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Read more4 Tips to Improve Your WordPress Website Security
The post 4 Tips to Improve Your WordPress Website Security appeared first on WPArena.
We think our security plugin, Defender, is pretty darn good, but we’d never tell you to put all your eggs in one basket. Even with a super-reliable and robust security plugin, you should still carry out extra checks on your site’s security…
Gone are the days where the only way to infiltrate someone’s computer or accounts was to send them a virus disguised as a pdf or manually guess their passwords.
Nowadays, hacking is easy. It’s automated.
Bots can brute-force their way into a site, create fake administrator accounts, and scan the network for vulnerabilities and valuable files in a matter of seconds.
This means that you no longer need a determined enemy in order to be the victim of an attack.
And since attacks are always on the rise, it makes sense to take whatever precautions are available in order to protect your site and ultimately, your visitors.
One of these precautions is simply taking the time to check your site from a few different sources.
Read on as we take a look at some of the best free tools out there.
1. Defender
2. WordPress Tools
3. wpRecon
4. VirusTotal
5. Mozilla Observatory
6. Google Transparency Report
Hopefully, you’re already using Defender to protect your site against malicious attacks, however, did you know it has an awesome scan feature, as well as a comprehensive rundown of things you can do to improve your site security?
Let’s start with the scan.
To begin a scan, click on Defender’s Malware Scanning option in the WordPress sidebar.
Defender will then highlight any files that it thinks are suspicious, such as core files which have been edited or don’t come as standard.
You’ll need to check through the files to decide whether they pose a risk, or whether they are changes you’ve made yourself.
You then have three options:
Ensuring that no code has been tampered with is a great way to keep on top of your site security.
Defender goes one step further. It can carry out an overall check on your site security to give you recommendations if there are vulnerabilities on your site that could easily be fixed.
Simply head to the Recommendations section to find out if Defender has picked up any vulnerabilities.
You can click on each item individually to see more information. Defender can even provide you with instructions to fix it!
Defender will also let you know what you’re doing right, by listing all the precautions you have already taken.
Simply navigate to the Actioned tab on the left of Defender’s screen.
Like what you see?
Check out our full guide on how to get the most out of Defender, and if you host with us, take a look at how it integrates perfectly with The Hub.
The WordPress Tools section might not be somewhere you check into often, however, the Site Health menu can be pretty valuable, and is worth the odd visit.
This tool also offers more than just security recommendations and will provide more information than any of the external tools as it is linked directly with your site.
If you click on each recommendation, you will get some pretty useful further details.
You can also check out the list of passed tests so that you know what you’re doing right.
It’s built right into your WordPress installation so it should only take a minute or two to carry out a quick check every once in a while.
It’s good to get an idea of any information about your site which is publicly accessible, as this can be used by hackers to find ways to compromise your security.
One of the best ways to find out what information is readily available is by using a third-party tool that isn’t linked to your site.
wpRecon is one of these tools.
Simply input the URL of the site you want to test.
The test will give you a variety of results, with the first set being in relation to your server type, IP address, and a check of the version of WordPress you’re running.
It will also inform you of any plugins that are reading the HTML source of the website’s front page, check for information it can find about the theme, and try to list the contents of uploads and plugins folders.
A routine check using a tool such as wpRecon will help you identify if there are any big holes, ready for hackers to walk through.
VirusTotal is another free online tool for scanning sites, documents, and IP addresses. It has a database of over 70 antivirus scanners and URL/domain blacklisting services.
If your site is clean, you should be good to go, however, if any of the databases pick up something malicious, it could be that you have malware.
If this is the case, it could be worth running a full malware scan.
You can also check some further details regarding your site.
VirusTotal shares the result of the scan with the examining partners that it uses. This grows their virus and knowledge databases, helping to fight the fight against malware and hackers.
Mozilla Observatory is slightly different from the tools we’ve looked at above, as it offers a few separate types of tests.
When you first run the scan, it will test vulnerabilities in relation to HTTP. It will then give your site a score in the form of a letter.
Scroll down to see which of the tests you failed (if any).
Click on the name of each test to be taken to a page created by Mozilla which fully explains what it means.
After the first scan, you can also initiate further ones to check if access to your site can be gained through SSH (it would be very concerning if this was the case!) and extra tests with third-party companies ImmuniWeb, securityheaders.com, and hstspreload.org.
Google’s Transparency Report isn’t really the answer for checking for vulnerabilities on your own site, however, there’s a reason it made it to this list.
The reason it won’t be much help when it comes to your own site is that it only tells you whether or not it finds anything unsafe, it doesn’t tell you what the unsafe content is.
This makes it pretty redundant when checking on your own site but can come in useful when checking a site you want to visit.
If you’re nervous about visiting a URL for the first time, you can simply input it into Google Transparency Report’s search bar, and let it check it out for you.
So yes, whilst it may not be the answer to checking for holes in your site security, it’s a pretty good tool to have in your bag!
Carry out regular checks on your site using a variety of tools to make sure you identify any vulnerabilities before hackers or bots sniff them out.
Many of the issues picked up by these tools are quick and easy fixes, so schedule in regular checks as part of your site security process.
If you want to know how to make sure you haven’t missed anything when it comes to setting up the protection for your WordPress site, be sure to check out our 16-step checklist to total site lockdown.
And with this being #SecurityMonth you can currently get 35% off your first year of our Security & Backups Pack featuring Defender Pro, Snapshot Pro, Shipper Pro, and Automate. Click on the coupon below to unlock the exclusive deal.
35% Off Security & Backups Pack
Are you seeing the 'Error establishing a database connection' notice on your WordPress website? It is a fatal error that makes your WordPress website inaccessible to the users.
This error occurs when WordPress is unable to connect to the database. A number of things can affect your WordPress database connection which makes it a bit difficult for beginners to troubleshoot.
Me, I really dislike FOUT. I like that it’s an option, because not displaying text quickly on the web is no good. I know font-display: swap; is popular because it’s good for performance, but that FOUT stuff pains me. Matt Hobbs:
If there’s one thing I’d like readers to take away from this post it’s that
font-display: swapis a very good option for users with a fast internet connection. But its infinite swap period could be frustrating for users on very slow and unstable connections. If you have users viewing your site under these conditions (I’m pretty certain you will at some point in time), then it may be worth consideringfont-display: fallbackor evenfont-display: optional.
Seeeee, I told ya. I like how font-display: optional; totally stops FOUT. The font is either applied super fast, or isn’t used at all (but still downloaded async). Chances are, on the next page load, the font is loaded and cached and will be used.
Note this is about slow connections, not necessarily connections where the user would prefer as little data usage as possible. If that’s the case, check out some of the recent posts we linked up in Responsible, Conditional Loading.
And boy howdy, the Web Performance Calendar this year was just loaded in great articles.
Direct Link to Article — Permalink
The post A font-display setting for slow connections appeared first on CSS-Tricks.
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Right now, the two most popular search engines are Google and YouTube, which is no surprise. They work perfectly hand ...
Read moreRead This Before Embedding Your YouTube Videos into WordPress
The post Read This Before Embedding Your YouTube Videos into WordPress appeared first on WPArena.
What can’t you possibly build with WordPress? You can build all types of websites ranging from small blogs to large e-commerce websites. It’s the reason why WordPress is the platform of choice for millions of businesses across the globe, including big-name brands. WordPress is straightforward to use and comes with many customization options in themes, […]
The post Why and How to Create a Static Website with WordPress appeared first on WPExplorer.
Do you want to add a WordPress logout link to your site?
If you run a membership site, bbPress forum, eCommerce store, or a learning management system (LMS) using WordPress, having a prominent logout link is helpful for your users.
In this article, we will show you how to add the WordPress logout link to your navigation menu, as well as to other areas of your site.
Normally you can log out of your WordPress site by clicking on the logout link. This link is located below your profile picture in the top right corner of the WordPress admin bar.
All you have to do is take your mouse over to your username, and it will appear in the dropdown menu.
In case you or your site administrator have disabled the WordPress admin bar, then you will not be able to see the WordPress logout link.
The good thing is that the WordPress logout link can be directly accessed to log out of your current WordPress session.
The logout link for your WordPress site looks like this:
http://example.com/wp-login.php?action=logout
Don’t forget to replace example.com with your own domain name.
You can access this link directly in your browser window to log out of your WordPress site.
When you visit the WordPress logout link, it will take you to a warning page. You will need to click on the logout link to confirm that you really want to log out.
You can also manually add this logout link anywhere on your WordPress site. Let’s take a look at how to do that.
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
Adding the WordPress logout link in your site’s navigation menu will make it easily accessible from any page on your website.
Simply head over to the Appearance » Menus page in your WordPress admin. After that, you need to click on the custom links tab to expand it and add the logout link in the URL field.
Once you are done, click on the ‘Add to menu’ button, and you will notice the link appear in the right column. You can adjust its position by simply dragging it up or down.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Menu’ button to store your changes.
You can now visit your website to see the logout link in your navigation menu.
The problem with adding the logout link in the menu is that it is visible to all users (both logged-in and logged-out). It only makes sense to show the logout link to users who are actually logged in.
You can do that by following our instructions on how to show different menus to logged in users.
WordPress comes with a default widget called Meta. This widget shows a bunch of useful links including a logout or login link to users.
Some people find the other links in the Meta widget are not quite as useful.
As an alternate, you can also add a plain text or custom HTML widget with the logout link in plain HTML. Here is the HTML code you’ll need to add:
<a href="http://example.com/wp-login.php?action=logout">Logout</a>
If you manually add a logout link in WordPress, then the problem is that it does not change based on the user’s login status.
To fix that, you can use a plugin to dynamically display the login or logout link based on the user’s session.
First, you’ll need to install the Login or Logout Menu Item plugin. For details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After you install and activate the plugin, you’ll go to Appearance » Menus in your WordPress admin and add the Login/Logout link to your menu.
After you hit ‘Save Menu’ and check your WordPress website, you’ll see the link in your menu.
When you click on it, it’ll take you to a page to login, or if you’re already logged in, it will log you out.
This method also works with WooCommerce, MemberPress, and other WordPress eCommerce platforms.
We hope this article helped you find the direct WordPress logout link and add it to your navigation menu. You may also want to see our guide on how to add a call button in WordPress, and how to track link / button clicks in WordPress to make data-driven decisions.
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 the WordPress Logout Link to Navigation Menu appeared first on WPBeginner.
There are certain common WordPress errors that leave you scratching your head on what to do. The WordPress Updating and Publishing failed error is one such error. Not only can this error occur due to multiple factors, but it also inhibits you from releasing and publishing content on your site. Imagine if you’re running a […]
The post How to Fix the WordPress Update or Published Failed Error appeared first on WPExplorer.
With our integrated videos plugin, you can embed high-quality educational tutorial videos on your site’s frontend and admin!
Video tutorials are a great resource to share insightful information in an organized way for you and your users.
The Integrated Video Tutorials plugin (IVT) functions as a perfect method to improve WordPress skills, onboard new users, and reduce support requests, making it valuable for anyone with access to your site to refer to.
Included are 45+ WordPress training videos which we keep regularly updated, white-label branding, user displays, and more. Plus, you can create and have your own custom training videos, along with even customized playlists.
In this article, you will learn how to get the most out of integrated tutorials. I’ll be going over how to:
When you’re finished reading, you’ll know the best way to deploy these videos for your WordPress sites and use them to their full potential — in just a few clicks!
From The Hub dashboard, you can download the integrated videos plugin from the Plugins tab. Once you click on the integrated videos tab, you’ll get the options to Install or Download.
Choosing to install makes it simple. It will pull-up all of the sites you have in The Hub, and you can install it directly from here and your WordPress dashboard.
Once installed, you can get a 360-degree overview of the dashboard. From here, you can view the most recently updated video, playlists, create new videos, and more.
You can see the total videos you have at the top of the dashboard, the date of the last uploaded video, your most recently updated video, your newly created custom video, and the latest playlist you created.
In the Video section, you can quickly access all of the 45+ videos that come with the plugin, create a custom video, edit the titles, and more.
And finally, in the dashboard, the Playlists area lets you view and edit all of your playlists.
It’s fast and easy to organize, access, create playlists and more — right from the dashboard.
Do you need to explain something to your users that aren’t already covered in our videos? Something specific to your brand or your website? No problem! Integrated Video Tutorials lets you add custom videos quickly and easily.
From the Video section of the dashboard, get started by clicking the Add Custom Video button.
The Add Custom Video button opens up an area where you’ll select what source your custom video is hosted from. You have the options for Wistia, YouTube, and Vimeo. (Note: More options are coming very soon for Dailymotion, Amazon S3, Google Drive, and more!)
Simply choose what option you have for the video and add the link.
In this example, it’s a YouTube video.
From here, you can change the title and set a customized start & end time. Also, upload a thumbnail image if you’d like.
After hitting continue, add it to a playlist in a click. A drop-down menu will appear with all of your current playlists options. You can even add it to multiple playlists at one time!
When done, it’ll be all set to go when you hit Publish.
Add a video to as many playlists as you like.
It’s then displayed in the Available Videos.
You can access it and edit the custom video at any time.
Next, I’ll show you how to…
Quickly access your custom video to edit and view in just a few clicks. You’ll simply go to the Available Videos section, find your video, and access or edit accordingly.
Click on the gear icon next to the video you’d like to gain access to and you’ll get the options to Edit Video, Copy Shortcode, or Delete.
When you click Edit, you’ll get the options that were discussed earlier for custom videos. You can change the title, start & end time, and upload a thumbnail image.
For any of the pre-uploaded videos that come with this plugin, you have the option to Edit Title and Copy Shortcode.
Preview any video by clicking on the video title in the Available Videos section.
Play the video in the preview area at any time.
Ready to publish? Use the Shortcode to embed videos. Add the shortcode to any acceptable area, and you’ll be all set.
It’s as simple as that to access and edit videos!
Manage, create, delete, and customize playlists from the Playlists area. Playlists are great when you have a specific topic that includes several related areas you would like to cover in separate videos.
This section shows you how many playlists you currently have, recently created playlists, and recently updated playlists.
Let’s create a new playlist first. To do that, click on Create Playlist.
It will then prompt you to add a name, description, and – if you want – a thumbnail image.
Once Continue is hit, you can search for videos to add or simply click on the ones you want to include in the playlist. If you want to delete one from the list, you can do that as well in one-click.
Add as many videos as you’d like!
Your playlist will then appear with all of the other playlists you already have.
With any of the playlists, you can click on the gear icon and get the options to:
Editing and adding videos is exactly the same as when they’re created. And if you add Visibility Settings, you can control which user roles (e.g. author) can view the playlist and the default locations for it to display.
Add a video at any time to a playlist quickly by clicking on the icon next to a video. You’ll then choose what playlist you want to add it to, and you can also add it to multiple playlists by checking the boxes.
Pick any amount of playlists that you’d like by checking the boxes next to each one.
And just like that, you have a customized playlist for your video tutorials.
You can adjust additional settings for your tutorials in the Settings area in the admin. This is so you can determine how your videos should display in the admin area of your website.
In the Display Settings section, you can enable a tutorials tab in the WordPress admin sidebar in the Tutorials Tab area in one-click
Determine the location of the videos page in the admin menu. You can pick to display all the videos under the WordPress Dashboard menu item, or you can have it be a top-level menu item.
Plus, you can set the menu title that will be displayed as your tutorial videos menu in the WordPress admin sidebar.
The Help Videos area is where you can enable the option to have videos appear in the Contextual Help boxes. It’s based on how you set your visibility settings for your playlists.
Do you want someone else to have admin access to edit playlists and videos? You can configure permissions in the Permissions area.
Simply choose which user roles can have access.
Once you change the settings, you can always adjust them at any time.
As we close the credits on this post, you can see how using our integrated video tutorials is quick, easy, and beneficial. And since we already have you stocked up with over 45 useful videos to begin with, you can implement them right away!
For more information, be sure to check out our documentation. And keep tabs on what’s coming up next in our Roadmap.
Install the plugin to train and empower new WordPress users and start reducing your support costs today!
Back in August 2020, when the content-visiblity property in CSS trickled its way into Chrome browsers, Una Kravets and Vladimir Levin wrote about it and we covered it. The weirdest part is that to get the performance value out of it, you pair it with contain-intrinsic-size on these big chunks of the page where you insert some arbitrary guess at a height. I wrote:
That part seems super weird to me. Just guess at a height? What if I’m wrong? Can I hurt performance? Can (or should) I change that value at different viewports if the height difference between small and large screens is drastic?
Jake Archibald and Das Surma just did a video on all this and it helped clarify that a bit. You can see at about 7:30 in just how confusing it is. Jake used this massive HTML spec page as a demo, and made <section> wrappers around big chunks of HTML, and applied:
section {
content-visibility: auto; /* this is the thing that delays painting */
contain-intrinsic-size: 1px 5000px; /* this is the guess at the height of the content, and also saying width doesn't matter */
}Apparently that 5000px isn’t the height of the element, it’s the size of the content of that element. I guess that matters because it will push that parent element taller by that number, unless the parent element overrides that with a height of its own. The magic comes from the fact that the browser will only paint¹ the first section (where it’s very likely the viewport isn’t over 5000px tall) and defer the painting on the rest. Sorta like lazy loading, but everything rather than media alone. It assumes the next section is 5000px tall, but once the top of it becomes visible, it will actually get painted and the correct height will be known. So assuming your page is just big ass blocks on top of each other, using an extremely large number should work fine there. Godspeed if your site is more complicated than that, I guess.
It’s a good video and you should watch it:
This is yet another thing where you have to inform the browser about your site so that it can Do Performance Good™. It is information that it can figure out by itself, but not until it has done things that have a performance cost. So you have to tell it up front, allowing it to avoid doing certain types of work. With responsive images, if we give images a srcset attribute with images and tell the browser in advance how big they are, including a sizes attribute with information about how our CSS behaves, it can do calculations ahead of time that only download the best possible image. Likewise, with the will-change property in CSS, we can tell the browser when we’re going to be doing movement ahead of time so it can pre-optimize for that in a way it couldn’t otherwise. It’s understandable, but a little tiresome. It’s like we need a stuff-you-need-to-know.manifest file to give browsers before it does anything else — only that would be an additional request!
The accessibility implications are important too. Steve Faulkner did a test applying content-visibility: auto to images and paragraphs:
The content is visually hidden, but in both JAWS and NVDA the hidden
<img>is announced but the content of the<p>element is not. This has to do with how theimgand thepelement content are represented in the browser accessibility tree: Theimgis exposed in the accessibility tree with thealttext as the accessible name. The content of thepelement is not present in the accessibility tree.
He notes that content hidden this way should not be available to screen readers, per the spec. I could see it going either way, like hide it all as if it was display: none, meaning none of it is in the accessibility tree. Or, leave it all in the accessibility tree. Right now it’s a tweener where you might see a bunch of stray images in the accessibility tree without any other context than their alt text. This is an interesting example of new tech going out with more rough edges than you might like to see.
Speaking of alt text, we all know those shouldn’t be empty when they represent important content that needs to be described to someone who can’t see them. They should be like paragraphs, says Dave:
I finally made the simplest of all connections:
alttext is like a paragraph. Word pictures. Basic I know, but it helps me contextualize how to write goodalttext as well as source order of my code.
I don’t want to be overly negative here! The performance gains for setting up a long-scrolling page with content-visibility is huge and that’s awesome. Being able to inform the browser about what is OK not to paint in two lines of code is pretty nice.
The post More on content-visibility appeared first on CSS-Tricks.
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Backing up your WordPress site(s) has never been easier. Regardless of your hosting setup, The Hub and Snapshot make keeping your sites fully backed up a breeze. Here’s how…
Whether you manage one or multiple WordPress sites, keeping your site’s files and data regularly backed-up is an essential part of website maintenance and security.
So, it’s important that the backup process be made as simple, easy, safe, and reliable as can be.
In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to keep your WordPress sites fully backed up using The Hub, our WordPress management console, and Snapshot, our automated backups plugin.
Specifically, we’ll look at how to:
With The Hub, you can easily manage multiple WordPress sites from one central location. This includes managing, deleting, downloading, backing up, and restoring site backups.
The types of backup you will manage from The Hub depend on whether you choose to host your sites with WPMU DEV or a third-party host.
If you host your sites with WPMU DEV’s managed WordPress hosting, your sites’ files and data will be fully backed up every night automatically using our secure, reliable, and super-fast Hosted Backups service. See our Hosting Backups Guide for more details.
Note: You can also use Snapshot to schedule additional backups (e.g. store your backups on a third-party storage service like Amazon S3, *Google Drive, *Dropbox, etc.)
*coming soon
If you host your sites with a third-party host, you can install Snapshot and use it with The Hub to manage all of your backups. See our Snapshot documentation for full details on using the plugin.
Tip: The Hub icons show you which backup service each of your sites is using (i.e. WPMU DEV backups or Snapshot). These icons display in your site’s Hub menus and panels.
With The Hub, you can view information about your sites’ backups as soon as you log in.
Simply hover over the backup icons on your Sites screen and a small pop-up window will display the backup details for that site.
Depending on the backup service your site uses, The Hub’s Overview section will display your Backups module differently.
For example, here is the Overview screen of a site hosted with WPMU DEV using our Hosted Backups service…
And here’s the same Overview screen of a site hosted with a third-party service using Snapshot, as indicated by the icon on the Backups panel…
As you can see, there is a slight difference in how information displays about your backups in The Hub’s Overview panel.
If you use Snapshot to manage your site’s backups, the Overview panel displays how much storage you have used in your current plan.
To manage site backups, view a list of available backups, configure backup settings, etc., select a site from The Hub and click on the Backups panel in The Overview screen or the Backups tab in the main menu.
Clicking on either of these options will bring you to the Backups Dashboard.
Again, the Dashboard you see here will depend on your choice of hosting.
Here is the Backups Dashboard of a site hosted with WPMU DEV…
Backups Dashboard screen of a site hosted with WPMU DEV
And here is the Backups Dashboard of a site using a 3rd-party host with Snapshot installed:
Backups Dashboard screen of a site using Snapshot
See our documentation for more information on using the Backups tab.
To create a full backup of any site directly from The Hub with just one click, go to the Backups tab and click the button in the Backups Dashboard.
You can also do this by clicking on the Settings icon (three dots) and selecting Create Backup from the menu.
The Hub will automatically begin to back up your site. As soon as the backup is completed, it will display on the list of available backups.
Notes:
See our Backups Dashboard Overview documentation for more details on creating backups.
If you’re using Snapshot to backup your sites, you can create a backup schedule (monthly, weekly, daily) from The Hub by going to your Backups tab and selecting Set Schedule from the Settings menu.
Configure your schedule and click Save to update your settings. Alternately, if you do not want The Hub to back up your sites, click the Remove Schedule link to set the frequency of your backups to None.
Schedule backups for sites using Snapshot from The Hub.
Note: You cannot set a schedule for backing up sites hosted on WPMU DEV, as your sites are automatically backed up daily.
To view details of your backups, go to The Hub > Backups tab and click on a backup item.
This will bring up a pop-up window with your backup details.
Click on the Settings icon (three dots) to bring up additional options that let you download and restore your backups.
Note: If you’re viewing details about backups created using Snapshot, you can also delete the backup to free up storage space, and send an email with a downloadable copy of your backup by clicking on the Filename.
If you are using Snapshot, you can also view detailed logs about your backups. Just log into your site from The Hub, go to the Snapshot Backups > Logs section, and click on a backup from the list on the Available Logs screen.
For more info, see our Snapshot Logs tab documentation.
With The Hub, you can easily download and restore your backups.
To restore your website from a full or incremental backup, select your site from The Hub, click on the Backups tab and then click on a backup from your list of available backups.
Next, click either the Restore button or select the option from your Backup Details > Settings menu.
If you can access your website, The Hub will restore your backups automatically as soon as you click the button.
If your website is unavailable, there are several methods you can use to restore your site, and The Hub will instruct you on what steps to take.
If you’re not hosting your websites with WPMU DEV, see our documentation on how to restore your website with Snapshot.
Whether you choose to host with WPMU DEV (and we highly recommend you do – we’re better and cheaper!) or a third-party host, you can enjoy complete peace of mind knowing that your WordPress sites are being fully and securely backed up.
Also, we’re continually improving The Hub and Snapshot (check out our roadmap) and if you need help creating or restoring your backups or have any other WordPress-related questions or issues, our 24/7 support team is always available.
With The Hub 2.0, you can give unlimited users multiple roles — even if they aren’t WPMU DEV members! All of this can be easily set up in a matter of minutes, allowing you the flexibility to give users access to as much or as little as you’d like on your WordPress site.
Plus, With The Hub Client, you can create your Hub for your clients and collaborators, using your branding.
Oh, and did we mention it’s all free for your users and you’re able to be set up in minutes?
In this article, we’ll be going over how to:
This post’s features are accomplished from the Users & Roles tab in The Hub dashboard, except for The Hub Client, accessed by the Hub Client Plugin (which I’ll show you how to activate).
You can create new users in The Hub, allowing them to access specific areas on your WordPress site. Creating new users in The Hub is the easiest way to allow access to users because everything is done from one place.
Click the Users tab and Add First User to get started.
From here, you’ll enter their email. Then, you can select sites that they’ll have access to (all the sites that you have with WPMU DEV are shown in the dropdown), and the user role to view, edit, or custom role (which can be modified and changed at any time).
Once that user gets the email and hits Confirm, the user will be redirected to WPMU DEV to set up a free account with their email, name, and password.
They don’t even need to be a WPMU DEV member. And again, there’s no cost for the users. The only cost would be if the new user wants to upgrade to a WPMU DEV membership of their own.
When they click Join – that’s it!
A new user is added and will have access to the sites and roles determined by the admin when invited.
From the admin point of view, they can then see their new user in the Users area. If the invited user accepts, it will show Active in the status. If the user hasn’t confirmed yet, it will show Pending.
It also displays the user’s email, role, sites that the user has access to, and status.
Add as many users as you’d like by clicking on the New User button.
Setting up a user can be done with the tap of a button.
As you can see, creating and organizing users takes no time at all.
When you send a person an invite to be part of the team, you also add user roles. Roles are what determines which access capabilities users have.
The predetermined roles that are initially available are:
You can pick between these two or create your own.
Create your own role under Roles by clicking on New custom user role.
Name the new role anything you’d like and customize accordingly. Let’s check out how to customize it by…
Customizing access for a role can be determined by clicking on all the available options (e.g. sites, security settings, SEO, etc). Also, choose to have View & Edit or View Only for sites.
You decide what to include in this new role.
The Custom option gives you detailed task descriptions about specific roles that each option can allow.
As an example, here are various tasks you can include for Plugins in this new role. Click on the options you want the user to have the capability to manage.
Once you have the new tasks determine, click Save, and you’re all set.
For more detailed information on each task description, you can see all of them listed here.
With roles determined, the ability to assign them is all in one place. Everything under Role shows what that user has access to.
Want to change roles? Customize what sites they have access to and switch roles accordingly by clicking on the roles and what sites you want the user to have access to.
Once updated, the user will have the roles that you applied to them.
And like all things in The Hub, you can edit anything whenever you want.
You have instant access to view your sites and how many users each site has in the Sites tab. The Sites tab makes it quick and easy to view and edit roles for specific sites.
All the websites are displayed here with the number of users displayed next to the site’s name.
Hover over the number to bring up all the users for that site.
Click on the plus sign by the site’s name to manage the user’s access.
This shows who has access and whether they’re active or not. Uncheck the user to remove access and add a new user from here, too.
You can also resend an invitation to a pending user from this section.
With The Hub Client, you can provide access to clients, collaborators, and users using your personalized white label Hub. It’s your own Hub, the way you and your organization want it, customized to your perfection.
Plus, you can use any host (including our own managed hosting), sell our services, and run at your domain.
To use The Hub Client plugin, you have to be connected with The Hub to access its API. You can see how to do that here.
When connected to The Hub, the Hub Client plugin can be downloaded from the White Label page and then clicking on Find out more about The Hub Client.
Once downloaded and installed, you’ll get a welcome message.
The welcome message can walk you through everything on getting started by, you guessed it – clicking Get Started.
Begin by changing your name to replace WPMU DEV by clicking on the title and entering whatever you’d like.
Replace the WPMU DEV logo with your own by uploading an image in the Your Logo section (e.g. Dev Man).
You can change the colors for the Navigation background, Navigation text, and Navigation text selected & hover in the Color scheme area. Do this by visually picking the colors or by color number (e.g. #FFFFFF for white).
Pick and choose appropriate colors that fit your branding.
Head over to the Configuration to select a pre-made menu to appear after Sites.
And for the client page, you can set up any page you’d like to replace your client hub. All the pages you have in your WordPress site will appear in the dropdown menu.
For example, I created a page called Client Login that I’m going to use for my clients to log in at.
And now, when your users log in, they’ll be greeted with your branding, colors, and configurations.
That’s how you have your own completely white-labeled Hub Client organization (yippee!).
So, let’s set up…
Your colleagues, users, and clients can now log in and use your very own branded WordPress site and customized Hub with The Hub Client. The Hub Client includes controlling all user access levels and roles.
It has to be activated and running to do this, so be sure to read through the section in this article on setting up The Hub Client first.
Once The Hub Client is ready, adding, and setting up users & roles is all accessible in The Hub Client > Users & Roles.
This section is precisely how Users & Roles are set up in The Hub, except the Setting tab.
The Hub has the Settings tab, and The Hub Client has a Terms of Service & Privacy tab, so you can edit and set your Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
You can easily add a new client or user by clicking the New User box.
Once clicking on that, you’ll fill out the new user’s email address, grant site access, and select the user’s role.
The user will get an email invitation to join. Once confirmed, they’ll appear in your Users & Roles admin as active.
When you have your users in the system, you can manage their access to websites. All you do is click on the individual, and a pop-up will appear where you can select Access to Selected Websites or Access All Websites.
If you choose Access to Selected Websites, you can remove or add sites that the individual can access in one-click.
Create a new role in the Roles tab. Plus, see what User Roles are already set up. (For more on New Roles, please see the Add User Customization Settings).
To quickly view your websites, view users for each site, and add or remove users from your site, go to Sites.
With the Users & Roles in the Hub Client, you’ll have your clients up-and-running in your white-labeled Hub in minutes. All accessible right from the dashboard in your WordPress site.
You can add an unlimited amount of collaborators and users with access to WPMU DEV products, plugins, and support.
As you can see, adding users & roles and creating your Hub for you and your clients is doable in just a few clicks. There’s just no other substitute out there for an all-in-one CMS when it comes to managing your WordPress sites.
And if you think this is good, just wait. Coming soon, we’re including automated site creation & client billing, making your white label Hub your own SaaS business!
To keep tabs on what’s coming, be sure to follow our Roadmap. And for more, check out The Hub’s documentation and stay tuned to our blog.
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Ever found yourself in a situation where you tried to update WordPress or a plugin only to be greeted by the white screen of death? Or maybe you love experimenting with new themes and plugins? Or adding custom functionality to your website and you’ve encountered the same thing? No matter what the case might be, […]
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Do you want to create a questionnaire in WordPress to survey your visitors or collect data?
Getting feedback on your products or simply learning more about your users can help your business to succeed.
In this article, we will show you how to easily create a questionnaire in WordPress, step by step.
Creating a questionnaire is a great way to learn more about your audience. This lets you tailor your content to their needs. You can also use the results to create or modify the products / services that will be most helpful to your audience.
There are several survey tools that you can use outside your website, but having your questionnaire on your website itself means you have full control over how it’s displayed. Plus, it’s more familiar and reassuring for your audience.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily add a questionnaire to your WordPress site.
For this tutorial, we’ll be using WPForms to create a questionnaire.
WPForms is the best forms plugin for WordPress and allows you to easily create any kind of forms using a simple drag and drop form builder.
First, you need to install and activate the WPForms plugin on your WordPress site. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Note: You’ll need the Pro version of the plugin to get the features that we will use in this tutorial.
Upon activation, you need to visit the WPForms » Settings page in your WordPress admin area to enter your license key. You’ll find the license key under your account on the WPForms website.
Now, it’s time to move on and create your questionnaire.
WPForms’ powerful surveys and polls addon lets you create questionnaires easily. It also produces beautiful visual graphs of the results.
First, visit the WPForms » Addons page to install the Survey and Polls addon. Use the search bar to find it, then click the Install Addon button.
Next, go to WPForms » Add New to create a new form. First, type in a name for your form at the top of the screen:
There are 4 different pre-built survey form templates to choose from. These are the Poll Form, the Survey Form, the NPS Survey Simple Form, and the NPS Survey Enhanced Form.
We are going to use the Survey Form for our questionnaire.
After you select the template, it will open up in the WPForms editor.
We recommend that you edit the questions to make them appropriate for your audience and needs. We are going to use the form to gather customer feedback on products and delivery.
To edit any field, simply click on it. The editing view will then open up on the left-hand side of your screen. Here, we are editing the Name field at the top. We changed the format to ‘Simple’ using the dropdown.
We also made it optional by unchecking the ‘Required’ box.
The ‘How can we improve?’ box only appears if the user rates their experience as 1 star or 2 stars.
We’re going to add a new feedback box that will appear if the user rates their experience as 3 or 4 stars. To do this, simply bring your mouse cursor over the ‘How can we improve?’ box then click the Copy button:
Next, WPForms will check that you want to duplicate the field. Go ahead and click the ‘OK’ button to continue:
Now, you can edit your new field on the left-hand side of the screen. We have changed the label, which appears above the box. We also changed the description, which appears below the box:
You also need to set the conditional logic for this field. To do that, click the Conditionals tab. Then, set the numbers to 3 and 4 instead of 1 and 2:
Finally, we are going to edit the ‘How satisfied are you with’ Likert scale. A Likert rating scale is a 5 or 7 point scale that is often used to measure satisfaction or attitudes.
Again, simply click on the field to edit it. Then, change the labels of the rows or columns to the text you want to use.
We are going to change the labels of the rows to make them more specific:
Go ahead and make as many changes to the form as you like. Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top of the screen:
WPForms will send each completed questionnaire to the business email address that’s set in your website settings. It’s easy to change this by going to Settings » Notifications.
Simply delete the {admin_email} in the ‘Send To Email Address’ box and enter the email address you want to use instead:
Tip: Not sure what your WordPress administration email is? Go to Settings » General and check what is listed in the ‘Administration Email Address’ box.
Don’t forget to save your questionnaire after making any changes.
You can add your questionnaire to any post or page on your website. You can even add it to your sidebar.
To add your form to a page, edit your page or go to Pages » Add New to create a new one. Then, click the + button to add a new block. Select the ‘WPForms’ block:
Next, simply click on the dropdown and select your questionnaire form.
Now, simply preview or publish your post to see the form live on your WordPress website:
You can also use WPForms’ conversational forms feature.
A conversational form is an interactive form that flows like a conversation. Users answer a question and it automatically shows them the next one.
It makes longer forms like a questionnaire easier to fill out and reduces form abandonment.
First, you need to go to WPForms » Addons in your WordPress admin. Then, search for and install the Conversational Forms addon:
After that, go to WPForms » Add New and create a new form using the instructions in the previous method.
If you already created your form, then simply go to WPForms » All Forms page and click on it to edit it:
Now, we are going to convert your form into a conversational form. First, go to the Settings » Conversational Forms tab. Then, simply check the ‘Enable Conversational Form Mode’ box.
You will then see a number of extra options to fill in. Conversational forms can’t be embedded in a post or page, so you need to give your form a title here. You can also write any text that you want to display above the form:
WPForms will automatically create a URL for your conversational form based on the form’s name. If you want to change this, simply type in a different URL here.
Optionally, you can also upload a header image, choose a color scheme, and change the Progress Bar style.
Once you are happy with your form’s settings, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top of the screen:
Now, click the ‘View’ button next to the permalink for your form to see it live on your site:
The customer simply clicks the Start button to begin the form.
They can then enter their responses one question at a time. The questions that aren’t active will be faded out until the customer moves to them.
The sticky progress bar at the bottom of the screen will show how far through the form the customer is:
That’s it. You’ve successfully created your conversational questionnaire.
Whether you created a regular survey or a conversational form, the process for viewing the results is the same.
Each questionnaire response will be emailed to the email address you set up under Settings » Notifications.
WPForms also stores all your survey results in your WordPress database. To view them, go to WPForms » Entries in your WordPress dashboard. Then, click on the name of your survey form:
You will then see some of the answers from your questionnaire. Simply click the ‘View Survey Results’ button to view all the questionnaire results.
WPForms will automatically create graphs and charts to make it easy to interpret the results:
It’s easy to export any of the graphs as a PDF or JPG. You can even print them to share with others in your organization. Just click the ‘Export’ link next to any item and choose from the dropdown menu:
You can also download all your results as a CSV file. Just click the ‘Export All (CSV)’ button near the top of the page to download all the results:
If you want to view the questionnaire answers from individual customers, then click the ‘Back to All Entries’ button at the top of the screen:
Next, scroll down to the table at the bottom of the screen. Click the ‘View’ button for the entry you want to see:
You will now see all the answers submitted by that person.
We hope this article helped you learn how to create a questionnaire in WordPress. You might also enjoy our articles on the best email marketing services and how to start an online 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.
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Branda is your ultimate tool for customizing your multisite network. Inject a slice of personality into each of your sites’ admin areas and decide whether this power sits with just the Network Admin, or with individual site admins.
In this article, we’re showing you how to manage user access to Branda on your multisite network, and then diving into the features best-suited to customizing your multisite admin.
More specifically, we’ll be covering how to:
1. Control Who Can Access Branda
2. Change Your Module Permissions
3. Personalize Your Sites
4. Choose a Custom Color Scheme
5. Add Notes to Your Admin Footer
6. Customize Your Admin Menu
7. Reorganize Your Admin Bar
8. Add Extra Customization With CSS
9. Customize Your Cookie Notices
10. Create Coming Soon and Maintenance Mode Pages
11. Create Unique Login Screens
12. Customize Your Favicons
As a Network Administrator, you can control who has access to Branda.
If you want to be the only one in charge of Branda’s features, you don’t need to do anything, as Branda is hidden from all other users straight out of the box.
If you want to grant your site admins access to Branda, you can do so by heading to Settings > Permissions and checking the box.
If you would rather handpick which users get access to Branda, you can do this by scrolling down and selecting ‘Custom Users’.
You can grant your site admins (plus any other user roles) access to Branda from this menu.
Branda’s customization options are split up into modules. If you make changes to a module in the Network Admin plugin settings, it will take effect across all of your networked sites.
If you want to give your site admins the ability to override the network customizations, you can do so within the settings menu.
Whilst the sites of your multisite network may be related and all fall under the same brand, personalizing your admin areas using Branda is an easy way to give them a little bit of personality, rather than feeling like they’re all merging into one.
Simple changes you can make include the color scheme, admin footers, and personalizing the admin menu.
Below is a quick overview of how to do all of these and more.
You can easily select one of the default color schemes if your only aim is to easily distinguish your admin areas from one another. However, the real magic of Branda lies in the ability to create your own custom color scheme.
You can customize the color of each Aspect of your admin area, right down to the links and hover colors.
If you make these changes as the Network Admin, the color scheme will just change within the Network Admin area.
If you want to apply the same color scheme to all of your sites, you can select ‘Force color scheme’.
If you want your admins to be able to set their own color schemes for their sites/profiles, simply give them access in Settings > Permissions and select the Color Schemes module.
You can add a personalized note in your admin footer using Branda, even on a multisite network.
This can be done either across the network, or per site.
All you need to do is activate the Admin Footer module, then add your message.
Your message will then display at the bottom of every page within the admin area.
Your admins can choose to change the footer for each individual site – it’s just another way that Branda can help you to differentiate between the sites on your network.
When you’re running a multisite network, you may have differences between your sites which means that the same admin setup across all of them just isn’t practical.
With Branda, you can easily remove, add, and edit the items in your admin menu.
You can easily tidy up the admin menu of each of your sites.
To do this, simply head to the Admin Menu module and select Customize.
There are extensive customization options for each admin item.
You can also add your own custom menu items to ensure that your sites are full of links and shortcuts to make your admin duties run as efficiently as possible.
Branda also offers the power to remove the dashboard link from user profiles which aren’t connected to one of the sites in your network.
This means that if someone’s profile isn’t linked to a site, all they will be able to access is their profile screen.
Just like the admin menu, you admin bar is a valuable tool when it comes to navigating the back-end of your site, helping you to work smoothly and efficiently.
If there are links on it that you only want to make available to certain user roles, you can restrict access within the admin bar module.
You are then free to customize it in the same way as you did your admin menu, either through the network admin settings or per site.
You can hide specific items, add custom ones, and reorder the whole menu.
Line your links up exactly as you want them.
Whilst Branda is packed full of features to help you tailor your admin area to your needs, there are times where you might need to tweak an extra thing or two.
Adding extra CSS to a site can cause issues if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, so understandably, this feature is disabled by default for everyone but the Network Admins.
If you want to delegate this power to your site admins, you can do this from the Permissions section of the Settings menu.
If you want to reserve the Custom CSS field for the Network Admins, it can come in handy if you want more control over your site permissions.
For example, you can use it to hide the activate or deactivate buttons of your plugins.
Just remember to remove CSS permissions for other users so that no one can undo your changes!
Adding your own cookie notice is very simple with Branda. You can easily add the same notice to all sites, or if your sites require different wording, you can add them individually.
You can choose your own text, add images, link to your privacy policy, and make changes to the color and design.
There is also the option to update the version number of the cookie notice, which will force all users to view the notice again, and you have the ability to choose how long cookies are stored for.
If you want your site admins to be able to override the network cookie notice with their own personalized ones for each site, you need to ensure you give them permission by heading to Settings > Permissions.
When you’re running a multisite, adding a new site may be a common occurrence.
This means that you might need to enable coming soon mode to ensure that your potential customers know what’s going on, and also to give your SEO a head start by letting Google know you’re on your way.
Branda allows you to design your own unique pages to keep your visitors in the loop.
If you want to do this as the network admin, you can use a standard coming soon page which you could apply across all new sites.
Or if you wanted to delegate this power to your site admins, you can have a more personalized page for each site.
The same counts for maintenance mode – you can use the same methods to create front-facing pages which will let your visitors know what’s going on.
All you need to do is head into Branda’s Website Mode, which will allow you to turn each of these modes on and off, as well as customize their designs.
An easy way to distinguish the sites in your network from each other is through personalized login screens.
Never try to log into the wrong site again!
You can add your own background images, logos, and change the text labels and links.
To create a login screen, head to the Customize Login Screen module and then check out this guide which shows you exactly how to craft the perfect login page.
Favicons are the little images that display in your site’s browser tab.
When running a multisite, Branda gives you the option to have the same icons across all of your sites, or add different ones.
As Network Admin, all you need to do is head to Branda’s Utility section and choose the Images module.
From there, you can upload your own favicon and then choose whether or not your subsites will inherit it.
Branda is fully compatible with your multisite network, meaning that anything you can do on an individual WordPress installation, you can do on your multisite.
In fact, customizing many areas of multisite admin works the same way as customizing a regular WordPress site admin. We’ve covered these extensively in this post.
Once you have the hang of distributing the permissions between your other users, the possibilities are endless. Check out the full documentation to see the full extent of Branda’s powers, and keep an eye on the roadmap to see what new features are on the horizon.
As a WordPress blog and a WordPress theme author we’ve seen our fair share of confusion about the differences between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org. This is completely understandable since both run on WordPress, both use themes and plugins and both are readily available for free online. But there are major differences between the two and those […]
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