you can also win a 1-on-1 mentorship call with me for 1 hour.

The winner will be chosen randomly using a random generator script.

Thank You, Everyone

I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported us in this journey. I really do appreciate all of your retweets, personal emails, content suggestions, and interactions at events.

I also want to say a special thank you to everyone who’s using our plugins because that enables us to keep bringing more free tutorials on WPBeginner.

You all are AMAZING, and without you, there is no WPBeginner.

I look forward to another solid year ahead of us.

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

The post WPBeginner Turns 14 Years Old – Reflections, Updates, and a Giveaway ($50,000 in Prizes) first appeared on WPBeginner.