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Help Your Content Go Anywhere With A Mobile Content Strategy

You’ve put a lot of thought, time and effort into creating great content, and you want users to have a great experience with your content. While you might have created the best content in the world, you don’t get to choose how users access it. That’s why it’s important to make sure your content works beautifully on every platform and device, desktop, mobile or something else entirely.

Before you panic, I’m not advocating that you create individual content strategies for each device or network that your content is published to. That would be crazy, and it wouldn’t necessarily work better for your users.

It’s not because you wouldn’t do a good job — it’s because it would be impossible to plan and keep up with special content strategies for every device that exists now (not to mention ones that haven’t been invented yet).

While there’s no magic bullet to make sure your content is publishable and useful on every device, you can change the way you think about, plan for and create content so that it can go anywhere it needs to go.

Developing a mobile content strategy isn’t just about making content look as good on phones and tablets as it does on the desktop. It’s about creating portable, flexible content structures that go wherever your users are, without sacrificing quality. It’s an intimidating task, but not impossible. We’ll start with an example, then cover some of the things you can do to make your content more flexible and accessible.

First, An Example: How NPR Learned To COPE

National Public Radio’s (NPR) core product has long been high-quality audio journalism. But because audiences don’t solely rely on their radio for news, NPR needed a content strategy that would allow it to reach a larger audience by publishing stories to multiple platforms. It needed a way to expand its radio stories with photos, videos, audio and text and get them to readers, no matter what devices they were using. They also needed to be efficient and cost-effective and make it easy for journalists to publish their stories. So, it developed a content strategy that would ensure that its stories would work well on every device without their having to create new publishing platforms for each type of device or having to duplicate every story for each platform.

The key to the strategy was to create “display-agnostic” content structures that allow journalists to COPE — create once, publish everywhere1. In NPR’s new strategy, journalists file their stories once to a CMS. Each story published to the CMS has common elements — titles, categories, tags, captions, etc. — that can be shown or hidden depending on the device and that is distributed via an API. This way, NPR’s designers can change the content’s presentation for each platform without sacrificing quality or requiring the editorial team to publish stories multiple times.

Here’s a small example of how it works. Check out one story about Downton Abbey from NPR’s Monkey See blog. The story was written, edited and then published to NPR’s CMS. But because of NPR’s COPE model and APIs, it displays a little differently on different screen sizes.

Here’s how the story’s excerpt was displayed on NPR’s home page on the desktop:

This is how the story appears on NPR's home page on the desktop.2
This is how the story appears on NPR’s home page on the desktop. (View large version3)

Looks good, right? Let’s break it down by the elements in the desktop excerpt:

  • categorization (of the Monkey See section)
  • headline
  • excerpt
  • a few links to related tags (to the right)
  • image
  • image caption (hidden behind that blue button)
  • image credits (also hidden behind the blue button)

Now, here’s how that same story’s excerpt looks on the mobile version of NPR’s home page:

This is how the story appears on NPR's home page on mobile.4
This is how the story appears on NPR’s home page on mobile. (View large version5)

You’ll notice it’s pretty much the same, but with a few small differences:

  • While the category is still there, the related tags aren’t used.
  • The image credit is visible right below the image, while the caption is still hidden behind the button.

So, the journalist published the story once, and the same content is presented, but some of its elements are left out or rearranged to accommodate for the smaller screen.

In order to create a content strategy that works for you and that goes wherever your users are, you have to stop thinking about devices. Instead, start working to create content that has structure, even as it takes on different forms.

Content Modeling: A Difficult, Time-Consuming And Incredibly Necessary Process

Before you can build an effective content strategy, mobile or otherwise, you have to know exactly what you’re working with. That’s where content models come in — they’re a way to give your content an organizational structure without defining its form, and they’re very important to your strategy’s success.

Trust me, content modeling is something you want — no, need — to do, not because it’s a fun time necessarily, but because doing it early has the potential to save you a ton of time, money and heartache later. Doing content modeling early, before you get into the design and development process, is much better.

Raise your hand if your design team has ever spent weeks or months on a really lovely design for desktop and mobile, only to show it to the client for review and realize that you haven’t accounted for content types that need images or video or some other crucial element. That’s the worst, right? By spending a little time on content modeling, you’re reducing the risk of that happening, while also making your designers and developers’ lives easier. Content modeling isn’t difficult, but it takes some time and effort.

Let’s say you’re working on a website geared to home cooks. Your team is ready to start working on a new mobile content strategy. Before diving into your strategy, though, you need to get your team together for a content modeling session.

A content modeling session is easy to set up. You’ll just need to get a few key stakeholders together around a whiteboard for an hour or two (though, don’t be surprised if it takes longer). There’s no limit to how many people you should invite to the content modelling session, but don’t let it get too big. Include a few of the people who will be creating the content — they’re the ones who will be dealing with the content the most — as well as anyone charged with setting standards, goals and direction for the brand.

Start by looking at the website’s existing content types. What kinds of stories, blog posts or other content types are being created? List each content type and the elements it includes, like photos, captions, body copy, headlines, etc. Don’t forget to include things like newsletters, podcasts, listings and events — the point here isn’t to do this quickly, but to be thorough. For our cooking website, two of the website’s content types might be recipes and ingredients.

Once you’ve got a list of content types, break them down by element. You’ve established that two of the content types are recipes and ingredients. These two content types are related (recipes consist of ingredients, and ingredients can be tied to specific recipes), but each includes its own unique set of elements.

03-content-model-opt-small6
This is an example of what the content model for recipes and ingredients might look like. The diagonal lines show the relationships between content elements and content types. (View large version7)

After you’ve listed each existing content type and its elements, think about what content types you’d like to be able to create in future. For example, do you want to go beyond recipes and ingredients and create sets of seasonal dishes? Or is your business model shifting to include notable chefs or contributors, who will need to be featured. Nothing is off limits — think about your business goals, editorial goals and audience’s needs.

Once You’ve Got Models, Start Building Them Out in the CMS

Once you’ve got your content model in place, start setting up a CMS that will help you COPE.

Every CMS is a little different, but in most cases you won’t need to create an entirely custom CMS to support your new content strategy. In most cases, you can bend your existing CMS to your will by creating page types, post types, custom fields and field sets that make it easier to create and display content. You can tie field sets to page and post types, which will make it easier for your content creators to add all of the necessary information.

For example, you might set up a page type in your CMS for each recipe and include these fields:

  • ingredients list (linking each ingredient to its ingredient page);
  • cooking time;
  • categories (like season or course — think appetizers, desserts, etc.);
  • introductory copy about the recipe;
  • recipe instructions;
  • tags;
  • author (which could possibly include fields for the author’s name, a head shot and a short bio).

Once you know which elements make up each content type and have accounted for them in your CMS, you’ll be able to COPE. You’ll have a flexible content structure that allows you to publish each recipe or ingredient once, even though it might be presented differently on each platform. You can then work with your designers and developers to figure out which elements should appear when.

Understand How Your Content Will Be Used

Ultimately, we don’t get to choose when someone decides to use the content we create or which platform they use it on (but, oh, the world would be a much simpler, if less interesting place, if we did). So, why think about use cases? Because our job is to make our content accessible and useful to all users, no matter when or where it’s being used.

Super-smart content strategist Karen McGrane puts it this way8:

People use every device in every location, in every context. They use mobile handsets in restaurants and on the sofa. They use tablets with a focused determination in meetings and in a lazy Sunday morning haze in bed. They use laptops with fat pipes of employer-provided connectivity and with a thin trickle of data siphoned through expensive hotel Wi-Fi. They use desktop workstations on the beach—okay, they really only use traditional desktop machines at desks. You’ve got me on that one.

Going back to the recipe website, it has a ton of possible use cases. You may have users who:

  • spend time browsing the website for recipes on their desktops and planning their menu before going to the grocery store;
  • pick up an interesting ingredient at the store and pull up your website on their phone to learn more about it and to see what recipes it could be used in;
  • call on Google Glass to find a recipe on their way to the store;
  • prop their tablets up in the kitchen like a cookbook;
  • ask an audio interface to read a recipe to them step by step.

What do all of these users have in common? Each one of them deserves to have a great, complete experience with your content.

“But wait!” you might say. “We’ve got a ton of data showing that our users use our website in this particular way on this particular device.” That may be mostly true, but you can’t always be absolutely positive. That’s why the best solution is to make all of your content available and easily accessible across all platforms.

Such accessibility doesn’t mean sacrificing the user experience, though, nor does it mean that the presentation of your content must be identical on phones, desktops and tablets.

Each device has its own considerations for design and user experience that your content can work within. Let’s consider some examples.

  • You might choose to highlight specific content elements on different platforms, while placing others behind a menu.
  • Or you could opt for a more visual presentation on large screens, using larger images that might not work as well on smaller screens. (For example, you might hide each section of a recipe behind a tappable button on a phone, so that users can quickly see and access the information they need.)
  • On desktop displays, you might choose to immediately show more photos of recipes associated with an ingredient to encourage further browsing.

The point is that while your content’s presentation may change, users should be able to access the same amount and quality of content from any platform.

Adapt Your Editorial Process To Your Strategy

Once you’ve done the hard work of modeling your content and thinking about use cases, you should have a pretty good idea of the content you’re working with and where it needs to go.

Before running off and firing up your CMS, you need to consider one more thing: the editorial process. Remember that content strategy is not just about structuring content for the reader, but also about making the process of creating content efficient, thoughtful and sensitive to the content’s mobility.

Your editorial team and its process are crucial to implementing your new content strategy. Your content creators are the ones who will be dealing with the new structure the most, so it’s important to understand their existing processes, any pain points they may have and any changes they’d like to see. Even if you feel pretty good about the editorial process, this is a good time to check in with the content creators to see whether they need anything to make their work easier.

Creating and implementing a flexible content strategy could also mean making some changes to the way your content is published. In a perfect world, it’ll make things easier. When you don’t have to worry about publishing each piece of content to its own platform, you’ll probably be able to streamline the editorial process. Instead of content creators having to create content in more than one place and editors having to edit for each platform, a COPE model allows the editors to edit each piece only once.

During content modeling, you may have added a few new content types or elements to the content’s structure. Don’t forget that these new pieces will need to be brought into your editorial policy. Here are a few things to consider:

  • Who is responsible for creating each piece of content? The writer, the editor or someone else?
  • Who publishes the content once it has been edited? Does the editor publish it, or do they inform the writer that it’s ready to go?
  • Who is responsible for categorizing and tagging content? Will your writers do that or your editors?
  • How will the content be created? Will the writers create content directly in the CMS, copy and paste from a document, or submit a document to an editor for publication? Given that many CMS’ allow writers to save unpublished drafts, asking your writers to create their stories in the CMS instead of in a document might not be a bad idea. This will reduce the number of steps each story goes through and will make formatting and editing easier.

Additionally, the new content structure could require changes to your editorial standards. You’ll likely have to put new guidelines in place for any new content elements you have added. This is also a good time to review existing editorial guidelines to make sure they still make sense. Think about things like the following:

  • Who will choose the photos that go with posts? Who will write the captions? Do photos have to have captions?
  • If you’ve added any new content types (for example, “chefs”), who is responsible for creating those new pieces?
  • How many categories and tags should be assigned to each piece of content? Does the writer or editor choose them? Also, who determines when it’s time to add a new post category or tag? (Personally, I recommend that editors set them in order to keep things consistent and to make sure you’re not doubling up on tags. This is especially important in content structures such as in the recipe example, which require posts to be in certain categories in order to be found.)

Before implementing your new device-agnostic content strategy, you may need to revisit your guidelines to account for things that might display differently on small screens. Headline lengths may have to be adjusted so that they don’t completely take over small screens. Also, you might have to change the guidelines on image sizes to make sure that a photo attached to a story looks just as good on large monitors as it does on tablets.

Finally, even if you feel pretty good about the editorial process, this is a good time to check in with the editorial team to see whether they need anything or whether you could implement new processes as part of your strategy to make content creation easier.

Final Thoughts

Remember that any new strategy is partly a learning process. And content is messy — it’s human and it’s vital, and ensuring that its creation, distribution and use go smoothly requires a lot of time, effort and coordination. As long as you’re working to make sure that every user has a great experience with your content, you’re fighting the good fight.

Use content models to understand each type of content you’re publishing and the elements it includes. Then, use post types, page types and custom fields to account for each element in your CMS. Study your users to learn how they interact with your content. Try to address their most common needs while making sure the content works well across all platforms. Adapt the process of creating content to your new strategy. Train your content creators to use the new content structures you’ve created, and put editorial guidelines and practices in place to ensure that the strategy will be implemented.

By taking the time to create content structures that can go anywhere, as well as considering use cases and tightening up your editorial strategy, you’ll be confident that the content will work, no matter who’s using it or where.

If you’ve got stories about creating mobile or device-agnostic content strategies that you’d like to share, please leave them in the comments.

(da, al, il)

Footnotes

  1. 1 http://www.programmableweb.com/news/cope-create-once-publish-everywhere/2009/10/13
  2. 2 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/01-npr-desk-opt.jpg
  3. 3 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/01-npr-desk-opt.jpg
  4. 4 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/02-npr-mobile-opt-.jpg
  5. 5 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/02-npr-mobile-opt-.jpg
  6. 6 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/03-content-model-opt.png
  7. 7 http://www.smashingmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/03-content-model-opt.png
  8. 8 http://alistapart.com/article/your-content-now-mobile

The post Help Your Content Go Anywhere With A Mobile Content Strategy appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

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Best WooCommerce Alternatives for WordPress

WooCommerce has become the most installed eCommerce platform since Automattic purchased it in 2015. Are there any alternatives that even compare to WooCommerce? Let’s find out…

One of my favorite things about WordPress is when you find a reliable theme or plugin developer, you realize that the search for high-quality website-building tools is over. The only thing is,  nothing changes faster than technology, especially in today’s digital landscape, where new platforms get launched, existing ones get acquired, and older ones go bust on an almost daily basis. Should you put all your eggs into one eCommerce plugin basket?

WooCommerce website
The WooCommerce website

WooCommerce – The eCommerce Market Leader

As of writing this article, WooCommerce powers over 3.3 million websites and has over 30% of eCommerce market share, making it the most popular eCommerce platform on the web.

eCommerce Usage Distribution stats
WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce platform on the web. (Source: BuiltWith.com)

WooCommerce also states on its website that the plugin has been downloaded over 75 million times. According to technology monitoring sites like WTechs.com and BuiltWith.com, between 5%-6% of the top 1 million websites use WooCommerce.

WooCommerce usage stats
WooCommerce is used by 6% of the top 1 million eCommerce sites. (Source: BuiltWith.com)

Finding an alternative to WooCommerce is getting harder for WordPress users, but it’s not game over yet. Some eCommerce plugins developed for WordPress early on still have legions of loyal users, so let’s explore other options.

WooCommerce Alternatives

If you’re concerned that other eCommerce plugins just won’t fit the bill, then let’s settle this once and for all today. Here are some other eCommerce plugins for WordPress to consider.

  • Cart66

    If security is a major concern for your eCommerce store, then the Cart66 plugin is one you must look at.  This plugin not only focuses on security, but it also comes chock-full of sales-enhancing features.

    One thing to note about Cart66 is that it offers two subscriptions. The first one comes with the standard highlights mentioned below. The second one costs significantly more but offers more in the way of being able to manage the entire shopping experience from start to finish (like mailing labels, drip campaigns, etc.)

    Highlights

    • PCI-compliant hosted payment portal
    • Built-in CDN for additional security
    • Secure hosted payment page.
    • Includes over 100 payment gateways
    • Sell digital or physical products
    • Advanced shipping and tax rate calculator
    • Coupon integration
    • MailChimp integration
    • One-click Buy Now links for your other marketing platforms (e.g. email, social)

  • Easy Digital Downloads

    One of the very few eCommerce plugins for WordPress that’s available for free, Easy Digital Downloads is a great option if your site is in the business of selling digital products like software, ebooks, and images and if you need a simple store setup. Anything beyond creating products and adding discount codes will require a paid extension or upgrade (but that should be expected with a free plugin anyway).

    Highlights

    • It’s free
    • Works with most major payment gateways, like PayPal and Amazon
    • Create digital product pages the same way you’d create anything else in WordPress (which means it’s super intuitive)
    • Discount code creation
    • Built-in reporting system

    Interested in Easy Digital Downloads?

    Details

  • eCommerce Product Catalog Plugin by ImpleCode

    This free eCommerce plugin is great for creating and managing a physical product catalog, which is made even more easy with its drag-and-drop catalog builder. Now, while you could spring for the premium extensions that give you access to things like quote forms, product reviews, and a shopping cart, you may be best off using this in conjunction with a safe and secure payment gateway instead.

    Highlights

    • It’s free
    • Drag-and-drop builder
    • Customize your design or use pre-made templates
    • Works with over 150 currencies and four price formats
    • Build a catalog for up to 100,000 products
    • Granular product catalog organization based on categories or tags
    • Control shipping options
    • SEO-friendly: includes metadata as well as separate catalog sitemap
    • Includes breadcrumb functionality

    Interested in eCommerce Product Catalog Plugin by ImpleCode?

    Details

  • WP eCommerce

    If you’re looking for something that is a step up from a free eCommerce plugin but not quite as robust as a premium one, you may be interested in the WP eCommerce plugin. They keep it simple in terms of setting up a new store but have also built this plugin with the developer in mind, offering a number of APIs to extend the functionality of your online store.

    WP eCommerce uses the same model as WooCommerce… the eCommerce platform itself is free, but they offer limited extensions and add-ons that you can purchase.

    Highlights

    • Integrates with reliable payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe
    • Manage tax and shipping rates
    • Coupon management options
    • Configure for recurring billing, processing refunds, and more
    • Includes on-page marketing options, like “Share This” and “User Who Bought This”
    • Monitor sales from within the tool

  • WP Easy Cart

    Another free eCommerce solution to consider is WP EasyCart. This plugin is easy to install on your existing site and adds a straightforward shopping cart. You can sell a variety of products, both physical and digital, and play around with the settings to achieve the look you want. It is compatible with most themes and can be set up within minutes.

    Highlights

    • It’s free
    • It comes with several widgets, menus, and more to manage features like store search, vertical and horizontal menus, price and manufacturer filters, categories, specials, and more.
    • Payment gateway integration, internationalization & live shipping
    • Advanced product settings (tiered pricing, B2B pricing, featured products, etc)
    • Coupons and promotions
    • Google Analytics integration
    • Social sharing
    • Administrative software

  • NinjaShop

    NinjaShop touts itself as “the quickest way to start selling on WordPress!” but doesn’t give much more information than this on its website. Most of the information about this plugin can be found in its documentation section.

    When we installed the plugin to test it out, it installed nicely with a clean and simple interface that guides you through the process. It is not for novice users, as customizations require good knowledge of editing CSS, and the plugin seems to be in development with some documented features still lacking and few user downloads.

    Highlights

    • It’s free
    • The plugin is very light
    • It uses the store’s inbuilt pages (you can also create and use your own pages).
    • It has features and options that can be turned on or off so you can enable only what’s needed.
    • Product image zoom feature.

Other eCommerce Platforms That Integrate With WordPress

There are other options you can use to build an eCommerce site with WordPress. These include using other platforms that integrate with your WordPress site, like the ones listed below.

  • Shopify

    Shopify generates a buy button code you can copy and paste to add products to your WordPress site. Once you drop the Buy Button into place and choose the product you’d like to feature, a standalone mini-storefront is created on your WordPress blog or website that connects directly with Shopify’s secure shopping cart platform to display product images, details, and prices automatically. This can be a good option for those who already have an existing WordPress site and Shopify shop.

    And the benefits of using Shopify? Many are similar to the WordPress plugins, such as a secure shopping cart, various payment gateways, controlling taxes and shipping, and the ability to use CSS and HTML to build and style your website to match your brand’s look. It also lets you choose from over 100 professional themes and present your shopping cart as mobile or tablet-ready.

  • BigCommerce

    BigCommerce provides scalable headless commerce on WordPress via a plugin.

    The plugin allows you to link to your BigCommerce account and display products with embedded store images within your WordPress site on the front-end while handing things like catalog management, processing payments, and managing fulfillment logistics on the back-end from BigCommerce.

    This is a good option for a standalone eCommerce site if you’re not too familiar with CSS and HTML, as the plugin supports WordPress’ standard method of overriding template files so you can modify out-of-the-box designs, customize product cards, lists, and cart without risking plugin updates that will undo your changes. Big Commerce gives you full catalog access, allows you to choose a theme, and use the point and click design features to make it your own. It’s also got built-in marketing and SEO tools, so you don’t need to be an expert in this either. Your site will be securely hosted, PCI compliant, and you’ll get a CRM to communicate with your customers.

Should You Switch From WooCommerce?

There are options available for WordPress users that don’t want to build stores or an eCommerce business on WooCommerce.  Thanks to its long-standing presence as the top eCommerce plugin on the market, however, WooCommerce has the leg up on the competition, especially in areas like developing extensions and add-ons to deliver new features and functionality to the platform.

Like all businesses, web developers are driven by economic factors and will gravitate toward servicing growth markets and this will have a direct impact on your eCommerce setup. Your choice of platform, therefore, will affect key areas of your business like:

  • Adapting quickly to changes in technology, customer preferences, or the economy,
  • Growing your store with new features, and
  • Receiving reliable support when you need it.

If these areas are important to you, then you should think carefully before choosing to go with a WooCommerce alternative. Also, if you haven’t built your eCommerce site yet, make sure to read our comprehensive guide to planning an eCommerce store with WordPress.

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How To Create And Customize A WordPress Child Theme


  

The WordPress platform is a magnet for those who want to take matters into their own hands, who want complete control over their websites and want to be independent in running them. WordPress does make it really easily to completely customize a website. If you have a bit of knowledge of HTMl, CSS and/or PHP, there is nothing you can’t change.

How To Create And Customize A WordPress Child Theme

I mean, just compare the default themes, Twenty Fifteen and Twenty Fourteen. Hard to believe they are running on the same platform, isn’t it? Therefore, it is only natural for you to want to adapt the look of your website to fit your vision. I doubt there are many WordPress users out there who don’t constantly think about what to implement next. However, a problem arises.

The post How To Create And Customize A WordPress Child Theme appeared first on Smashing Magazine.

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4 WordPress Alternatives: the What, Where, and Why

This guest post is by Matt Setter of MaltBlue.com.

As bloggers, we’re all familiar with WordPress, whether as a self-hosted setup, or via WordPress.com. I think that, if you’re a blogger and you’ve not used it, then you’re likely in an odd minority.

If you do a Google search for “blogging software,” WordPress will likely be among the first results you’ll see. But is it necessarily the best choice?

Yes, “everybody’s doing it,” but does that make it the right choice? Just like in the 90’s when Microsoft seemed like the only choice, but then we found alternatives like Mac or Linux, there are alternatives to WordPress too.

Now maybe you’re quite happy with your WordPress installation, it meets your needs, and your site’s humming along nicely. Well, that’s perfectly fine. But what if you’re not? What if you want to change, or have the opportunity to change?

What if you’re:

  • just starting out
  • about to rebuild or redesign your blog
  • moving hosts
  • concerned WordPress is not meeting your needs
  • contrarian in your thinking?

Well if you’re any one of these, you’ll love this post. Today I present to you four alternatives you may never have heard of, showing you the pros and cons of each, how much they cost, and where you can get them from. Ready? Great! Let’s begin.

Habari

habariHabari is a secure blogging platform designed from the ground up with the current and future needs of the blogging community firmly in mind. It’s also designed to be open and transparent, using modern software development techniques in its design.

Some examples of blogs run on this platform include:

  • http://barefootrunner.co.uk/
  • http://futurespark.com.au/

The Habari project screencast linked below gives a great introduction to the CMS.

Features

  • Support for a wide variety of plugins and extensions, including:
    • contact forms
    • Last.FM
    • spam management
    • Amazon
    • Google Maps, AdSense, and Analytics
    • star ratings
    • members-only access
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
  • modern theme support
  • support for multiple users and multiple sites in one installation
  • support for tagging
  • support for a wide variety of media, including Viddler and Flickr
  • custom RSS feeds and statistics
  • Feedburner integration
  • modern spam filtering techniques
  • automatic Twitter updates
  • Disqus integration for commenting.

Cost and availability

Habari is available as a free download from the project home page. You can even try out a demo version without needing to install it.

Support options

Habari support is available via:

  • FAQ
  • users group
  • IRC (internet chat, similar to ICQ, MSN, Google Chat etc).

Is it for you?

If you’re keen to roll up your sleeves and manage things yourself, or you have great tech support, try out Habari. However, if your host doesn’t support it or you’re not able to do it yourself, then this may not be the best option for you.

CushyCMS

cushycmsCushyCMS is, as the home page says, “A Truly Simple CMS.” It was designed to be implemented with as little effort as possible; to be “Super Easy To Use!”

Where Habari is more like WordPress in that you can download, install, and configure it yourself, CushyCMS is a fully hosted solution.

Minimal manual effort is required on your part, other than the work required to implement modest customisations. Have a look at the introductory video below to see just how easy it is.

Blogs that use CushyCMS include:

  • http://thewebtherapist.com/
  • http://www.the-nomads.co.uk/

Features

Depending on the package that you choose, different features will be available to you. In the free package, you get:

  • five sites
  • unlimited site editors
  • availability in 20 languages.

If you take the pro package, you can:

  • brand your installation
  • customise the interface via a wysiwig editor
  • remove all ads from the site
  • use your own domain name and logo
  • configure access rights for each user
  • customise the CSS classes.

Cost and availability

CushyCMS is available from Stateless Systems and comes in two forms:

  • free
  • pro, for US$28 per month.

Support options

This depends on the package that you’ve chosen. If you’ve chosen the free package, you get:

  • videos
  • documentation
  • package FAQ
  • access to the Google user group.

If you upgrade to the pro package, you get all that, plus direct email support from Stateless Systems.

Is it for you?

Depending on your needs and requirements, CushyCMS could be just what you’re looking for. You can sign up and get started in minutes. There’s no need to worry about what your current provider does or doesn’t support, as this system is fully hosted. You can get started with the free version, but you’ll have limited branding and domain control privileges.

You can upgrade to the pro version, but unless you’re making regular money with your blog, you might not want to pay the monthly fee for it. However, you do get a company backing the product with 24/7 support, should you have any questions or queries.

concrete5

concrete5Just like WordPress and Habari, concrete5 is available to be downloaded, configured, and installed at your web host and is a blogging platform built from the ground up to satisfy the needs of website editors, designers, and developers alike on a foundation of proven open source technologies.

The underlying philosophy of concrete5 is to make running a website easy. As you can see from the demo video below, in just about all aspects of site administration, you can simply click on a region of the page and edit it to your heart’s content.

A couple of blogs that run on concrete5 are:

  • http://www.gigstadpainting.com/
  • http://www.sustainableharvest.com/

Features

Concrete5:

  • is easy to theme yourself, or you can choose from a wide variety of pre-made themes
  • supports a wide variety of plugins and extensions including:
    • digital download support
    • discussion forums
    • ecommerce
    • ad servers
    • configurable menu navigation
    • star reviews
    • scrolling ticker
    • image gallery
    • traffic and statistics management
    • Google Maps
    • user chat
    • country-based redirect
    • Vimeo and YouTube support.
  • easy to configure, whether by hand or via the wysiwig editor
  • easy to update, right from your browser
  • open source and completely free to use
  • easy to install and configure.

Cost and availability

Concrete5 is available from the concrete5 website and is open source, so it’s free.

Support options

Similar to Habari, concrete5 doesn’t have a paid support option, however it does have:

  • an active community
  • clear documentation
  • a thorough FAQ.

If you are a developer, or have access to development support, training and integration packages are also available.

Is it for you?

Concrete5 is a good mixture of the best parts of the two previous packages. You can install it yourself, but training and custom build support are also available. So, depending on your needs and your available budget, concrete5 may be the right option for you. Why not give a trial version a go today to see?

TomatoCMS

tomatocmsLast, but by no means least, is TomatoCMS. Like Habari and Concrete5, TomatoCMS is an open source, modern blogging and CMS platform designed from the ground up to meet today’s needs and demands.

Examples of blogs that run on this platform include:

  • http://www.thethao68.com/
  • http://home.phono.co.jp/

Two key aspects set TomatoCMS apart: Widgets and the Layout Editor. Let’s look at its feature list.

Features

Among a vast array of compelling features are:

  • a variety of built-in modules (extension) including:
    • banner advertising support
    • category management
    • comment management
    • simple menu management
    • multimedia management
    • in-built news system
    • tag support
    • poll support
  • built on the Zend Framework, jQuery, and 960grid, making it fast, light and flexible.

In addition to this it’s also:

  • SEO friendly
  • secure
  • highly themable
  • packaged with a simple visual editor allowing you to drag, drop, and resize almost any interface element.

Cost and availability

As with Habari and Concrete5, TomatoCMS is also a free download available to be installed and configured on your host as your needs demand.

Support options

Also like Habari and Concrete5, TomatoCMS doesn’t offer a commercial support package. However it does have a solid project wiki and a thriving forum. If you have troubles with it, then you’re likely to find the solution there without too much hassle.

Is it for you?

If you’re keen to control most, if not all, of the aspects of the system on your own host, then this is the option for you. However, if you need support then this option may not be the best choice.

Choices, choices

So there you have it. If you want to change from WordPress, have an opportunity to change, or are just starting out, now you have four additional options to WordPress to choose from.

Take a closer look and evaluate them. When you find the one that ticks all your boxes, give it a try and let me know how it goes for you.

Do you run your blog on an alternative to WordPress? Why is it your platform of choice? What makes it the best one for your blog and your business? Let us know in the comments.

Matthew Setter is a freelance writer, technical editor and proofreader. His mission is to help businesses present their online message in an engaging and compelling way so they’re noticed and remembered.

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How to Turn Off WordPress Comments for Good

For some of the websites you create, comments are completely unnecessary. Sometimes it’s a matter of not wanting people to comment on your pages.

Posts are fine, but why does WordPress even think that pages would need comments? Then there’s the fact that some comments present a security risk if they contain suspicious links that visitors unknowingly click on.

So, let’s keep this short and sweet. You want to get rid of comment functionality on your WordPress site? Here’s how to do it.

8 Ways to Disable Comments in WordPress

There are different reasons why you’d want to disable comments in WordPress and not every reason is going to lead you to the same solution. So, whether you want to disable comments for certain posts, disable comments on all pages, create tighter controls over who can comment, or just get rid of that pesky comment spam, there is a fix for you:

Method #1. Individual Page Controls

There may come a time when you want to block (or allow) comments on a specific page or post of your website. I’d say this is a pretty rare use case, but it’s still good to know that you have the option to control comments within each page.

Step 1

Navigate to the Page or Post in WordPress that you want to update this setting for.

Step 2

Scroll down to the bottom of the page until you see a box labeled Discussion. If you do not see that box, scroll back up to the top of the page and drop open the Screen Options in the top-right corner. Click Discussion and then scroll down again. It should be there now.

Step 3

To disable comments on this page, unclick the Allow comments box. You can also disable trackbacks and pingbacks here as well. (More on that in option #5 below.)

Discussion box in the Dashboard

Step 4

Save your changes.

If you want to disable comments for all pages on your site, scroll down to option #7.

Method #2. Disable All Future Post Comments

Now, if you decide that you want to shut off comments on your posts, you can set a universal control from the Settings within WordPress.

Step 1

In WordPress, go down to the Settings tab and select Discussion.

Step 2

At the top of this page, you’ll see a section called Default article settings. Uncheck Allow people to post comments on new articles if you want to disable this functionality.

Default article settings

As is noted beneath that checkbox, you can override that setting by changing the settings on individual posts. Just follow option #1’s steps above.

Step 3

Save your changes.

Take note that this setting only applies to new posts that you create on your WordPress site. You’ll need to enable #3 if you want to disable comments on older posts.

Method #3. Set Auto-Close on Comment Sections

Let’s say you’ve taken care of #2, but you want to remove comments from previous posts. You can do this through the same discussion settings in WordPress.

Step 1

In WordPress, go down to the Settings tab and select Discussion.

Step 2

In the Other comments settings section, check the Automatically close comments on articles older than [0] days. This will effectively remove the comment form and thread on all posts previously created.

Other comment settings

Step 3

Save your changes.

Method #4. Implement Stricter Comment Controls

If the issue you have is that you like some of the comments coming through but want better control over which ones actually publish to your site, you can set up those restrictions within WordPress’s settings as well.

Step 1

In WordPress, go down to the Settings tab and select Discussion.

Step 2

The amount of control you put over how comments are submitted, reviewed, and approved is up to you.

Comment settings

This page will allow you to do a number of things like:

  • Only allow registered users to submit a comment.
  • Receive an email whenever a comment comes through.
  • Require manual approval of all comments.
  • Give frequent commenters a free pass to comment without approval.
  • Put comments into a queue if they contain suspicious links.
  • Blacklist comments that contain certain words, links, etc.

Step 3

Save your changes.

Method #5. Kick out Trackbacks and Pingbacks

Trackbacks and pingbacks are comments that appear on your posts after someone has linked to your content on their own website. Since many of these are just spam, many WordPress users choose to disable them entirely.

Step 1

In WordPress, go down to the Settings tab and select Discussion.

Step 2

Under default article settings, uncheck Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks) on new articles.

Trackbacks

You can also disable this on individual pages or posts by following option #1.

Step 3

Save your changes.

Method #6. Use the Akismet Plugin

The Akismet plugin is one of the most popular and well-reviewed WordPress plugins available, and for good reason. It sifts through all the comments that come into your site, instantly detecting whether or not they look like spam. The best thing about this plugin is that it’s pretty hands-off. You shouldn’t need to go into your Comments folder to clean out bad or other suspicious-looking comments. Akismet will put them aside for you.

Method #7. Use the Disable Comments Plugin

This is the WordPress plugin you’ll need if you want to completely disable comment functionality. This means that there will be no comments on pages or posts on your site. The Disable Comments also disables comments fields and sections throughout the WordPress admin so that users can’t override the universal settings. So, if you need a one-and-done comment disabler, this is it.

Method #8. Use the Disable Comments RB Plugin

Disable Comments RB plugin

No special skills or code modifications needed to disable comments on your website using Disable Comments RB. Just install the plugin and enable main functionality.

You can set comment controls for pages all at once without affecting your posts.

Key features of Disable Comments RB:

  • All comments links in admin menu are hidden
  • Hide Dashboard / Recent Comments section
  • Hide Dashboard / Discussion section
  • All comment links in admin bar are hidden
  • Disable all comments widgets
  • Discussion page settings turned off
  • Disabled RSS/Atom feeds
  • Turn off Pingback functionality in header
  • Pingbacks are disabled

A smart algorithm makes this plugin simple and powerful. While it allows global disabling of comments on all posts, pages, and attachments, it also permits selective enabling of comments anywhere on your website. Just edit this functionality in the desired sections of your WordPress site.

Wrapping Up

Well, there you have it: eight simple ways to enable, disable, and get a better handle on comments on your WordPress site. It might seem like overkill, but every WordPress site has different needs when it comes to comments and thus different solutions are required.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated for accuracy and relevancy.
[Originally Published: 2013 / Revised: 2017, 2022]

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Top eCommerce Payment Gateways for WordPress

Okay, so you’ve created a kickass design, your site’s running in tip-top shape, and your visitors are more than ready to convert. What more could you ask for?

But then your soon-to-be-customers get to the payment gateway and don’t see their preferred provider listed. Or there’s a security warning that’s thrown them off-guard. Or, even worse, they change their minds, want to go back to the site to add another item to their cart, but they realize they’re no longer on your site and don’t know how to get back.

So, what can you do to ensure that UX issues like the ones mentioned above don’t keep your visitors from converting? There’s really only one thing you can do: choose a payment gateway provider (or providers) that will provide a reliable and secure experience.

In this post I’m going to:

  • Explain what payment gateways are and how they work
  • Show you some popular payment gateways, how much they cost and how to use them
  • Talk about how you can integrate these payment gateways with WordPress

If you already know what a payment gateway is, feel free to skip ahead to the section on popular gateways and WordPress integration. :)

What Is a Payment Gateway?

To briefly describe what a payment gateway is, it’s a third-party tool that evaluates and processes payments from your customers. So, rather than set up a basic contact form that requires customers to fill in their information to place an order—which you would then need to manually process on your end—the payment gateway handles it on your behalf.

There are a number of benefits to using a payment gateway. The time savings is obviously one of them. There’s also the matter of PCI compliance. And there’s the flexibility in payment types you can accept by using a payment processing tool.

Of course, like with any other third-party system you bring into your WordPress site, there are a number of things that must be taken into consideration. Here is what you will need to think about:

Cost

With most third-party integrations, there’s almost always an upfront cost associated with it. However, when it comes to payment processors, you also need to take a closer look at the fine print as there are fees you’ll need to pay for each transaction processed. There are some that also charge your customers a fee in order to use the payment gateway—and nothing screams “depart this transaction immediately” more than an unexpected cost.

Payment Location

Some payment gateways enable users to add the payment gateway directly onto their site through an API. This can be a good thing as it prevents that feeling of disruption as visitors are shuttled to a different website to enter their payment information. However, there are some payment gateway providers that are so well-known and trusted (think of PayPal) where the disruption might not matter that much if customers feel more confident submitting payment information through that site instead of your own.

That’s ultimately what you need to keep in mind here: what will your customers be more comfortable with. Do they want one seamless process that occurs entirely on your site or would they be more comfortable paying through a well-known provider? You can use A/B testing to see which option leads to higher conversions or you can solicit feedback from your customers and ask them directly what they prefer.

Merchant Account

You may run into a number of payment processors who require you to have a separate merchant account into which funds are deposited, which means yet another step you have to take care of in order to get your online payment system up and running. However inconvenient that may seem right now, though, it’s important to note that payment gateways who don’t require merchant accounts and are willing to directly deposit funds into your account are more likely to charge you a higher processing fee.

Security

Obviously, this point can’t be stressed enough as security shouldn’t stop even if the purchase experience is handed over to another party. Your payment gateway should be just as secure to use, if not more, than your own website. This means they need an SSL certificate, additional encryption, and must be PCI compliant.

Countries Accepted

The first thing to do before signing with any payment processor is to check your site’s analytics. This will tell you which countries your visitors are located in, so you can include country-compatible payment methods, currencies, and translations in your payment gateway.

Taxes

If you’re collecting revenue through your site, you need an easy way to collect the appropriate amount of taxes. While there will, of course, be local taxes, you’ll also have to be aware of country or region-specific taxes, like the value-added tax (VAT) in the EU. So, if you know you’re going to sell goods out of state or country, your payment gateway should be equipped to calculate those taxes for you.

Automated Payments

For product sales, this might not be something you need to worry about. However, for those of you offering a recurring service or something that customers will purchase frequently enough, automated payments are definitely worth thinking about. One way to do this is to create an option for recurring payments. You may also want to create an auto-pay method whereby payment information from previous transactions can be saved so customers don’t have to re-enter it every time.

Plugin Compatibility

If your site is making sales, then you most definitely have an eCommerce or shopping cart plugin at your disposal. Not every payment gateway will work with your plugin of choice, so confirm compatibility before signing up.

Design

And, of course, you’ve got to think about the design of the payment gateway. Will it allow for branding personalization so that it matches your site? Is it mobile responsive? How intuitive is it in terms of layout, numbers of steps or pages, etc.? Again, this is still part of your customers’ experience and you don’t want bad design to ruin that.

Best Payment Gateways for WordPress

Alright, so now that you know what you’re looking for, let’s narrow down that search and compare the best payment gateway providers for WordPress.

  • PayPal Payments Pro

    If you need a little extra out of PayPal, their Pro option is worth consideration:

    • Cost: There’s a $30 monthly fee to use this service, in addition to the per-transaction fee assessed.
    • Payment Location: You won’t have to send customers to PayPal. They’ll see the recognizable and trusted logo on your site, but they can stay right where they are to make a payment.
    • Merchant Account: There’s no need for one with PayPal, but you do have the option if you want a quick and easy way to deposit funds into your bank account.
    • Security: PayPal provides you with options to keep transactions on your site PCI compliant.
    • Global Friendliness: PayPal accepts only six currencies from credit card providers. If customers make PayPal payments, though, they’ll take over 25 currencies from 200+ markets.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: Because this is PayPal, a good portion of the payment types available come from them, including: PayPal standard payments, PayPal credit, as well as PayPal special financing. You can also accept credit cards, bank transfers, and even phone-based credit card payments.
    • Automated Payments: I don’t believe this is an option.
    • Plugin Compatibility: PayPal Pro supports most major shopping carts.
    • Design: The UI is fully customizable. It also works across all devices, so you won’t have to worry about the mobile payment experience.

    Interested in PayPal Payments Pro?

    Details

  • Stripe

    Stripe is definitely not lacking in features:

    • Cost: There are no setup or monthly fees. Aside from the usual per-transaction charges, the only costs you have to worry about are from customer chargebacks.
    • Payment Location: You can create a totally custom checkout for your site or you can use their pre-built Checkout.
    • Merchant Account: No need for a merchant account.
    • Security: If you’re keeping customers on your site to process payments, Stripe offers developers the option to use client-side tokenization to ensure PCI compliance.
    • Global Friendliness: Strips works in over 100 countries (for your and your customers’ base of operations) and accepts over 135 currencies. There’s no change for currency conversion either.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: Stripe accepts all major credit cards, bank and debit payments, Bitcoin, and digital payments from Apple Pay and Android Pay. Their API tools also enable developers to set up alternative payment processing options like selling products from a tweet.
    • Automated Payments: Stripe is set up to help all e-commerce business types: basic stores, on-demand marketplaces, subscription services, and even crowdfunding.
    • Design: This tool was built with the developer in mind, so its capabilities can be extended with simple APIs.

  • 2CheckOut

    Here are just a few of 2CheckOut’s features:

    • Cost: In addition to the standard fees per transaction, they also charge for international transactions and currency conversion.
    • Payment Location: You can either use the API to put the checkout on your site or you can use “inline” checkout which moves the process to their site while making it still look like it’s on yours.
    • Merchant Account: You need a merchant account in order to accept payments.
    • Security: They are Level 1 PCI compliant.
    • Global Friendliness: Their payment gateway is offered in 15 languages, includes 87 currency options, and they’ll process payments in over 200 markets.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: They accept credit card, debit card, and PayPal payments, among others.
    • Automated Payments: You can create pricing plans, flexible billing schedules, automated payments, and more.
    • Plugin Compatibility: Works with WooCommerce, WP e-commerce, Zoho, Shopify, osCommerce, and more.
    • Design: You can brand the gateway to match your site. The checkout page is also mobile-friendly.

  • Authorize.net

    Authorize.net is another widely accepted gateway that might offer precisely what you need:

    • Cost: There’s an initial $49 setup fee, a $25 monthly fee, as well as per-transaction fee.
    • Payment Location: It’s up to you: this can go on your site or on Authorize.net’s.
    • Merchant Account: You’ll need a merchant bank account to collect your payments.
    • Security: You’ll have free access to Authorize.net’s fraud protection tools if you integrate gateway on your site. Otherwise, Authorize.net is PCI DSS certified.
    • Global Friendliness: While you’re free to accept payments from around the world, you must reside in the U.S., Canada, UK, Europe, or Australia in order to use this service.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: Payment types include credit card, Authorize.net e-checks, as well as digital payments like Apple Pay, PayPal, and VisaCheckout.
    • Automated Payments: There are a number of options available. You can store customer information for future transactions, set up subscriptions, or create dynamic recurring billing schedules.
    • Plugin Compatibility: Works with e-commerce and banking plugins like BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento, Moolah, QuickBooks, and Wells Fargo.
    • Design: You’re free to personalize the look of your checkout page to match your brand.

    Interested in Authorize.net?

    Details

  • Braintree

    Braintree offers another way to accept payments on your WordPress site. Check out some of its features:

    • Cost: There are no monthly fees to use Braintree, just the standard per-transaction fee. Note that the fee depends on which country you’re processing payments from.
    • Payment Location: You can use Braintree’s hosted service or you can use their drop-UI to put it directly on your site.
    • Merchant Account: Since this is a PayPal service, you don’t need a merchant account.
    • Security: Advanced fraud protection is included with this service.
    • Global Friendliness: Braintree’s service will process payments in over 130 currencies and for customers in 44 countries.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: You can accept payments from PayPal, credit cards, Apple Pay, Venmo, Masterpass, and more. In addition, you can split payments with other partners or providers.
    • Automated Payments: There are recurring billing options for repeat customers, subscription-based services, as well as donations.
    • Plugin Compatibility: This tool will integrate with a huge range of e-commerce and sales tools like Salesforce, Magento, Freshbooks, BigCommerce, and 3dcart.
    • Design: You can customize the design of the checkout or use their ready-made interface.

  • Square

    Square also lets you accept payments online easily. Check out Square’s features:

    • Cost: No monthly fee and 2.2% per transaction.
    • Payment Location: Although Square provides its own online store building platform, you can use Square’s APIs to accept payments directly on a WordPress website that you build yourself, or use plugins like a WooCommerce extension to integrate Square’s payment processing and other tools with your online store.
    • Merchant Account: You need a transactional bank account in case of refunds or disputed payments.
    • Security: They are Level 1 PCI compliant and offer layered security with fraud prevention methods.
    • Global Friendliness: At this time, WooCommerce Square is currently only available for the U.S., Canada, Australia, Japan and the UK.
    • Payment Methods Accepted: All major credit and debit cards are accepted. Payments are deposited into your linked bank account next business day with their standard schedule, or you can create a custom payment schedule to suit odd business hours.
    • Automated Payments: You can receive automated payments for single and recurring transactions.
    • Plugin Compatibility: Works with WooCommerce, WP EasyCart, Ecwid.
    • Design: You can customize the gateway to match your site. The checkout page is also mobile-friendly.

Integrating Payment Gateways with WordPress

Here’s the thing about payment gateways: you might not be responsible for designing them or developing the code that processes payments in the first place, but that doesn’t mean you can wipe your hands clean of what happens once your visitors land on them. If you’re including a payment gateway on your site, then it’s a part of your visitors’ experience and needs to be accounted for as you shape that experience for them, so it’s important to integrate your payment gateway correctly not just with WordPress, but also any plugins used to enhance or extend your site’s functionality.

For example, our Forminator plugin not only lets you add forms, quizzes, polls, and calculators to your site, but also take payments, donations, down payments, and sell merchandise with built-in Stripe and PayPal integrations. The video below shows you how to build order forms with payments for free in WordPress using the plugin’s payment integration features:

Different types of applications like Learning Management Systems (LMS), membership sites, and listing directories have built-in payment integrations with WordPress.

Below are some plugins that help to make integrating payment gateways and WordPress easier:

  • WooCommerce Square

    WooCommerce Square is a free plugin that lets you integrate the Square payment gateway on WordPress to sync inventory and product data between WooCommerce and Square POS.

    Some of the benefits and features of using this plugin for payment integration with WordPress include:

    • PCI compliant payment processing option that meets SAQ A levels of compliance.
    • Support for WooCommerce Subscriptions
    • Support for WooCommerce Pre-Orders
    • Allow customers to save payment methods and use them at checkout
    • Use an enhanced payment form with automatic formatting, mobile-friendly inputs, and retina card icons
    • Sync product data automatically between WooCommerce and Square.

    See the plugin documentation for setup instructions.

  • WP Easy Pay – Square for WordPress

    WP Easy Pay – Square for WordPress is another free plugin you can use to integrate WordPress with the Square payment gateway and accept simple payments and donations if you are not using WooCommerce or don’t need to add a shopping cart to your store.

    Some of the highlights of using this plugin for payment integration with WordPress include:

    • SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) support.
    • Sandbox support allows you to see test transactions in Square Dashboard.
    • Use a single button to collect donations and simple payments.
    • Users can enter custom amounts to make payments for donations.

    The plugin also has a premium version with additional features like support for digital wallets, email notifications, and reports.

  • WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway

    WooCommerce Stripe Payment Gateway is a free plugin that lets you accept Stripe payments through WooCommerce and add payment request buttons like Apple Pay and Google Pay and other payment methods on your website. It also supports recurring payments like subscriptions.

  • Stripe Payments

    The Stripe Payments plugin lets you integrate your WordPress site with the Stripe payment gateway to accept credit card payments.

    Once installed and configured, you can add ‘Buy Now’ buttons anywhere on your site using a simple shortcode and accept donations. After users purchase online with one-click payments, they are redirected to a “Checkout Result” page showing details of the transaction. Payment and order information can then be accessed from your WordPress dashboard.

  • Stripe Payments for WordPress – WP Simple Pay

    WP Simple Pay is a free standalone Stripe Checkout plugin that lets you accept credit card payments with Stripe Checkout on your WordPress site with no complex shopping cart, form builder or membership site plugin required.

    The free version comes with many built-in features, including unlimited payment forms, mobile responsive Stripe Checkout pages, product images display in Stripe Checkout page, optional verification and capture of user details, and the ability to specify payment success & failure pages. The paid version offers additional features including support for subscription payments and options.

  • WooCommerce PayPal Checkout Payment Gateway

    If you’re using WooCommerce, you can add this free plugin to integrate your site with a PayPal in-context checkout payment gateway, which remains hosted on PayPal’s servers, allowing your site to meet security requirements without affecting your theme.

    Refer to the documentation to learn how to integrate this plugin using PayPal’s easy setup method.

  • WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart

    WordPress Simple PayPal Shopping Cart is a free plugin that lets you insert an ‘Add to Cart’ button on any post or page using shortcodes and display the shopping cart on your pages or sidebar. The plugin also has an option to use smart PayPal payment buttons and various additional features.

    See the plugin’s documentation section and video tutorials for setup and integration information.

  • 2Checkout Payment Gateway for WooCommerce

    If you want to process payments online using 2Checkout (2CO), this plugin integrates with your WooCommerce store to provide itemized checkout and pass all billing and shipping data to the 2CO purchase page.

Getting Paid Is The Easy Part

By this point, you should have a pretty good idea of what you want your payment gateway to do and have a few providers you’re thinking of using:

  • Square offers relatively low processing fees and lets small businesses and independent sellers accept most consumer credit cards and facilitate cashless transactions.
  • Stripe is the most developer-friendly platform, so if you really want to get into personalizing your checkout page, this is a good option to have.
  • PayPal is a great choice if you want to leverage the trusted name of a payment processor that over 184 million people already use.
  • 2Checkout seems to be the most global-friendly of the options, so if you’re hoping to cast a wider net, that may be the one you want to turn to.

Probably the easiest way to integrate payment processing gateways with WordPress is to use an eCommerce plugin that already has an extensive list of payment options built-in.  Many eCommerce plugins not only give you this option, most will even provide links, wizards, and helpful tooltips to facilitate this process, so all you have to do is sign up for an account with the merchant, enter a registration code or special key into a settings field, and boom diggity… you’ve saved a whole lot of time!

One last thing to think about when researching payment gateways is how you’re going to deliver customers their goods after collecting their money, especially if you plan to sell physical goods. That’s why we’ve written a companion piece on the top eCommerce plugins for shipping products.

If you haven’t built your eCommerce site yet, make sure to read our comprehensive guide to planning an eCommerce store with WordPress before getting started.

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20 Tools To Get You Started With Web Development

Creating a website may sound complicated and tedious, but there are a lot of tools out there that can make your task a lot easier. It’s important to have a good presence online both for businesses and organizations or causes, this is why all the tools and services available for helping you create a website are top-notch. We’ve rounded up a few of the best we could find and here’s the list.

[m2leep]

1. Gridgum

 1

Looking for beautifully designed themes and templates that are also fully responsive? Then head over to Gridgum, a niche market place where you will find stunning themes and templates created by passionate authors who will even help you out if you need any help. Gridgum emphasizes quality rather than quantity and this is why both sellers and buyers are encouraged to use it. The marketplace offers WordPress and Bootstrap themes and also Admin Panels for people who are shopping for their new website. Gridgum accepts themes created with Bootstrap, Gumby and Skeleton frameworks. As a buyer on Gridgum you will receive points with each purchase that can be redeemed as discounts on future orders and when paying through PayPal you won’t have the surcharge other markets take. You can also reach out to the theme or template’s author if you need help with anything. If you’re looking to publish your themes on Gridgum here’s what you should know: all themes must be responsive, have an unique name and be compatible cross-browser. Gridgum will also encourage you to offer support to clients who download your theme. Money-wise, Gridgum offers a 70% commission for all exclusive themes and a 45% one for non-exclusive themes.

 

2. ExpressionEngine

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Managing your website’s content has never been easier with the new ExpressionEngine tool created by EllisLab. ExpressionEngine is one of the most flexible content management tools you’ll find. You can break down tour website’s content and display it the way you want, without having to worry about some pre-established notion of how it should be stored and accessed. The tool is very easy to install and will fit any sort of website from real-estate and tourism to eCommerce or personal blog, without having to make any modifications to it. Besides, you can integrate it with several apps and services and you don’t have to be a professional for that, as it’s easy to be done. On the other hand, if you’re a programmer you’ll immediately appreciate the quality of this tool and recognize it as one of the most extensible content management tools there are. To find out more about ExpressionEngine and how it works, check out the website.

 

3. HTML5 Maker

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One of the most popular trends on the Internet is animations. If you want to create your own animations HTML5Maker is one of the best online services that can help you do that. Whether you’re planning an ad campaign or maybe you just want to attract more viewers on your personal blog, HTML5Maker is the right tool for this job. The tool is very easy to use so you don’t have to have any design skills or know-how. There are many great ready-to-use templates you can choose from. You can create your animations with the help of the Online Animation Editor and the Online Image Editor and then embed them from the cloud into your website or share them as a Template with your friends. Plus, with the Photo Editor and the Transition Effects your creativity will have no boundaries, whether you want to create banners or sliders or any other type of animated multimedia content.

 

4. Argento

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Argentotheme.com offers one of the best Magento templates there are. Argento theme was designed based on the best eCommerce store practices and in accordance with Magento developers’ guidelines, therefore you’re assured to have a highly functional and flexible template when choosing Argento. It’s also SEO optimized and responsive. The template works on any kind of device, even with iOS, Android or BlackBerry because it scales to fit any screen resolution, so you don’t have to create a separate mobile application for your website. One of the best parts is that you won’t have to worry about the installation process, because the team of professional developers will take care of installing your template in less than 24 hours. Since the theme was created with SEO in mind, it will provide your store with improved HTML structure and SEO tags and HTML attributes. Argento also features lots of popular extensions that will make your website more user-friendly.

 

5. BugMuncher

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BugMuncher is a smart tool that will help you receive feedback and bug reports on a live site from your users. If you are fed up with receiving emails from your users that only tell you your website is not working, then you need BugMuncher in your life. Not everybody is familiar with technical information, so it may be difficult for some users to describe their issue. BugMuncher will allow your users to highlight the issue, take a snapshot and send it straight to your mailbox. Along with the snapshot you will also receive essential data about your users; just at a glance you will be able to see what path they took through your website, what operating system they use, what browser they have and even what plugins they have installed. By passing custom information about your users into BugMuncher you’ll be able to use it to recreate the conditions under which the feedback report was sent to you.

 

6. Tickera

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Handling big or small events can be stressful and time consuming. Tickera is a WordPress plugin that will help you stay better organized when planning your events. With Tickera you can design and create custom made tickets and sell them directly on your web site. Tickera is very user friendly, it’s incredibly simple to install and has no commission fees. Designing your own ticket couldn’t be easier. You can arrange the elements after your heart’s desire, choose your favorite color palette and even add your own background image for a personal touch. You can even have different kinds of tickets (Standard, Premium, VIP) for the same event. Tickera offers support for integration with a barcode reader, which will improve your check in process significantly. You can check in your attendees on your iPhone or Android to make sure less people are left waiting outside your venue. This WordPress plugin includes many popular payment gateways out there like PayPal, 2Checkout, Stripe, and Paymill.

 

7. Kukook

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Studies have shown that recruitment agents spend an estimated 3 seconds looking over the CVs they recieve for a job offering. Due to this fact you always have to make sure that your resume can really stand out from the cround and ensure that your application recieves the attention it truly deserves. A good resume content-wise is not enough, you need an attractive, professional template to go with it in order to be sure that you’ll really get the recruitment manager’s interest. Kukook is the place to go in search for the template you need. Kukook offers a selected gallery of unique resume templates that are sure to fit your needs perfectly. You can choose to go with a modern resume template, a graphic design resume or even an artistic resume template and the best part about all of these is that they can easily be altered in Word as soon as you download them to your computer.

 

8. Themify

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Themify.me offers a great variety of responsive, beautifully designed themes that are also very functional. With the help of features such as the Drag&Drop Builder, custom widgets and shortcodes, you can easily customize your template without the need to have any programming skills. In addition to these great themes, Themify.me has recently developed a new set of tools called the Builder Addons. These tools extend the Themify Builder and can be used with any Themify theme and the Builder Plugin. The Pointers tool helps you attract the attention of the viewer towards certain parts of your website by placing different pointers. The Audio feature allows you to upload and audio file and place it in any column within the Builder. With the ProgressBar module you can display the progress of an ongoing project in an animated way. The A/B image module allows you to compare two images placed side by side.

 

9. Templates-Master

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If you’re on the market for the best Magento templates then you have to check out what the team over at Templates Master is doing. They offer a variety of highly functional Magento templates and extensions that are developed based on improved HTML. Besides, they always pay great attention to SEO. They recently developed a new tool called the Magento Page Cache. This tool was created as a solution for saving time and money. It will make your online store run faster and it will help you pay less for your hosting packages. Page Cache is based on core Magento architecture that supports both static and dynamic blocks and it also has some additional extension settings that allow you to set flexible cache rules. The team provides installation instructions and manual as well as 1 year of free support so you don’t have to worry about installing and managing it, it’s going to be very easy.

 

10. Free Icon Maker

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FreeIconMaker.com allows you to create an unlimited number of icon sets and customize them just how you want it. Free Icon Maker is incredibly easy to use, it has an intuitive interface and will make you feel like a designer even though you don’t have any designing skills. It’s easy to get started. You can either upload your own vector (SVG) icons or browse through the gallery at Free Icon Maker where you can choose from over 1000 icon sets. Next on, play with colors, gradients, shadows and size until your icon looks ready to be used on your website. When you are done, you can share your icon sets as a template with the other users. Free Icon Maker is completely free both for personal and commercial use and will help you create amazing iOS 8, Flat and 3D icon sets for mobile applications and websites in the blink of an eye.

 

11. GoJS JavaScript Library for HTML5 Canvas

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GoJS is a feature rich JavaScript library that will help you implement interactive diagrams across modern browsers. GoJS supports graphical templates and data-binding of graphical object properties to model data. Only the model, consisting of simple JavaScript objects, needs to be saved and restored. If you need a hand in the beginning to get things started, take a look at more than 90 sample apps that show different diagrams with their full source code. Also, be sure to check out the useful step-by-step instructions on building apps with GoJS diagram and model data which will surely come in handy. GoJS features plenty of highly advanced tools that will make user interactivity more fun: you can pan, scroll, select, delete, undo, drag and drop, copy and paste elements and you can even experiment with GoJS’ extensible tool system for custom operations, event handlers and overviews. GoJS has you covered with all you might want to construct: Tree diagrams and Family trees, Network diagrams, Mind maps, Smart grid diagrams, Social network diagrams and Organization Charts.

12. XQual

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XStudio will handle the complete life cycle of your QA/testing projects from beginning to middle to end: products, releases, requirements, specifications, agile projects, tests, test campaigns, test reports and defects. This simple to use test management solution includes an open source (LGPL) SDK offering you the possibility to interface with all types of automated tests. For storing data XStudio uses MySQL, Oracle or SQL Server, which means it can be used from Windows, Linux or Mac. What is more, thanks to its particularly flexible and easy to use Java SDK, XStudio is the only test management tool that can be interfaced with proprietary tests. This cool management solution will also get rid of bugs, slippages and regressions for you. What sets XStudio apart from the crowd, making it ideal for your customer, is that it offers outstanding tools to measure the coverage of your testing, like the traceability matrix, the execution progress and the quality index of your web site.

 

13. VirtueMart

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VirtueMart is a smart Open Source E-Commerce solution for the Joomla! Content Management System. This user-friendly tool will help you manage your store and keep an unlimited number of clients, orders, categories and products. VirtueMart has an intuitive interface and has many built in features that will allow you to start your own store within minutes. You don’t have to worry about templates, design or layouts. By adding plugins, components and modules, everything will look smooth and polished in no time. VirtueMart’s Dynamical Calculator will make sure all your prices are correctly displayed according to time zone and shopper group. It will even calculate discounts and tax, taking into consideration the geographical location of your customers. The inventory tool is also extremely useful. It will let you know when you are running out of a certain product and it will even send alerts to your clients informing them how many products are left. What’s more, VirtueMart is free to download and the latest release has just come out and it is full of first-rate enhancements that will make developers giddy. Checkout their release notes right now and see how much better VirtueMart has become with VM3.

 

14. MotoCMS

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If you need to build beautiful mobile friendly web sites fast and you don’t have programming or coding skills, then MotoCMS is exactly what you need. This powerful website builder will help you create sites from scratch: you will be able to build multilingual sites, you will have an Image Editor and a useful Media Library.  Adding new elements to your site is a piece of cake: a subscription button, a search field, a photo gallery or a “buy now” button can be up and running in just a few minutes. With MotoCMS SEO friendly websites are just a click away. MotoCMS offers an intuitive Admin Panel that makes customizing the look of your site easier. MotoCMS for Flash sites provides a set of highly advanced tools and widgets for creating video and image galleries, for embedding video and MP3 player, mobile version creation, custom widgets integration, custom fonts, image editing, and many more.

 

15. Opinion Stage

 

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If you need to gather feedback from your users or attract new viewers to your web site, the best way to do this is by creating your own custom made poll. Opinion Stage will even help you monetize your poll by displaying commercials or promoting other polls from across the network within it. You can customize your poll by choosing what to display: the number of votes or voters. You can also choose what type of answers you want to receive from your users: multiple choice or head to head. Once your poll is done, you can share it on your Facebook page with just one click. Opinion Stage will keep you posted on your polls’ performance: check how many times they have been shared and even see on what social platforms they are trending. The useful Opinion Stage platform will even let you filter your results by time span, geographical region or gender.

 

16. Webflow

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Webflow was created in order to make designing your very own website as easy as possible. With the simple drag and drop editor Webflow provides you can create your website visually and let it worry about generating all the HTML5 and CSS3 code it requires. The best thing about Webflow is that all the code it generates will respect all W3S rules and it will make your site ready to be put straight into production.

 

17. Uptime Robot

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Uptime Robot’s motto is ’Downtime Happens. Get Notified!’ and they provide the best service to help you achieve just that. Uptime Robot allows you to define up to 50 monitors for your websites or servers and have them checked every 5 minutes to see if they’re still working properly. In case an issue arises, Uptime Robot will let you know via email, SMS, push messages, RSS, Twitter and more, depending on how you’ve set up your preferences. With Uptime Robot you will be able to monitor HTTP(s), Ping, Port as well as check Keywords. What’s more Uptime Robot has a modern, easy to use dashboard that helps you do this whole setup and view statistics about your uptime, downtime and response times. And there’s more, Uptime Robot offers you a fully documented API that allows you to integrate this tool straight into your apps and benefit from its full potential.

 

18. Adverts

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Adverts is the plugin to turn to when you’re looking to either create your very own classifieds website or just add this section to your already existing page. Adverts is easy to install and allows you to set up your own shortcodes in order for you to be able to run your site smoothly. What’s more, Adverts was created with the WordPress development guidelines in mind which means it has clean code, full documentation, can be extended with hooks and filters and is compatible with any properly coded WordPress theme. Adverts has a modular build that will offer you the option to add or remove extra features as you see fit, all the while benefiting from its core functionality. In addition to all of this the team behind Adverts really cares about offering customer support. Therefore were you to encounter any issues while using their plugin, feel free to email them with your problem and you’re guaranteed to receive a response within 24h.

 

19. CoffeeCup

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Having a website for your business is vital nowadays and it can’t be just any website, you have to make sure that it is both responsive and content driven. CoffeeCup is the tool to help you achieve just that. Using this tool you will have access to a drag and drop editor that will help you define your website’s layout as well as all the design elements it contains. What’s more, you’ll also have access to a first rate form builder and a website analysis tool.

 

20. Daily Hosting

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If you are ready to step up your game and invest in a reliable web hosting solution but you don’t know what to choose, then DailyHosting.net will provide you all the information you may need and dozens of examples to make things even easier for you. Daily Hosting offers several web hosting guides explaining the concepts of web hosting for those who are not familiar with them yet. These guides are completely free of charge and they are very helpful. The reviews on Daily Hosting are also extremely useful since they show you exactly what hosting solution suits every type of sites. Before committing to a web hosting solution you should bear in mind several important factors. Always take into consideration how much traffic your site brings in daily and try to think ahead: will your traffic volumes decrease or increase in the near future? Most importantly, set yourself a budget and make sure you don’t exceed it.

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Premium Plugins That Web Designers Should Use In Their Projects

I think I speak for all of us when I say that digital creatives like to work with the finest tools and resources available to us. However, it’s only natural that our lists of favorites should mutate as new trends and better solutions emerge. A series of products and services that were really killing it last year, simply don’t make the grade in the autumn of 2014.

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So, what are the plugins that you turn to most often nowadays, to build websites? In this article, you will find a selection of over a dozen premium solutions that I believe rock the industry right now.

 

LayerSlider Premium Multi-Purpose Slider Plugin

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It is common knowledge that websites using slideshows, image galleries, or content sliders, hold a certain appeal with the audience. I am aware that the ways of integrating this type of elements in your website are manifold, yet my vote goes to the best there is: the premium solution named LayerSlider. It helps create slides that are responsive across most devices, and SEO-ready. Plus, the plugin is engineered to tackle multiple website creation platforms.

Users begin by choosing a skin. Overall, LayerSlider is available in 13 skins that set the stage for your creative endeavors. Furthermore, you are greeted by a drag-and-drop builder, which has timeline view and lets you preview everything you do in real time. Your options include choosing from 200 preset slide transitions with 2D and 3D effect, and working with a transition builder to devise custom animations. In terms of content,you are free to add HTML, text, Google Fonts, videos, and images.

 

PrestaNitro Product Inline Editor

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My second favorite premium solution concerns e-commerce websites based on the popular software PrestaShop. PrestaNitro is a great back-end module, which even has an Envato award to show off for that. You will find that it supports multiple languages, not to mention multiple purposes.

You can use PrestaNitro in order to work straight from front office when setting up products for your online shop. In other words, you get to see the results of every template modification, and manage catalogs much easier. Basically, you have a clear path to inserting fields like name, reference, short and long description, stock, and price.

 

Madhai – Responsive PrestashopMegamenu

madhai-responsive-prestashop-megamenu

 

How do you usually go about creating megamenus for your PrestaShop websites? You need an advanced solution for that purpose. My recommendation is Madhai, a module based on Bootstrap, just like the default PrestaShop theme. Why would you go for it? For aesthetic reasons, to begin with. ‘Madhai’ means ‘beautiful’ and its designs stand by that denomination. What is more, this plugin is calibrated for swipe on touch-screens, and completely responsive to popular browsers and common devices.

Here, you can expect to find plenty of customization options, a 12-columns grid, as well as 50 animation effects to choose from for your drop down. Finally, Madhai is coupled with fast and helpful customer support.

 

Shortcode Ultimate Plugin for Joomla

shortcode-ultimate-joomla

 

In the instance where you’re creating websites on a platform like Joomla, you could make do with a plugin for shortcodes. I would recommend a premium solution such as Shortcode Ultimate Plugin. There are 60 essential shortcodes on the table, and you can use its intuitive drag-and-drop interface in order to create any number of varieties. You get to preview your work in real time, and are able to choose between working on front office, or not.

 

CollageMaker

Collage-Maker---WPEka

 

If your website tells a good story, then the public will rush in to see what it’s all about. One of the best and most visual ways to grip your audience is by setting up an image collage. For WordPress, CollageMaker does the trick. Use it with confidence to integrate tiled, tiled mosaic, or randomly-styled collages, display them in a sidebar, and even allow visitors the interactive function of moving them around. Images open in a lightbox, and You can insert a custom URL link on each of them.

 

Magento CustomerAttributes Extension

Magento-Customer-Attributes-Extension

 

Any web designer and web developer can testify to the importance of knowing your website users. Collecting data is all the more crucial in the case of Magento stores, since in e-commerce it’s easier to sell products that people actually need. Thus, you should consider the customer account area or checkout registration as opportune venues to ask pertinent questions. Feel free to use this extension, and create as many customer attributes as you please.

 

Lizatom Shortcodes Plugin

lizatom-plugin3

 

WordPress projects can always use some shortcodes, especially if they entail the forging of blogs or virtual stores. Why not have a go with Lizatom Shortcodes Plugin, and see what you think? I believe its colossal selection of shortcodes is worthy of attention. No less than 5000 shortcodes are ready to respond to your every request. You get CSS3 buttons, tooltips, info boxes, and pricing tables, and can easily add a 3D shadow effect to your images, add pricing tables, reveal text in accordion style, not to mention customize order lists.

 

UserPro

UserPro4

 

One of the essential characteristics of a great website is high-level user experience. Enhancing the way people interact on your website is a sure ticket to boost user experience on the whole. Therefore, it makes sense to turn to a premium plugin like UserPro, an excellent profile management tool. With it, you get loads of display options to set up site member directories. Besides, you can use it to create registration forms, assign them various roles, and let users reach social networks fast.

 

Monarch

monarch-dashboard-sm

 

The only reason why social sharing and following are so important to your website, is that they have the power to increase incoming traffic. So, you stand much to gain by enlisting the help of a premium plugin for social sharing. Monarch allows you to choose from 40 networks, style up buttons for some of the most popular ones, and show them on your web page in 8 different locations. Apart from that, Monarch also monitors user engagement in time.

 

Chimpy – MailChimp WordPress Plugin

Chimpy_3

 

MailChimp is such a wonderful tool for e-mail marketing, don’t you agree? If you hold this statement to be true, then good MailChimp WordPress integration is desirable. Chimpy can really help you with that. You can use this premium plugin to create registration forms, display them in engaging pop-ups, show comment forms, and synchronize all users across WordPress. Lastly, you can also try the effective marketing stunt that only makes certain website content available to confirmed members.

 

iMapper

i-mapper-3

 

Nothing comes close to visual elements when you want website visitors to pay heed to its content. The importance of that appeal is even greater for web stores, so you have to find a proper way to display product images. If you were to map out each product image with informative pins, then this would serve to keep potential clients on the same page while getting to know their product. iMapper can help you customize a pin styles, or you can choose preset designs, and place the pins anywhere on your image.

 

Subscriptio

Subscriptio_3

 

Want a straightforward yet proficient tool to help you sell woocommerce subscriptions through your website? Say no more. I can vouch for a premium plugin that helps you ace that area. Subscriptio is a fine tool for dealing with every single detail that concerns your subscriptions, and it’s complete with hooks and filters for professionals. Among other things, you can use Subscriptio to establish the length of suspension periods for subscribers, and often they get to receive reminders.

 

Content Timeline

content-timeline3

 

The layout of your website content weighs tons when visitors are trying to decide whether it’s worth their time or not. On average, it takes a few seconds to come to a conclusion in that sense. Content timelines turn that decision into an easy one to make, and a possitive one at that. Care to transfigure your website’s user experience? Use the Content Timeline plugin and its 11 customization options. Display any amount of groups and numbers in chronological (or otherwise) points that show text to the left and to the right.

 

FrontEnd Page Builder

FrontendBuilder-3

 

How well do you usually handle time pressure? Web developers and web designers are no strangers to it, as every project has to be completed before a certain deadline. You know what really cuts corners? Code-exempting solutions. For example, you can opt for a special WordPress plugin that allows you to work in front office, and so finish projects faster. You need not worry, as FrontEnd Page Builder offers sophisticated features,and comes with first-class support.

 

Joomla On Exit Popup Box

joomla-on-exit-popup-box

 

You might also want to accelerate the marketing force of your websites. If they happen to be based on Joomla, use this clever plugin to display a pop-up for your readers just as they show signs of heading towards the exit. The pop-up is certainly bound to get their attention.

 

WP Awesome Support – Responsive Ticket System

wp-awesome-support-responsive-ticket-system

 

I am going to end my list of competent premium plugins with a responsive plugin for WordPress themes. Check out this premium solution for Awesome Support. A Responsive Ticket System is just what your website needs to keep clients happy, and make sure they are spreading news of your professional services.

 

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This concludes my compilation of astute plugins. Although this has been a subjective account through and through, I believe that each and every solution presented here follows the current industry standards to the letter. As such, these premium plugins are bound to satisfy the demands of any web developer or web designer. I hope you enjoyed my article, and found helpful information in it. If you have anything to say, then please leave a comment.

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20 Must Have Tools For Creating And Maintaining Your Website

Being a web developer or designer nowadays can be both stressful and rewarding. Rewarding because your services are some of the most sought after ones in the current market and stressed because the expectations of your clients seem to increase with each passing day. It’s clear that we no longer need plain, functional websites, but interactive, memorable designs. This is why we’ve compiled a list of 20 of the best tools and services available to help make your job a lot easier.


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HotJar

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It’s essential for all developers and designers to know how users are really using their websites. By careful analysis of this information, you will be able to offer your client useful data and help them improve their UX and conversion rate. And HotJar is just the tool to help you accomplish all of this. HotJar is a platform that offers you tools to gather all the information you could possibly require in order to get a complete picture of the way users interact with your website. Unlike its competitors, HotJar offers all its features within a unified dashboard so you’ll be able to review the collected data in one place as opposed to flitting from one screen to another in order to have a good grasp on what’s happening.

As far as what the features offered, HotJar offers you: feedback and exit polls that can help you get first hand information about how user-friendly your website is, online surveys so as to be in tune with what your visitors require, heat maps that show you the areas of interest within your website, funnel and form analysis so that you’ll know what pages or sections prove to be the least interesting to users, full visitor session playback and much more.

Giverz

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Giverz is currently hosting a giveaway from which you can get up to 4 bitcoins. Do you need to know more or are you already typing in their name in your search engine? Well, if you do, here’s what Giverz is all about: they are a team dedicated to gathering all the best giveaways available on the Internet and offering them up for grabs to their emailing list. How it works is that you go over to their website, subscribe to the mailing list and join in on the fun. In no time, you will hear about one of their amazing campaigns (be sure to follow them on Twitter and Facebook in order to always be up to date) and the countdown begins. As soon as the timer hits 0 the entire emailing list will receive an email with a link letting them know the giveaway is up for grabs. The fastest ones to click on the link will be the lucky winners, so time is of the essence. What are you waiting for?

ZippyPixels

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ZippyPixels is a platform that aims to supply developers and designers with some of the best products available at very reasonable prices. The whole idea started of after the team over at ZippyPixels (who are experienced web developers and designers as well), searched the Internet for a place where they could get the resources they needed without having to pay an arm and a leg. They found none. So the decided to create their own service and keep in close touch with the community they aimed to help. This is how bundles like Grandé came to life. The community asked for a comprehensive bundle that will supply their every need and ZippyPixels was more than happy to oblige. The Grandé bundle offers 160 HD mockups that cover categories such as:

  • Logos
  • Books
  • Flyers and advertisements
  • Device
  • Magazines
  • Stationery and more

Go over to ZippyPixels and take a look at just how awesome these mockups look and start thinking about all the cool ways in which you could use them.

 

ShrinkTheWeb

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ShrinkTheWeb is the tool that all mobile and web developers have been looking for. By using ShrinkTheWeb, they will be able to turn the process of taking screenshots and including them into their websites from a pain into a breeze. This tool has an automated screenshot system that is capable of scaling the pictures to any need, not to mention a speed of capture and delivery that is unmatched across the Internet. All you have to do is write a singe line of code or use an existing plugin and ShrinkTheWeb will set off to do all the hard work. In addition to its screenshot features, ShrinkTheWeb also offers URL to PDF Conversion, Custom Size Previews and Private Label Service that will help you make your website stand out from the crowd. ShrinkTheWeb is not only a free service, it also offers unparalleled tech support in case you need assistance.

 

BrowseEmAll

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Writing code that ensures your website is compatible cross browser is a best practice, but it’s not always the way things go. This is why BrowseEmAll is a tool that will make web developer and designer’s lives all the much easier. By using BrowseEmAll, you will no longer have to test out your website on a variety of browsers, the analysis is done automatically. This tool offers you the possibility to view your website in multiple browsers at the same time and track down compatibility issues faster and easier. Also, BrowseEmAll offers a wide range of mobile simulators that will not only help with the responsive aspect of your website, but they will also help you optimize your website for mobile access. What’s more, you will be able to test your HTML and raw files directly within BrowseEmAll, so you won’t have to upload them to a server beforehand. In conclusion, by using BrowseEmAll you will be able to ensure that your websites will look good on any browser or device.

 

Paddle

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Paddle.com is an eCommerce platform made especially for digital content creators. It has been created with the intention of taking away the boring aspects of eCommerce like payments, file hosting & delivery, taxes and chargebacks to let sellers focus on what they’re really enjoy: creating products.

An analytics dashboard complete with sales stats, customer data and the ability to manage/create products means that sellers can control everything in a single location. And Paddle’s beautiful Overlay Checkout creates a seamless buying experience for customers, since they’re able to complete purchases on the same webpage.

Getting started couldn’t be easier: sellers just need to name and price their product, upload their file and that’s it, they’ll be given a dedicated checkout link they can use to sell their products. Paddle handles the rest! If you’d like an easy way to sell digital content, sign up for free here.

 

Stamplia

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Stamplia Builder is an editor that allows you to modify purchased email templates easily and more efficiently than ever before. Getting started with Stamplia Builder is a quick process and before you know it you will be working on your first template like you’ve been using the editor your whole life. Within the Stamplia Builder you will have access to automatic export of templates into email providers like MailChimp, CampaignMonitor and SendGrid. Also, all the templates you create with this tool will automatically be compatible with the email provider’s editor. In addition to this, you will be able to see your modifications on the email template in a real-time responsive visualization mode and add amazing images with the aid of the faster image editor. When you’ve finished, Stamplia Builder makes sure that the template you have modified will look good both on computer and mobile and you will be able to test it in order to make sure your emails won’t accidentally get into Spam.

 

DealFuel

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A variety of developer tools, an impressive assortment of graphic resources, an extended array of eBooks and eCourses and numerous bundles to gather them all, this is how DealFuel could be described. As you can see, this website is the perfect place to head to regardless of what your needs might be. Here you’re sure to find first rate WordPress themes and plugins, SEO tools and dedicated software for your website. You’ll also find elegant mockups, professional textures, vectors and Photoshop actions for all your visual needs. And don’t forget about the numerous bundles that include a whole selection of useful resources.

What’s more, DealFuel has a dedicated section for freebies that contains some of the best free products that you can find anywhere. And even if it so happens that the product you’ve had your eye on isn’t in the free category, don’t worry too much about it, DealFuel has already negotiated a deal for you that will ensure you get the best possible price for it. And here is an exclusive coupon code that will get you an additional 10% discount over and above the discounted offers – WONDER2014.

 

RumbleTalk

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With RumbleTalk you will be able to add an active HTML5 chat room to your websites in a matter of minutes. The chat rooms offered by RumbleTalk are highly customizable and are sure to fit in seamlessly with any kind of website that requires them. The chat rooms come complete with moderators, SSL and a variety of themes. You also have a choice about the way you integrate them, either by embedding them in a webpage or featuring them as a floating toolbar. Regardless of the way you choose to display them, you can be sure that the chat rooms will be a pleasant experience for all your users as they will be free to add videos and photos straight into the chat room and steer the conversation towards anything they see fit. Don’t hesitate to start your business relationship with RumbleTalk straight away, they are a team dedicated to keeping their customers happy and creating a relationship based on trust and mutual understanding with them.

 

OOcharts

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OOCharts is the API that will help you create your very own Google Analytics dashboard. This tool is completely free and could prove to be invaluable in your future projects. It will help you make chats of your website’s activity, it will queue your requests that exceed the limits of Google Analytics and make sure you get your information reliably, it will cache requests of previous reports so that they’ll load faster next time you call them up and all you need to do in order to get stated is connect your Google profile and make an API key for your website.

 

Luvly

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Luvly is a premium digital marketplace that encompasses an extensive collection of resources that are meant to help you make your website more visually appealing. Since the way your website looks is one of the most important things to your visitors, it is essential that you select only the best tools available for your graphics. This is why Luvly is the perfect marketplace for you. All resources available on this marketplace have gone through a thorough approval process destined to ensure that only the best make it online. The range of requirements that Luvly supplies is impressive. You will find any graphic resources here from mockups, to icons, vectors, patterns, logos and more. They also have dedicated sections for both WordPress and Blogger templates that are sure to respond to all your requirements. What’s more, Luvly is dedicated to helping its community grow and empowering designers, so they organize numerous workshops and tutorials to help them get their feet under them.

 

CloudCart

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In order to create an online store, you need all the expertise you can get. Luckily, CloudCart has the best know-how about making an online store and then some. By employing CloudCart all you’ll have to worry about is having all the products you’re selling in stock and ready to go out to clients as soon as your website comes online. CloudCart will take care of everything required in order to create a successful website for your business. They will provide you with secure hosting, beautiful themes that are completely search engine optimized and make sure that word about your website is spread over a variety of social networks like Twitter or Facebook. What’s more, they will offer you Integrated Payments, 1-click checkout, international payments and a delivery and tax calculator so that you’ll be ready to start selling as soon as your website is live. And, in addition to all of this, you will have advanced reporting tools at your disposal that will let you know how your business is doing at any given time.

 

Opinion Stage

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Adding opinion polls to your websites can prove to be highly beneficial for their user friendliness level. Opinion Stage allows you to register to their service and add your first poll on your website in under 5 minutes. By using polls provided by Opinion Stage you will be entering a community of users that are currently using on of the best platforms for online surveys available. And that’s no small feat. Opinion Stage not only offers completely customizable polls for your pages, but they also offer an all-encompassing dashboard where you can view all the results gathered by your polls instantly. In addition to this, you have complete freedom to filter these results by a number of criteria and even display them in charts and graphs in order to read them easily. Another cool feature that Opinion Stage provides you is the possibility to monetize your polls by either including ads within them or by promoting other polls from the Opinion Stage network.

 

WPEka Club

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A repository of first-rate WordPress themes and plugins is something that sounds good to a lot of people. WPEka Club is such a place. With a collection of more than 60 themes and plugins that cover a varied array of products for Business, Auctions, Social Media, AdSense, SEO and more, WPEka Club is the perfect place to head to for all the WordPress awesomeness. By opting for their all-inclusive plans that begin at only $27 a month, you will have complete access to the entire WPEka Club collection as well as all the brand new releases that are released while you’re an active member(and the team over at WPEka promises that you will enjoy at least 4 new releases each month). Don’t hesitate to join WPEka Club’s community and enjoy all the premium WordPress themes and plugins as well as one of the best support systems available in the premium WordPress market.

 

Fiddler

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Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy that is guaranteed to make your life a lot easier. By using this tool you will be able to test the security of your website, detect bottlenecks within the communication between server and application and manipulate and edit all your webs sessions. With Fiddler you will be able to put your website to the test regardless of what operating system you’re using (Windows, Mac or Linux), browser or platform (Ruby, Php, Java and more).

 

Web Starter Kit

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If you’re looking to start work on a project that is destined to be used on multiple devices, then the Web Starter Kit is the tool you need. Amongst its features you will find: multi-device responsive boilerplate, living component style guide, live browser reloading and more. Also, by using the Web Starter Kit you will be following the Web Fundamentals guidelines out of the box.

 

BrowserShots

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If you’re looking for a fast way to see how your website looks on a variety of browsers, head on over to BrowserShots. All you have to do in order to get the information you require is enter your website’s URL, choose the browser you need and click Submit. In a matter of minutes you will have a snapshot loaded an ready to be examined.

 

jQAPI

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jQuery is undoubtedly being used to its full potential nowadays and many developers turn to it frequently. This is why it is so important to have access to its documentation easily and within a well structured browser. This is what jQAPI provides, an alternative jQuery Documentation Browser that is available both online and offline and that will make developer’s lives a lot easier.

 

New Relic

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New Relic is a tool that will help you gather performance data from all your applications and allow you to make informed decisions about their future. Among the products that New Relic offers you’ll find: Application performance manager, native mobile application performance manager, real time big data analytics for business decision making, server monitoring for cloud and data centers and more.

 

Inspiration Hut

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It’s always good to be able to have access to honest reviews and feedback from fellow developers and designers and Inspiration Hut is the place where you can find that. Inspiration Hut features a diverse array of products available for the entire web development and design community and it also encourages this community to share its work with others. By browsing through their gallery you are sure to find numerous resources that will help you in your work. The best part is that most of them are free. Inspiration Hut encourages its community to contribute to its ever-growing repository and create an online go to place that guarantees quality. Among the cool resources you’ll find over at Inspiration Hut are: backgrounds, Fonts, Brushes, Free PSDs, Icons, Mockups, Patterns, Print Templates, Textures, Themes, UI Kits and much, much more. So head on over to Inspiration Hut and enjoy their collection and don’t forget to credit when required.