seedprod | The Blog Pros

June 30, 2023

How to Easily Create Post Purchase Surveys in WooCommerce

Are you looking for the best way to gather useful feedback about your WooCommerce store from your active customers?

User surveys can help you get valuable information so you can use it to make data-driven decisions. For example, they can help you find out how to improve your sales funnel or why your customers bought a particular product.

In this article, we will show you how to easily create post purchase surveys in WooCommerce.

Why Use Post Purchase Surveys in WooCommerce?

If you have a WooCommerce store, then you may be wondering what your customers think of your products and online store. There’s no easy way to find out without actually asking them.

Luckily, you can use a WordPress survey plugin to collect real user feedback quickly and easily. This feedback will help you discover the ‘why’ behind every website visitor’s action. This is something you can’t learn from Google Analytics alone.

When creating your customer survey, make sure you don’t add any unnecessary questions. The questions you ask should get you the most valuable information and insights.

Here are some examples of questions you can ask your customers after checkout:

How long have you been a customer?
How did you discover us?
Was our pricing page easy to understand?
Which of our products have you used?
How satisfied are you with our products?
Have you needed to contact customer service?
Do you have any additional comments or suggestions?

By asking for user feedback after each WooCommerce purchase, you will learn ways you can improve your sales funnel to boost user experience and increase sales.

When you know the why or the intent behind users’ actions, you can easily figure out why your visitors buy or do not buy your products.

With that being said, let’s take a look at how to easily create post purchase surveys in WooCommerce. We will cover two different methods:

Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using UserFeedback
Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using WPForms

Method 1: Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using UserFeedback

UserFeedback is an easy-to-use survey plugin by the MonsterInsights team. It lets you ask your website visitors questions and collect their feedback in real time. It also makes it easy to add the survey to specific WooCommerce pages, such as the order confirmation page.

UserFeedback includes a Post Purchase Review template to give you a head start in creating your survey. Plus, you can customize how your popup surveys look so that they completely match your brand and site design.

First, you need to install and activate the UserFeedback plugin. For step-by-step instructions, you can follow our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: There is a free version of UserFeedback that you can use to get started. However, you will need the features of the Pro version to create a post purchase survey.

Setting Up the UserFeedback Plugin

Once the plugin is activated, the setup wizard will automatically launch. Click the ‘Start’ button to begin the setup.

Next, you will be prompted to create your first survey to show you what the plugin is capable of.

We won’t be using this example survey, so you can go ahead and use the default answers.

Choose question for your first UserFeedback survey

You can choose from a few pre-written questions or create your own question. You will also be able to change your questions at any time.

For this tutorial, you should simply click the ‘Next Step’ button to continue.

Click on Next Step in the UserFeedback setup wizard

Next, you will see the option to enable specific UserFeedback features, depending on your license level.

Go ahead and enable the features you want or that your license level allows.

Once you have done that, you need to click the ‘Next Step’ button at the bottom of the page.

Now, you can enter the email address where you want the survey responses to be sent.

Customize notifications for UserFeedback

Since we won’t be using this survey, you don’t need to make any changes and can simply click the ‘Next Step: Publish’ button.

In the final step of the setup wizard, the features and addons you enable will be installed.

UserFeedback features and addons successfully installed

Then, you can click on the ‘Exit to dashboard’ button at the bottom of the page.

You will see the sample ‘First Survey’ that you created with the wizard.

Now you can unlock the Pro features of the plugin. You need to enter the license key that was emailed to you when you purchased a UserFeedback plan.

You will need to navigate to UserFeedback » Settings in the WordPress admin area. Once there, simply paste your license key into the field and click the ‘Verify’ button.

Make sure you click the ‘Save Settings’ button once you have done this.

After that, you can enable the Pro features by going to the UserFeedback » Addons page.

For each addon, you will need to click the ‘Install Addon’ button, followed by the ‘Activate’ button that appears.

This is important since the Additional Templates addon includes a Post Purchase Review template, and the Question Types addon allows you to add star ratings and more. Other addons allow you to further customize your survey form.

Now that you have successfully installed the UserFeedback plugin and its addons, you are ready to create your post purchase survey.

Creating a Post Purchase Survey Using UserFeedback

To create a new survey, you need to return to the UserFeedback » Surveys page and click the ‘Create New’ button.

This will show you dozens of survey templates that you can use as a starting point.

You need to scroll down until you find the Post Purchase Review template and then click it.

A new survey will be created for you. Some helpful questions have already been added.

You can change any question’s type and title by simply pointing and clicking.

Editing a Survey Question in UserFeedback

Each question has a Settings tab where you can set the question as ‘Required’. The Logic tab lets you show or hide the question based on the customer’s previous answers.

With UserFeedback, you can ask unlimited questions and receive unlimited responses. You can ask all types of questions, including multiple-choice and free-form questions, and even capture emails and collect star ratings.

You might like to add some of the questions we listed at the beginning of this article. To add a question to your survey, simply click the ‘Add Question’ button after the last question.

When you choose a question type from the dropdown menu, a new question will be added.

After that, you will be able to add a question title. Depending on the question type, you can then customize the question in other ways, such as labeling checkboxes or radio buttons.

Tip: The ‘Preview’ link at the top of the page doesn’t just preview the form but also allows you to customize its colors.

You can also create a custom thank you message and redirect users after their submissions.

Customizing the UserFeedback Thank You Question

When you have finished editing your survey questions, just hit the ‘Next Step: Settings’ button. This will open the Settings page, where you can customize your survey even more.

In the ‘Tracking’ section, you can enable or disable Google Analytics tracking if you have MonsterInsights installed.

Next, in the ‘Targeting’ section, you can select what types of devices and pages you want your survey to appear on. You can display the survey on all device types or create different surveys that target desktop and mobile users.

Next, you can scroll down to the Pages setting area. This is important because it allows you to choose where the survey will be displayed.

The default setting is ‘All Pages’. This will display the survey on every page of your online store. However, we only want to survey customers after they have made a purchase.

In this case, we should display the survey on the order confirmation page that is displayed after checkout. This page is also known as the WooCommerce thank you page.

To target this page, you will need to select ‘Page url is’ from the dropdown menu. After that, you should type ‘order-received’ in the next field.

Targeting the WooCommerce Order Confirmation Page in UserFeedback

This works because the setting matches partial URLs. The full URL will change with each transaction but will always contain the characters ‘order-received’.

You can also scroll down to the ‘Behavior’ section. Here, you can configure settings like:

Display Timing – When the survey will appear on the page.
Display Length – How often the survey will appear to website visitors.
Survey Run Time – How long the survey will appear on the designated pages.

In addition, you can enable or disable the ‘Start Survey Minimized’ option.

This displays a less visible version of your survey instead of automatically opening the first question.

Once you are done changing the settings, you can click the ‘Next Step: Notifications’ button.

This will take you to the Notifications page, where you can choose to send yourself an email with each new response to the survey. Simply leave the ‘Send Email’ toggle switched on and then enter one or more email addresses.

You can also enable conditional logic to trigger email notifications when visitors respond to your questions in a certain way.

For example, you might only want to receive an email if the user checks a box labeled ‘Do you want a callback?’

For this to work, your survey needs to contain at least one question with a radio, checkbox, NPS, or star rating question.

After that, click on the ‘Next Step: Publish’ button to continue.

Publish Your Survey

Lastly, there’s an option to schedule the survey for a later date and time.

If you are ready to publish your survey immediately, then go ahead and click the ‘Save and Publish’ button.

Save and publish the UserFeedback survey

That’s it! You’ve successfully created a survey form.

Now when your customers purchase items from your store, your survey will pop up on the order confirmation page.

Tip: You may not see the customer survey when you are logged into WooCommerce. You will need to open your online store in a new incognito window or a different web browser.

Viewing Your Survey Form Results

Once you start getting responses, you can analyze them right from your WordPress admin dashboard using easy-to-read reports.

Simply navigate to UserFeedback » Results to see the total responses, impressions, and more details.

Method 2: Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin on the market. It comes with a powerful surveys and polls addon, which allows you to quickly create highly-engaging survey forms.

It lets you combine the Surveys and Polls addon with powerful WPForms features like conditional logic, multi-page forms, custom notifications, email integrations, and more.

Note: You will need the Pro plan because it includes the WPForms Surveys and Polls addon. WPBeginner users can use our WPForms coupon to get 50% OFF on all WPForms licenses.

Setting Up the WPForms Plugin

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once the plugin is activated, you need to go to the WPForms » Settings page and enter your license key. You will find this information in your account on the WPForms website.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Verify Key’ button.

Once you have done that, you should head over to the WPForms » Addons page and scroll down to the Surveys and Polls addon.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Install’ addon button to install and activate the addon.

Now you are ready to create the post purchase survey form.

Creating a Post Purchase Survey Using WPForms

You need to visit the WPForms » Add New page to create a new form. This will launch the WPForms form builder interface, and you can choose from different pre-built form templates.

First, you should provide a title for your survey form at the top of the page.

After that, you need to choose a template. Start by clicking on ‘Addon Templates’ to list templates that are compatible with the Surveys and Polls addon.

Select the Survey Form Template in WPForms

Then you need to click the ‘Use Template’ button on the Survey Form template. This will load a sample customer feedback form template with several fields already added to it.

You can just point and click to edit the fields, rearrange them with drag and drop, or remove them from the form. You can also add new form fields from the left column.

WPForms supports all commonly-used form fields, including dropdown, radio buttons, checkboxes, Likert scale, text input, rating scale, and many more. This makes it super easy for you to build highly-interactive survey forms.

There is some conditional logic already built into the form. For example, the ‘How can we improve?’ field will only appear if a user selects 1 or 2 stars in the ‘Your Experience’ field.

You can see this by selecting the ‘How can we improve?’ field and then clicking the ‘Field Options’ tab on the left, as seen in the image above.

If some of your customers log in to your online store, then you can make their life easier by auto-filling some of their information from their user profiles.

For example, to auto-fill their email address, you need to click on the Email field, then click the ‘Field Options’ tab on the left. Once there, just click on the ‘Advanced’ tab to show the advanced field options.

You will notice a field where you can set a Default Value for the email field.

You can enter information from their profile automatically by clicking on ‘Show Smart Tags’.

Entering the User Email Smart Tag in WPForms

Now you simply click the ‘User Email List’ option, and the {user_email} smart tag will be entered into the field. This will automatically add the email address for logged-in users.

You can also easily remove any fields that you don’t need on the form.

For example, if you would like to remove the ‘Name’ field, then you should point at that field with your mouse and then click the red Trash icon that appears at the top right of the field.

If you would like to add more questions, such as the ones we listed at the beginning of this article, simply drag a new field onto the page and then customize it.

Once you have created the form, you need to click the orange ‘Save’ button at the top of the page to store your form settings.

Next, you can go to the Settings tab and select ‘Confirmations’ in the WPForms form builder.

Here, you can choose whether to show a message or a page or even redirect users to a URL when they submit the survey form.

Besides that, the WPForms Notifications tab lets you edit the notification settings so that you get email alerts when a user fills out your survey.

You can now click on the close button to exit the form builder.

Adding the Survey Form to a Custom Thank You Page

If you have gone through the trouble of creating a custom WooCommerce thank you page, then you can easily add your post purchase survey to it using a shortcode or a block.

Note: Whether you are using the default thank you page or a custom one, you can also display the survey as a popup using a plugin. See the next section for details.

You will find the shortcode you need by visiting the WPForms » All Forms page.

You can then use the shortcode to add the form to your custom thank you page by following our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

Alternatively, if you created your custom thank you page using the block editor or a page builder plugin like SeedProd, then all you need to do is drag the WPForms widget onto the page and then pick the survey form you just created from a dropdown menu.

Dragging the WPForms Widget Onto a Page in SeedProd

Once you have saved your custom thank you page, your customers will see the survey after checking out.

Automatically Showing a Survey Popup Using OptinMonster

You might prefer to have the survey pop up automatically over the order confirmation page, similar to what happens with the UserFeedback plugin in Method 1.

The first thing you need to do is install the free OptinMonster plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: In this tutorial, we will use the free OptinMonster plugin because it does everything we need. However, with a Growth subscription, the premium version of OptinMonster has much stronger integration with WooCommerce.

Upon activation, the OptinMonster setup wizard will start.

Simply follow the onscreen instructions to set up OptinMonster on your website and create a free account.

Once you complete the setup, you will find yourself on the OptinMonster dashboard.

You will see a welcome message, a link to the OptinMonster user guide, and a video to help you get started.

Now you will need to scroll down until you find a box where you can create a new popup.

Simply click the ‘Create New’ link.

You will now see a collection of popup templates. Since our popup will just contain our post purchase survey, we will use the minimal Canvas template.

You can find this template by typing ‘canvas’ into the search field.

Search for the Canvas Template in OptinMonster

When you point your mouse over the Canvas template, two buttons will appear.

You can create your popup by clicking the ‘Use Template’ button.

Click the Use Template Button in OptinMonster

You will see a popup asking you to give the campaign a name.

You can type in ‘Post Purchase Survey’ and then click the ‘Start Building’ button.

The OptinMonster builder will open with your selected template. You can see a preview of the popup on the right, and there are blocks on the left that you can add to the popup.

You need to find the WPForms block and drag it onto the page.

You can now select the survey you want to add.

Simply click on the name of the WPForms post purchase survey that you created earlier. The WPForms shortcode will be added to your popup.

Select the WPForms Survey You Created Earlier

There is still a placeholder image and text block on the page. These can be safely deleted.

When you hover your mouse over the image, a purple toolbar will appear. You can delete the image by clicking the Trash icon. You will be asked to confirm the deletion.

You can delete the text block that says ‘Drag blocks and elements to start building your campaign’ in the same way.

Your finished popup should include just the WPForms shortcode. This is a good time to save your work by clicking the ‘Save’ button at the top of the screen.

Your next job is to click the ‘Display Rules’ tab and set how and where the popup will be displayed.

The first rule determines when the popup will be shown. The default value is after you have been on the page for 5 seconds. This will work for most online stores, but you can change the value if you like.

Now you need to scroll down to the second rule, which you will find just below the ‘AND’ label.

The default value is to display the popup on every page of your WordPress website. You need to change this so that it only displays the post purchase survey on the order confirmation page.

The Current URL Path Setting in OptinMonster

To do this, you need to click the dropdown menu for ‘is any page’ and select ‘contains’ instead.

Another field will appear, and you need to type ‘order-received’ here.

The Current URL Path Matches When Contains Order-Received

This rule will match the confirmation page URL. Although the URL changes with every transaction, it will always contain the characters ‘order-received’.

Now you can click the ‘Next Step’ button to determine what happens when the conditions in those two rules are met.

The default settings here will display the popup without any effects or sound. If you would like to add an effect or sound, just use the dropdown menus.

Once you are finished, you need to click on the ‘Next Step’ button. You will see a summary of the display rules you just created.

Summary of Display Rules in OptinMonster

Make sure you click the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.

Finally, you can click the ‘Publish’ tab at the top of the screen and then click the ‘Publish’ button under ‘Publish Status’. This will push the popup live on your online store.

You can now close the OptinMonster builder by clicking the ‘X’ icon in the top right corner.

Your customers will now see the post purchase survey whenever they finish checking out. Here’s how it looks in our demo store.

Viewing Your Survey Form Results

WPForms shows survey results in beautiful charts and graphs. You can also print survey results and export them to your favorite spreadsheet software.

To view your survey results, you need to visit the WPForms » All Forms page and click on the ‘Survey Results’ link below your survey form.

On the results page, you will see your survey responses displayed in an interactive chart and tables.

You can export responses to a single question and the entire survey.

On the top, you will see options to switch to different chart types and export options.

You can save individual survey results in JPEG, PDF, and Print formats to easily share them on presentation slides, blog posts, or social media.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to create post purchase surveys in WooCommerce. You may also want to see our guide on how to create smart coupons in WooCommerce or our expert picks for the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Create Post Purchase Surveys in WooCommerce first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 21, 2023

How to Edit WooCommerce Pages (No Coding Required)

Do you want to edit WooCommerce pages without writing code?

WooCommerce creates many pages to display products and add cart functionality to your store. Small improvements to these pages can result in higher sales and less cart abandonment for your store.

In this article, we will show you how to easily edit WooCommerce pages to make more sales without any coding skills.

Why Edit WooCommerce Pages for Your Online Store?

WooCommerce creates many pages to display products, shop, account, checkout, and cart features for your online store.

By default, your WordPress theme controls how these pages look. There are a ton of great WooCommerce themes that you can choose from.

However, editing these pages may not be as straightforward as it seems.

For instance, you may not be able to show additional products, add upsell features, change the layout, and more.

This is where SeedProd comes in. It is the ultimate WooCommerce page builder plugin that allows you to use an intuitive drag-and-drop tool to design your WooCommerce pages.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

For the different methods in this article, we will be using the SeedProd Pro version, as it has the features needed to edit WooCommerce pages.

Upon activation, you need to visit SeedProd » Settings page to enter your plugin license key. You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website.

Adding a SeedProd license key to WordPress

After entering your license key, you are good to go. You can now edit and create highly optimized WooCommerce pages for your online store.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to edit WooCommerce pages, step by step.

You can click any of the links below to jump to any method you want:

Create a Completely Custom WooCommerce Theme
Customize the WooCommerce Checkout Page
Customize the WooCommerce Checkout Form
Add One-Page Checkout in WooCommerce
Add a Slide-In Cart to WooCommerce
Customize the WooCommerce Cart Page
Edit WooCommerce Product Pages
Customize the Shop Page for Your WooCommerce Store
Customize WooCommerce Thank You Page

Create a Completely Custom WooCommerce Theme

SeedProd comes with a complete WooCommerce theme builder built-in. This allows you to replace your WooCommerce theme with a custom one of your own.

The advantage of this approach is that you get more flexibility when editing your WooCommerce theme. You can edit any page using a simple drag-and-drop tool.

To get started, simply go to the SeedProd » Setup page and click on the ‘Select a theme for my store’ button next to the ‘Build a WooCommerce Store’ option.

Next, the plugin will show you many ready-to-use WooCommerce themes you can use as a starting point.

Simply click on a template to select it.

Each WooCommerce or WordPress theme is a collection of templates showing different areas of your website or online store.

SeedProd will now generate those templates for your theme and show you a list of them.

You can now take your mouse over to a template and click on the ‘Edit Design’ link to start editing it.

This will launch the SeedProd page builder interface.

Editing shop page for your WooCommerce theme

You can add all the common website building blocks from the left column. To the right, you will see a live preview of the page you are editing.

You can also simply point and click on any item to edit it.

SeedProd comes with all the WooCommerce blocks that you will need to build a sales-oriented WooCommerce theme.

Once you are done making changes to a template, simply click on the ‘Save’ button to store your changes.

Just repeat the process to edit other templates in your custom WooCommerce theme.

Once you have finished editing all the pages, go to the SeedProd » Theme Builder page and toggle the ‘Enable SeedProd Theme’ switch.

Your custom WooCommerce theme will now replace your existing WooCommerce theme.

Now, you can visit your WordPress website to see it in action.

To learn more, see our complete tutorial on how to create a custom WordPress theme without coding.

On the other hand, if you want to keep using your existing WooCommerce theme and only edit certain parts of your website, then continue reading.

Customize the WooCommerce Checkout Page

The checkout page in any eCommerce store is one of the most significant steps in the customer journey.

By default, WooCommerce comes with a plain checkout experience, which is not optimized for sales and conversions.

Small edits to the checkout page can help you increase sales and reduce cart abandonment on your store.

For example, you can show related products with an ‘Add to Cart’ button on the checkout page so that users may see something else they want to purchase, too.

To create your custom checkout page, simply go to SeedProd » Landing Pages and click on ‘Add New Landing Page’.

Next, you will be asked to choose a template for your page.

You can choose one of the templates on the screen and edit it to create a checkout page, or you can start with a blank template.

We will be using the blank template for this tutorial, but you can choose any of them that you like.

Next, you will need to provide a title and URL for the page. You can use anything that helps you easily identify this page.

Click on the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button to continue.

This will launch SeedProd’s page builder interface, where you can simply drag and drop blocks to build your page layout.

First, you should add a header and then customize it with your own branding.

SeedProd comes with sections, which are collections of blocks that are often used together. To add a header section, click on the ‘Sections’ tab and then select the ‘Header’ category.

Next, take your mouse to a header and click the ‘Add (+)’ button to insert it into your page.

You can now edit the header section by simply clicking on each block and replacing it with your own logo, menu, and call to action.

Once you are happy with the header, you need to add a two-column layout.

You can use this two-column layout to display the checkout form and upsell products, testimonials, and other elements.

After that, you need to add the Checkout block from the left-hand menu.

Add it to the left column, which is wider and will appear first on mobile devices.

Next, you need to add blocks to the right column. This is the area you can use to convince users to complete the purchase.

You can add a testimonial block here or show your most popular products.

Here are a few more things you can add to your checkout page to improve it for higher conversions:

Trust badges like secure payment badges provided by PayPal and Stripe
More social proof, like real-time customer activity
The Business Reviews block in SeedProd to display Google reviews

Once you have finished editing your checkout page, don’t forget to click the arrow beside ‘Save’ and then click on ‘Publish’ in the upper-right corner of the screen.

Next, you need to tell WooCommerce to start using your custom checkout page for all customers.

Go to the WooCommerce » Settings page and switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab.

Under the ‘Page Setup’ tab, select your custom checkout page for the ‘Checkout page’ option. Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to store your settings.

You can now go to your store in a new browser tab and try the new checkout experience by adding a product to your cart.

For more details, you can see our tutorial on customizing the WooCommerce checkout page.

Bonus Tip: Want to see how your new cart page is performing? See our tutorial on WordPress conversion tracking for beginners to track all your conversions.

Customize the WooCommerce Checkout Form

The checkout page is one of the areas where many users abandon carts.

The easiest way to ensure users complete their purchases is by offering a better checkout experience.

This is where FunnelKit can help. It is one of the best sales funnel builders for WooCommerce that enables you to optimize funnels, checkout pages, cart experience, and more.

It has dozens of templates, a funnel builder wizard, and drag-and-drop editing for your cart and checkout pages.

First, you need to sign up for a FunnelKit plan by visiting their website.

Note: You will need at least the Plus plan to unlock sales funnels, upsells, order bumps, and other features.

After that, you need to install and activate the FunnelKit Builder and FunnelKit Builder Pro plugins. You can find them under your account on the FunnelKit website.

Need help? See our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you will be asked to provide your plugin license keys. You can find them on the same Downloads page under your account on the FunnelKit website.

Once you have finished, you are ready to customize the WooCommerce checkout form.

Simply go to the FunnelKit » Store Checkout page in the WordPress admin dashboard and click on the ‘Create Store Checkout’ button.

On the next screen, you need to first choose your editor interface.

FunnelKit templates can be edited with the default Gutenberg editor, Elementor, Divi, Oxygen, or any other page builder by using shortcodes.

After that, you need to choose a template. There are dozens of beautiful templates to choose from. Just click on the ‘Preview’ button to see a live preview of the template.

You can choose between a single-step or multi-step checkout page in the preview. After that, simply click on the ‘Import This Funnel’ button at the top.

Next, you will be asked to enter a name for your funnel.

You can call it anything that helps you identify it later. Then, click on the ‘OK’ button to continue.

FunnelKit will now create your custom checkout page.

After that, you will see the page dashboard. From here, you can edit your checkout page, add more steps, or add an order bump.

Editing a page will open it in the editor you chose earlier.

For this tutorial, we chose Gutenberg. Each item on the checkout page is a block that you can edit by simply clicking to select it.

You can also add new blocks by clicking on the ‘Add Block’ button.

Once you have finished making the changes, don’t forget to click on the ‘Update’ button.

This will bring you back to the Checkout page dashboard. From here, you need to switch to the ‘Fields’ tab.

This is where you can edit the checkout form fields. In this example, we are using a two-step checkout form. This allows you to capture the contact information before the payment.

You can also add new form fields from the right column. By default, the plugin shows the commonly used checkout fields.

However, you can click on the ‘Add New Field’ button to add a custom form field.

This will show a popup where you can choose the field type, provide a meta key, and enter a label.

You can also make the field ‘required’ and assign it to the checkout or thank you page.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your form settings.

FunnelKit comes with a bunch of optimizations that you can add to your checkout page for a more frictionless experience.

Just switch to the ‘Optimizations’ page, and you will see a list of optimizations that you can apply to the checkout page.

Simply click on an optimization to configure it, then click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes.

Next, switch to the ‘Settings’ tab to enable Analytics, Facebook pixel, custom scripts, or CSS in your checkout funnel.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to apply your changes.

Finally, you need to click on the ‘Draft’ button next to the Checkout page title and change it to ‘Publish’. This will replace your existing checkout page with the custom funnel you have just created.

You can now visit your store in a new browser tab to test the custom checkout experience you have created.

This is how it looked on our demo website.

Add One-Page Checkout in WooCommerce

FunnelKit also allows you to create a one-page checkout experience.

You need to visit the FunnelKit » Store Checkout page and click on ‘Create Store Checkout’.

In the template selection, simply click on the ‘One-Step’ option at the top.

After that, click on the ‘Import This Funnel’ button to continue.

You can then continue editing your template in your preferred editor. See the previous section of this tutorial for more detailed instructions.

Add a Slide-In Cart to WooCommerce

Most WooCommerce themes come with a separate cart page. This cart experience adds friction to the shopping and checkout experiences.

If users need to adjust the product quality or remove items from the cart, they have to leave the page they are currently viewing to update the cart.

This can be fixed by adding a slide-in cart in WooCommerce.

A slide-in cart shows a cart button on the screen. Clicking on the button displays a slide-in menu with products the user has added to the cart.

Users can now edit and update the cart without leaving the page.

FunnelKit has a beautiful slide-in cart feature that integrates seamlessly with your online store. You can even use it to upsell products, incentivize checkout, offer discounts, and more.

First, you need to visit the FunnelKit website and sign up for an account.

Note: You will need at least the Plus plan to access the slide-in cart features.

After signup, go to your account on the FunnelKit website to download the FunnelKit Cart plugin.

Next, you need to install and activate the plugin. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once you have activated the plugin, you must go to the FunnelKit » Cart page to configure the slide-in cart settings.

From here, you will see many options to your left and a live preview of how your slide-in cart will look.

FunnelKit offers a ton of customization options. For instance, you can choose from different styles, select cart icons, change button text, and more.

You can also add upsell products or cross-sell products, offer discounts, and make the cart experience much more appealing.

To publish your changes, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button.

You can now visit your website to test the slide-in cart in your live store.

Customize the WooCommerce Cart Page

WooCommerce has a default cart page allowing users to continue to the checkout page.

By default, it shows the products customers have added to their cart. However, research shows that more than 70% of customers leave an online store without completing the purchase.

WooCommerce themes often come with a boring cart page with no optimization for conversions.

By customizing your WooCommerce cart page, you can easily reduce cart abandonment and improve sales.

To create your custom checkout page, simply go to the SeedProd » Landing Pages and click on ‘Add New Landing Page’.

Next, you will be asked to choose a template for your page.

You can choose one of the templates on the screen and edit it to create a cart page, or you can start with a blank template.

We’ll use the blank template for this tutorial.

Next, you will need to provide a title and URL for the page. You can use anything that helps you easily identify this page.

This will launch the SeedProd builder interface.

You can start by switching to the ‘Sections’ tab and adding a header to your blank template.

After that, feel free to point and click to edit the header area to your liking.

Below that, you need to add a two-column layout, which you will use to add other cart page blocks.

Next, add the ‘Cart’ block to the right column.

Now, since your cart is currently empty, it will not show any products. Go to your store and add a few products to your cart and then reload the SeedProd page builder.

After that, you can add other elements to improve your cart page.

For instance, you can start by adding testimonials or add a countdown timer to trigger the FOMO effect.

Feel free to play around by adding different blocks and tweaking colors and width.

Once you have finished editing, don’t forget to click on ‘Save and Publish’ in the top-right of the screen.

Next, you need to tell WooCommerce to start using your custom cart page for all customers.

Go to the WooCommerce » Settings page and switch to the ‘Advanced’ tab.

You can now visit your online store in a new browser tab.

Start adding a few products, and then head over to the cart page to see your new cart page in action.

Edit WooCommerce Product Pages

WooCommerce themes use the same template to display all products on your website.

However, you may want to promote some products more than others. The most you can do to distinguish important products is to make them featured products.

SeedProd allows you to create custom product pages. You can use a well-designed template tailor-made for higher conversions and then simply fill it with your product information.

To get started, simply go to the SeedProd » Landing Pages and then click on ‘Add New Landing Page’.

Next, you will be asked to choose a template for your page.

You can choose one of the templates on the screen and edit it to create a product page. You will find several templated optimized for conversions under the ‘Sales’ tab.

Choose a template to create a product page

Simply click to select a template and continue.

Next, you will be asked to provide a page title and URL. You can use the product name as the title and URL.

Click on the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button to continue.

This will launch the SeedProd page builder interface with your selected template. You can simply point and click on any item on the page to edit it.

You can start by replacing the header items, such as the logo, navigation menu, and call-to-action button, with your own.

After that, you can replace images with your product images and edit the text as necessary.

Add your product details with add to cart button

Finally, you can replace the call to action with the Add to Cart block.

After that, you need to enter the product ID in the Add to Cart block settings. You can also change the button text, as well as add subtext, color, and shift alignment.

To find a product ID, you need to go to the Products » All Products page in the WordPress admin area in a separate browser tab.

Take the mouse over to the product that you want to promote, and the product ID will appear along with other links.

To make your product page more effective, you can try these tips:

Add high-quality product images with the zoom effect so that users can clearly examine the product.
Under your main call to action, you can create different rows highlighting product features and providing more information to the customers.
Use social proof to trigger the FOMO effect.

Once you are done editing your product page, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save and Publish’ button at the top.

Once published, you can view your product page by clicking on the ‘Preview’ button.

This will show the live product page on your website that you can now start promoting.

For more details and bonus tips, see our tutorial on customizing WooCommerce product pages.

Customize the Shop Page for Your WooCommerce Store

WooCommerce allows you to easily display your products on the shop page. It is basically a page with your products displayed in a grid layout.

The shop template in most WooCommerce themes is boring and not optimized for sales and conversions. On top of that, there are usually no or very few options to customize it.

SeedProd allows you to create and customize a WooCommerce shop page easily. You can choose your own layout and design and optimize this page for higher conversions.

To get started, simply go to the SeedProd » Landing Pages and then click on the ‘Add New Landing Page’ button.

Next, you will be asked to choose a template for your page.

You can choose one of the templates on the screen and edit it to create your shop page.

Simply click to select a template and continue.

Next, you will be asked to provide a page title and URL. You can use something like Shop, Store, or Storefront to indicate that it is the main shop page.

Click on the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button to continue.

This will launch the SeedProd page builder interface with your selected template. You can simply point and click on any item on the page to edit it.

You can start by replacing the header items, such as the logo, navigation menu, and call-to-action button, with your own.

After that, you can add a hero section at the top with a large image and your main call to action.

Below that, you can use WooCommerce blocks to display your products.

You can choose from recent, featured, best-selling, top-rated, and sale products.

After adding a product block, you can also customize how it looks.

SeedProd allows you to choose the number of products, sorting options, columns, and more.

You can further optimize this page by adding more text, special offers, banners, an FAQ section, and more.

Once you are done editing, don’t forget to click on ‘Save and Publish’ at the top.

After saving your page, click the ‘Preview’ button to see it in action.

SeedProd will open the page in a new browser tab.

You can now replace links to the Shop page in your navigation menu with your custom shop page.

Customize WooCommerce Thank You Page

The WooCommerce ‘Thank You’ page appears when a customer completes a purchase. By default, WooCommerce will only show them their order details on this page.

That doesn’t provide customers with more options to explore. It is kind of a dead end and a missed opportunity for sales and conversions.

Luckily, you can fix that with SeedProd by creating a custom thank you page.

To get started, simply go to the SeedProd » Landing Pages and then click on the ‘Add New Landing Page’ button.

Next, you will be asked to choose a template for your page.

Switch to the ‘Thank You’ tab, and you will find a bunch of thank you page templates. You can choose one of them, or you can even start with a blank template.

Next, you will be asked to choose a title and URL for your page.

You can use ‘Thank You’ or any other meaningful title for your page.

Click on the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button to continue.

This will launch the SeedProd page builder interface, where you will see a live preview of your template. You can simply point and click to edit any item in the preview or add new blocks from the left column.

You can now use this opportunity to promote your email list or upsell products by adding WooCommerce product grid blocks.

Feel free to experiment with different headings, text copy, and products to create an effective Thank You page.

Once finished, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save and Publish’ button in the top right corner of the screen.

Your custom thank you page is now live. However, you still need to tell WooCommerce to use this page as your default Thank You page.

To do that, you will need to install and activate the Thanks Redirect for WooCommerce plugin. For more details, see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to the WooCommerce » Settings page and click the ‘Products’ tab.

From here, you need to check the ‘Enable Global Thanks Redirect’ option. After that, you will see a field labeled ‘Thanks Redirect URL.’

Paste your new WooCommerce Thank You page URL into this box, then click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

Now when customers complete a purchase, they will see your highly optimized custom Thank You page. They will be far more likely to click and search the rest of your store than if you had stayed with the default.

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily edit WooCommerce pages without writing code. You may also want to see our complete WooCommerce SEO guide or our expert picks for the best WooCommerce sales funnel plugins to boost your conversions.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Edit WooCommerce Pages (No Coding Required) first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 16, 2023

How to Add WordPress Navigation Menu in Posts / Pages

Do you want to add a WordPress navigation menu to your posts or pages?

By default, you can only display menus in the locations set by your WordPress theme. However, sometimes you may need to add a menu to a specific post or page or even show the menu inside a page’s content.

In this article, we will show you how to add a WordPress navigation menu in posts and pages.

How to add WordPress navigation menu in posts / pages

Why Add a WordPress Navigation Menu in Posts / Pages?

A navigation menu is a list of links pointing to important areas of a website. These links can help visitors find what they are looking for, improve the customer experience, and keep people on your WordPress website for longer.

An example of a WordPress navigation menu

The exact location of your menu depends on your WordPress theme. Most themes let you show menus in multiple areas, but sometimes you may need to add a navigation menu to a post or page.

For example, you may want to add a unique menu linking to all the products mentioned on a specific sales page.

You can also use menus to display related posts on your WordPress blog. By placing this navigation menu at the end of a blog post, you can encourage readers to check out more of your content.

With that being said, let’s see how you can add a WordPress navigation menu to any post or page. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use:

Method 1: Using the WordPress Navigation Block (Best for Individual Pages and Posts)
Method 2: Using the Full Site Editor (Block Themes Only)
Method 3: Creating a Custom WordPress Theme (More Customizable)

The easiest way to add a WordPress navigation menu to posts and pages is by using the built-in Navigation block. This allows you to show a navigation menu anywhere in a page or post, but you must manually add each menu.

This is a great method if you need to control exactly where the menu appears on each page. However, it can be time-consuming and frustrating if you want to add the same navigation menu to lots of pages and posts.

To get started with this method, simply open the page or post where you want to add a WordPress navigation menu. Then, click on the ‘+’ button to add a new block to the page.

Adding a navigation block to a WordPress page or post

In the popup, type in ‘Navigation.’

When the right block appears, give it a click to add it to the page or post.

Adding a new block to a WordPress page or post

The Navigation block will show one of your menus by default.

If you want to add a different menu instead, then open the ‘Block’ tab. Then, you need to select the ‘List View’ tab.

The List View tab, in the WordPress block editor

Here, you can click on the three dots next to ‘Menu.’

Then, simply choose the menu that you want to use instead.

Choosing a different WordPress navigation menu

Sometimes, you may want to customize the menu by adding more links. For example, if you run an online store, then you might link to all the products mentioned on that page.

To go ahead and add links to the navigation menu, click on the ‘+’ icon in the ‘List View’ tab.

This opens a popup with different options.

To add a link to any page on your website, just click on ‘Page Link.’

You can now either choose a page from the dropdown menu or start typing in the page title. When the right page shows up, click to add it to the menu.

To add more pages to the navigation menu, simply repeat the same process described above.

You can also add social icons to a WordPress menu, which will encourage people to follow you on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more.

To get started, click on the ‘+’ icon in the ‘List View’ tab. This time, select ‘Social Icons.’

Adding social sharing icons to WordPress

This adds a new area where you can add the social icons.

To get started, click on the new ‘+ Click plus to add’ section.

Now, select the social media network you want to link to.

For example, you can choose ‘Twitter’ to promote your Twitter page in WordPress.

After that, you will need to configure the social icon.

The exact steps will vary depending on the social network. However, you will typically need to click to select the icon and then type in the URL for your social media profile.

Simply repeat these steps to add more social icons to the navigation menu.

Finally, you may want to add a search bar to your WordPress menu to help people find interesting pages, posts, products, and more.

WordPress has a built-in search feature, but it is basic and doesn’t always provide accurate results. That’s why we recommend using a WordPress search plugin to improve your site search.

Even better, if you choose an advanced plugin like SearchWP, then it will replace the default WordPress search. After configuring the plugin, all the search boxes across your site will use SearchWP automatically, including any search boxes in your navigation menus.

No matter whether you are using the built-in WordPress feature or an advanced plugin like SearchWP, simply select ‘Search’ to add a search bar to the menu.

Adding a search bar to a WordPress navigation menu

When you are happy with the menu’s content, you may want to change how it looks.

You can change the menu’s layout, including its alignment and orientation, by selecting the ‘Settings’ tab.

How to style a WordPress navigation block

After that, you can change the background color, text color, typography, and more by selecting the ‘Styles’ tab.

As you make changes, the live preview will update automatically. This means you can try lots of different settings to see what works best for your WordPress blog.

Customizing the WordPress menu in a page or post

There are lots more settings you can configure, but this is all you need to add a helpful WordPress navigation menu to a post or page.

Pro Tip: If you plan to use the same navigation menu across multiple pages and posts, then it’s smart to turn it into a reusable block in the WordPress block editor. This can save you a ton of time and effort.

When you are ready to make the navigation menu live, just click on either the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button.

How to add a WordPress menu to a page or post

Now, if you visit this page or post, you will see the navigation menu in action.

Method 2: Using the Full Site Editor (Block Themes Only)

If you only want to add a navigation menu to a few posts and pages, then method 1 is a great choice. However, you will need to add each menu manually, so this isn’t the best option if you want to show the same menu across your entire website.

If you are using a block-based theme such as Hestia Pro, then you can add a WordPress navigation menu to the page or post template. This menu will then appear across all your pages or posts without you needing to add it manually. This is perfect if you always want to show the same navigation menu in exactly the same place.

To get started, go to Themes » Editor in the WordPress dashboard.

By default, the editor will show your theme’s home template.

To add a navigation menu to your WordPress pages or posts, click on ‘Templates’ in the left-hand menu.

Choosing a block-based template in WordPress

The editor will now show all the templates that make up your WordPress theme.

To add a navigation menu to your WordPress blog posts, select the ‘Single’ template. If you want to add a menu to your pages instead, then select the ‘Page’ template.

Choosing a WordPress block-based template

WordPress will now show a preview of your chosen template.

To edit this template, go ahead and click on the small pencil icon.

With that done, click on the blue ‘+’ icon in the top left corner.

In the search bar that appears, type in ‘Navigation.’

Adding a Navigation block to a block-based template

When the right block shows up, drag and drop it onto your template.

By default, the block will show one of your menus. If you want to add a different menu instead, then click on the ‘Block’ tab. After that, select ‘List View.’

The List View tab in the WordPress full site editor

You can now click on the three dots next to ‘Menu’ to see all the menus you have created on your WordPress website.

Simply select any menu from the list.

Adding a navigation menu to a page or post template in a block-enabled theme

With that done, you can add more pages to the menu, add a search bar, and more, by following the steps in method 1.

When you are happy with how the navigation menu looks, click on the ‘Save’ button to make it live. Now, if you visit your site, then you will see the same navigation menu across all your WordPress pages or posts.

Method 3: Creating a Custom WordPress Theme (More Customizable)

Another option is to create a custom WordPress theme. This is a more advanced method, but it gives you complete control over where the menu appears in your posts or pages.

In the past, you would need to follow complicated tutorials and write code to build a custom WordPress theme. However, it’s now possible to easily create your own themes using SeedProd.

SeedProd is the best drag and drop WordPress page builder, and Pro and Elite users also get an advanced theme builder. This allows you to design your own WordPress themes without writing any code.

For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to create a custom WordPress theme (without any code).

After creating a theme, you can add a navigation menu to any part of your WordPress website.

Simply go to SeedProd » Theme Builder and find the template that controls the layout of your posts or pages. This will typically be ‘Single Post’ or ‘Single Page.’

This will open the template in SeedProd’s drag and drop page builder.

In the left-hand menu, scroll to the ‘Widgets’ section. Here, find the Navigation Menu block and drag it onto your layout.

Adding a navigation widget using the SeedProd page builder plugin

After that, click to select the Navigation Menu block in the live preview.

Now, open the ‘Select Menu’ dropdown and choose the menu you want to show.

Adding a navigation menu to a page or post template using SeedProd

You can now type an optional title into the ‘Title’ field. This will appear above the WordPress navigation menu.

To preview how the menu will look on your website, click on the ‘Apply’ button.

Previewing a navigation menu in a WordPress page or post

Next, you may want to style the menu by clicking on the ‘Advanced’ tab.

If you added a title, then you can change the text color, adjust the typography, and add more space between the heading and the menu items.

Customizing a navigation menu using SeedProd

You can also change the color and font used for the menu items.

Simply use the ‘Text Typography’ and ‘Text color’ settings to make these changes.

After that, you can change the spacing, add custom CSS, and even add CSS animations using the settings in the ‘Advanced’ tab.

When you are happy with how the menu looks, go ahead and click on the ‘Save’ button in the SeedProd toolbar. Then, select ‘Publish.’

Now, if you visit your website, then you will see the new page or post layout in action.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add a WordPress navigation menu in posts and pages. You may also want to check out our guide on how to create a landing page with WordPress or see our expert picks for the must have WordPress plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add WordPress Navigation Menu in Posts / Pages first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 14, 2023

14 Best SeedProd Site Kits and Templates (Expert Pick)

Are you looking for the best SeedProd website kits and templates?

SeedProd is a website and theme builder that comes with dozens of ready-made templates for almost every business niche.

These templates are designed to save you time. This means you don’t need to manually build a site. Instead, you can import a ready-made SeedProd site kit to set up your WordPress website quickly.

In this article, we will share some of the best SeedProd site kits and templates to set up your website in one click.

How to Make a WordPress Website With a SeedProd Template Kit

SeedProd is the best WordPress website and theme builder. Over 1 million WordPress users trust SeedProd to build and customize their sites.

If you want to make a website, eCommerce store, or personal blog, then SeedProd is a one-stop solution with over 50 theme template kits, and they add new templates every week.

Whether you own a dry cleaning business or run a travel blog, you will find a built-in template kit for your niche. You can import one of these site kits in one click, and your website is ready.

Each SeedProd website template includes a homepage, landing pages, and a contact page. It also comes with dummy content and images, so you can see the final look of your website even before it’s ready.

Then, all you need to do is replace the dummy content with your text and images. You can use the SeedProd drag-and-drop builder to customize the template.

Note: The links in this article go to theme previews. To add a site kit to your website, you will need to navigate to SeedProd » Theme Builder and click the ‘Theme Template Kits’ button. You can find detailed instructions in our guide on how to install template kits.

Without any delay, let’s look at our hand-picked and best SeedProd site kits and templates.

1. Real Estate

The Real Estate theme template kit for SeedProd will let you create a customizable real estate website in seconds. Just click on the template to import it, and you are ready to customize the content, styling, and branding in SeedProd’s visual editor.

Each property page contains photos as well as dimensions and other selling points. All of your listings are showcased together on the Projects landing page for easy browsing. There are also separate listings for houses and apartments.

The About page describes who you are, along with statistics for projects completed, underway, and more. You can easily add photos of your team to a grid.

The Contact page lists all of your locations, email addresses, and phone numbers and displays them on a convenient zoomable map.

2. Music House

The Music House theme is the best SeedProd site kit for music teachers and educational institutions. With some tweaking, it’s also suitable for bands, musicians, and other people in the music industry.

Besides offering an About Us and Campus (contact) page, you will find a page where you can list your classes, including fees and available days. There is also a page where you can add photos and details about all of your music teachers.

3. Conduct Construction

Conduct Construction Theme Kit for SeedProd

The Conduct Construction theme kit is suitable for anyone in the building industry who wants to list their services and show off their past projects.

The Services page offers a photo grid where you can display photos and descriptions of the types of building jobs you are able to handle. Underneath, this is a full-width section where you can add a wide photo and provide a written list of your projects.

The Projects page displays a photo gallery of your previous work. There are tabs along the top so your website visitors can filter by project type, such as ‘Manufacturing Industry’, ‘High-rise’, and ‘Public Infrastructure’.

The About Us page lets you describe your corporate philosophy, display a chart of your accomplishments, and show statistics about your engineering workforce. All of these sections are easy to customize using SeedProd’s drag-and-drop interface.

4. Venture Marketing Firm

Venture Marketing Firm Theme Kit for SeedProd

The Venture Marketing Firm theme template has a home page where agencies can show off what makes them unique, along with the types of marketing they provide. Full details of the services offered can be provided on the Services page.

A beautiful Portfolio page provides a photo gallery that can be filtered by project type. At the bottom of the page, your visitors can add their email addresses to request a proposal.

The Contact Us page features a map of your location, social links, and a newsletter sign-up form.

5. Wedding Invitation

Wedding Invitation Theme Kit for SeedProd

The Wedding Invitation website kit lets couples share the details of their wedding with friends and family. This makes online invitations easy and is a helpful reminder for the date, time, and address of the ceremony and reception.

On the custom home page, there is room for you to tell the story of how you met, fell in love, and proposed. You can even create a photo timeline of your relationship on the Our Story page and add an album of your special memories on the Photos page.

The Join Us page serves two purposes. First, it provides a form where your guests can RSVP. Second, it displays a map of the venue where guests can easily find directions.

6. Travel Blog

The Travel Blog theme template kit allows bloggers to share stories, photos, and videos of their latest travel adventures and gear.

The front page offers a ‘Start Today’ button that takes readers to the Work With Me page, where they can subscribe to blog updates and your social channels. It also includes sections that display your latest videos and highlights places to visit.

The Destinations page displays your travel articles by geographic region in an attractive grid, and the Videos page allows you to embed your YouTube videos.

7. Dry Cleaning

The Dry Cleaning website theme is the best SeedProd template kit for local businesses like laundromats. The front page provides a handy summary of your services and the benefits your business offers. These can also be found on the Services page.

The SeedProd visual editor offers a Pricing Table block, and one has been added to the Prices page. You can easily customize this price list with your own prices and categories using SeedProd’s visual editor.

At the bottom of the About page, SeedProd’s Testimonials and Star Rating blocks have been added. These let you easily add customer reviews and ratings for your business to increase social proof.

The Contact page lists the addresses, emails, and phone numbers of each location of your business, along with a map that will help customers navigate to your stores.

8. e-Course Website

The e-Course Website theme will help you quickly create a website where you can create and sell online courses with WordPress.

The custom home page lets you introduce the courses you offer, display testimonials from your students, and more.

You can describe your courses in greater detail on the Lessons page. A ‘Start Learning’ button allows students to subscribe to the courses they are interested in.

The About page gives more details about your online business, and the Contact page allows potential students to reach out and ask for more information.

9. NM Advertising Agency

NM Advertising Agency Theme Kit for SeedProd

The NM Advertising Agency theme allows you to quickly create a website for advertising agencies and public relations specialists. You simply need to customize the site with information about your own business.

The front page displays helpful statistics and pie charts that demonstrate how you can help and the return on investment your clients can expect.

The Services page lets you spell out the variety of marketing and public relations services you offer, and you can share a portfolio of your prior projects on the Work page.

You can highlight the expertise of your staff on the Team page, and the Contact page allows potential clients to schedule an in-person visit or speak to a team member about their needs.

10. eBook Author

The eBook Author theme template kit is a great way to promote and sell your eBooks in WordPress. An attractive Bio page is included, which you can customize with your own story and Instagram photos.

Your books are listed in a grid on the Books page. This page also lets you highlight upcoming books and provides a form where your readers can subscribe for regular updates.

You will just need to choose your own shopping cart solution. We recommend Easy Digital Downloads, and you can learn how to set it up in our beginner’s guide on how to sell digital downloads in WordPress.

11. Personal Trainer

The Personal Trainer theme kit features a clean and attractive home page that will introduce your in-person or online training services to potential clients.

You can add an explainer video to the Training page where you introduce yourself and demonstrate your training methods. You can also customize the Packages and Rates section and add your own frequently asked questions using SeedProd’s Accordion block.

You can add your best client reviews on the Testimonials page and tell the story of your own personal fitness transformation on the Result page.

There is a button on the home page where clients can schedule an appointment. This can take your clients to the WordPress appointment or booking plugin of your choice.

12. Child-Day Care

The Child-Day Care Website theme kit makes it easy to create an attractive website for a childcare or daycare center.

The theme will automatically create an attractive Curriculum page that you can customize with your own approach to early childhood education.

The About Us page can describe the values and benefits of your center. It also includes a ‘Meet Our Leadership’ section where you can add photos of your team.

The Blog entry in the navigation menu lets you keep your audience up to date with the current events in your daycare center and share educational tips on raising young children.

Finally, you can customize the ‘Book a Tour’ button to allow parents to send you an email or take them to your online booking form in WordPress.

13. Juice Bar

The Juice Bar website theme kit for WooCommerce lets you quickly set up a beautifully-designed online store. By default, this store template features bottled juice and other beverages, but it can be easily customized for other products.

The home page is set up to highlight product collections, items on sale, and other featured products. SeedProd offers helpful blocks to automatically display Recent Products, Sale Products, Best Selling Products, Featured Products, and Top Rated Products.

The Shop item in the navigation menu takes customers to all of your products, and clicking on a product displays the product page. The ‘Add to Cart’ buttons are live and add products to the WooCommerce shopping cart.

14. Computer Technician

Computer Technician Theme Kit for SeedProd

The Computer Technician theme is the best SeedProd template kit for anyone who offers IT-related services. The front page contains sections that can be customized to describe your business, display testimonials, and demonstrate how you save your clients time and money.

The Services page can display any number of services that you may offer, like data recovery, Apple product service and repair, and laptop repair. These can be easily edited to suit your own business.

Like most themes, there are also About and Contact pages. The Contact page has a contact form where your clients can get in touch with you.

Frequently Asked Questions About Site Kits and Templates

Here are some questions we are often asked about SeedProd site kits and template kits.

What is a template kit?

WordPress template kits are collections of pre-designed templates, layouts, and other elements that allow you to create a professional-looking website without writing code.

They are a powerful feature of some drag-and-drop page builder plugins and may be called website kits, website templates, or WordPress starter templates. In SeedProd, they are called theme template kits.

What is the difference between a WordPress theme and a template kit?

WordPress allows you to customize the appearance of your website by installing themes. Themes determine the overall look of all the pages on your site. There are thousands of WordPress themes available (both free and paid).

A template kit is a feature of a drag-and-drop page builder plugin, such as SeedProd. It comes with designs for common pages such as an About page, a Contact page, and a custom home page. It may also provide templates for areas that appear across multiple pages, such as a header and footer template.

The benefit of template kits is that they are easier to customize using the drag-and-drop page builder. They also have more customization options than standard WordPress themes.

What is the best SeedProd site template kit?

There isn’t one SeedProd site template kit that is best for every website. Instead, you should choose a site kit designed for your industry or niche. Luckily, SeedProd has many different site kits for all kinds of websites and businesses.

You should take into consideration the appearance of the kit as well as the extra custom pages it creates for you.

Before making the kit live, you will need to replace the demo content. You may also want to change the kit’s branding to better match your own business. It’s easy to customize every part of the design using the drag-and-drop editor.

We hope this tutorial helped you find the best SeedProd site kits and templates. You may also want to see our guide on how to speed up WordPress performance or our expert picks for the best email marketing services to grow your business.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 14 Best SeedProd Site Kits and Templates (Expert Pick) first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 12, 2023

How to Use Shortcodes in Your WordPress Themes

Do you want to use shortcodes in your WordPress theme?

Normally, you will use shortcodes inside content areas like posts, pages, or sidebar widgets. However, sometimes you may want to add a shortcode inside your WordPress theme.

In this article, we will show you how to easily add any shortcode to your WordPress theme.

How to use shortcodes in your WordPress themes

Why Use Shortcodes in Your WordPress Themes?

Shortcodes allow you to add all kinds of features to your website, including image galleries, forms, social media feeds, and much more.

WordPress comes with a few built-in shortcodes, but there are also many popular WordPress plugins that add shortcodes to your site.

For example, WPForms has easy-to-use blocks, but it also provides shortcodes so that you can add forms to other areas of your website.

An example of a WordPress shortcode, provided by WPForms

Most of the time, you will add shortcodes inside content areas like posts and pages.

To learn more, please see our complete guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

Adding a shortcode block to a WordPress page or post

However, sometimes you may want to use a shortcode inside your WordPress theme files.

This allows you to add dynamic elements to areas you can’t edit using the standard WordPress post editor, such as your 404 page. It’s also an easy way to use the same shortcode on multiple pages.

For example, you might add a shortcode to your theme’s Page or Post template.

With that in mind, let’s see how you can use shortcodes in your WordPress theme. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.

Method 1: Using the Full-Site Editor (Block Themes Only)
Method 2: Editing Your WordPress Theme Files (Works With Any WordPress Theme)
Method 3: Creating Your Own WordPress Theme (Fully Customizable)

Method 1: Using the Full-Site Editor (Block Themes Only)

The easiest way to use shortcodes in your WordPress theme is by using the full site editor. This allows you to add a Shortcode block to any part of your website.

However, this method only works with block-based themes like Hestia Pro. If you are not using a block-enabled theme, then you will need to use a different method instead.

To get started, head over to Themes » Editor in the WordPress dashboard.

By default, the full site editor shows your theme’s home template, but you can add shortcodes to any template or template part, such as the header or footer.

To see all the available options, just select either ‘Templates’ or ‘Template Parts’.

Adding a shortcode to a WordPress template

You can now click on the template or template part you want to edit.

As an example, we will add a shortcode to the 404 page template, but the steps will be exactly the same no matter which template you select.

Adding a shortcode to a WordPress theme using a full-site editor (FSE)

WordPress will now show a preview of the template or template part.

To add a shortcode, go ahead and click on the small pencil icon.

Editing a WordPress theme's 404 template using the full-site editor (FSE)

With that done, click on the blue ‘+’ icon in the top left corner.

In the search bar, you need to type in ‘Shortcode’.

Adding a shortcode block to a WordPress theme

When the right block appears, drag and drop it onto the theme template.

You can now either paste or type the shortcode that you want to use.

Adding Shortcode blocks to a WordPress theme

After that, go ahead and click on the ‘Save’ button.

Now, simply visit your WordPress blog to see the shortcode in action.

An example of a shortcode, on a 404 page template

Method 2: Editing Your WordPress Theme Files (Works With Any WordPress Theme)

You can also add shortcodes to your WordPress theme by editing the theme files. This method is more advanced, but it works with every WordPress theme.

If you haven’t added code to your site before, then check out our step-by-step guide on how to copy and paste code in WordPress.

You can modify the individual theme files directly, but this makes it difficult to update your WordPress theme without losing customization. For this reason, we recommend overriding the theme files by creating a child theme.

If you are creating a custom theme, then you can add or modify the code in your existing theme files.

When editing your theme files, you can’t add the shortcode in the same format you use with standard content areas. Instead of seeing the shortcode’s output, you will see the shortcode itself on the screen.

This happens because WordPress doesn’t execute shortcodes inside theme template files. Instead, you will need to explicitly tell WordPress to run the shortcode using the do_shortcode function.

For more information, please see our guide on how to easily add custom code.

Here’s an example of the code you will add to your WordPress theme files:

echo do_shortcode('[gallery]');

Simply replace ‘gallery’ with the shortcode you want to use.

If you are not sure where to add the shortcode, then please see our beginner’s guide to the WordPress template hierarchy.

If you are adding a shortcode with extra parameters, then the code snippet will also change a little bit.

Imagine you have created a contact form using WPForms. In this case, you will need to use the standard WPForms shortcode plus the form’s ID:

echo do_shortcode("[wpforms id='92']");

Troubleshooting: What to Do When do_shortcode Isn’t Working

Sometimes, you may add a shortcode to a theme file, but the code’s output doesn’t appear on your WordPress website. This usually means the shortcode depends on a WordPress plugin or some other code on your website.

If the do_shortcode function is not working, then make sure the plugin providing the shortcode is installed and activated by going to Plugins » Installed Plugins.

In the following image, WPForms is installed but deactivated, so the echo do_shortcode code won’t work.

How to instal and activate a WordPress plugin

You can also check whether a shortcode is available for you to use by adding the shortcode_exists() function to your index.php file.

In the following snippet, we are checking whether the WPForms snippet is available to use on our website:

if ( shortcode_exists( 'wpforms' ))  {
  echo do_shortcode("[[wpforms id='147']]");
}

If you still don’t see the shortcode output on your website, then try clearing the WordPress cache, as you may be seeing an outdated version of your site.

Method 3: Creating Your Own WordPress Theme (Fully Customizable)

Another option is to create a custom WordPress theme. This is a more advanced method, but it allows you to add as many shortcodes as you want to any area of your WordPress theme. You can also make other changes to create a theme that has exactly the features and design you want.

In the past, you would need to follow complicated WordPress tutorials and write code to build a custom WordPress theme. However, it’s now possible to create a custom theme without writing a single line of code using SeedProd.

SeedProd is the best WordPress page builder and also comes with a theme builder. This allows you to design your own themes using drag and drop.

SeedProd's advanced theme builder feature

For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to create a custom WordPress theme (without any code).

After creating a theme, you can add shortcodes to any part of your WordPress website by going to SeedProd » Theme Builder.

Here, find the template where you want to use a shortcode.

Then, just hover your mouse over that template and click on ‘Edit Design’ when it appears.

This will open the template in SeedProd’s drag and drop page builder.

In the left-hand menu, scroll to the ‘Advanced’ section. Here, find the Shortcode block and drag it onto your layout.

Adding a Shortcode block to a theme using SeedProd

In the live preview, simply click to select the Shortcode block.

You can now add your shortcode into the ‘Shortcode’ box.

Adding a contact form to a WordPress theme using shortcode

By default, SeedProd doesn’t show the shortcode output in the live preview.

To see your shortcode in action, click on the ‘Show Shortcode Option’ toggle.

Previewing the shortcode output in SeedProd

After that, you may want to add some styling to the shortcode output by selecting the ‘Advanced’ tab.

Here, you can change the spacing, add custom CSS, and even add CSS animation effects.

Styling shortcode output using the SeedProd theme builder

When you are happy with how the page looks, just click the ‘Save’ button.

After that, select ‘Publish’ to make the shortcode live.

Publishing a custom WordPress theme using SeedProd

You can now visit your website to see the custom shortcode in action.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to use shortcodes in your WordPress themes. You may also want to check out our guide on how to create a landing page in WordPress and our expert picks for the best social media plugins for WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Use Shortcodes in Your WordPress Themes first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 9, 2023

How to Add Dynamic Content in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide)

Are you looking to add dynamic content to your WordPress website?

Adding dynamic content to your website enables you to provide visitors with personalized experiences, recommendations, and other interactive elements. That way dynamic content can help increase user engagement and conversions.

In this article, we will show you how to easily add dynamic content in WordPress.

Why Add Dynamic Content in WordPress?

Dynamic text refers to content that changes on a website depending on different factors, including user behavior, time, location, name, and more.

Setting up dynamic text enables users on your WordPress website to see different messages according to different factors.

For example, you can use dynamic text to display the name of the user who is currently logged in to your website.

Showing personalized content can keep visitors engaged on your site for longer periods, which can reduce the bounce rate and improve your site’s SEO rankings.

It can even help convert users into customers or subscribers by showing that your website cares about its visitors, which creates a positive impression and builds trust.

Plus, dynamic content can increase sales and signups on your website. For example, you can show the current date dynamically for a countdown sale or discount offer, and it will automatically update each day. This can create a sense of urgency and lead to more conversions.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to add dynamic content in WordPress. You can use the quick links below to jump to the method you wish to use:

Method 1: Create a Dynamic Landing Page Using SeedProd
Method 2: Add Dynamic Content Using OptinMonster

Method 1: Create a Dynamic Landing Page Using SeedProd

If you want to create a landing page with dynamic content, then this method is for you.

SeedProd is the best WordPress page builder on the market that helps you create attractive landing pages and themes without using any code.

It also comes with a dynamic text feature that allows you to add dynamic content to your headings and text.

First, you will need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, you may want to see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: SeedProd also has a free version, but it doesn’t have the dynamic text feature. So, for this tutorial, we are using the SeedProd Pro plugin.

Upon activation, head over to the SeedProd » Settings page to enter the plugin license key.

You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website.

Next, you need to visit SeedProd » Landing Pages from the WordPress admin sidebar.

Once you are there, click on the ‘Add New Landing Page’ button.

This will direct you to the ‘Choose a New Page Template’ screen, where you can select any of the pre-made templates for your landing page.

Upon template selection, you will be asked to enter a page name and choose a URL.

After entering this information, just click on the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button to continue.

This will launch SeedProd’s drag-and-drop page builder, where you can now start editing your page. For more detailed instructions, you may want to see our guide on how to create a landing page in WordPress.

Next, simply drag and drop the Heading or Text block from the left sidebar onto the landing page. Then, click on the block to open up its settings in the left sidebar.

Once you have done that, you need to click the ‘Insert Dynamic Text’ button.

This will open up a ‘Dynamic Text Replacement’ prompt on the screen.

From here, you should select the ‘DateTime’ option if you want to set up a time or date dynamically. This can be helpful if you want to display the time limit for a sale or discount offer on your website.

After that, simply select a date format from the dropdown menu and click the ‘Insert’ button.

If you don’t see your preferred format in the dropdown menu, then you can click on the ‘Learn More’ link at the top to see other formats.

If you want to add a location, name, country, multiple language support, page title, email address, postal code, or other dynamic content, then you need to select the ‘Query Parameter’ option.

After that, add the dynamic text factor under the ‘Parameter Name’ option.

For instance, if you add dynamic text for names in the ‘Parameter Name’ option, then everyone who is logged into your site will be shown their name like ‘Hey John’ instead of ‘Hey There’ on the page.

Or if you add dynamic text for an email address, then users will be shown their email address on your landing page every time they log in.

Similarly, if you want to display the location of every user dynamically, then you can enter ‘location’ as the parameter name.

Next, add the default value that the dynamic text will revert to if the location is not available in the URL parameter.

For example, if a visitor opens up your site and their location is not available in the URL, then the dynamic text might say ‘Stores Near You’ instead of ‘Stores Near Florida’.

After that, simply click the ‘Insert’ button to add the dynamic text.

Once you have done that, click the ‘Save’ button at the top to store your settings. Finally, click the ‘Publish’ button to make your landing page live.

Now visit your website to check out the dynamic content in action.

This is what it looked like on our demo website.

Method 2: Add Dynamic Content Using OptinMonster

If you want to add dynamic content to your advertising campaigns, including popups or floating bars, then this method is for you.

OptinMonster is the best lead generation and conversion optimization tool on the market. It allows you to show personalized campaigns to users without using any code.

It also comes with a dynamic text replacement feature that enables you to add dynamic content to your campaigns using smart tags.

First, you will need to sign up for an OptinMonster account because the paid tool allows you to add dynamic content.

Simply visit the OptinMonster website and click the ‘Get OptinMonster Now’ button to set up an account.

Next, you have to install and activate the free OptinMonster plugin on your WordPress website. For more detailed instructions, please see our tutorial on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you will see the OptinMonster setup wizard in the WordPress admin panel.

From here, click the ‘Connect Your Existing Account’ button to connect your WordPress site to your OptinMonster account.

After that, a new window will open up on the screen.

Simply click the ‘Connect to WordPress’ button to move ahead.

Once you have connected your OptinMonster account with WordPress, head over to the OptinMonster » Campaigns page from the WordPress admin sidebar.

Next, you need to click on the ‘Create Your First Campaign’ button to start a campaign.

This will take you to the ‘Templates’ page, where OptinMonster offers different campaign types that you can use to show various types of content or targeted messages to your users.

These include popups, floating bars, gamified campaigns, inline campaigns, slide-in popups, and more.

For instance, if you want to show dynamic content inside a WordPress post or page, then you can choose the Inline campaign type.

After selecting a campaign type, you can choose any of the pre-made templates for that specific campaign.

You will then be asked to enter a name for it and click the ‘Start Building’ button.

This will take you to OptinMonster’s campaign builder interface. It is a drag-and-drop tool where you can design your campaign with a live preview.

From here, drag and drop the Text or Heading block from the sidebar on the left into the campaign. After that, just select some text in the block to open up the text editor at the top of it.

Next, you must click the ‘Smart Tags’ icon at the right corner of the text editor to open up a dropdown menu with a list of smart tags

From here, you can select any of the smart tags to add dynamic content to your campaign.

For instance, you can use the {{form_first_name}} smart tag to add the name of the user at the top to make the campaign feel more personalized.

Now, all the logged-in users on your site will see their names in the campaign.

There are other smart tags that show the campaign name, email address, postal code, country, province, year, month, date, coupon code, page URL, and more.

For example, using the smart tag for countries will display the country name of each user who has logged in and is currently viewing your campaign.

Similarly, using a date smart tag will help you display the time limit for a sale without manually updating it every time.

Once you have chosen your smart tag(s), just click the ‘Save’ button at the top to store your settings.

Finally, switch to the ‘Publish’ tab from the top and click on the ‘Publish’ button to make your campaign live.

Now, you can visit your website to check out the campaign with dynamic content.

This is what it looked like on our demo website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add dynamic content in WordPress. You may also want to see our tutorial on how to use dynamic field populations in WordPress to auto-fill forms and our top picks for the best email marketing services for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add Dynamic Content in WordPress (Beginner’s Guide) first appeared on WPBeginner.

June 1, 2023

Should You Accept Guest Posts on Your WordPress Blog? (Pros/Cons)

Are you trying to decide whether to accept guest posts on your WordPress blog?

Publishing guest posts can be a quick and easy way to get new content for your site. However, there are negatives and positives to consider, before deciding whether guest posts are right for your blog.

In this article, we’ll take a look at the pros and cons of accepting guest posts on your WordPress blog.

Should you accept guest posts on your WordPress blog? (pros/cons)

What Are Guest Posts?

Guests blogs are a type of user-generated content that’s created by people who aren’t officially linked to your website.

Often, guest bloggers have their own products and services that they want to promote via guest blogging. With that in mind, they might feature their product or service in the guest blog, or add a backlink in their author bio.

Other guest bloggers may want to build their reputation as an industry leader by publishing on reputable websites just like yours.

Guest blogging is a very popular marketing and content-creation tactic. In fact, if you type ‘write for us’ into your favorite search engine, then you’ll get a ton of results.

Searching for WordPress blogs that accept guest blogs

That said, deciding whether to accept guest posts on your WordPress blog is a big decision. To help you make the right choice, let’s look at the pros and cons of accepting guest posts on your WordPress blog.

Pros: Should You Accept Guest Posts on Your WordPress Blog?

Some of the best WordPress blogs accept guest posts, so it’s no surprise there are many benefits. With that in mind, here’s why you may want to accept guest blogs on your WordPress website.

Get A Fresh Point of View

Every author has a unique point of view, and your audience will likely appreciate a change of pace and ideas. This is especially true if you’re a solo blogger or feel that your content is getting stale.

To really catch the reader’s attention, you can encourage guest bloggers to write about their own experiences or talk about a topic that typically generates lots of debate or even controversy. This can get more comments on your WordPress blogs.

In the best-case scenario, the guest post might even go viral and increase your blog traffic.

Although you want guest posts to stand out, they should still fit with the rest of your content. That said, it’s smart to publish a detailed style guide that guest bloggers can follow.

An example of guidelines on a website that accepts guest blogs

If you have a ‘wish list’ of topics for guest bloggers, then you can add them to your guidelines.

In this way, you can bring fresh and interesting opinions to your blog, while keeping things consistent for your regular readers.

An example of a 'write for us' page, on a website that accepts guest blogs

Connect With a New Audience

Typically, guest bloggers want to promote their own products and services, or grow their reputation as a respected industry figure. With that in mind, guest bloggers will work hard to drive traffic to their blog.

This may mean sharing the link on their social media accounts, adding it to their email newsletter, or even writing about the guest post on their own website.

A guest blogger, promoting their posts on social media

This is all free promotion for your site and can get you lots of new visitors.

Even better, this is an entirely new audience who may be learning about your site for the first time. If these people like what they see, they may become regular readers or even customers.

That said, it’s a good idea to tell the guest blogger when you publish their post so they can start promoting it right away.

You might even share your Google Analytics data with them, so they know what actions are driving the most traffic to their blog. The guest writer can then fine-tune their actions to get you even more visitors.

The MonsterInsights Google Analytics plugin for WordPress

For more information, please see our guide on how to track user engagement in WordPress with Google Analytics.

Connect with Industry Professionals

Accepting guest posts on your WordPress blog could be the first step to building positive relationships with the wider community including industry leaders.

This networking can lead to all sorts of opportunities, such as a chance to speak at events and conferences. Even if you simply chat with industry figures on social media, this can create a buzz around your business and get you more visitors.

If potential customers see you engaging positively with respected people online, then this also adds to your reputation. This may eventually get you more sales and conversions.

Newer blogs or websites may struggle to get guest blogs from big names. However, there’s always a chance that a smaller guest blogger may go on to do big things. If this happens, then a guest blog you published months or even years ago may suddenly start to get more traffic.

If you’re lucky, then the author will remember you gave them a chance when they were a new blogger. If this happens, then you’ll have a powerful industry contact, which could mean big opportunities for your business.

An Easy Way to Create Content

Creating blog posts takes time and effort. If you’re a solo blogger or a new business, then you may struggle to publish new content regularly.

Guest bloggers can supply you with new and interesting content, and help keep your blog fresh. By regularly publishing guest posts on your website, you can improve your WordPress SEO and keep people coming back to your blog.

Even better, you can do this without having to hire extra writers or taking time out of your busy schedule to blog.

Finding quality guest bloggers and editing submissions can take time, but it’s often much faster than writing the post yourself. There are also ways to effectively attract and manage guest bloggers, which can save you even more time.

To start, you can create a ‘write for us’ page so potential bloggers can read your guidelines, formatting rules, and the kind of content you’re interested in publishing.

This should improve the quality of the guest posts you get, while also helping you avoid answering the same questions over and over again.

The easiest way to create a ‘write for us’ page is by using SeedProd. This WordPress page builder plugin comes with more than 180 professionally-designed templates and ready-made blocks that allow you to create an eye-catching ‘write for us’ page, fast.

The SeedProd page builder plugin for WordPress

After creating this page, you should add it to your site’s main navigation menu so visitors can find it easily.

We also recommend allowing users to submit posts using WPForms. WPForms is the best form plugin for WordPress and comes with a post submission addon that allows guest bloggers to upload content to your blog.

In this way, you can automate the submission process and save yourself a ton of time.

For more information, please see our guide on how to allow users to submit posts on your WordPress site.

Improve Your Reputation

When someone guest blogs for your website, people tend to see it as an endorsement. These guest bloggers are saying they like your brand and want to be associated with you.

In this way, accepting guest posts on your WordPress blog can build your reputation as a respected member of the community. With that in mind, we recommend trying to get guest blogs from industry experts and leaders in your field.

Also note that the endorsement goes both ways. You are also sort of endorsing the writer, too, by having them on your site. So it pays to be mindful of who you choose to write for you.

Plus, according to our blogging statistics report, there are over 600 million blogs online. A steady stream of recognizable guest bloggers can make your site feel more like a professional publication. This immediately makes your blog stand out from the millions of other blogs, which is great for driving more readers to your site.

Cons: Should You Accept Guest Posts on Your WordPress Blog?

It may seem like every WordPress website accepts guest posts, but guest blogging isn’t right for every website.

With that being said, here’s why you might not want to accept guest blogs.

Guest Posts Often Mean More Spam

Spam is a big problem for all websites. If you accept guest posts using WPForms, then you get built-in spam protection tokens, reCAPTCHA and custom CAPTCHAs, and other powerful features that can protect your site from spambots.

However, you may still get unwanted submissions. Some authors submit their posts to every single ‘write for us’ page they find, in the hope of getting at least one positive reply. Sometimes, these people may not even read your ‘write for us’ guidelines.

Reading through submissions takes time and effort, so these spammy posts can slow down your editorial workflow.

Using a plugin with built-in spam protection like WPForms is a great start, and it can protect you from most automated spam and bots. However, you should still expect to get a few ‘spammy’ submissions that aren’t appropriate for your business website or blog.

You May Get Blog Posts Created By AI Content Generators

Some bloggers may be more interested in publishing lots of guest posts, fast, rather than sending you quality content. With that in mind, you may get some guest posts created by AI content generators such as GPT3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3).

Guest bloggers simply need to provide AI or CharGPT writing prompts and the artificial intelligence program will then go through lots of publicly available information to create a guest blog post for your website.

This can be a way to create lots of guest posts quickly, but there are some big problems for website owners. Firstly, there’s no guarantee that all the information these artificial intelligence plugins and tools use is accurate, so you may publish a guest post that includes completely false information.

Many AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT are also designed to be impartial and unbiased. This means the guest post may feel bland and uncreative, with very little passion or enthusiasm for the guest blog’s topic.

As AI generators get more sophisticated you may find it difficult to spot guest blogs that are written by autoblogging tools. However, researchers at Google have worked for years to detect content generated by artificial intelligence tools. In the past, they have penalized websites for publishing AI-generated content.

With that in mind, publishing guest blogs written by artificial intelligence may hurt your WordPress SEO, even if you didn’t realize the post was written by AI.

We feel that artificial intelligence tools like GPT3 can be great writing assistants for guest bloggers. They can be used to quickly create a blog outline, gather information, and suggest some key points for a guest blog. However, websites should be wary about accepting any guest blogs that are written using AI.

You May Get Duplicate Guest Post Content

Guest bloggers often try to promote their products, services, or brand by submitting to as many blogs as possible.

This means you may get a submission that’s already been published elsewhere. You may even publish a guest post, only for that content to appear on another website later.

This isn’t your fault, but the duplicate content can impact your SEO. Search engines such as Google often remove duplicate guest blogs from their search results, so you may struggle to get traffic.

Even if the duplicate content appears in the search results, you’re still sharing visitors with everyone else who’s published the same guest blog.

To avoid duplicate content, you should add an originality clause to your ‘write for us’ guidelines. This section should say you only accept submissions that haven’t been published elsewhere, including on the writer’s own website.

An originality clause on a website that accepts guest blogs

You should also make it clear that once you accept a post, the writer must stop submitting it to other websites.

However, there’s no guarantee that guest bloggers will follow your guidelines. With that in mind, you may want to check whether a submission has already been published. You can simply paste some of the content into a search engine such as Google, and see whether you get any matching results.

After publishing a guest post, you can monitor whether it shows up on other sites. For more on this topic, please see our guide on how to easily find and remove stolen content.

You’ll Need to Edit Guest Blogs

By publishing detailed and helpful guest blogger guidelines, you can often improve the quality of the posts you receive. However, you’ll still need to review and edit all incoming posts.

Depending on the quality of the guest posts, this can take a lot of time. You’ll also need to spend time on other tasks such as optimizing the post’s images and optimizing the blog post for SEO.

Thankfully, there are tools that can help you edit guest posts, fast. When it comes to optimizing for search engines, we recommend AIOSEO.

AIOSEO is the best SEO plugin for WordPress and provides actionable suggestions for how to improve a blog post’s SEO.

This includes optimizing images for search engines by automatically setting your alt text, image titles, captions, and more.

You can simply type in the keyword you want to rank for, and AIOSEO will analyze the guest post for that keyword. It will then show you a score, and give suggestions on how to improve your ranking for that specific keyword.

For more information, please see our guide on how to setup All in One SEO for WordPress.

You’ll Need to Promote Your Guest Blogging Program

After publishing your ‘write for us’ page and submission form, you’ll need to drive people to those pages. This means promoting your guest blogging program.

There are lots of ways to attract guest bloggers, including posting on social media and writer forums and notifying everyone on your email list.

Once you’ve built relationships with reliable, quality bloggers, you should have no problems getting a steady stream of guest posts for your website. However, finding these people can be a lot of work. You’ll often need to invest time and effort into promoting your guest blogging program before it starts delivering results.

Final Verdict: Should You Accept Guest Posts on Your WordPress Blog?

There are many benefits to accepting guest blogs on your WordPress website. It can be a great way to generate new and interesting content for your blog, without you having to spend time researching and writing yourself.

By publishing guest blogs, you can also connect with other people in your industry. This includes leading industry figures, plus up-and-coming bloggers who may become important contacts in the future.

However, there are some big drawbacks you need to be aware of. In particular, duplicate content and spammy posts can hurt your SEO and your reputation as a respected website.

If you don’t want to allow guest authors to register an account on your site, then consider creating a guest post submission form on your website. It lets guest authors submit their articles directly to your post editor without even creating a user account for them.

Of course, using the right tools can help you avoid many of the drawbacks, while still getting all of the benefits.

We hope this tutorial helped you decide whether to access guest posts on your WordPress blog. You may also want to learn how to make money online blogging with WordPress, or check out our expert pick of the must-have WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Should You Accept Guest Posts on Your WordPress Blog? (Pros/Cons) first appeared on WPBeginner.

May 22, 2023

22 Best WordPress Themes for SEO Experts

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes for SEO experts?

As an SEO expert, you want to choose a theme that showcases your search engine optimization and marketing skills while helping you convert potential visitors into customers.

In this article, we will share some of the best WordPress themes for SEO experts that you can use on your website.

Building an SEO Business Website Using WordPress

WordPress is an SEO-friendly website builder. That’s why many top brands are using WordPress for their websites.

WordPress makes it easy for search engine crawlers, such as Google’s site crawler, to index your website.

There are two types of WordPress available. WordPress.com, a hosted platform, and WordPress.org, also known as self-hosted WordPress.

For more details, check out our guide on the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

We recommend using WordPress.org. It instantly gives you access to all WordPress features out of the box.

You will need to purchase a domain name and web hosting to build a self-hosted WordPress website.

We recommend using Bluehost as your web host. It is one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Bluehost WordPress Hosting offer for WPBeginner Users

For WPBeginner users, Bluehost also offers a free domain name, a free SSL certificate, and a big discount on web hosting.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

After purchasing the web hosting, you should follow our guide on how to make a website for step-by-step instructions.

Now, let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress themes for SEO experts, consultants, and marketers.

1. Divi

Divi is a popular WordPress theme (WP theme) with a multipurpose approach. It’s suitable for any type of website. It has built-in SEO optimization making it a perfect choice for search engine experts.

With hundreds of layouts, it’s easy to set up your professional website in just a few clicks. Divi adds extra options to your WordPress admin panel and also provides a built-in visual website builder so you can get your site looking just how you want.

2. SeedProd

SeedProd is the most popular WordPress theme and website builder. It lets you design a fully custom theme for your site from scratch and meets all SEO standards without any extra effort.

Moreover, you can import a ready-made website template in 1-click and then customize it using the SeedProd drag and drop builder. It also comes with hundreds of landing page templates to add to your site.

SeedProd is a complete package and a one-stop solution to launch your business website easily.

3. Astra

Astra is a powerful WordPress all-purpose theme and one of the best SEO expert themes. It comes with several starter sites for different business niches, making it easy to find a template for your website.

Astra supports drag and drop page builders such as Visual Composer and WPBakery. It’s also compatible with premium plugins for WordPress.

You can also use the WordPress theme customizer to edit your theme settings for Astra. This lets you see a live preview of your site as you make changes to things like your header styles, fonts, colors, and more.

Astra works perfectly with SEO plugins like All in One SEO and Yoast SEO for the optimization of your website. You can easily add shortcodes to your posts and pages as well as widget-enabled areas.

4. OceanWP

OceanWP is a WordPress SEO theme designed for any kind of website. It comes with free and paid demo sites that you can import in 1-click to launch your website.

OceanWP is SEO friendly and offers a great user experience. It has multiple addons for social media icons, a sticky navigation menu, user registration, and more. OceanWP is translation ready to create a multilingual website easily.

5. Ultra

Ultra is a retina ready multipurpose WordPress theme with ready-made layouts suitable for SEO experts. You can install the templates in 1-click, including the demo content. Then, go ahead and replace the content with your own.

Ultra includes the Themify builder, which lets you edit any page layout with a simple point and click interface. Inside, you will find multiple header designs, blog layouts, page templates, and sidebars. You can even use Ultra’s addons to include pricing tables, countdown timers, and more on your site.

6. Hestia Pro

Hestia Pro is a classic WordPress theme for SEO experts and marketers. It comes with a one-page and multi-page template, so you can select the right design for your site.

It’s easy to edit and manage using the WordPress customizer. The theme fully supports WooCommerce to start an online store and rank well in search engines. It also uses responsive design to look great on all devices, and works with all popular WordPress plugins.

7. Infinity Pro

Infinity Pro is a WordPress business theme that lets you easily optimize for SEO. It has an elegant black and white design, the perfect set of colors, and a full-width header template. It’s also fully mobile responsive.

With over 10 widget areas, you can easily customize the theme to add your text, images, and other media content. It has a powerful theme options panel to make changes to your site.

StudioPress is now part of WP Engine, the most popular managed WordPress hosting company. You can get this theme and all 35+ other StudioPress themes when you sign up for WP Engine hosting to build your website.

Bonus: WPBeginner users also get an additional 20% OFF. Get started with WP Engine today!

8. Spencer

Spencer is an elegant WordPress theme for SEO businesses, online marketing agencies, and entrepreneurs. It has a modern business homepage which is easy to set up with simple drag and drop widgets.

It comes with ready-to-use templates to add a landing page, contact form, about page, and a separate blog page to your site.

9. Corporate

Corporate is an online business theme that’s suitable for any type of SEO company website. It’s a great choice for SEO agencies and SEO experts. It ships with several ready-made landing page designs and a built-in drag and drop builder to edit them easily.

Corporate has multiple layout choices for different page templates, a smooth background color effect, CSS animations, testimonials, and more. It comes with a beginner-friendly theme options panel and a 1-click demo installer.

10. Dixie

Dixie is a WordPress podcast theme built specifically for podcasters and content producers. It lets you share your SEO podcast and rank highly in search engines to get more audiences online.

When it comes to theme features and functionality, Dixie offers masonry layout options, an episode slider, audio, and video players, infinite scrolling, pagination, and more. It makes it easy to change the entire color scheme, too.

11. Neve

Neve is a stylish WordPress theme built for SEO, social media, and digital marketing websites. It lets you focus on the content by providing dozens of ready-made layouts. You can use these to show your expertise and share case studies.

Neve makes it super easy to set up your site with a widgetized homepage, custom widgets, and a theme options page. Neve is eCommerce ready with full support for WooCommerce.

12. Indigo

Indigo is a multipurpose WordPress theme suitable for SEO experts, agencies, and businesses. It takes a modular approach to design and lets you drag and drop modules to create page layouts quickly.

Other notable features include custom widgets, social media icons, a contact form, Google fonts, and more. The theme settings are quite straightforward and easy to follow, even for beginners.

13. Authority Pro

Authority Pro is another powerful SEO WordPress theme or marketing theme to build your online presence as an SEO expert. Built on top of the Genesis framework, it features a fresh and modern design with a large header image, welcome message, and an email newsletter subscription form.

It includes 4 widget-ready areas, 2 navigation menus, and a unique vertical navigation menu. It has a theme options panel and a live customizer to set up your website.

14. Roxima

Roxima is a fantastic WordPress business theme. It’s perfect for SEO consultants or web design companies and also makes a good marketing WordPress theme. The homepage features a large background image with a call-to-action button and beautiful parallax background effects.

It comes with custom widgets, several widget-ready areas, unlimited color choices, and more. Along with the homepage template, there are templates you can use for other pages (inner pages) on your site. Roxima is easy to use, with tons of options in the live theme customizer.

15. Presence

Presence is a stunning WordPress theme suitable for all kinds of business websites, including digital agency and SEO expert websites. It comes with 10 ready-to-use demos, including a perfect layout for SEO service providers.

It includes a portfolio section, team members section, testimonials, and custom widgets, with flexible layouts and 6 color schemes. It’s designed to work out of the box for beginners while offering plenty of choices for advanced users.

16. Corner

Corner is a great minimalist and distraction-free design. It has a clean and simple WordPress business theme that comes with a simple 2 column layout.

Corner features a narrow left sidebar and a wider content area with lots of white space. It’s powerful enough to be extended with any page builder plugin. You can even add an online store with WooCommerce.

17. Struct

Struct is a uniquely designed WordPress theme suitable for SEO experts, marketing agencies, small businesses, and freelancers specializing in SEO. The homepage features a fullscreen background image, followed by a custom logo, navigation menu, call-to-action buttons, and welcome text.

Struct also includes a services section, team members, testimonials, custom widgets, and content discovery features. It has built-in SEO optimization and helps you rank your website easily.

18. Breakthrough Pro

Breakthrough Pro is a reliable WordPress theme built on the Genesis Framework. It comes with a beautiful fullscreen header image and a prominent call-to-action button in the top section to make a great SEO agency website.

Breakthrough Pro uses large images and elegant typography to make your content stand out. Other features include a customizable header, widget areas, theme options panel, and live customization support. You could even add a mega menu to your site.

19. Nayma

Nayma is a great WordPress multipurpose theme suitable for SEO experts, affiliate marketers, and agencies. It uses modules to build page layouts that let you drag and drop elements. This makes it easy to get the design just right.

Nayma includes several modules for sliders, testimonials, portfolios, contact forms, and more. It comes with full WooCommerce support, and you can also use it for multilingual websites.

20. Integral

Integral is a free WordPress business theme that you can also use as a one-page template. It features a modern homepage design with a large background image, welcome message, and call-to-action buttons.

Integral comes with beautiful parallax background effects, multiple sidebars, a projects and features section, and more. You can change things like the theme colors, fonts, and widget sections using the live WordPress customizer.

21. Potenza

Potenza is a great option if you want a more formal design. It makes a great SEO agency WordPress theme or could be used for a digital marketing agency website. It’s a WordPress SEO theme with a professional and corporate feel. It has vertical navigation with links to different sections on the page.

The homepage is made up of widget-ready areas, which means you can easily add content widgets. Potenza includes a contact form, multiple colors, social media icons, Google Maps, and support for popular page builders.

22. Float

Float is a very versatile WordPress theme that could be a great choice for your SEO business. This multipurpose WordPress theme is packed with built-in designs, layout choices, header, and navigation styles.

Float integrates easily with page builders. It also has templates for single pages, including blog and shop pages and posts. It has multiple sidebars, call-to-action buttons, and several custom widgets.

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress themes for SEO experts. You may also want to see our ultimate guide on how to improve WordPress speed and performance for a fast loading website.

The post 22 Best WordPress Themes for SEO Experts first appeared on WPBeginner.

May 3, 2023

How to Install Template Kits in WordPress (Step-by-Step)

Do you want to install template kits in WordPress?

Designing a website can take a lot of time and effort, especially if you don’t have any previous experience. Thankfully, template kits allow you to apply a professional design across your entire WordPress website with the click of a button.

In this article, we will show you how you can easily install website template kits in WordPress.

How to install template kits in WordPress (step-by-step)

Why Install Template Kits in WordPress?

WordPress template kits are a collection of pre-designed templates, layouts, and other elements that allow you to create a professional-looking website without having to write code.

Template kits are designed to be used together, so you can simply install a kit and use the same design across your entire site.

A good template kit has designs for all the most common pages including an about page, a contact page, and a custom home page. They may also provide templates for areas that appear across multiple pages, such as a header and footer template.

There are some template kits that you can customize to suit any kind of website, similar to multi-purpose WordPress themes. Other templates are designed for a specific industry, such as fashion, venture marketing, and tech blogging kits.

No matter what template kit you use, with the right page builder plugin you can customize it to perfectly suit your business and branding.

With that being said, let’s see how you can design a beautiful website fast, by installing template kits in WordPress.

How to Choose the Best WordPress Template Kits

Template kits have many names, as some companies call them website kits, website templates, or WordPress starter templates. No matter what the name, the best place to find template kits is by installing a drag-and-drop page builder plugin.

SeedProd is the best page builder plugin with over 1 million users. It allows you to create a complete WordPress website without having to write a single line of code.

SeedProd comes with 90 ready-made blocks that you can add to any page, and over 180 templates that you can use to create landing pages, sales pages, and more.

SeedProd also has a growing library of professional website kits that you can add to your site with a single click. After choosing a kit, you can customize every part of the design using SeedProd’s drag-and-drop editor.

Since it’s the fastest and easiest method, in this guide we’ll show you how to install template kits using SeedProd.

Step 1. Install a WordPress Page Builder Plugin

First, you need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: There is also a free version of SeedProd that allows you to create beautiful coming soon pages, maintenance pages, and more no matter what your budget. However, in this guide, we’ll be using the premium plugin as it has lots of different template kits. Just be aware that you’ll need a Pro plan or higher to use the template kits.

Upon activation, head over to SeedProd » Settings and enter your license key.

Adding a license to the SeedProd page builder plugin

You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website. After entering the license key, click on the ‘Verify Key’ button.

With your license key active, you’re ready to install a template kit.

Step 2. Choose a WordPress Template Kit

SeedProd’s site kits work seamlessly with its WordPress theme builder, so head over to SeedProd » Theme Builder to get started. Here, click on the Theme Template Kits button.

You’ll now see SeedProd’s website kit library.

To take a closer look at any template, simply hover your mouse over it and then click on the magnifying glass icon when it appears.

Previewing a website starter kit using SeedProd

This opens the template kit in a new tab.

Since it’s a complete website kit, you can see more pages and designs by clicking on the different links, buttons, and menu items.

An example of a website starter kit, installed using SeedProd

SeedProd has template kits for different industries and niches like restaurant websites, travel blogs, marketing consultancies, and more.

When you find a template kit you want to use, simply hover over it and then click on the checkmark icon when it appears.

Choosing a website template kit using SeedProd

SeedProd will now add all the different templates to the WordPress dashboard.

To take a look, go to SeedProd » Theme Builder. You may see slightly different options depending on the kit you’re using.

A list of template kit parts in the WordPress dashboard

SeedProd’s templates are disabled by default, so they won’t immediately change how your site looks by overriding your current WordPress theme.

Step 3. Customize Your Template Kit in WordPress

Before making the kit live, you need to replace the demo content. You may also want to change the kit’s branding to better match your own business. For example, you can add custom fonts, change the colors, add your own logo, and more.

The templates you see may vary depending on the kit. However, most kits have a header and footer template, so we’ll show you how to customize these templates as an example.

How to Customize a Header Template Kit in WordPress

The header is the first thing visitors see when they arrive at your site. With that in mind, it should introduce your brand and provide easy access to your site’s most important content.

To customize the header template, simply hover over it and then click on ‘Edit Design.’

Customizing a template kit using SeedProd

This loads the SeedProd editor, with the header template to the right of the screen.

On the left-hand side, you’ll see a menu with different options.

Adding blocks to a website template part

Most header templates come with a placeholder logo, so let’s start by replacing it. Simply click to select the placeholder logo and the left-hand menu will show all the settings you can use to customize the block.

Simply hover over the image in the left-hand menu and then click on the Select Image button when it appears.

Most template kits come with alternative logos and images that you can add to your WordPress website.

You can choose one of these images from the WordPress media library or upload a new file from your computer.

After replacing the logo, you can change its alignment and size, add image alt text, and more using the settings in the left-hand menu.

When you’re happy with how the logo looks, it’s a good idea to update the menu.

Most header templates come with a placeholder menu that you can easily customize by adding your own text and links. To get started, click to select the Nav Menu block.

Adding a navigation menu to a custom page design

You can either build a menu in SeedProd, or you can display any navigation menu you’ve created in the WordPress dashboard.

To build a new menu using SeedProd, simply hover your mouse over any menu item that you want to delete. Then, click on the trash can icon when it appears.

Removing items from a WordPress navigation menu

To add a new item to the menu, click on the ‘Add New Item’ button, which creates a new placeholder item.

Next, simply click on the item to expand it.

Creating a custom navigation menu using WordPress

You’ll now see some new settings where you can type in the text and link you want to use.

You can also set the link to open in a new tab, or you can mark it as no follow.

How to install a template kit using SeedProd

Simply repeat these steps to add more items to the menu. You can also rearrange items in the menu using drag and drop.

Another option is to simply display a menu you’ve already created in the WordPress dashboard. To do this, click on ‘WordPress Menu’ and choose a menu from the dropdown.

After making these changes, you may want to add more content to the header. For example, you might encourage visitors to follow you on social media by adding ‘like’ and ‘share’ buttons to the header.

In the left-hand menu, simply find the block you want to add and then drag it onto your layout.

Adding social icons to a website template kit

You can then customize the block using the settings in the left-hand menu.

When you’re happy with how the header template looks, click on ‘Save’ to store your settings.

How to Customize the Footer Template in WordPress

The footer is the perfect place to add useful information such as a dynamic copyright date or your phone number. You can also link to important content like your contact form, blog, and social media profiles.

With that in mind, most SeedProd template kits come with a footer template. To edit this template go to SeedProd » Theme Builder and then hover over the ‘footer’ template. When the ‘Edit Design’ link appears, give it a click.

This opens the footer template in the SeedProd editor. You can now delete unwanted blocks, replace the placeholder content, and add more blocks following the exact same process described above.

Many business owners use the footer to show their contact information, such as their business email address. However, if you’re using WPForms then you can easily add a contact form to your website’s footer. This allows people to contact you from any page or post.

Adding a contact form to a template kit using WPForms

If you’re looking for more ideas, then you can see our checklist of things to add to the footer of your WordPress website.

Most footer templates come with placeholder text that you can replace with your own content. Simply click to select each text box and then type your messaging into the small text editor that appears.

The editor has all the standard formatting options, so you can highlight important text or add links that will appear across your WordPress blog or website.

Many footer templates come with a ready-made Nav Menu block that contains some placeholder links.

You can replace these dummy menu items with links to your own content by following the same process described above. For example, you might include links to your site’s privacy policy, blog, online store, and other important content.

Adding a custom navigation menu to a website footer template

When you’re happy with how the footer looks, click on the Save button to store your changes.

Step 4. Edit Your Global Template Kit Settings

Often, you’ll want to change the template’s default fonts, backgrounds, colors, and more to match your branding. Instead of making these changes to each template, you can save time by editing the kit’s Global CSS settings.

In your WordPress dashboard, go to SeedProd » Theme Builder and hover over the Global CSS template. You can then click on the ‘Edit Design’ link when it appears.

In the left-hand menu, SeedProd lists all the different elements you can change, such as the fonts, forms, layout, and more.

To see what changes you can make, simply click any option.

Changing a template kit's global CSS settings

You can now adjust its settings. For example, you can change the colors used for the kit’s headers, paragraph text, links, and more.

SeedProd will automatically apply these changes across the entire template kit.

Changing the colors in a website template kit

When you’re happy with the changes you’ve made, click on the ‘Save’ button.

Step 5. Enabling Your SeedProd Template Kit

You can now customize every SeedProd template by following the same process described above. When you’re happy with how the templates are set up, it’s time to make the kit live.

In the WordPress dashboard, go to SeedProd » Theme Builder and click on the ‘Enable SeedProd Theme’ toggle so that it shows ‘Yes.’

Now, if you visit your WordPress website you’ll see the new design live.

We hope this article helped you install template kits in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to choose the best web design software, or see our expert pick of the must-have WordPress plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Install Template Kits in WordPress (Step-by-Step) first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 25, 2023

Why Is WordPress So Hard (And How to Make It Easier)

If you’re comparing different website builders, then you may have come across the sentiment that WordPress is hard to use.

WordPress is the world’s most popular website builder powering over 43% of all websites on the internet. However, some people complain that WordPress is more difficult to use than solutions like Squarespace and Wix.

In this article, we’ll address the myth of why WordPress is so hard, and share the tricks, tools, and techniques you can use to harness the full power of WordPress without any difficulties.

Why is WordPress So Hard?

Over 43% of all websites on the internet are built on WordPress. This might make you wonder:

Why are so many people using a difficult platform?

Unlike website builders such as Squarespace, WordPress is completely open source, customizable, and flexible. You can use WordPress in any way you want, which might sound confusing for new users.

This is particularly true if you’ve previously used a website builder like Wix.com. These platforms typically have limited features and control exactly how you use their tools. This might make it seem like that they’re easy to use, but they are also very restrictive.

With the right techniques, tools, and information, WordPress is just as easy as any website builder, but without any of the restrictions.

By choosing WordPress, you’ll get the freedom to use any web host and domain provider, so you can update, customize, and extend your WordPress website in exactly the way you want.

In the official WordPress repository alone, you’ll find over 60,000 free plugins that can add all sorts of features to your website. Think of plugins like apps in your iPhone except they’re for your websites.

When it comes to designing your site, you can use any free or premium theme, or even use drag & drop page builders to create a completely unique design.

There are no provider terms and conditions to follow, and you own all the content on your site.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at why nearly half of all website owners in the world ignore the myth that WordPress is hard to use and choose WordPress as their platform.

WordPress Isn’t Hard (But Here’s How to Make it Even Easier)

At WPBeginner we don’t believe that WordPress is hard. However, if you don’t have the right tools, tricks, and know-how, then WordPress can feel more complex than it actually is.

With that in mind, let’s see how you can make WordPress easier. You can use the links below to jump to any section of the post.

Choose the Right Web Hosting Provider
Install Must-Have WordPress Plugins
Find the Perfect WordPress Theme
Use a WordPress Page Builder
Use a WordPress SEO Plugin
Use Tools to Improve Site Speed and Performance
Set up an Automated Security Plugin
Set up Google Analytics
Use Comment Filtering and Moderation
Never Edit Your Theme Files Directly
Keep Your WordPress Site Up-To-Date
Automate Your WordPress Backups
Learn WordPress
Consider Hiring a WordPress Maintenance Service

Choose the Right Web Hosting Provider

By choosing the best WordPress hosting, you can set your site up for success. The right host will provide exactly the features you need to build and run a successful WordPress website, even if you have no previous experience.

Some hosts even perform crucial WordPress maintenance tasks such as creating backups, adding security plugins, and installing updates. This will make WordPress feel effortless.

For example, Bluehost is a well-known WordPress hosting provider that automatically installs and set up WordPress for you when you sign up.

From time to time, you may encounter problems or have questions.

A good host will offer support over email, phone, live chat, and other channels so you’ll have no problems getting your site back on track.

As the world’s most popular CMS, there are lots of companies that offer WordPress hosting. For that reason, we’ve done the research and created a list of the best web hosting companies to help you find the provider that’s right for you.

Here are the top WordPress hosting companies that we recommend:

Bluehost – great for beginners – includes free domain.
Hostinger – growing fast in popularity due to affordable prices, fast speed, includes free domain.
SiteGround – premium WordPress hosting provider, uses Google cloud. Slightly higher prices.
WP Engine – enterprise managed WordPress hosting provider, great for large sites.

Install Must-Have WordPress Plugins

The best part about WordPress is that you can easily add any feature to your site using plugins, without hiring a developer.

There are eCommerce plugins to help you create an online store, plugins that turn WordPress into a membership site so you can sell courses, add smart lead generation forms to grow your business, improve your SEO rankings, and much more.

In fact, there are over 60,000 free plugins in the official WordPress repository alone, so you’ll have no problems finding a plugin that meets your exact needs.

The official WordPress plugin repository

To help you get started, here’s our expert list of the must-have plugins for your WordPress website.

Our top 5 free WordPress plugins that we always recommend include:

WPForms – best drag & drop online form builder for WordPress.
AIOSEO – best WordPress SEO plugin to boost your SEO rankings.
MonsterInsights – easily see your website analytics to make data-driven decisions.
Duplicator – easily create regular backups for your website.
SeedProd – drag & drop page builder to create custom website designs without any code.

Find the Perfect WordPress Theme

WordPress themes control how your site looks and acts. There are themes designed for specific markets like WooCommerce themes and membership site themes, but also multi-purpose themes that you can customize to fit almost any type of site.

Just like plugins, there are countless free themes to choose from. In fact, there are over 10,500 free themes in the official WordPress repository alone.

You’ll find even more on top WordPress theme providers websites.

This includes Elegant Themes, Astra, StudioPress, and more.

An example of a premium WordPress theme marketplace

It’s important to choose a theme that looks good, has the features you need, and is also high quality. To help you make the right decision, see our guide on how to select the perfect WordPress theme.

If you’re looking for theme recommendations, then check out our expert pick of the most popular and best WordPress themes.

Use a WordPress Page Builder

When building your site, you’ll create posts and pages using the WordPress block editor.

If you’re using a block-enabled theme such as Divi or Astra, then you can also add content using the full-site editor.

This editor allows you to completely change the theme layout and add new sections to your website without writing any code.

This is a great start, but it can be very basic and has a limited number of features.

We still recommend using a page builder plugin such as SeedProd. SeedProd allows you to create completely custom page designs and comes with ready-made blocks that you can drag and drop anywhere on your site.

This includes advanced blocks like countdown timers, contact forms, Google Maps, payment fields, and much more.

Why is WordPress so hard? SeedProd can make it easier

After adding a block to your site, you can customize it using the settings in the left-hand SeedProd menu.

This makes it easy to create custom home pages, landing pages, and more.

Why is WordPress so bad? Page builders can make it easier

For more on this topic, please see our guide on WordPress Block Editor vs Page Builders, as well as our expert tips to master the WordPress content (block) editor.

Use a WordPress SEO Plugin

Most visitors will find your site through search engines like Google. To help search engines show your content to the right people, you’ll need to work on your WordPress SEO.

SEO is a huge topic that often includes technical tasks such as adding rich snippets schema markup to your site.

Thankfully, there’s a WordPress plugin for everything and SEO is no exception. There are lots of different WordPress SEO plugins and tools you can use for individual tasks, but we recommend AIOSEO as it’s the complete SEO toolkit for WordPress.

AIOSEO comes with powerful features including breadcrumb navigation, advanced eCommerce SEO support for WooCommerce, local SEO, an internal link assistant, and much more. This means you don’t have to set up and learn multiple SEO plugins.

AIOSEO also scans your pages and posts as you’re writing them and creates a checklist of ways to improve its SEO.

Why is WordPress so hard? AIOSEO can make it easier

For step-by-step instructions, please see our ultimate guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

Use Tools to Improve Site Speed and Performance

To provide a good experience, your website needs to load quickly.

WordPress is already optimized for speed and performance, but there are lots of tricks and tools that can make it run even faster. With that in mind, we’ve created the ultimate guide to boost WordPress speed and performance that has everything you need to know.

Set up an Automated Security Plugin

WordPress is secure software, but hackers are always coming up with new ways to break into sites and steal data. To help new WordPress users keep their sites safe, we’ve created an ultimate WordPress security guide.

We also recommend using Sucuri, which is the best WordPress security plugin.

Sucuri tracks everything that happens on your site, including failed login attempts and any changes to the WordPress files.

It also scans for malware and monitors whether your site appears on any blocklists, as this may mean there’s a problem with your site’s security.

Why is WordPress so bad? Sucuri is one way to make it easier

If it finds an issue, then Sucuri will notify you automatically. In this way, you can protect your site without having to perform any manual checks, or learn complicated security tools.

To learn how we use Sucuri on our own websites, see our complete Sucuri review.

Set up Google Analytics

As a website owner, your goal is to get people to your site and keep them engaged. That’s where Google Analytics comes in.

Analytics allow you to make decisions based on real data. For example, you can track website visitors and see the content that gets the most engagement. You can then create more of this popular content.

You can also see how long visitors stay on your site and the bounce rate, which is the percentage of users who exit your site on the first visit. You can use this information to increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress.

Google Analytics is an important tool, but it can be complicated to set up. For that reason, we recommend using MonsterInsights.

The MonsterInsights Google Analytics plugin

MonsterInsights is the best analytics solution for WordPress users.

It allows you to easily install Google Analytics on your website and then shows helpful reports directly in the WordPress dashboard.

Why is WordPress so complicated? MonsterInsights can make it easier

To learn more, please see our guide on how to install Google Analytics in WordPress.

Use Comment Filtering and Moderation

All website owners worry about comment spam.

Spambots and malicious third parties can easily flood a site’s comment section with links to malware and low-quality pages. This can hurt your website’s reputation and may even affect its SEO.

You can moderate comments in WordPress directly from the dashboard, including manually approving and blocking comments, or even deleting them completely.

Moderating comments manually can make WordPress more hard

However, moderating every single comment can be time-consuming, especially as your site grows and attracts more visitors.

Thankfully, there are lots of tools to combat comment spam in WordPress. This includes Akismet, which automatically filters all comments through a global spam database.

Moderating comments automatically using Akismet

To learn more, please see our guide to Akismet and why you should start using it right away.

Never Edit Your Theme Files Directly

WordPress is open-source software so anyone can see and edit its code, or even add their own PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. It may sound complicated, but there are lots of reasons to add custom code to WordPress.

For example, you might use a code snippet to completely disable comments, or remove the WordPress version number. Typically, it doesn’t make sense to install a plugin for these small tasks, so WordPress gives you the option to use code instead.

Many WordPress tutorials will provide a snippet and then ask you to edit your theme’s functions.php file.

The problem is that even a typo or small mistake in the code can cause errors or even break your site completely. You also won’t be able to update your WordPress theme without losing the customization.

This leads many people to think that WordPress is hard, when really the problem lies with their custom code.

That’s why we recommend using WPCode.

The WPCode code snippets plugin for WordPress

WPCode is the best code snippets plugin for WordPress and allows you to add custom PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and HTML without editing any theme files.

WPCode also has a built-in library of snippets that you can add to a site with just a few clicks. Even if you’re a beginner with no coding experience, WPCode makes it easy to add custom code in WordPress in a safe way.

Why is WordPress so complicated? WPCode can make it easier

Keep Your WordPress Site Up-To-Date

It’s important to keep your themes, plugins, and core WordPress software up-to-date. Hackers try to exploit known errors and vulnerabilities in outdated software, so if you fall behind then your site could become an easy target.

Some updates even add features that make WordPress easier to use. For this reason, it’s important to update WordPress core, update your WordPress plugins, and install the latest version of your theme.

Some web hosts will install these updates for you automatically, especially if you’re using a managed hosting provider.

Another option is to enable automatic updates for WordPress and enable automatic updates for plugins and themes. With that done, you’ll always have access to the latest WordPress features and fixes.

Why is WordPress so complicated? Automatic updates can make it easier

Automate Your WordPress Backups

WordPress is secure and reliable software, but it’s still a good idea to create regular backups.

Accidents and mistakes happen, such as deleting important content or editing the wrong page. Malicious third parties may also try to break into your site and delete your content.

By creating regular backups, you can always recover a working and error-free version of your website. Even if the worst happens and you lose all your data, you can simply restore your WordPress website from its latest backup.

They may be important, but many website owners overlook backups until it’s too late.

The good news is there are many free and paid WordPress backup plugins that can do the hard work for you. We recommend using a premium plugin like Duplicator Pro as it can create backups automatically.

For added security, Duplicator Pro will save your backups to popular online storage solutions like Dropbox, OneDrive, or Amazon S3. This means you can log into these services from any location, and get access to a working copy of your website.

Learn WordPress

The right plugins, themes, and techniques will help you run a successful WordPress website with ease. In some cases, you can even completely automate important tasks such as making a WordPress database backup or performing a security audit.

For this reason, many website owners don’t take the time to learn more about WordPress. We think this is a big mistake.

By continuing to learn you can often make WordPress even easier to use. With that in mind, here are just some of the free resources you’ll find on WPBeginner:

WPBeginner Blog. This is where we publish our WordPress tutorials, how-tos, and step-by-step guides. We have a huge library of free content, and we’re publishing new information all the time.
WPBeginner Dictionary. Complicated terms and technical jargon can make WordPress seem a lot harder than it is. For that reason, we’ve created a directory that covers all the WordPress lingo.
WPBeginner Videos. Our step-by-step WordPress 101 video tutorials have everything you need to get started with WordPress.
WPBeginner on YouTube. Enjoyed our WordPress 101 series and want to learn more? You’ll find over 900 more videos on our YouTube channel covering everything from SEO, to common WordPress errors and how to fix them, how to embed dynamic social media feeds on your site, and much more.
WPBeginner Engage Group. The largest and fastest-growing WordPress group for non-techies and beginners on Facebook. Here, you can connect with over 91,000 WordPress users, ask questions, and get support from the community.

Consider Hiring a WordPress Maintenance Service

The tips and tricks in this guide will make WordPress feel effortless, even if you’ve never created a website before.

However, if you’re looking for the ultimate hassle-free experience then you can always hire a maintenance service to take care of WordPress for you. This includes creating backups, installing updates, performing SEO audits, upgrading your site’s security, finding and fixing broken links, and more.

These services are perfect for first-time WordPress users or anyone who finds that day-to-day website maintenance takes too much time. If you want to hire a WordPress expert, then see our pick of the best WordPress website maintenance services.

We hope this article helped you see why WordPress is not hard, and there’s a good reason that nearly half of all websites on the internet use WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how much it really costs to build a WordPress website or see the most important reasons to use WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Why Is WordPress So Hard (And How to Make It Easier) first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 21, 2023

8 Best Product Grid Plugins for WooCommerce (Free + Paid)

Are you looking for a WordPress plugin to show WooCommerce products in a grid?

Showing your products in a grid view provides a better user experience for customers. With the right plugin, you can easily customize and style your product category grid.

In this article, we will show you the best product grid plugins for WooCommerce.

Why Use a Product Grid Plugin for WooCommerce?

When you’re creating an online store, it is important to showcase your best products and make it easier for customers to view them.

With the right WooCommerce plugin, you can easily display multiple products or features from a single product in a grid view. This provides a better user experience and makes it easy for customers to interact with your products.

Besides that, a product grid plugin also offers more flexibility for customization. You can easily adjust the grid, choose the number of rows and columns, change the color, and more.

Some plugins will also let you add category filters. This way, users can simply search for a product and view them in a grid rather than explore each product in your WooCommerce store. It helps boost conversions and increase sales.

That said, let’s look at the best product category grid plugins for WooCommerce.

1. SeedProd

SeedProd is the best WordPress website builder and landing page plugin. It is used by over 1 million professionals.

The plugin offers a drag-and-drop builder that lets you create custom themes and page layouts. You get prebuilt templates and lots of customization options.

In the page builder, SeedProd offers exclusive WooCommerce blocks to customize your product page. You simply drag and drop the products grid block on your template.

The plugin lets you choose the number of columns in the grid. It also offers options to filter products and show all products, best-selling products, top-rated products, and more. Besides that, you can select the order of the products based on date, title, rating, ID, and more.

Other than that, SeedProd offers other blocks for customization. For instance, you can add images, optin forms, countdown timers, contact forms, and more to your product pages.

It also easily integrates with email marketing tools to help you collect leads and grow your email list.

Pricing: SeedProd prices start from $39.50 per year. There is also a free SeedProd Lite version you use to get started.

2. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It lets you set up Google Analytics in WordPress without editing code or hiring a developer. Plus, it automatically sets up advanced tracking on your website.

MonsterInsights offers a Popular Posts feature that lets you show your best-selling products in a grid view. You get to choose from prebuilt themes for your product grid.

The plugin also shows a preview of your theme. Besides that, you get plenty of customization options.

For instance, you can change the color and size of the title, prices, and ratings. It also gives you the option to select a layout for your grid, choose product count to display, and more.

Other than that, you can also exclude certain products or product categories from appearing in the MonsterInsights popular post widget on the page.

Pricing: MonsterInsights premium plans start from $99.50 per year. There is also a MonsterInsights Lite version you use for free and set up Google Analytics in WordPress.

3. ProductX

ProductX is another popular product grid plugin for WooCommerce. It lets you create WooCommerce stores using the drag-and-drop builder.

There are different blocks you can use to customize your store. Plus, the plugin offers a template toolkit, so you can quickly select a design and edit it according to your requirements.

ProductX offers different product category grid blocks. You can choose from 3 different variations to display products in a grid view. Besides that, there are multiple settings to edit the design of the product grid.

Other features offered by ProductX include advanced product filters, a progress bar, product comparison, whitelist items, and much more.

Pricing: ProductX is a paid WordPress plugin with prices starting from $49 per year for 1 site.

4. YITH WooCommerce Best Sellers

YITH WooCommerce Best Sellers is a great plugin to have on your online store and display top-selling products in a grid layout.

The plugin is easy to use and offers different options to customize your product category grid. For example, you can change the text, ratings, colors, and other details of any product in the grid. Plus, you can choose the number of rows and columns to display.

Using YITH WooCommerce Best Sellers, you can show your most popular products or top-selling product category. There is also a best-seller badge you can use to highlight a product and get more conversions.

Pricing: YITH WooCommerce Best Sellers will cost you $59.99 per year.

5. Smash Balloon Instagram Feed

Smash Balloon Instagram Feed is the best WordPress social media plugin. You can display content from different social media accounts on your WordPress website using the plugin.

If you’re using Instagram shopping to sell products online, then you can easily display items on your WordPress website using Smash Balloon’s Instagram Feeds plugin.

You can simply connect your Instagram account with the WooCommerce store. After that, display product feeds as grids, carousels, masonry, and other layouts.

The plugin also lets you link each Instagram post to a page on your WooCommere website. This way, users will land on the product page and easily make a purchase.

With Smash Balloon, you get full control over the appearance of your social media feeds. There are options to change the width, height, number of images, and more for your Instagram shoppable feed.

Pricing: You can get Smash Balloon Instagram Feed plugin for $49 per year.

6. Product Carousel Slider & Grid Ultimate for WooCommerce

Product carousel slider and grid ultimate

Product Carousel Slider & Grid Ultimate for WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that lets you create attractive product grids, carousels, and sliders.

The plugin offers built-in themes for carousels and grids. Plus, it lets you customize the grid by choosing the number of products to display per page, showing a header title, and controlling the image sizes. The plugin also gives you settings for selecting columns and rows and enabling pagination.

You can then choose which products to show in the grid. There are multiple options to choose from, like the latest products, older products, and featured products. After creating the product grid, you can easily add them anywhere on your WooCommerce store using shortcodes.

Besides that, there are options to show different badges on products. For instance, you display a sales badge, featured badge, discount badge, and sold-out badge in your product grid. You can also edit the style settings and change the product title font, color, ratings, and more.

Pricing: You can use the Product Carousel Slider & Grid Ultimate for WooCommerce plugin for free.

7. Grid/List View for WooCommerce

Grid/List View for WooCommerce is the next product category grid plugin on our list. The plugin is a great free solution for business owners looking to create simple product grids and lists.

You get to choose from 2 default styles, which include a grid or list layout. Besides that, there are basic options to customize your product grid. You can choose how many products to display and where to position the product count.

Sadly, there is no drag-and-drop customization option as you’d get in SeedProd. However, the plugin offers a wide variety of buttons to choose from for your WooCommerce product grid.

Pricing: Grid/List View for WooCommerce is a free-to-use plugin.

8. Product Categories Designs for WooCommerce

Product Categories Designs for WooCommerce is the most basic WordPress plugin for creating product grids and sliders.

If you have different product categories on your WooCommerce store, then all you have to do is install the plugin and use shortcodes to display the products.

There are no customization options or additional settings that you’ll find in your WordPress dashboard. Everything is controlled through shortcodes. You can use different shortcodes for choosing the number of columns, order of product categories, design of the product grid, and more.

However, if you’re looking for more customization features and ease of use, then you can use any other plugin on our list, like SeedProd or MonsterInsights.

Pricing: You can get started with Product Categories Designs for WooCommerce for free.

Which is the Best Product Grid Plugin for WooCommerce?

In our experience, SeedProd is the best product grid plugin for WooCommerce. It is super easy to use because it offers a drag-and-drop builder with lots of template customization for your site and pages.

You can create stunning WooCommmerce pages with customized product grids that will help boost conversions. The plugin also offers tons of options to edit and change the appearance of your product category grids.

That’s not all, SeedProd also integrates with popular email marketing services, which helps grow your email list.

Bonus: If you’re looking to grow your WooCommerce store, then we also recommend that you try FunnelKit. It’s one of the best WooCommerce plugins to grow your store revenue.

We hope this article helped you pick the best product grid plugin for WooCommerce. You may also want to see our guide on WooCommerce SEO made easy and the best live chat software for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 8 Best Product Grid Plugins for WooCommerce (Free + Paid) first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 17, 2023

How to Easily Add Bullet Points & Numbered Lists in WordPress

Do you want to add bullet points and numbered lists in WordPress?

Adding lists to your content helps improve readability of your site. They’re also a great way to share step-by-step instructions or complicated data with your visitors. Sometimes search engines can even give higher ranking to pages that use lists in their content.

In this article, we will show you how to easily add bullet points and numbered lists in WordPress with custom styles.

How to add bullet points and numbered lists in WordPress (beginner's guide)

Why Add Bullet Points and Numbered Lists in WordPress?

Instead of showing visitors a wall of text, we believe it’s a best practice to break your content into scannable sections. There are lots of ways to make your pages more reader-friendly including creating tables, using subheadings, adding videos, and creating lists.

A list can help visitors understand your content at a glance, even if you’re sharing complicated information or lots of data. This can improve the user experience and keep people on your website for longer.

They’re also ideal for creating to-do lists or sharing step-by-step instructions with your visitors. For example, you might turn a recipe into a numbered list on your food blog.

With that in mind, let’s see how you can add bullet points and numbered lists in WordPress. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.

Method 1. Using the Built-in WordPress List Block (Easy)
Method 2. Using the Super List Block WordPress Plugin (Create Multimedia Lists)
Method 3. Using a Page Builder Plugin (Best for Landing Pages)
Method 4. Add Bullet Points and Number Lists Using Code (Advanced)

Method 1. Using the Built-in WordPress List Block (Easy)

The easiest way to add bullet points and numbered lists is by using the built-in List block and WordPress block editor.

This allows you to create simple lists without installing a separate WordPress plugin, although the default block only has a few customization options.

If you want to fine-tune every part of your lists with custom icons, horizontal layouts, different colors, and more, then we recommend using one of the other methods in this article.

To get started, simply open the post or page where you want to add a list. You can then choose whether to create a bullet point or numbered list.

How to Create a Bullet Point List in WordPress

To create a bullet point list, click on the ‘+’ icon to add a new block.

In the popup that appears, type in ‘List.’

When the right block shows up, give it a click to add it to the page.

Adding a List block to a WordPress page or post

This creates the first item in a bullet point list. Simply type in the text you want to use for the first list item.

With that done, press the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard to move to the next line. WordPress will automatically create the second bullet point.

You can now go ahead and type in the text you want to use for the second bullet point. Simply repeat these steps to add more items to the list.

If you want to create a nested list, then click the ‘Indent’ button. This moves the cursor one step to the right, ready for you to type in the indented text.

How to create a nested list in WordPress

You can click on the ‘Indent’ button again, to create two levels of nested bullet points.

As you can see in the following image, each level uses a different icon.

To decrease the indent, click on the ‘Outdent’ button.

This moves the cursor one step to the left, ready for you to start typing.

Creating nested lists in WordPress using the indent and outdent buttons

By pressing the ‘Indent’ and ‘Outdent’ buttons, you can create nested lists with multiple different levels.

By default, WordPress will use the ‘Medium’ font size but you can switch between small, large, and extra large using the ‘Typography’ settings in the right-hand block options.

You can also add links, or use the standard text formatting options, such as bold and italic.

How to Create a Numbered List in WordPress

To create a numbered list in WordPress, simply press the ‘1’ key on your keyboard followed by a full stop (.).

WordPress will automatically turn this text into the first item in a numbered list.

You’re now ready to type the first item in the numbered list.

After that, just press the ‘Return’ key on your keyboard and WordPress will create the next numbered point automatically.

Adding a numbered list to a website or blog

Just like with bullet points, you can create nested lists by clicking on the ‘Indent’ and ‘Outdent’ buttons.

This creates an indented bullet point, underneath the numbered bullet point.

Creating an indented numbered bullet list

Unlike bullet point lists, you can only use a single level of indenting.

When you’re happy with how the list looks, simply click on the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to make it live on your WordPress website.

Method 2. Using the Super List Block WordPress Plugin (Create Multimedia Lists)

The built-in List block is perfect for creating text-based lists, but sometimes you may want to include other content. For example, you might want to create a pricing table featuring images, text, and a call to action button.

The easiest way to do this is by using Super List Block. This free plugin adds a new block that allows you to use any WordPress block in your lists.

You can even create multimedia bullet points by adding multiple blocks to a single list item. In the following image, we’re using a Paragraph and Image block in each list item.

A multimedia list created using the Super List Block plugin

Super List Block also allows you to switch between vertical and horizontal list styles, and create ‘no marker’ lists that don’t have a bullet point icon or a number.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Super List Block plugin. If you need help, then please see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, head over to the page or post where you want to add a list. You can then click on the ‘+’ icon and start typing in ‘Super List.’

When the right block appears, give it a click.

This adds a new block with two default list items.

To start, you can switch between horizontal and vertical layouts using the arrows in the toolbar and in the left-hand menu.

Switching between horizontal and vertical list layouts

You can also choose between a numbered or bullet point list using the icons under ‘Change List Style.’

Another option is ‘No Marker,’ which is a unique list style provided by the plugin.

How to create a no marker list using a free WordPress plugin

When you’re happy with how the list is configured, you’re ready to create your first item.

Simply click on the ‘+ button in the corner of the Super List block and choose the first block you want to add. Super List is compatible with all the default WordPress blocks, so you can add an image, heading, or any other block you want.

You can then style the block as normal. For example, you might upload an image, add a download link, or type in some text.

To add another block to the bullet point, simply press the ‘Enter’ key on your keyboard. This adds a new ‘Type / to choose a block’ line underneath the first block.

You can now click on the ‘+’ icon inside the list item and add another block following the same process described above.

When you’re happy with how the first list item is set up, you can configure the second default item by following the same steps.

To add more bullet points, you’ll need to select an entire list item. This can be a bit tricky, as you’ll need to select the item as a whole, rather than the individual blocks within that list item.

When you see an ‘+’ icon in the toolbar, you have the right item selected. With that done, simply go ahead and give the ‘+’ button a click.

Adding list items to a multimedia WordPress list

This adds a new, empty item to the list.

Simply keep repeating these steps to add more bullet points and blocks.

When you’re happy with how the list looks, you can either click on the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to make it live on your WordPress blog or website.

Method 3. Using a Page Builder Plugin (Best for Landing Pages)

If you want to create beautiful lists with custom styling, then you may want to use SeedProd.

This advanced drag & drop page builder plugin lets you create professionally-designed pages using a simple drag and drop editor. It also comes with a ready-made List block that lets you fine-tune every part of the list design, including changing the space in between individual items, replacing the standard bullet points with custom icons, and more.

SeedProd makes it easy to design standalone pages that have a unique design, so this is also a great choice if you want to add lists to a custom home page or landing page.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate SeedProd. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to enter your license key.

You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website. After adding the license key, simply click on ‘Verify Key.’

After that, go to SeedProd » Landing Pages and click on ‘Add New Landing Page.’

Creating a custom landing page using a drag and drop page builder

On the next screen, you’ll be asked to choose a template.

SeedProd comes with over 180 beautiful templates that are organized into different categories such as 404-page templates and custom WooCommerce ‘thank you’ pages.

Simply click on any tab to see the different templates within that category.

SeedProd's professionally-designed templates

When you find a template you want to use, simply hover your mouse over it and then click the checkmark icon.

We’re using the ‘Explosive Growth Webinar’ template in all our images, but you can use any design you want.

Next, you need to give the page a title.

SeedProd will automatically create a URL based on the page title, but you can change this to anything you want. For example, adding relevant keywords to a URL often improves your WordPress SEO and helps the page appear in relevant search results.

To learn more, please see our guide on how to do keyword research for your WordPress blog.

Naming a template using the SeedProd page builder

When you’re happy with the title and URL, click on ‘Save and Start Editing the Page.’

This will load the SeedProd drag-and-drop page editor. On the right, you’ll see a live preview of the page design, with some settings on the left.

SeedProd comes with lots of blocks that you can add to your design, including blocks that allow you to add social share buttons, videos, contact forms, and more. For more information, please see our guide on how to create a custom page in WordPress.

To add a list to your design, find the ‘List’ block and drag it onto the page.

Adding the SeedProd list block to a page template

This adds a vertical list to your page with a placeholder ‘Item 1.’

If you want to create a horizontal list instead, then click on the ‘Advanced’ tab and then select the ‘Horizontal’ button.

You’re now ready to start building your list by selecting the ‘Content’ tab.

To replace the default text with your own messaging, click on ‘Item 1’ in the left-hand menu.

Adding items to a list using a page builder plugin

You can now type your list item into the small text editor that appears.

Here, you can also apply any formatting you want to use, such as bold or italic.

By default, SeedProd uses a checkmark for each bullet point, but it has a built-in library of icon fonts, which includes 1400 Font Awesome icons that you can use instead.

To replace the checkmark, simply hover your mouse over it and then click on ‘Icon Library’ when it appears.

This opens a popup where you can choose the icon you want to use instead.

You can use different icons for individual bullet points within the list, so this is a great way to create more interesting and eye-catching lists.

To create more bullet points, simply click on the ‘Add New Item’ button.

You can now add text and change the default icon by following the exact same process described above.

Adding new items to a list using a page builder plugin

After adding all the items to your list, you can change the font size and alignment using the settings in the left-hand menu.

You can also increase or decrease the space between the individual list items using the ‘Space Between’ slider.

Changing the spacing inbetween list items

After that, you may want to change the color of the icons in the list. Even if you’re using different icons, SeedProd will apply the same color to every item so the design will always look consistent.

To make this change, click on the ‘Icon Color’ area and then choose a new color from the popup that appears.

With that done, you may want to click on ‘Advanced’ and look at some additional settings. We’ve already seen how you can switch between vertical and horizontal list layouts, but you can also change the text color and font.

To really make your list stand out, you can add a box shadow or CSS animation.

SeedProd's advanced customization settings

Most of the settings in the ‘Advanced’ tab are fairly self-explanatory so it’s worth looking through them to see what different kinds of effects you can create.

That done, you can continue working on your page design by adding more blocks and then customizing them using the settings in the left-hand menu.

When you’re happy with how the page looks, click the dropdown menu on the ‘Save’ button and select ‘Publish.’

Publishing a custom landing page using SeedProd

You can now visit this page to see the list live on your online store or website.

Method 4. Add Bullet Points and Number Lists Using Code (Advanced)

You can also create lists using the built-in WordPress code editor and HTML.

This is more complicated so it isn’t the best method for beginners. However, it does allow you to use more styles and formatting in the built-in List block. For example, you can quickly and easily add heading styles to list items, using tags like h1 and h2.

For more on this topic, see our guide on how to edit HTML in the WordPress code editor.

To get started, open the page or post where you want to show the list. Then, click on the three-dotted icon in the upper-right corner and select ‘Code editor.’

The next steps will vary depending on whether you want to add a bullet point list, or a numbered list.

How to Create a Bullet Point List Using Code

To create a bullet point list, start by typing in the following:

<!-- wp:list -->
<ul>

The ul stands for ‘unordered list,’ which means the list doesn’t have any numbers, and the wp:list tells WordPress that you’re creating a List block manually.

Next, press the ‘Return’ key to move onto a new line and create your first list item:

<!-- wp:list -->
<ul>
<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Red</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->

Here, li stands for ‘list item,’ and we’re closing the line with /li.

You can repeat this process to create more list items. For example:

<!-- wp:list -->
<ul>
<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Red</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->

<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Orange</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->

<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Green</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->

When you’ve finished, close the code block with another ‘unordered list’ flag:

</ul>
<!-- /wp:list -->

This gives us the following list code:

<!-- wp:list -->
<ul>
<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Red</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->

<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Orange</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->

<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Green</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->
</ul>
<!-- /wp:list -->

As you can see in the following image, this creates a very simple list, but you can customize it by adding other HTML such as heading tags.

How to Create a Numbered List Using Code

To create a numbered list, simply type in the following:

<!-- wp:list {"ordered":true} -->

You can then type in ol which stands for ordered list:

<!-- wp:list {"ordered":true} -->
<ol>

After that, add each list item by following the same process described above:

<!-- wp:list {"ordered":true} -->
<ol>
<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Red</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->

Finally, close the ordered list using an /ol tag and wp:list.

<!-- wp:list {"ordered":true} -->
<ol>
<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Red</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->

<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Orange</li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->

<!-- wp:list-item -->
<li>Green </li>
<!-- /wp:list-item -->
</ol>
<!-- /wp:list -->

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to add bullet points and numbered lists in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to make money online blogging, or check out our expert pick of the best WordPress contact form plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Add Bullet Points & Numbered Lists in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

April 4, 2023

How to Create a Custom Shape Divider in WordPress

Do you want to add custom shape dividers to your WordPress website?

Shape dividers can organize your content in an engaging and eye-catching way. They can also highlight your site’s most important content, so visitors and customers don’t miss out on crucial information.

In this article, we will show you how to create a custom shape divider in WordPress.

Why Create a Custom Shape Divider in WordPress?

A shape divider is a type of section divider that you add between blocks of content.

These dividers can be simple, such as a horizontal line created with built-in WordPress blocks.

A custom shape divider, created using the built-in WordPress tools

You can use these basic dividers to organize and separate content, which is particularly useful on pages that cover lots of different topics.

You can also create more advanced shape dividers using page builder plugins and other web design software. These can highlight your site’s most important content so it stands out to visitors and customers.

A custom shape divider, created using SeedProd

A professional-looking shape divider can also make a page more interesting and engaging.

For example, you might use them to create a unique background for your email newsletter signup form.

How to create a custom shape divider using SeedProd

With that being said, let’s see how you can create a custom shape divider in WordPress. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.

Method 1. Create a Simple Shape Divider (No Plugin Required)
Method 2. Create a Custom Shape Divider in WordPress Using a Page Builder (Recommended)

Method 1. Create a Simple Shape Divider (No Plugin Required)

The easiest way to add a custom shape divider to WordPress is by using the built-in Separator block.

This method allows you to add a horizontal line separator in between any WordPress blocks, and then customize the line’s color and style.

A custom divider created using the WordPress block editor

This method doesn’t let you add different shapes to WordPress and has limited customization settings. However, you won’t need to install an extra WordPress plugin, so this is the easiest way to add a simple shape divider to your website.

To get started, simply open the post or page where you want to add an horizontal divider in the content editor. Then, click on the ‘+’ button where you want to place that divider.

In the popup, type in ‘Separator.’

When the right block appears, click to add it to the page or post.

Add a custom shape divider to a WordPress website

To customize the default Separator block, give it a click and then use the settings in the right-hand menu.

You can switch between default, wide line, and dots using the buttons in the ‘Styles’ section.

Adding different line styles in WordPress

You can also change the line’s color so that it matches the rest of your theme or branding.

To do this, click on ‘Background’ and then choose a color from the popup that appears.

How to style the Separator block in WordPress

When you’re happy with how the divider looks, you can either click on the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button to make the shape divider live.

Method 2. Create a Custom Shape Divider in WordPress Using a Page Builder (Recommended)

If you are looking to use different shape and customize every part of your dividers, then we recommend using the SeedProd plugin.

SeedProd is the best WordPress page builder plugin on the market, and it allows you to add a custom shape divider to any section, row, or column using a simple drag-and-drop editor.

Creating a custom shape divider in WordPress

It also comes with over 180 professionally-designed templates and more than 90 blocks that you can use to create beautiful custom home pages, landing pages, and more.

Note: There is a free version of SeedProd on available on WordPress.org, but we’ll be using the Pro version since it comes with a wide range of shape dividers.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to enter your license key.

Adding a license key to the SeedProd page builder

You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website. After entering the license key, click on the ‘Verify Key’ button.

With that done, go to SeedProd » Pages and click on the ‘Add New Landing Page’ button.

How to create a new landing page design using SeedProd

After that, it’s time to choose a page design template. SeedProd has a ton of professionally-designed templates that you can fine-tune to perfectly suit your WordPress website.

To select a template, simply hover your mouse over it and then click the ‘Checkmark’ icon.

Choosing a page design template for your WordPress website

Next, go ahead and type in a name for the page. SeedProd will automatically create a URL based on the page’s title, but you can change the URL to anything you want.

For example, you may want to add some relevant keywords, which will help search engines understand what the page is about and may improve your WordPress SEO.

When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, click on the ‘Save and Start Editing the Page’ button.

Creating a custom landing page using SeedProd

Next, you’ll be taken to the drag-and-drop page builder, ready to customize the template.

The SeedProd editor shows a live preview of your design to the right and some block settings on the left.

The left-hand menu also has blocks that you can drag onto your layout.

For example, you can drag and drop standard blocks like buttons and images or use advanced blocks such as the countdown timer, contact form, social sharing buttons, and more.

Adding blocks to a WordPress page builder

To customize a block, just click to select it in your layout.

The left-hand menu will then show all the settings you can use to configure that block. You can also change the page’s background colors, add background images, or change the color scheme and fonts to better match your brand.

Customizing the background color in WordPress

SeedProd also comes with ‘Sections,’ which are collections of blocks that are often used together. For example, SeedProd has a header section, hero image, call to action, customer testimonials, FAQs, features, footer sections, and more.

To look through the different sections, simply click on the ‘Sections’ tab.

Adding a Section to a custom page template

You can move sections and blocks around your layout using drag and drop.

If you want to delete a block, then simply hover over it and then click on the trash can icon when it appears.

Deleting blocks from a custom page design

Whether or not you choose to use a SeedProd section, you can now create a custom shape divider. Simply click to select the section, row, or column where you want to add the divider.

Then, click on the ‘Advanced’ tab in the left-hand menu.

Now, click to expand the ‘Shape Divider’ section.

To start, you can choose where to show the shape divider by selecting either the ‘Top’ or ‘Bottom’ button.

Adding a custom divider to the bottom of a WordPress block

You can now open the ‘Type’ menu and choose the shape divider that you want to use.

As you select different shapes, the live preview will update automatically so you can try different styles to see what looks the best.

Adding custom shape dividers to a custom landing page

After choosing a shape divider, you can style it using the new settings.

To start, you can click on ‘Color’ and then choose a new color from the popup that appears.

Adding a color to a custom shape divider in WordPress

With that done, you can make the divider bigger or smaller by dragging the ‘Width’ and ‘Height’ sliders.

If you already have a specific size in mind, then you can type those numbers into the boxes.

Create a custom shape divider in WordPress

You can also try flipping the divider by clicking to enable or disable the ‘Flip’ switch.

By default, the divider will appear behind the rest of the content, so users can clearly see any text, images, or other content that overlaps the divider.

However, moving the shape to the front can create some interesting effects. If you want to see how this looks, then simply click to enable the ‘Bring to Front’ switch.

Bringing the custom shape divider to the front

To add more dividers simply follow the same process described above.

You can even add a shape divider to the top and bottom of an area, which often creates some impressive and eye-catching results.

Adding multiple custom shape dividers to a single section

You can continue working on the page by adding more blocks and customizing those blocks in the left-hand menu.

When you’re happy with how the page looks, click the ‘Save’ button. You can then select ‘Publish’ to make that page live.

How to Add Shape Dividers to a WordPress Theme

SeedProd’s drag-and-drop editor gives you the freedom to add a unique shape divider to any page. However, sometimes you may want to use the same shape dividers on multiple pages, or even across your entire WordPress blog or website.

This will help you create a consistent design and can also save you a ton of time. In this case, we recommend adding a shape divider to your theme using the SeedProd theme builder.

With SeedProd, you can create a custom WordPress theme without writing any code. It creates all the files that make up your theme, including the sidebar, header, footer, single posts, and more.

You can then customize these files using the familiar drag-and-drop builder. This includes adding shape dividers by following the same process described above.

When you activate the new theme using SeedProd, it will overwrite your existing WordPress theme, so you should only use this method if you want to replace your current theme.

For detailed step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to easily create a custom WordPress theme.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to create a custom shape divider in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to increase your blog traffic, or see our expert pick of the best social proof plugins for WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Create a Custom Shape Divider in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

March 28, 2023

How to Fade Images on Mouseover in WordPress (Simple & Easy)

Do you want to fade images on mouseover in WordPress?

A simple fade-in or fade-out animation when a user moves their mouse over an image can make your site more engaging. It also encourages visitors to interact with your content, which can keep them on your site for longer.

In this article, we’ll show you how to add a fade image effect on mouseover in WordPress.

How to fade images on mouseover in WordPress

Why Fade Images on Mouseover in WordPress?

Animations are an easy way to make your website more interesting, and can even draw the visitor’s attention toward your page’s most important content, such as your website logo or a call to action.

There are lots of different ways to use CSS animations in WordPress, but adding a hover effect to images is particularly effective. The fade animation means your images will slowly appear or disappear when visitors hover over them.

This encourages people to interact with your images, and can even add a storytelling element to the page. For example, different images might fade in and out as the visitor moves around the page.

Unlike some other animations, the fade image on mouseover effect is subtle so it won’t negatively impact the visitor’s reading experience or any image optimization you’ve done.

With that said, let’s show you how to add a fade to your images on mouseover in WordPress.

Adding Image Fade on Mouseover to all WordPress Images

The easiest way to add a fade effect to all your images is by using WPCode. This free plugin allows you to easily add custom code in WordPress without having to edit your theme files.

With WPCode, even beginners can edit their website’s code without risking mistakes and typos that can cause many common WordPress errors.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the free WPCode plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, head over to Code Snippets » Add Snippet.

Adding custom code to your WordPress website with WPCode

Here, simply hover your mouse over ‘Add Your Custom Code.’

When it appears, click on ‘Use snippet.’

Creating a custom CSS snippet on your WordPress website

To start, type in a title for the custom code snippet. This can be anything that helps you identify the snippet in the WordPress dashboard.

We need to add custom CSS to WordPress, so open the ‘Code Type’ dropdown and select ‘CSS Snippet.’

Add a fade on mouseover animation to images using WPCode

In the code editor, add the following code snippet:

.post img:hover{
opacity:0.6;
filter:alpha(opacity=60); /* For IE8 and earlier */
-webkit-transition: all 2s ease;
-moz-transition: all 2s ease;
-ms-transition: all 2s ease;
-o-transition: all 2s ease;
transition: all 2s ease;
}

This code snippet will fade each image for 2 seconds when the user hovers their mouse over it. To make the image fade slower, simply replace ‘2s ease’ with a higher number. If you want to make the picture fade faster, then use ‘1s ease’ or smaller.

You can also make the ‘opacity’ higher or lower by changing the opacity:0.6 line.

If you change any of these numbers then make sure you change them across all the properties (webkit, moz, ms, and o), so the fade effect looks the same on every browser.

When you’re happy with the snippet, scroll to the ‘Insertion’ section. WPCode can add your code to different locations, such as after every post, frontend only, or admin only.

To add a fade effect to all your images, click on ‘Auto Insert.’ Then, open the ‘Location’ dropdown menu and choose ‘Site Wide Header.’

Inserting custom CSS across your WordPress website

After that, you’re ready to scroll to the top of the screen and click on the ‘Inactive’ toggle, so it changes to ‘Active.’

Finally, click on ‘Save Snippet’ to make the CSS snippet live.

Adding a fade effect to images using CSS

Now, if you hover the mouse over any image on your WordPress website, you’ll see the fade effect in action.

Adding Image Fade Animations to Individual Pages

Using a fade effect for every single image can become distracting, especially if you’re running a photography website, a stock photo store, or any other site that has lots of images.

With that in mind, you may want to use fade effects on a specific page or post only.

The good news is that WPCode allows you to create custom shortcodes. You can place this shortcode on any page, and WordPress will show fade effects on that page only.

To do this, simply create a custom code snippet and add the fade animation code following the same process described above. Then, click on the ‘Save snippet’ button.

Fade images on mouseover in WordPress using custom code

After that, scroll to the ‘Insertion’ section, but this time select ‘Shortcode.’

This creates a shortcode that you can add to any page, post, or widget-ready area.

After that, go ahead and make the snippet live following the same process described above.

You can now go to any page, post, or widget-ready area and create a new ‘Shortcode’ block. Then, simply paste the WPCode shortcode into that block.

How to create fade animations for images using shortcode

For more information on how to place the shortcode, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

With that done, either click on the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to make the shortcode live. You can then visit that page, page, or widget-ready area to see the fade on mouseover effect.

Adding Image Fade Animations to Featured Images

Another option is to add fade animations to your featured images or post thumbnails. These are the post’s primary image and they often appear next to the heading on your home page, archive pages, and other important areas of your website.

By fading featured images on mouseover, you can make your site more eye-catching and engaging, without animating every single image across your WordPress blog or website.

To add a fade animation to your post thumbnails, simply create a new custom code snippet following the same process described above.

Adding a fade on mouseover effect to individual images

However, this time add the following code to the editor:

img.wp-post-image:hover{
opacity:0.6;
filter:alpha(opacity=60); /* For IE8 and earlier */
-webkit-transition: all 2s ease;
-moz-transition: all 2s ease;
-ms-transition: all 2s ease;
-o-transition: all 2s ease;
transition: all 2s ease;
}

After that, scroll to the ‘Insertion’ box and select ‘Auto Insert.’ Then, open the ‘Location’ dropdown menu and choose ‘Site Wide Header.’

Adding an animation to images on mouseover

After that, you can go ahead and make the code snippet live using the same process described above.

Now, you can hover the mouse over any featured image to see the fade animation in action.

If you want to add even more image mouseover effects, then see our guide on how to add image hover effects in WordPress.

Bonus: Animate Any Image, Text, Button, and More

Fade effects are a fun way to make images more interesting, but there are lots more ways to use animations in WordPress. For example, you might use flipbox animations to reveal text when a visitor hovers over an image, or use zoom effects so users can explore a picture in more detail.

If you want to try different effects, then SeedProd has over 40 animations that you can add to images, text, buttons, videos, and more. You can even animate entire sections and columns with just a few clicks.

Inside the SeedProd editor, simply click on the content you want to animate, and then select the ‘Advanced’ tab in the left-hand menu.

You can then go ahead and click to expand the ‘Animation Effects’ section.

After that, simply choose an animation from the ‘Entrance Animation’ dropdown, including a wide range of different fade effects.

Adding animations to WordPress using SeedProd

For more information, please see our guide on how to create a landing page with WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to fade images on mouseover in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to choose the best web design software, and our expert picks of the best WordPress popup plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Fade Images on Mouseover in WordPress (Simple & Easy) first appeared on WPBeginner.

March 23, 2023

How to Easily Add CSS Animations in WordPress

Do you want to add CSS animations in WordPress?

Animations are a great way to grab the visitor’s attention and highlight a page’s most important content. They can also encourage customers to click on your call-to-action buttons and links.

In this article, we will show you how you can easily add CSS animations in WordPress.

How to easily add CSS animations in WordPress

Why Add CSS Animations in WordPress?

You can use CSS animations to draw the visitor’s attention to different parts of a page. For example, if you have an online store then animations can highlight a product’s most important features or biggest selling points.

Animations will also make your CTAs stand out, which can help you reach a specific goal such as getting more people to subscribe to your email newsletter.

You can add CSS animations to your theme or child theme‘s stylesheet. However, this takes a lot of time and effort, and it can break your website’s design and even function if you make a mistake.

With that being said, let’s see how you can easily add CSS animations to your WordPress site. If you prefer to jump straight to a particular method, then you can use the links below.

Method 1. How to Easily Animate Any WordPress Block (Quick and Easy)
Method 2. How to Add CSS Animations to Custom Pages (Recommended)

Method 1. How to Easily Animate Any WordPress Block (Quick and Easy)

The easiest way to add a simple CSS animation is by using Blocks Animation.

This free plugin allows you to add an entrance animation to any block without having to write a single line of CSS. It also has a typing animation and a ticker-style effect that you can add to text and numbers.

A count animation, created using the Animation Blocks plugin

First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, open any page or post in the WordPress editor. Then, simply click on the block that you want to animate and select the ‘Block’ tab in the right-hand menu.

You’ll see this menu has a new ‘Animations’ section.

Simply click to expand the ‘Animations’ section, and you’ll see three different options: Animations, Count Animations, and Typing Animations.

‘Animations’ are short effects that play once when the page loads. To add this kind of entrance animation to your WordPress blog, just click on the dropdown next to ‘Animation.’

Adding a CSS animation to WordPress using a free plugin

This opens a menu where you can choose the animation you want to use.

The WordPress editor will show a preview of the animation, so you can try different options to see what looks the best.

By default, the entrance animation will play as soon as the page loads, but you can add a delay if you prefer. If you use multiple animations on the same page, then you can even use delays to stagger your animations so they’re not overwhelming.

Simply open the ‘Delay’ dropdown and choose a time from the list.

How to add loading CSS animations to WordPress

You can also make the animation faster or slower using the ‘Speed’ dropdown.

As you’re trying different settings, you can preview the animation at any point by clicking on ‘Replay Animation.’

The plugin also has ‘Count Animations’ and ‘Typing Animations.’

Typing Animations allow you to animate text, while Count Animations add a ticker-style effect to numbers. These animations work with any block that supports text or numbers, so you can use them to animate buttons, image captions, headings, and more.

To add either of these effects, start by highlighting the text or numbers that you want to animate. Then, click on the downward arrow in the small toolbar.

Adding a typing animation to a text block

You can now choose ‘Count Animations’ or ‘Typing Animations’ from the dropdown menu.

If these options are grayed out, then make sure you’ve highlighted the right content. For example, you won’t be able to select ‘Count Animation’ if you’ve only highlighted text.

Creating typing animations with a WordPress plugin

After adding the animation, you can change the speed and add an optional delay using the dropdown menus in the small popup.

For example, in the following image, we’re using a delay of one second.

When you’re ready to make the CSS animation live, either click on the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button. Now, if you visit your WordPress website you’ll see the animation live.

Method 2. How to Add CSS Animations to Custom Pages (Recommended)

If you want to add simple animations to the built-in WordPress blocks, then Blocks Animation is a good choice. However, if you want to really grab the visitor’s attention, keep people on your website, and get more conversions then we recommend using SeedProd.

SeedProd is the best page builder plugin that allows you to create beautiful landing pages, sales pages, and more using a simple drag-and-drop editor.

It also comes with an ‘Animated Headline’ block that you can use to create rotating and highlighted animated headlines.

An animated headline created using SeedProd

Despite the name, you can use the Animated Headline block to animate any text including a call to action, subheading, or any other text that you want to emphasize.

SeedProd also comes with over 40 entrance animations that you can add to any block including images, text, buttons, videos, and more.

You can even animate entire sections and columns with just a few clicks. In this way, you can create engaging animated pages within minutes.

If you’re using animations to get more conversions and sales, then SeedProd integrates with WooCommerce and supports many of the top email marketing services you may already be using to promote your website.

How to Setup the SeedProd Page Builder

The first thing you need to do is install and activate SeedProd. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to enter your license key.

You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website. After adding the license key, simply click on ‘Verify Key.’

Create a Custom Page Design

To get started, go to SeedProd » Landing Pages and click on ‘Add New Landing Page.’

Creating a new landing page with SeedProd

On the next screen, you’ll be asked to choose a template.

SeedProd comes with over 180 beautiful templates that are organized into different categories such as 404-page templates and custom WooCommerce ‘thank you’ pages.

For this guide, we’ll show you how to create a sales page with animated text and entrance animations, but the steps will be similar no matter what kind of page you create.

Simply click on any tab to see the different templates within that category.

When you find a template you want to use, just hover your mouse over it and then click on the checkmark icon.

We’re using the ‘Zen Sales Page’ template in all our images, but you can use any template.

Next, you need to give the page a title.

SeedProd will automatically create a URL based on the page title, but you can change this to anything you want. For example, adding relevant keywords to a URL can often improve your WordPress SEO and help the page appear in relevant search results.

To learn more, please see our guide on how to do keyword research for your WordPress blog.

When you’re happy with the title and URL, click on ‘Save and Start Editing the Page.’

This will load the SeedProd drag-and-drop page editor.

On the right, you’ll see a live preview of the page design, with some settings on the left.

SeedProd comes with lots of blocks that you can add to your design, including blocks that allow you to add social share buttons, videos, contact forms, and more.

For more information, please see our guide on how to create a custom page in WordPress.

How to Add Animated Text to WordPress

To add some animated text to the page, find the Animated Headline block and drag it onto your page design.

There are two ways to animate your headline. First, the ‘Highlighted’ style adds a shape animation to your text, such as a circle or an underlined zigzag.

You can use this animation to draw attention to a particular word or phrase inside the headline. This can make your headline easier to read and understand by highlighting the most important content. It’s also a great way to draw attention to a call to action.

Adding a CSS animation to a headline in WordPress

The Highlighted style also has a few strikethrough shapes.

You can use strikethroughs to create interesting and eye-catching effects, or it can simply add some fun to your design.

A strikethrough animation created with SeedProd

To create a Highlighted animation, just open the ‘Style’ dropdown and select ‘Highlighted.’

Next, open the ‘Shape’ dropdown and choose a shape. When you click on a shape, SeedProd will show a preview of that animation, so you can try different shapes to see which one you like the most.

A curly CSS animation created with SeedProd

SeedProd also has a ‘Rotating’ animation style, which adds a transition effect to the text.

Often, animated text is the first thing visitors look at when a page loads, so it’s a great way to highlight the most important piece of text.

To create a transition animation, simply open the ‘Style’ dropdown and click on ‘Rotating.’

You can then open the ‘Animation’ dropdown and choose the type of transition you want to use, such as fade, zoom, or roll. Again, SeedProd will play the animation inside the page editor so you can try different effects to see which you prefer.

No matter whether you’re creating a ‘Highlighted’ or ‘Rotating’ animation, you can add text before and after the animated text.

Simply type into the ‘Before Headline’ and ‘After Headline’ fields. In the ‘Text’ field, add the word or phrase that you want to animate.

If you want to animate the whole headline, then simply leave the ‘Before Headline’ and ‘After Headline’ fields empty.

Animating an entire headline in WordPress

By default, SeedProd will play the animation on a loop, which some visitors may find annoying.

To only play the animation once, click to deactivate the ‘Infinite Loop’ switch.

Disabling the infinite loop animation settings

By default, the animation will play for 1200 milliseconds after an 8000 milliseconds delay.

To use different values, type into the ‘Duration’ and ‘Delay’ fields. For example, you can make the animation faster by using a shorter duration.

You may also want to style the text. For example, you can change the font size and alignment.

When you’re happy with how the animated headline looks, go ahead and click on the ‘Save’ button to store your changes.

Add Entrance Animations in WordPress

Entrance animations play when the page first loads, so they’re a great way to catch the visitor’s attention.

You can also use them to highlight the content visitors should look at first. For example, if you have an online marketplace then you might animate the product’s hero image, or the banner advertising your Black Friday sale.

Inside the SeedProd editor, simply click on the content you want to animate, and then select the ‘Advanced’ tab in the left-hand menu.

Adding entrance animations using SeedProd

You can then go ahead and click to expand the ‘Animation Effects’ section.

After that, simply choose an animation from the ‘Entrance Animation’ dropdown.

You can now add entrance animations to any block, section, or column simply by following the same process described above.

Publish Your CSS Animations in WordPress

When you’re happy with how the page is set up, click the dropdown menu on the ‘Save’ button and select ‘Publish.’

You can now visit this page to see the CSS animations live.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add CSS animations in WordPress. You may also go through our ultimate guide to boost speed and performance, or see our list of the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Add CSS Animations in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

March 16, 2023

How to Start a Video Blog (Vlog) And Make Money in 2023

Do you want to start a video blog and make money?

Vlogging is a powerful way to connect with people and build a personal brand. However, if you simply upload vlogs to third-party platforms like YouTube, then you may struggle to grow your audience, make money, and become a successful vlogger.

In this article, we will show you how you can start a vlog and make money.

How to start a video blog (vlog) and make money

Which Is the Best Website Builder for Your Video Blog?

There are many website builders that can help you create a vlog site, but we recommend using WordPress and a separate video hosting platform.

To learn more about why WordPress is such a good choice, please see our complete WordPress review with pros and cons.

There are two types of WordPress software: WordPress.com and WordPress.org. We recommend using WordPress.org, also called ‘self-hosted WordPress.’ This will give you full ownership and control of your site.

Using WordPress.org allows you to install third-party plugins and themes, including plenty that are designed specifically for vloggers.

Also, while you can upload videos to WordPress, it’s far better to use a separate video hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo.

Videos take up a lot of your hosting resources, which will slow down your website. Instead, we recommend uploading your vlogs to a separate hosting platform such as YouTube or Vimeo, which has all the server resources you need.

After uploading your vlogs to one of these sites, you can then embed your vlog in a WordPress page or post by simply copying and pasting a link. WordPress has built-in support for most major video hosting platforms.

If you really want to save time and impress your viewers, then you can use a plugin like Smash Balloon to create a video feed that will update automatically every time you post a new vlog.

An embedded YouTube feed, created using Smash Balloon

If you don’t already have a video hosting platform in mind, then don’t worry. Later in this guide, we’ll help you find the perfect platform for your vlogs.

Step 1. Setting Up Your Video Blog Website

To create a video vlog, you’ll need a domain name and web hosting.

Although the WordPress software is free, hosting and domain names are where the costs can really start to add up.

A domain name typically costs $14.99/year and hosting costs start from $7.99/month. This is a lot for hobby vloggers, new creators, or anyone who is working with a tighter budget.

Thankfully, Bluehost has agreed to offer our users over 60% off on web hosting and a free SSL certificate as part of this deal. This is absolutely essential if you plan to sell premium videos and make money from your vlogs. You will also get a free domain name when you sign up!

Simply click the link below to create a vlogging website for as little as $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Because you get a free domain when you sign up with Bluehost, you’ll need to be sure it’s the right fit for your video blog. For expert tips, check out our guide on how to choose the best domain name.

Once you’ve completed the purchase, you’ll get an email with instructions on how to log in to your web hosting control panel. This is your hosting account dashboard where you can manage your vlog, including setting up email notifications and asking for WordPress support if you need it.

It’s also where you’ll install the WordPress software, so let’s do that now.

Step 2. Install WordPress on Your Video Blog

When you sign up with Bluehost using our link, you’ll get access to a one-click WordPress installer. Simply log into your Bluehost account and click on ‘One Click Install.’

You can now follow the onscreen instructions to set up WordPress.

If you’re using a different WordPress website host like SiteGround, Hostinger, HostGator, or WP Engine, then you can see our complete guide on how to install WordPress for all the top hosting providers.

Once WordPress is set up, you’re ready to start customizing your vlog site.

Step 3. Select a Video Theme

WordPress themes are professionally designed templates that change how your vlog looks and acts.

There are lots of different premium and free WordPress business themes to choose from. You can generally categorize these as multipurpose WordPress themes, or niche industry themes. However, most WordPress themes are designed to show text.

Since we’re starting a vlog, we need a theme that’s designed specifically for videos.

Even if you’re using a separate video hosting platform, embedded videos still take time to load. With that in mind, it’s important to find a lightweight theme that won’t slow down your website. Wherever possible, we also recommend using a theme that has built-in lazy loading.

On top of that, vlogs often need special features such as parallax scrolling, lightbox popups, and fullscreen video backgrounds.

That’s a lot to keep in mind, so you may want to look at our expert pick of the best WordPress video themes.

Another option is to use a landing page builder plugin such as SeedProd. SeedProd is the best drag-and-drop WordPress page builder and comes with more than 180 templates.

This includes an entire section of ‘Webinar’ templates that are designed specifically to show videos on your WordPress website.

SeedProd's professionally-designed vlog templates

SeedProd also has a ready-made ‘Video’ block that you can drag and drop onto any page.

For more information, please see our guide on how to create a landing page with WordPress.

Once you’ve chosen a video theme, please see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress theme.

After installing a theme, you may want to customize it by going to Appearance » Customize in the WordPress dashboard. This will launch the theme customizer where you can fine-tune the theme settings and see your changes in the live preview.

Customizing a WordPress video blog theme

If you’re using one of the newer full-site editing themes, then you’ll need to go to Appearance » Editor instead.

Here, you can fine-tune the theme using blocks.

Customizing a WordPress vlogging theme using the FSE

Just remember that you can customize your theme at any point. You can even completely change your WordPress theme, if you realize it doesn’t quite meet your needs.

This means you don’t need to finalize your site design now. In fact, it may be easier to fine-tune your vlog once you’ve added some content.

Step 4. Create a Custom Homepage

WordPress comes with two content types called posts and pages.

You’ll typically use posts to create articles and blogs, while pages are static “one-off” types of content. For example, you might publish an about page, a privacy policy, or a custom archive page.

There are a few different ways to show videos in WordPress. However, since we’re creating a video vlog you’ll typically embed one or more videos in a blog post.

By default, the WordPress homepage shows your posts in reverse chronological order, so your latest vlog appears at the top of the homepage.

However, you may want to move this blog list to another page, and use a custom homepage instead. This custom homepage can introduce your vlog to visitors and let them know what you have to offer.

You might even create a YouTube gallery of all your best videos, which is a great way to catch a visitor’s attention and make them want to watch more of your content.

Smash Balloon allows you to create all kinds of galleries, including showing a specific YouTube playlist or favorites feed, a single video, or even your latest live stream.

Adding a YouTube vlog feed to your WordPress website

For step-by-step instructions on how to create an attention-grabbing homepage for your video blog, please see our guide on how to create a custom homepage in WordPress.

Once you’re happy with the design, it’s time to set it as your homepage. To do this, go to Settings » Reading in the WordPress dashboard.

How to set a custom homepage in WordPress

Here, scroll to ‘Your homepage settings’ and select ‘A static page.’

Next, open the ‘Homepage’ dropdown and choose the page that you want to use.

Changing the homepage on a WordPress video blog

After that, simply scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Save Changes.’ Now, if you visit your website you’ll see the new homepage in action.

With that done, make sure you create a separate blog page to display your vlogs.

Step 5. Set Up Your Video Hosting Platform

Before you can start adding videos to your WordPress website, you’ll need to upload them to a separate video hosting platform. In this way, you can show countless high-resolution videos on your website without affecting its performance.

For more on this topic, see our post on why you should never upload a video to WordPress.

There are lots of different video hosting platforms that you can use, but we recommend YouTube as it’s the most popular choice.

It’s free to create a YouTube account and you can upload as many videos as you want.

YouTube even has a Partners Program that you can join to make money from your videos. This program also offers more benefits like analytics, longer videos, and editing tools.

Since it’s such a popular platform, there are lots of great WordPress plugins for YouTube. For example, you can use plugins to quickly and easily embed a YouTube playlist in WordPress.

Adding a YouTube playlist to a vlog using Smash Balloon

If you don’t want to use YouTube, then there are many other popular platforms including Vidyard, Wistia, and SproutVideo. For a closer look at all the top video sites, please see our expert pick of the best video hosting sites for bloggers.

After choosing a platform, you’ll need to create an account and upload all the vlogs that you want to show on your WordPress website.

For instructions on how to do this, check out the online documentation for your chosen video hosting platform.

Step 6. Create Your First Vlog

To create your first vlog, simply go to Posts » Add New in your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress has a block-based editor that allows you to create beautiful content layouts for your vlogs. Here, you can add text, images, audio clips, and more.

For an in-depth look at the editor, please see our WordPress block editor tutorial.

The easiest way to add vlogs to WordPress is by using the built-in auto-embed feature. If you’re using one of the big video hosting platforms, then you can simply paste the video’s URL into the WordPress content editor, and WordPress will handle the rest.

Just head over to your chosen video hosting platform and find the vlog that you want to show on your WordPress blog. You can then simply copy the video’s URL.

After that, switch back to the WordPress dashboard and paste the URL in the content area. If you paste it into a standard Paragraph block, WordPress will automatically try to place it in the correct block, such as the YouTube block.

Even if you don’t see the platform-specific block, it will use the Embed block and display the video inside the content editor.

For more information, please see our detailed guide on how to easily embed videos in WordPress blog posts.

As you’re working on the vlog, you can see how it’ll look to visitors by clicking on ‘Preview.’

This will open the page in a new tab.

The WordPress post editor also has sections for Categories and Tags. You can use these to organize your vlogs so it’s easier for visitors to find interesting content. To learn more, please see our guide on how to add categories and tags in WordPress.

When you’re happy with how the vlog looks, go ahead and click on the ‘Publish’ button in the top-right corner of the screen.

To add more vlogs to your website, simply follow the same process described above.

Step 7. Add a Contact Form to Your Vlog

Some viewers might want to contact you directly. This may include affiliate marketers, sponsors, advertisers, and other brands who are looking to build relationships with creators, or other vloggers who want to collaborate.

These people could ring your phone number or send a message to your business email address, but we always recommend adding a contact form to your website.

This makes it easier for potential partners to contact you, so you don’t miss out on any opportunities to grow your brand and make money from your vlogs.

The easiest way to add a contact form to your WordPress website is by using the free WPForms plugin. WPForms comes with a built-in Simple Contact Form template that you can customize using the drag-and-drop editor.

Adding a contact form to a WordPress vlogging site

You can then add the form to any page, post, or widget-ready area using the ready-made WPForms block.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to create a contact form in WordPress.

Step 8. Help Visitors Find Interesting Vlogs

Once you’ve added some content to your vlog, it’s a good idea to add a navigation menu so visitors can find their way around the different videos.

Adding a navigation menu to a video blog (vlog)

The exact location of your menu will depend on your WordPress theme. Most themes have several options, so you can create multiple menus and then show them on different areas of your vlog.

Whether you create a single menu or multiple menus, it’s easy to add navigation to your vlog. For a complete guide, please see our post on how to add a navigation menu.

Adding a navigation menu to a WordPress vlog

Menus encourage people to explore your site, but sometimes visitors may want to search for a specific vlog. WordPress comes with a built-in search feature, but it’s quite basic and not very good at finding relevant content.

That’s why we recommend using SearchWP, which is the best search plugin for WordPress.

It is very easy to use and gives much more accurate search results. It allows visitors to search for a keyword in the post or page title, content, URL slug, categories, tags, taxonomies, WordPress excerpts, and even comments.

All of this can help visitors find interesting vlogs, fast.

How to improve WordPress search with SearchWP

For step-by-step instructions on SearchWP, please see our guide on how to improve WordPress search.

Step 9. Optimize Your Vlog for SEO

If you want to get more viewers, then you’ll need to optimize your vlog for SEO. This will help search engines understand your content and show it to people who are looking for videos just like yours.

WordPress SEO is a huge topic that can be confusing for new vloggers. With that in mind, we recommend using All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO).

AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and has everything you need to get your vlogs onto the first page of Google, without having to learn any complicated SEO jargon.

AIOSEO comes with the easiest setup wizard that helps you choose the best SEO settings for your business. AIOSEO will even scan your vlogs and show an actionable checklist on how you can optimize that specific vlog.

An actionable checklist for improving SEO

Additionally, AIOSEO has a video sitemap feature that you can use to show search engines what’s the most important content to index.

To help you get started, please see our ultimate guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress correctly.

Step 10. Notify Users About New Vlogs

Did you know that 70% of people who leave your site will never come back? Thankfully there are lots of ways to turn abandoning visitors into loyal viewers.

To start, it’s smart to create an email newsletter so people who enjoy your vlogs can subscribe. After that, you can email these subscribers every time you post a new vlog.

You can also keep them engaged with your brand by sending them fun surveys and polls, notifying them about any giveaways and contests you’re running, or even simply asking them for feedback on your latest vlog.

All of this can help you create a sense of community and build a stronger relationship with your viewers.

If you do build an email list, then you’ll want to make sure your messages arrive safely in the subscriber’s inbox and not in their spam folder. With that in mind, we recommend using an SMTP service provider to improve your email deliverability rates.

Another option is to use push notifications with software like PushEngage to send targeted, personalized messages to viewers after they leave your vlog.

Push notifications are short, clickable notifications that appear as a popup on the user’s desktop or mobile devices. Some of the biggest websites in the world use push notifications to keep users engaged, including Facebook.

These notifications go directly to the user’s web browser or mobile device so they have a high chance of getting the person’s attention, which makes them perfect for notifying viewers when you post a new vlog.

To learn more, see our guide on how to add web push notifications to WordPress.

Step 11. How to Make Money From Your Video Vlogs

Creating lots of quality, engaging vlogs takes a lot of time and effort, so you may want to make money from your videos.

If you’ve created a contact form, then potential sponsors and partners already have a way to contact you, which is a great start. However, there are lots more ways to make money online with WordPress.

Here are some of the best ways to make money from your vlog.

Google AdSense

There are many reasons why it’s smart to embed videos on your own website, rather than simply uploading them to platforms like YouTube.

One major benefit is that you can show Google AdSense ads next to your videos.

When you sign up for Google AdSense, Google acts as a middleman between you and the advertiser. Instead of you having to find the right partners for your vlog, Google allows advertisers to bid for keywords matching your content. This allows you to get the best possible rates for the ads on your vlogging website.

For more details, please see our article on how to properly add Google AdSense to your WordPress blog.

Affiliate marketing

Many vloggers make money by recommending products and services to their viewers. For example, many lifestyle vloggers film daily routine videos showing off their favorite skincare or fitness products.

By using affiliate links, you can earn money every time a viewer buys a product or service based on your recommendation.

For the best results, it’s a good idea to only recommend quality items that you already use and trust. If you encourage viewers to buy poor-quality or scammy products, then you’ll damage your band and almost certainly lose viewers.

There are plenty of affiliate marketing plugins and tools for WordPress that can help you make money by promoting affiliate products, but we highly recommend PrettyLinks or ThirstyAffiliates to all vloggers.

To get started, please see our step-by-step affiliate marketing guide for beginners.

Ask for Tips and Donations

If you build a strong, positive relationship with your viewers then they may want to support your work as a vlogger. This is particularly true if you’re a hobby vlogger or someone who is just starting out.

Although they’re mostly used by non-profits, some vloggers use donation forms so that viewers can support their work. These forms are often presented as ‘buy me a coffee’ or ‘buy me a beer.’

To learn more, please see our guide on how to create a donate form in WordPress.

Create a Membership Site

Most of the time, you’ll want your vlogs to be publicly available so you can get as many views as possible and build your audience.

However, some vloggers may want to create a video membership site in WordPress. This allows people to pay for different perks, such as early access to the latest vlogs, exclusive live streams, or premium members-only videos.

You can also offer perks that don’t involve videos, such as a members-only forum, blog posts, or the ability to chat with you directly on channels like Discord.

The easiest way to create a membership site is by using MemberPress. It is the best WordPress membership plugin on the market and allows you to accept payments, create unlimited subscription levels, restrict access to video pages based on levels, and more.

Creating video memberships with the MemberPress plugin

Sell Your Videos as Digital Downloads

Depending on the kind of vlogs you create, you may decide to sell some of your premium videos as digital downloads. For example, if you’re a health and fitness vlogger then you might create videos teaching your followers different exercise routines.

For some niches, this can be a way to monetize the audience you’ve built from your vlogs.

Easy Digital Downloads is the best platform to easily sell digital products. You can get started in minutes and accept credit card payments with Stripe, PayPal, Google Pay, and Apple Pay.

The Easy Digital Downloads WordPress eCommerce plugin

With Easy Digital Downloads, you have complete control over how you distribute your videos. You can allow customers to download files as many times as they want or restrict file downloads by time or attempt.

To start selling your premium videos, please see our complete guide on how to sell digital downloads on WordPress.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to start a video vlog and make money. You may also want to learn how to increase your blog traffic or check out our list of the best email marketing services.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Start a Video Blog (Vlog) And Make Money in 2023 first appeared on WPBeginner.

March 9, 2023

How to Easily Create a Restaurant Website with WordPress

Do you want to create a restaurant website with WordPress?

A restaurant website can help attract new customers and grow your business. It can also provide a better experience for your existing customers and keep them coming back to your restaurant, cafe, takeaway, or similar business.

In this article, we will show you how to create a restaurant website with WordPress.

How to easily create a restaurant website with WordPress

Why Create a Restaurant Website?

A website is one of the best ways to market your restaurant to new customers and provide a better experience for your existing clients.

By creating an online presence for your restaurant, you can introduce your business to people who are looking for venues and food just like yours.

After a potential customer discovers your business, a professionally-designed and helpful restaurant website will tell them everything they need to know about your business. They can then decide whether your restaurant is right for them.

Even if you have lots of loyal customers and a positive reputation in the local area, a restaurant website can help you improve the customer experience.

For example, it can allow customers to book a table online, send you questions using a convenient contact form, check out the latest menu, and much more.

An example of a restaurant online booking form

In this way, a restaurant website can keep your customers happy, so they carry on visiting you for months, or even years to come.

That said, let’s see how you can easily create a restaurant website with WordPress.

Which Is the Best Website Builder for Your Restaurant?

There are many website builders that can help you create a restaurant website but we recommend using WordPress.

According to our blogging research statistics, WordPress is the most popular website platform in the world. It powers nearly 43% of all websites on the internet including many top restaurant websites.

WordPress is also open-source and free. For more on this topic, see our article on why WordPress is free.

However, it’s important to realize that there are two types of WordPress software, so you don’t choose the wrong one.

First, there is WordPress.com, which is a blog hosting platform. Then, there is WordPress.org which is also known as self-hosted WordPress.

For a detailed comparison, you can see our guide on the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

For a restaurant website, we recommend using WordPress.org because it gives you complete ownership of your site and allows you to install third-party plugins, including plenty that are designed specifically for restaurant owners.

To learn more about why we recommend WordPress to all our readers, please see our complete WordPress review with pros and cons.

Step 1. Setting Up Your Restaurant Website

To create a WordPress website you’ll need a domain name and web hosting.

A domain name is your website’s address on the internet. This is what customers will type into their browsers to reach your website, such as justeat.com or tacobell.com.

Web hosting is where your website lives online. To help you out, we’ve hand-picked some of the best WordPress hosting that you can buy for a restaurant website.

Although the WordPress software is free, hosting and domain names are where the costs can really start to add up.

A domain name typically costs $14.99/year and hosting costs start from $7.99/month. This is a lot for restaurants that already have bills and expenses to pay.

Thankfully, Bluehost has offers a free domain name, and our readers can get 60% off on web hosting. Bluehost is one of the largest hosting companies in the world, and an official WordPress-recommended hosting partner.

They’re also offering our readers a free SSL certificate. If you want to accept payments online, then an SSL certificate will help keep the customer’s credit and debit card information safe.

You can click the button below to get started for as little as $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Once there, you will need to go to the Bluehost website in a new tab and click on the green ‘Get Started Now’ button.

This will bring you to a pricing page where you can choose a hosting plan for your website.

We recommend choosing a Basic or Plus plan, as they’re the most popular web hosting plans among our readers.

After selecting a plan, click on ‘Continue.’

On the next screen, you’ll need to choose a domain name.

Choosing a domain name for your restaurant website

Ideally, the domain name will be easy to pronounce and spell, easy to remember, and related to your business. The name of your restaurant is a great place to start, but sometimes that domain may already be taken by another business.

In that case, you can try extending the domain name by adding your restaurant’s location, your own name, or the type of food you serve.

Need help choosing a domain name for your restaurant website? See these tips and tools on how to choose the best domain name.

After choosing a name, click on the ‘Next’ button to continue.

Now you’ll need to provide your account information such as your name and email address. After that, you’ll also see optional extras that you can purchase.

We generally don’t recommend purchasing these extras straight away, as you can always add them later on if you need them.

After that, simply type in your payment information to complete the purchase.

Once you’ve done that, you’ll get an email with instructions on how to login to your web hosting control panel. This is your hosting account dashboard where you can manage your restaurant website, including setting up email notifications and asking for WordPress support.

It’s also where you’ll install the WordPress software.

Step 2. Create a New WordPress Website

When you signup with Bluehost using our link, Bluehost installs WordPress on your domain name automatically.

If you want to create a different WordPress website, then you can simply click on the ‘My Sites’ tab in the Bluehost dashboard.

Next, just click on the ‘Add Site’ button and select ‘Create New Site.’

Creating a new restaurant website using Bluehost

The Bluehost wizard will now guide you through the setup process.

First, you’ll need to type in a site title and optional tagline.

Adding a site title and tagline to your new restaurant website

Click on the ‘Next’ button to continue.

After that, Bluehost will ask you to select a domain name and path for your restaurant website. If you’ve already purchased a domain name, then you can simply select it from the dropdown menu.

Choosing a domain for your new WordPress website

If you don’t have a domain name then you can buy one by visiting the ‘Domains’ page inside the Bluehost dashboard.

After choosing a domain name, you can leave the directory path blank and let Bluehost fill it in for you. The installer will also show a few must-have WordPress plugins that you may want to install on your restaurant website including OptinMonster.

After that, click on the ‘Next’ button and the installer will set up your restaurant site.

Once it’s finished, you’ll see a ‘WordPress installed successfully’ message with information about your new website. You can now go ahead and click on the ‘Log into WordPress’ button.

This will take you to your site’s admin area.

Log into your new WordPress website dashboard

You can also log in to the WordPress dashboard by simply going to yoursite.com/wp-admin/ directly from your browser.

If you’re using a different WordPress website host such as SiteGround, Hostinger, HostGator, or WP Engine, then you can see our complete guide on how to install WordPress for all the top hosting providers.

Once WordPress is setup, you’re ready to start building a five-star restaurant website.

Step 3. Select a Restaurant Theme

WordPress themes are professionally designed templates that change how your restaurant site looks and acts.

By default, each WordPress site comes with a basic theme. If you visit your website, then it will look something like this:

This is not very appealing for most customers, so you’ll usually want to replace the default WordPress theme.

There are lots of different premium and free WordPress business themes to choose from. You can generally categorize these as multipurpose WordPress themes, or niche industry themes.

Your typical restaurant website needs special features, like the ability to show a menu, photos, location information, business hours, and more.

With that in mind, it makes sense to look for a theme that’s designed for the food or hospitality industry. To help you out, we’ve collected the best WordPress restaurant themes.

You can also use a website and landing page builder plugin such as SeedProd.

SeedProd is the best drag and drop WordPress page builder and comes with built-in templates that you can use to build a professionally-designed restaurant website.

These templates include a menu, food photos, pricing, recipes, and more.

One of SeedProd's ready-made restaurant templates

Once you’ve chosen a restaurant theme, please see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress theme.

After installing your theme, you may want to customize it by going to Appearance » Customize in the WordPress dashboard.

This will launch the theme customizer where you can fine-tune the theme settings and see your changes in the live preview.

If you’re using one of the newer full site editing themes, then you’ll see the option for Appearance » Editor, which uses blocks similar to the content editor to customize your site.

Pro Tip: No matter what theme you’re using, neither the default WordPress customizer nor the full site editing offers a user-friendly drag and drop customization experience. For that reason, we recommend using a page builder like SeedProd to customize your theme.

Just remember that you can always return to this screen and continue customizing your theme. You can even completely change your WordPress theme at any point.

Step 4. Create a Custom Home Page

WordPress has two two default content types called posts and pages.

You’ll typically use posts to create articles and blogs. By default, the home page shows these posts in reverse chronological order, so the newest content appears at the top of the list.

You might use a blog to build a stronger relationship with their customers, improve your WordPress SEO, and get more traffic to your restaurant website. For example, you could write about recipes, share cooking tips, or blog about the latest restaurant industry news.

However, even if you plan to publish blog posts, you typically won’t show these on the home page. Instead, we recommend creating a custom home page that introduces your business to new visitors.

For step-by-step instructions on how to create an attention-grabbing restaurant home page, please see our guide on how to create a custom home page in WordPress.

Once you’re happy with the page’s design, it’s time to set it as your home page. To do this, go to Settings » Reading in the WordPress dashboard.

Adding a static home page to your WordPress website

Here, scroll to ‘Your homepage settings’ and select ‘A static page.’

Next, open the ‘Homepage’ dropdown and choose the page that you want to use.

Adding a static home page to your WordPress restaurant website

Then, simply scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Save Changes.’ Now, if you visit your website you’ll see the new home page in action.

If you are going to write blogs, then make sure you create a separate blog page to display your posts. If you don’t, then customers will struggle to find your latest WordPress blogs.

Step 5. Create an Online Restaurant Menu

Even long-term, loyal customers may want to look at your menu from time to time. By publishing your menu online, customers can look at it any time of day or night.

Publishing a menu can also help convince new customers to visit your restaurant.

It is possible to upload PDF files to your WordPress website. However, downloading a PDF menu can be difficult depending on the customer’s data plan and internet connection, and they’re non-responsive so they can be hard to read on some devices.

Plus, if you add new dishes or change your pricing, then you’ll also need to upload a completely new PDF.

For that reason, we recommend using SeedProd to add an online menu to your WordPress website. SeedProd also allows you to create a mobile responsive menu that looks great on every device.

One of SeedProd's professionally-designed restaurant templates

You can also easily update the menu as you add new dishes, change the prices, remove dishes, and more.

SeedProd even comes with a ‘Menu Sales Page’ template that’s perfect for creating a menu.

A restaurant menu, created using SeedProd

For detailed instructions, please see our guide on how to create an online restaurant menu.

Step 6. Set Up Online Food Ordering

Many restaurants allow customers to order food online. For example, you might give customers the option to pre-order their meal or place an order for delivery.

It may sound technical, but you can easily add online food ordering to your website using the WPForms plugin.

The WPForms form builder plugin for WordPress

WPForms is the best WordPress form builder that allows you to create online order forms for all kinds of products and services.

It even comes with a ready-made ‘Takeout Order Form’ that you can customize to suit your restaurant website.

Adding an online takeaway order form to your WordPress website

Every time someone completes the form, WPForms will notify you automatically so you can start working on that order straight away.

If you don’t want to accept cash on delivery, then WPForms supports all of the best payment gateways including PayPal and Stripe. This allows you to accept payments securely online, which is quick and convenient for your customers.

Accepting online payments for your restaurant website

For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to set up food ordering for restaurants in WordPress.

Step 7. Add a Restaurant Booking Form

Today, most people expect to be able to book appointments through an automated system.

By adding a booking form to your restaurant website, you can accept reservations at any time of the day or night. You’ll never lose another customer just because you weren’t around to answer the phone.

Booking forms can also automate a lot of the booking process. This includes collecting payments and emailing your customers to remind them about their upcoming booking.

You can easily add a restaurant booking form to your website using WPForms. This plugin has a ready-made dinner reservation form template that you can customize for your restaurant.

How to accept online bookings on a restaurant website

WPForms also integrates with all of the top email marketing providers. This makes it easy to send reservation confirmation emails to your customers.

As their booking approaches, you can even send the customer a reminder email, ask them to share any dietary requirements, send a pre-order form, and more.

Creating email notifications for your booking form

To learn more about adding a reservation form to your WordPress website, please see our guide on how to create a booking form in WordPress.

Step 8. Add a Contact Us Form

Even if you use a WordPress appointment and booking plugin, some customers may still need to talk to you directly.

While visitors could ring your phone number or send a message to your business email address, we always recommend adding a contact form to your website.

Most of the best contact form plugins come with built-in spam protection, so you won’t get any contact form spam. A form will also collect consistent information from visitors, so you’ll have all the data you need to write a helpful reply.

The easiest way to add a contact form to your WordPress website is by using the free WPForms plugin.

This free plugin comes with a built-in Simple Contact Form template that you can quickly customize using the drag and drop editor.

Then, simply add the form to any page, post, or widget-ready area using the ready-made WPForms block.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to create a contact form in WordPress.

Step 9. Add a Navigation Menu

Once you’ve added some content to your restaurant website, you’ll want to help visitors find their way around those pages and posts by adding a navigation menu.

An example of a restaurant menu, created using WordPress

No matter what theme you’re using, WordPress makes it really easy to add menus and sub-menus to your restaurant website.

For a complete guide, please see our post on how to add a navigation menu.

Step 10. Add Social Proof to Your Restaurant Website

Social proof is one of the best ways to earn customer trust, and convince new people to visit your restaurant. After all, we’re more likely to try things that we see other people buying, using, or recommending.

People love sharing food photos on sites like Instagram and Facebook. With that in mind, we recommend adding social media feeds to your WordPress website.

Smash Balloon Instagram Feed is one of the best Instagram plugins for WordPress, and it allows you to easily show other people’s photos on your site.

Using this plugin, you can create a hashtag feed and show photos that customers have tagged your account in. This includes photos of your food, venue, and shots of customers having fun at your restaurant.

A food hashtag Instagram feed, created using Smash Balloon

For detailed step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to create a custom Instagram feed in WordPress.

If your customers regularly tweet about your restaurant, then Smash Balloon Twitter Feed also lets you create hashtag and mention feeds.

For more instructions on adding a Twitter feed to WordPress, see our guide on how to embed tweets in WordPress.

Step 11. Show Customer Reviews

Customer reviews and testimonials can provide visitors with more information, and may even solve any question or worries customers have about visiting your restaurant.

If you already have a Facebook page, then it’s easy to display your Facebook reviews in WordPress using Smash Balloon Facebook Feed.

Facebook reviews, embedded in a WordPress website

If you want to show reviews from other platforms like Yelp or Google My Business, then there’s also plenty of customer review plugins for WordPress that you can use.

These plugins will collect reviews automatically and then organize them into a nice layout on your restaurant website.

Customer reviews embedded on a WordPress website

If you do add a customer review page in WordPress, then don’t forget to add it to your navigation menu too.

Don’t have any reviews to feature on your website? Then it’s time to start asking for them.

WPForms has a a ready-made Restaurant Review Form template that you can add to your website.

A restaurant review form, created using WPForms

Bonus Tips to Grow Your Restaurant Website

Now that you have setup your restaurant website, here are some top tips that you can use to grow your online business:

Setup AIOSEO plugin to improve your website’s SEO ranking. There’s a free version available as well.
Follow our ultimate WordPress SEO guide for more tips to outrank your competitor.
See our proven tips to boost your website’s traffic.
Setup a business phone number to increase your bookings and create a business email address to make your business look more professional.

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to create a restaurant website with WordPress. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress security guide and our expert pick of the must have WordPress plugins that you should install on all business sites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Easily Create a Restaurant Website with WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

February 10, 2023

How to Remove the Powered by WordPress Footer Links

Do you want to remove the ‘powered by WordPress’ footer links on your site?

By default, most WordPress themes have a disclaimer in the footer, but this can make your site look unprofessional. It also leaves less space for your own links, copyright notice, and other content.

In this article, we will show you how to remove the powered by WordPress footer links.

Why Remove the WordPress Footer Credits?

The default WordPress themes use the footer area to show a ‘Proudly powered by WordPress’ disclaimer, which links to the official WordPress.org website.

Many theme developers take this further and add their own credits to the footer.

In the following image, you can see the disclaimer added by the Astra WordPress Theme.

While great for the software developers, this ‘Powered by….’ footer can make your site seem less professional, especially if you’re running a business website.

It also lets hackers know that you’re using WordPress, which could help them break into your site.

For example, if you’re not using a custom login URL, then hackers can simply add /wp-admin to your site’s address and get to your login page.

This disclaimer also links to an external site, so it encourages people to leave your website. This can have a negative impact on your pageviews and bounce rate.

Is it legal to remove WordPress footer credit links?

It is perfectly legal to remove the footer credits link on your site because WordPress is free, and it is released under the GPL license.

Basically, this license gives you the freedom to use, modify, and even distribute WordPress to other people.

Any WordPress plugin or theme that you download from the official WordPress directory is released under the same GPL license. In fact, even most commercial plugins and themes are released under GPL.

This means you’re free to customize WordPress in any way you want, including removing the footer credits from your business website, online store, or blog.

With that in mind, let’s see how you can remove the powered by WordPress footer links.

Video Tutorial

If you don’t want the video or need more instructions, then simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.

Method 1. Removing the ‘Powered by’ Link Using the Theme Settings
Method 2. Removing the ‘Powered by’ Credit Using Full Site Editing
Method 3. How To Remove the ‘Powered by’ Disclaimer Using a Page Builder
Method 4. Removing the WordPress Disclaimer Using Code
Warning! Avoid the CSS Method at All Costs!

Method 1. Removing the ‘Powered by’ Link Using the Theme Settings

Most good theme authors know that users want to be able to edit the footer and remove the credit links, so many include it in their theme settings.

To see whether your theme has this option, go to Appearance » Customize in your WordPress admin dashboard.

You can now look for any settings that let you customize your site’s footer, and then click on that option.

For example, the Astra theme has a section called ‘Footer Builder.’

If you’re using this theme, then simply click on the ‘Footer’ section and select ‘Copyright.’

Doing so will open a small editor where you can change the footer text, or even delete it completely.

How to remove the 'powered by WordPress' disclaimer

No matter how you remove the footer disclaimer, don’t forget to click on ‘Publish’ to make the change live on your site.

Method 2. Removing the ‘Powered by’ Credit Using Full Site Editing

If you’re using a block theme, then you can remove the footer disclaimer using Full Site Editing (FSE) and the block editor.

This is a quick and easy way to remove the ‘Powered by’ credit across your entire site, although it won’t work with all themes.

To launch the editor, go to Appearance » Editor.

Then, scroll to your website’s footer and click to select the ‘Powered by’ disclaimer.

You can now replace it with your own content, or you can even delete the disclaimer completely.

Editing the 'Proudly powered by WordPress' credit using the full site editor

When you’re happy with how the footer looks, simply click on ‘Save.’ Now if you visit your site, you’ll see the change live.

Method 3. How To Remove the ‘Powered by’ Disclaimer Using a Page Builder

Many WordPress websites use the footer to communicate important information, such as their email address or phone number. In fact, visitors might scroll to the bottom of your site looking specifically for this content.

With that in mind, you may want to go one step further and replace the ‘Powered by’ text with a custom footer. This footer could contain links to your social media profiles, links to your affiliate partners, a list of your products, or other important information and links.

You can see the WPBeginner footer in the following image:

The best way to create a custom footer is by using SeedProd. It is the best page builder plugin and comes with over 180 professionally-designed templates, sections, and blocks that can help you customize every part of your WordPress blog or website.

It also has settings that allow you to create a global footer, sidebar, header, and more.

First, you need to install and activate SeedProd. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: There’s also a free version of SeedProd that allows you to create all kinds of pages using the drag-and-drop editor. However, we’ll be using the premium version of SeedProd since it comes with the advanced Theme Builder.

After activating the plugin, SeedProd will ask for your license key.

You can find this information under your account on the SeedProd website. After entering the key, click on the ‘Verify Key’ button.

Once you’ve done that, go to SeedProd » Theme Builder. Here, click on the ‘Add New Theme Template’ button.

In the popup, type in a name for the new theme template.

Once you’ve done that, open the ‘Type’ dropdown and choose ‘Footer.’

SeedProd will show the new footer template across your entire site by default. However, you can limit it to specific pages or posts using the ‘Conditions’ settings.

For example, you may want to exclude the new footer from your landing pages, so it doesn’t distract from your main call to action.

When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, click on ‘Save.’

This will load the SeedProd page builder interface.

At first, your template will show a blank screen on the right and your settings on the left. To start, click on the ‘Add Columns’ icon.

You can now choose the layout that you want to use for your footer. This allows you to organize your content into different columns.

You can use any layout you want, but for this guide, we’re using a three-column layout.

Choosing a layout for the WordPress footer

Next, you can edit the footer’s background so that it matches your WordPress theme, company branding, or logo.

To change the background color, simply click on the section next to ‘Background Color’ and then use the controls to choose a new color.

Changing the background color of a WordPress footer

Another option is to upload a background image.

To do this, either click on ‘Use Your Own Image’ and then choose an image from the WordPress media library, or click on ‘Use a stock image.’

Adding an image to a custom WordPress footer

When you’re happy with the background, it’s time to add some content to the footer.

Simply drag any block from the left-hand menu and drop it onto your footer.

After adding a block, click to select that block in the main editor.

The left-hand menu will now show all of the settings for customizing the block.

Simply keep repeating these steps to add more blocks to your footer.

You can also change where each block appears by dragging them around your layout.

A custom footer, created using the SeedProd theme builder

When you’re happy with your design, click on the ‘Save’ button.

Then, you can select ‘Publish’ to complete your design.

For your new footer to show up on your website, you’ll need to finish building your WordPress theme with SeedProd.

After building your theme, go to SeedProd » Theme Builder. Then, click on the ‘Enable SeedProd Theme’ switch.

Now, if you visit your website you’ll see the new footer live.

For a step-by-step guide, please see our guide on how to create a custom WordPress theme.

Method 4. Removing the WordPress Disclaimer Using Code

If you can’t see any way to remove or modify the footer credits in the WordPress customizer, then another option is to edit the footer.php code.

This isn’t the most beginner-friendly method, but it will let you remove the credit from any WordPress theme.

Before making changes to your website’s code, we recommend creating a backup so you can restore your site in case anything goes wrong.

Keep in mind that if you edit your WordPress theme files directly, then those changes will disappear when you update the theme. With that being said, we recommend creating a child theme as this allows you to update your WordPress theme without losing customization.

First, you need to connect to your WordPress site using an FTP client such as FileZilla, or you can use a file manager provided by your WordPress hosting company.

If this is your first time using FTP, then you can see our complete guide on how to connect to your site using FTP.

Once you’ve connected to your site, go to /wp-content/themes/ and then open the folder for your current theme or child theme.

Inside this folder, find the footer.php file and open it in a text editor such as Notepad.

In the text editor, look for a section of code that includes the ‘powered by’ text. For example, in the Twenty Twenty-One theme for WordPress, the code looks like this:

<div class="powered-by">
				<?php
				printf(
					/* translators: %s: WordPress. */
					esc_html__( 'Proudly powered by %s.', 'twentytwentyone' ),
					'<a href="' . esc_attr__( 'https://wordpress.org/', 'twentytwentyone' ) . '">WordPress</a>'
				);
				?>
			</div><!-- .powered-by -->

You can either delete this code entirely or customize it to suit your needs. For example, you may want to replace the ‘Proudly powered…’ disclaimer with your own copyright notice.

After making your changes, save the file and upload it to your server. If you check your site, then the footer credit will have disappeared.

Warning! Avoid the CSS Method at All Costs!

Some WordPress tutorial sites may show you a CSS method that uses display: none to hide the footer credit links.

While it looks simple, it’s very bad for your WordPress SEO.

Many spammers use this exact technique to hide links from visitors while still showing them to Google, in the hopes of getting higher rankings.

If you do hide the footer credit with CSS, then Google may flag you as a spammer and your site will lose search engine rankings. In the worst-case scenario, Google may even delete you from their index so you never appear in search results.

Instead, we strongly recommend using one of the four methods we showed above. If you can’t use any of these methods, then another option is hiring a WordPress developer to remove the footer credit for you, or you might change your WordPress theme.

We hope this article helped you remove the powered by WordPress footer links. You may also want to check out our expert pick of the best contact form plugins and proven ways to make money online blogging with WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Remove the Powered by WordPress Footer Links first appeared on WPBeginner.

Why Use Post Purchase Surveys in WooCommerce?

Method 1: Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using UserFeedback

Method 2: Creating Post Purchase Surveys Using WPForms

Why Edit WooCommerce Pages for Your Online Store?

Create a Completely Custom WooCommerce Theme

Customize the WooCommerce Checkout Page

Customize the WooCommerce Checkout Form

Add One-Page Checkout in WooCommerce

Add a Slide-In Cart to WooCommerce

Customize the WooCommerce Cart Page

Edit WooCommerce Product Pages

Customize the Shop Page for Your WooCommerce Store

Customize WooCommerce Thank You Page

Why Add a WordPress Navigation Menu in Posts / Pages?

Method 1: Using the WordPress Navigation Block (Best for Individual Pages and Posts)

Method 2: Using the Full Site Editor (Block Themes Only)

Method 3: Creating a Custom WordPress Theme (More Customizable)

How to Make a WordPress Website With a SeedProd Template Kit

1. Real Estate

2. Music House

3. Conduct Construction

4. Venture Marketing Firm

5. Wedding Invitation

6. Travel Blog

7. Dry Cleaning

8. e-Course Website

9. NM Advertising Agency

10. eBook Author

11. Personal Trainer

12. Child-Day Care

13. Juice Bar

14. Computer Technician

Frequently Asked Questions About Site Kits and Templates

Why Use Shortcodes in Your WordPress Themes?

Method 1: Using the Full-Site Editor (Block Themes Only)

Method 2: Editing Your WordPress Theme Files (Works With Any WordPress Theme)

Method 3: Creating Your Own WordPress Theme (Fully Customizable)

Why Add Dynamic Content in WordPress?

Method 1: Create a Dynamic Landing Page Using SeedProd

Method 2: Add Dynamic Content Using OptinMonster

What Are Guest Posts?

Pros: Should You Accept Guest Posts on Your WordPress Blog?

Cons: Should You Accept Guest Posts on Your WordPress Blog?

Final Verdict: Should You Accept Guest Posts on Your WordPress Blog?

Building an SEO Business Website Using WordPress

Why Install Template Kits in WordPress?

How to Choose the Best WordPress Template Kits

Step 1. Install a WordPress Page Builder Plugin

Step 2. Choose a WordPress Template Kit

Step 3. Customize Your Template Kit in WordPress

Step 4. Edit Your Global Template Kit Settings

Step 5. Enabling Your SeedProd Template Kit

Why is WordPress So Hard?

WordPress Isn’t Hard (But Here’s How to Make it Even Easier)

Choose the Right Web Hosting Provider

Install Must-Have WordPress Plugins

Find the Perfect WordPress Theme

Use a WordPress Page Builder

Use a WordPress SEO Plugin

Use Tools to Improve Site Speed and Performance

Set up an Automated Security Plugin

Set up Google Analytics

Use Comment Filtering and Moderation

Never Edit Your Theme Files Directly

Keep Your WordPress Site Up-To-Date

Automate Your WordPress Backups

Learn WordPress

Consider Hiring a WordPress Maintenance Service

Why Use a Product Grid Plugin for WooCommerce?

Which is the Best Product Grid Plugin for WooCommerce?

Why Add Bullet Points and Numbered Lists in WordPress?

Method 1. Using the Built-in WordPress List Block (Easy)

Method 2. Using the Super List Block WordPress Plugin (Create Multimedia Lists)

Method 3. Using a Page Builder Plugin (Best for Landing Pages)

Method 4. Add Bullet Points and Number Lists Using Code (Advanced)

Why Create a Custom Shape Divider in WordPress?

Method 1. Create a Simple Shape Divider (No Plugin Required)

Method 2. Create a Custom Shape Divider in WordPress Using a Page Builder (Recommended)

Why Fade Images on Mouseover in WordPress?

Adding Image Fade on Mouseover to all WordPress Images