DEV Community: GretaThemes

How to Export and Import Category / Taxonomy in Wordpress

GretaThemes — Thu, 27 May 2021 18:56:49 +0000

You need to move categories / taxonomies from a website to another, but there are too many of them. More than that, manually creating each category is too time-consuming and easy to make mistakes. Additionally, WordPress does not support export and import taxonomy in default, including category. Sounds freakingly tiring, isn't it? In this case, you should export and import categories automatically to save time and avoid making mistakes.

In this post, I'm gonna tell you how to use WP Import Export Lite plugin to export categories from a website, then import them to another site. You can also use this plugin to do the same thing with other taxonomies.

Notably, I just export and import category information like names, descriptions, etc. If you want to export and import data of posts in the category, you can see through this post.

Now, let's get started!

Export Data of the Category with WP Import Export Lite

First, you need to install and activate the plugin. WP Import Export Lite plugin is free and available on wordpress.org.

After installing, a new menu named WP Imp Exp will show up on the admin sidebar of WordPress.

Keep in mind that you need to install WP Import Export Lite on both websites to make it work!

The original website has 6 categories like this:

To export a category from this one to the other, go to WP Imp Exp > New Export (1).

In the Choose what to export section, choose Taxonomies / Categories / Tags (2), then choose Post categories (3).

After that, click Customize Export File (4).

Wait a minute for the plugin to export data, then click Download:

There I have a .xml file:

This file has all data of the category in the original website. What we need to do now is importing it to the target website in the next step.

Import Data of the Category to WordPress Website with WP Import Export Lite

Now I will log in the WordPress website that I want to import my category to. Before importing, it only has 2 categories: Plugin and Uncategorized (a default WordPress category).

I have installed WP Import Export Lite on this site, so we will skip the plugin installation step.

To import data of the category to the new website, go to WP Imp Exp > New Import and follow these steps:

Step 1: Choose a File to Import

Go to menu WP Imp Exp > New Import.

Choose Uploads from Desktop, upload file .xml that we have just downloaded, and then click Continue to step 2.

Note: You can choose an available file from the website or upload it from a URL if you want.

Next, you will be directed to the step 2 screen.

Step 2: Choose Data to Import

In the tab Import each record as, once again we choose Taxonomies / Categories / Tags > Post Categories to import the categories' data:

In the Handle New and Existing Items checkboxes, you have 3 options to import files:

Import new items & Update Existing items
Import new items only & Skip Existing Items
Update Existing Items & Skip new items

Here I choose Import new items & Update Existing Items. After choosing, move to step 3.

Step 3: Configure the .xml File

This step includes some advanced options to configure the .xml file, such as Add Filter, File Options, File Data Preview. To get more details, you can click here.

These options require some technical knowledge. However, we only need to import normal categories, so you can skip this step and click Continue to Step 4.

Step 4: Choose Content to Import in the Category

WP Import Export Lite plugin supports importing a lot of content types like names, descriptions, images, ... But as I have said before, I only import the category's name and description.

First, go to Field Mapping > Name & Description. Next, drag and drop the termname and description tags to assign them to the category, then click Continue to Step 5 like what I do in the gif below:

Step 5: Optimize Importing Speed

In Import Speed Optimization, you have 2 options:

High Speed Small File Processing
Iterative, Piece-by-Piece Processing: divide a file into small parts and process one by one. If your file is too large and consumes a lot of time to process, you should choose this option.

Here I choose High Speed Small File processing. After that, click Continue.

Finally, click Confirm and Run Import:

After having it done, the importing report will show up like this:

Now I will check the result by going to Post > Categories:

As you can see in the above image, beside the default categories Plugin and Uncategorized, my new categories have been added with descriptions.

Last Words

Exporting and importing categories become extremely easy with WP Import Export Lite plugin. If you follow this tutorial strictly, you will definitely make it done.

In addition to category, tags are also helpful tools to help web owners categorize and organize posts. You can combine using tags and categories to manage your post effectively like the tutorial in this post.

How to Restrict Content By Members in WordPress

GretaThemes — Sat, 08 May 2021 08:49:35 +0000

Your WordPress website has some important, sensitive, or paid content, and you want to allow only a few users with a certain role to view them. Easy peasy! You can use a member plugin to restrict who is allowed to read content on your WordPress website.

In this article, we're going to do it step by step with Restrict User Access plugin. But first, let's learn about the applications of restricting content by members in WordPress.

When Do You Need to Restricting Content by Members?

Restricting content by members can be applied for:

Online books websites: allow only VIP members to read paid books or hot books.
School websites: allow only teacher accounts to read private documents such as lesson plans and graduation theses.
Company websites: allow only manager accounts to read private documents or internal reports.
And many other applications, depending on your creativity.

For better illustration, I'm going to make an example of a company website. Here what I do:

How to Allow Only Certain Users to Read Content

In this article, I classify all users on the WordPress website into two levels: Manager and Staff. Staff can only read normal posts, while managers can read both normal and private posts.

To do so, I use Restrict User Access plugin.

Restrict User Access plugin helps you create a membership website where users get different levels. Depending on the level, users are allowed to use features or read posts with increasing importance / secret.

Restrict User Access plugin is free and available on wordpress.org, so you just need to install and activate the plugin as usual:

Upon activation, a new section User Access will show on the sidebar on the back end of your WordPress website:

This time, follow these below steps to restrict content by members in WordPress:

Step 1: Create Levels and Grant Capabilities for Them

First, go to User Access > Access Levels > Add New:

In the Add New interface, you can create access conditions, apply the level to users, grant capabilities for the level, and set up other options such as duration, hide the admin bar, etc.

Now, name the level, and then move to the Capabilities tab to grant capabilities for this level:

As you can see on the image, the first column contains capabilities that can be granted to the currently selected level (Manager). To grant a capability to Manager, just click on the corresponding cell in the Permit column; otherwise, click the cell in the Deny column.

In this article, I only focus on the capability to read articles or pages. Therefore, I only permit the following capabilities:

read: read normal posts / pages
read_private_posts
read_private_pages

As for other capabilities, I choose Deny.

Next, don't forget to click Create.

We've finished the first level Manager. As for the Staff level, I do the same. But in the Capabilities tab, I only permit read.

These are two levels (Manager and Staff) that I've created:

However, these levels still haven't been applied to any user. To do so, move to step 2.

Step 2: Apply the Level to Users

There are two methods to apply the level to users:

Method 1: Choose users manually
Method 2: Synchronize with user roles

Here we go!

Method 1: Choose Users Manually

Method 1 is suitable for internal company websites that have a few members (<20 people) because it's time-consuming to choose numerous members manually.

First, go to User Access > Access Levels and choose the level you want to apply to users:

Next, move to the Members tab, in the Search for Users section, fill in the user names and click Save.

Method 2: Synchronize with User Roles

Method 2 is faster than method 1 because you can utilize available user roles on your WordPress website. However, make sure that managers and staff are assigned the right user roles.

To synchronize with user roles, you also choose the desired level and go to the Members tab.

In the Synchronized Role section, choose the role you want to synchronize. In this example, I created two user roles (Manager Users and Staff Users) before, so I just need to synchronize them with the corresponding levels.

Ok, now I'll check if we do it right. My WordPress website has three private posts and some normal posts as follows:

First, I log in with a Staff account. As you can see, I can't see private posts. They don't even show up:

Next, I log in with a Manager account. And tada, I can see private posts now:

Restrict User Access has another interesting feature that is creating access conditions. With this feature, you can set up so that users in a level can only read certain posts that you specified.

How to Create Access Conditions

First, choose the level that you want to create access conditions for. In this example, I choose the Staff level:

Next, go to the Access Conditions tab and click New condition group:

Now, you can see a lot of condition types. However, we just focus on the capability of reading posts, so let's choose Posts / Blog:

After that, click the box next to the Posts / Blog section, and then select the posts that you allow your users to read. For example, I choose the following posts:

Finally, don't forget to click Save.

From now on, Staff users are only allowed to read content that I specified above. As for other posts, although they can still see the title and featured images on the archive page, they can't read the post content.

Last Words

Restricting content by members in WordPress is very crucial for websites that have sensitive, important, or paid content. You should utilize this technique to protect your website content.

Do you know any other application of restricting content by members in WordPress? Share it with us in the comment section!

See ya!

How to Add a Popup to WordPress Websites Freely and Quickly

GretaThemes — Fri, 07 May 2021 07:31:25 +0000

When visiting a website, have you ever seen an image or message suddenly shown on the screen? That’s the popup or the notification window of the website.

Popup is a popular and effective marketing strategy, used by a lot of business runners and website owners. To add a popup like that to WordPress, you can use a free plugin to make it quick and simple. Even if you’re not an expert, it takes only 10 minutes to follow our instruction.

Why Should You Use a Popup on a Business Website?

The image below is an example for the popup of a business website. It looks great, isn’t it?

Popup is not only stunning (if you manage to design a well-matching and attractive one) but also have many other benefits like:

Promote important information, sale and marketing campaigns,...
Call to action, increase conversion rate
Generate lead

Add a Popup to WordPress with Popup Builder plugin

To add a popup to your WordPress website, you can hire a credible web design company or a coder. However, to save time and money, plugin is the best option. Among a plenty of popup plugins out there, Popup Builder may be the most easy-to-use and effective.

It is a free plugin and available on wordpress.org, so you just need to install and activate the plugin right in the Dashboard.

Upon finishing, follow these steps below.

Step 1: Choose the Popup’s Type

Now the Popup Builder submenu will show up on the Dashboard. Go there, click Add News and choose one of the 4 provided popup’s types.

For better illustration, the image below is how the 4 types of popup provided by this plugin display on the front end.

After choosing the type you want, go to the next step.

Step 2: Add Content to the Popup

First, give the popup a name to manage it more easily.

Different types of popup need different contents. Let’s dig in each type.

Add Content to Facebook Popups

On the interface to create Facebook popups, you need to fill in these information:

The message that shows up in the popup. You should use a call-to-action sentence to encourage readers to interact. Also, you should add images, banners so that it will be more stunning.
Insert Facebook URL.
Choose a layout for the popup on a whim. Basically, these layouts are not so different. Thus, you can try them out and choose your favorite one.
Click here to hide the share button if you want.

And this is what I’ve got:

Add Content to Image Popups

Here you just need to upload the image or insert the image’s link. This plugin supports JPG, PNG and GIF.

This is a beautiful banner that I made by myself for the Black Friday campaign of my website:

Add Content to HTML Popups

Adding content to HTML popup is just like writing a post in WordPress Gutenberg editor. You can insert images, videos, tables, buttons, quotes, … or any other content that WordPress editor supports. The interface is kinda similar to Gutenberg editor, so it’s quite friendly and native.

And this is my HTML popup on the front end:

Add Content to Subscription Popups

Here we have quite a lot of content to fill in and customize for your subscription form. However, what you need to notice most is fields of the form, such as First name, Last name, Email, and customize their Placeholder and Required field.

After that, scroll down and customize the display of the form in terms of Form background options, Inputs’ style, Submit button styles to make it more stunning and matching to the website.

Notably, in the After successful subscription section, tactfully choose a suitable message, or information that you want to show to your users after they subscribe. For example, you can display thank-you notes, coupons, gifts, gift cards, … for these subscribers. By doing that, you can drag users’ impressions and improve their experience.

For example, this is my subscription email popup. Once they have submitted, I will show a notification about the Black Friday sale campaign, urging customers to go shopping.

Go to Popup Builder > All Subscribers to manage subscribers.

You can even send emails to subscribers in the Newsletter tab.

After adding content to it, scroll down. You will see many other setting options. Let’s dig in each option in the steps 4,5,6.

Step 3: Set up the Display Location and Condition of the Popup

Set up the Display Location

In the Popup Display Rules section, we need to adjust where the popup will/ will not show up.

You can choose Everywhere to show it on every page, post, tag, or customize, or show it in a certain place that you want. You can also click the (?) tooltip to get more details.

For example, I choose the location as a certain page, choose “is” to display it, and choose the display page as “Home”. In addition, you can add other locations by choosing Add.

Set up the Display Condition

In the Popup Events section, choose the time when the popup shows up (when the website has loaded for a few seconds, when users click somewhere, etc). This plugin support these following display conditions:

On load: The popup will automatically show up after a few seconds (you can add the number of seconds in the Delay tab) from when the site finished loading.

Set by CC class: allows users to click some component to enable the popup. This component will be based on the ID of it. This part is kinda complicated so you had better read the documentation carefully.

On click: similar to Set by CSS class section but you don’t need to use the ID of the popup to install the “button” to enable it.

Instead, if you choose Default in the Options section, the plugin will create a default class for the popup in the Default Class section as below.

If you choose Custom CSS, fill in the class that you have created yourself in the Custom Class section.

After that, add the class of the popup into the CSS of the component that you want.

For example, in this post, I added a button and the class I want in the Additional CSS classes section.

This is the result on the front end:

Hover Click: when hovering on a component, the popup will show up. You can do the same as in the On Click section.

Step 4: Customize the Popup’s Display

After step 3, you have had a basic popup. But if you want it to be more stunning, scroll down to the Design section. Here you can customize some components like interface, overlay, background to make it perfect as your favorite.

More than that, in the Dimensions section, adjust the its width and length by choosing Custom mode, or choosing Responsive mode to make its size match its content automatically.

Step 5: Customize Other Advanced Settings

These advanced settings allow you to configure displaying and interacting with popup, … in a more detailed way.

For example, you can choose how to close the popup window in the Close Settings section. There are many ways to close it, such as press Esc, or add a close button, … Choose one or more, that’s up to you.

If you want to add effects of closing and opening popup, or adjust the times it is shown for one user, … scroll down to the Popup Options section. You just need to click on the option that you want, and there you’ve done.

Note that when using the free Popup Builder plugin, the sections named Unlock Option colored in yellow like the image below are pro version’s features. You have to buy more extensions of this plugin to use them.

Finally, on the sidebar, there is a very interesting option: adding a fixed button on the website to show the popup when click on. This floating button is really convenient, allowing people to see it everytime and everywhere. Its design is also pleasant and not annoying.

This is the floating button on the website:

Or you can disable it by clicking Disable.

Finally, click Publish to get it done.

So you have completed your popup after 6 steps from basic to advanced settings. You have done a good job!

Last Words

As you can see, adding a popup to WordPress is not really complicated. You just have to be patient a little bit when customizing its display, that’s all of the hard work!

In addition, there are many things to increase conversion rate of the website. If you want to build an effective landing page, you had better read some more articles about how to create a high-converting landing page, or how to create a product page.

Good luck!

How to Create News Tickers in WordPress

GretaThemes — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 03:03:01 +0000

If you already have a WordPress website for magazines, newspapers, or reading blogs..., you may have difficulty in drawing visitors' attention to outstanding posts because your site is crammed with too much information. To solve this, news tickers are definitely a perfect feature to make your reading site more readable, informative and outstanding!

In this post, we will show you what news tickers are, why we should use them, and how to create an impressive news ticker with only a few simple quick steps.

Let's get started!

What are News Tickers?

On some types of websites like online magazines, online newspapers, you may see some news slides scrolling at the bottom or the header, footer or sidebar. These news slides look like those in TV news programs.

By glancing at the news ticker on a TV news program or a magazine website, viewers can get the hottest and most noticeable information. There are usually many pieces of information, which are called ticks, in one news ticker.

As in the gif below, do you see the headline news running? That is how a news ticker works.

Why Should We Use News Tickers?

News tickers have various benefits for different types of website:

For magazines, news tickers help you highlight what information and posts to be noticed.
For portfolios, they draw recruiters' attention to noticeable work experience and rewards of yours.
For other kinds of websites, news tickers themselves will become a highlight of the sites, to make your blogs, for example, more attractive and professional.

Thus, news tickers are clearly a useful tool for websites' owners. More than that, it's very easy to add news tickers to your WordPress website. Let's move to the next part and get one for yourself!

How to Add News Tickers in WordPress?

There are many ways to add a news ticker.

You can use a theme pre-built with news tickers in the beginning; that would be the easiest. Just read the theme's documentation carefully.

However, not every theme has a pre-made news ticker like that. So in these cases, you can think about using page builders or plugins.

In this post, we will use a free plugin called Ditty News Ticker plugin. It is free, very easy to use and highly customizable. You just need to download and activate it on Dashboard.

You can read more about how to install a plugin here.

Now, let's hesitate no more and follow our 3 steps to have an amazing news ticker on your site:

Step 1: Add a New News Ticker

First, go to News Ticker > Add New.

On the next screen, you will see 5 tabs below: Add Title, Shortcode, Ticker Mode, Ticker Type and Global Settings. These tabs are used to configure and display your news tickers.

Do you think there are too many things to keep in mind? Don't worry, we will make it short and clear for you:

First, give your ticker a name. Type the name in the Add Title tab. The title is usually displayed on the top of the ticker, so try to come up with an attractive name to draw visitors' attention.

After that, click Ticker Type, then add the content to display in the news ticker (with a link if necessary) in the Ticker Text section.

As I mentioned above, your news ticker may contain many ticks. Just click the (+) button to add one, and click the (x) button to delete.

Step 2: Configure News Ticker

After having a new news ticker, you need to make it more eye-catching by configuring it.

First of all, choose how your news tickers will be displayed. Click Ticker Mode, you will see 3 options: Scroll, Rotate, and List. In fact, Scroll is the most common option, but you can decide what is the most suitable one for your site.

Once choosing one of the three options above, you can adjust the behaviour of the tickers by various tabs below.

Personally, I chose Scroll mode, so I will adjust the scrolling action. There are two important things to notice: Scroll Speed and Tick Space. Actually, you have to try many times to find out the most suitable parameters. For me, I prefer the scroll speed of 8 and the tick space of 10 pixels.

Besides, I also tick Pause on mouse over option, so that the news ticker will stop moving when I want to click on a tick.

In addition, when clicking Global Settings, you will see some other options to customize the tickers. For example, if you want tickers' title to be on the top of them, tick on Display title. Or if you want to hide the tickers when there are no ticks, tick on the option like in the picture below.

Now your news ticker is ready to be displayed!

Step 3: Display News Tickers

Let's come back to the Shortcode tab at the top of the screen:

The news ticker will be displayed at where you insert this shortcode. You can add it to any position: homepage's footer, post, sidebar widget,...

Normally, we do not use news tickers for the content of a post. It would be better if you place news tickers on the header, footer or sidebar. I can give you an example of a sidebar's news ticker. First, I choose a random page, go to its Preview > Customize > Widget.

Then, go to Sidebar > Add a Widget. You will see a lot of options for additional sidebars like Audio, Calendar,... Choose Text, then you will see a small box to add the sidebar's name and paste your shortcode:

You have done many steps, right? But if you want to make your news tickers more beautiful, with custom colors, font size, opacity,..., you still have a little work to do. The free version of this plugin does not support users to adjust those parameters. So we only have result like the gif below:

The news tickers don't look so beautiful, so I styled it a bit with CSS. Go to Customize > Additional CSS.

There you will see a small box to add code. These codes will change the appearance of your news tickers.

I'm using Memory theme with the main palette of blue and white. Therefore, I added this CSS to have a news ticker of blue color:

.mtphr-dnt-tick-contents a {

color: var(--main-color);

}

.mtphr-dnt-tick-contents a:hover {

color: #000;

}

Click Publish, and see what we've got:

Here is just a simple example for you. I'm sure that you can make a much more stunning news ticker by yourself. Let's give it a try!

Last Words

So that's all about adding a news ticker to your WordPress website by Ditty News Ticker plugin. We have tried our best to make it short and clear, so we hope that this post is useful for you.

Maybe you might have some wonders or questions about our tutorial, so feel free to tell us in the comment section. We are willing to show you a more detailed tutorial about advanced options in this plugin, or other methods to add news tickers without using plugins. Thus, don't forget to connect us!

How to Easily Add Social Media Icons in WordPress

GretaThemes — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 04:34:25 +0000

It is always easier to interact with other people on social media than on your own WordPress website. That is why on many websites, they add a few icons to direct readers to their social platforms like Facebook or Instagram. If you want to have impressive and convenient social media icons like that, let's follow our construction in this post. We will show you how to link your social media channels to WordPress websites by using a plugin.

What are Social Media Icons and Its Benefits?

To get started, we will discover what social media icons are and why we should have them on our website.

Social media icons are the icons that link to the social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter of the website's owner.

However, don't mistake the these icons with social sharing buttons. Social sharing buttons allow you to share a post/page to your own post social media platforms. If you want to know more about how to add social sharing buttons, this post can help you.

Social linking is really helpful for making your WordPress website recognizable to various people on different social media platforms. Hence, you can make your website more popular and interactive with potential readers.

How to Add Social Media Icons to Your WordPress Site

There are many ways to create social media icons for your WordPress website. We have some examples:

Use a theme with a built-in social media menu / widget feature, then read the documentation of the theme to add them. Different themes have different ways to add social links, so remember to read carefully!
Use a page builder. One thing to notice is that not every page builder can support you to add a social icons module.
Use a plugin. Personally, I think this is the fastest and easiest way, not regarding how amateur you are in WordPress.

In this post, my choice is Simple Social Icon - an easy-to-use plugin just as its name. You just need to keep 3 steps in your mind.

Step 1: Install Simple Social Icon Plugin

You can download and install plugin by going to Dashboard > Plugin > Add New. Once seeing Simple Social Icon, click Install > Activate.

Step 2: Look for the Widget and Locate the Icons

After successfully installing and activating the plugin, you will be given a widget named Simple Social Icon. This is where you can add your social links and customize the display of them. There are two options for you:

Option 1: Use Admin Dashboard

To look for the widget of Simple Social Icon plugin, go to Appearance > Widget, search for the name Simple Social Icon and click on it.

Then, just find a desired location for your social icons. Note that each theme has different widget areas. For example, I choose Sidebar to display social icons, then click Add Widget.

This is when you can see the widget along with some custom options display on the sidebar. You will add links and customize the display of social media icons here.

It can't be more simple, actually. Just add the links into the corresponding tabs, and there you're done.

Simple Social Icon allows you to add up to 20 social links, from the popular ones like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to the less popular. Hence, you can insert various kinds of social media linking icons to your WordPress site.

However, custom links are not supported in this plugin. So if you have any links not included in the list above, you can't add them.

Now, let's see the result after I added some links to my website:

Option 2: Use Customizer

You can also customize and add social links using Customizer. The advantage of this way is that you have real-time preview - that means you can customize and see your social media icons displayed at the same time.

First, go to your website and click Customize

Go to Widget and find a nice location for your social icons, just like the Option 1.

After locating the links, click Add Widget and type Simple Social Icon in the search bar, then click on that widget.

At this time, add links into the corresponding tabs, like what I have told you in the option 1.

After adding all the links, this is what I have:

Step 3: Customize the Size and Color of Social Linking Icons

Customizing social linking icons is important to make your website more eye-catching. You just need to go to Admin Dashboard or Customizer on your website.

Before customizing the size and colors of social linking icons, you can write a title for them. An impressive title can be useful to urge people to click on your social icons. So remember to keep titles short and attractive, such as Follow us, Connect us, Let be friend with us,...

After that, you can choose to either click on Open links in the new window or not. For me, I will click on this option so that it can be more convenient for the users.

Next, customize the size and colors of social media icons.

Finally, click Save if you use Admin Dashboard.

Click Done > Publish if you use Customizer.

The social icons will be exactly as you have just customized.

That's it! Your website is ready to display its own social linking icons!

The verdict

Adding social media icons is as easy as eating a cake, isn't it? Just follow our instructions and you will not be disappointed. Making your website more professional with these social media icons is more likely to impress your targeted readers. If you have any questions or recommendations, don't hesitate to leave us some comments below. We are willing to listen to you.

How to Disable PHP Execution in the Uploads Folder in WordPress

GretaThemes — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 02:34:56 +0000

Protecting the beloved website from evil hackers is always a matter that every website owner concerns about. Today, GretaThemes will introduce you to an effective way to protect your WordPress website from hacker attacks. It's disabling PHP execution in the uploads folder in WordPress.

Sounds a bit technical, doesn't it? However, it's actually very easy, and anyone can do it within 5 minutes. But first, let me explain why we need to disable PHP execution in the uploads folder in WordPress!

Why We Need to Disable PHP Execution in the uploads Folder

Normally, admin and authorized users can upload files to the uploads folder. Hackers can take advantage of this to upload malicious files to the WordPress website if you don't manage user roles properly.

Especially, if your website has forms like contact form or post submission form, hackers can take advantage of these forms to upload malicious files (such as PHP files or images containing PHP code). By default, WordPress saves these files in the uploads folder. If you don't disable PHP execution in this folder, hackers can run malicious code to hack your WordPress website. Therefore, when you prevent all users (except admin) from executing PHP in the uploads folder, the uploaded files that contain malicious code won't be able to run.

There are many ways to disable PHP execution in the uploads folder, and the easiest way is inserting code into the .htaccess file.

Below is what we need to do:

How to Disable PHP Execution in the Uploads Folder

First of all, log in to the cPanel and choose File Manager.

Afterward, look for the uploads folder:

Normally, every folder in WordPress has a .htaccess file. To disable PHP execution in the uploads folder, add the following code to the .htaccess file in this folder:

<Files *.php>

deny from all

</Files>

In case the uploads folder doesn't have the .htaccess file, create a new one as follows:

On the toolbar, choose File > Create New File and set the name of the new file as .htaccess:

Next, right-click the .htaccess file and click Edit:

After that, add the above code to the .htaccess file and click Save changes:

Okey-dokey! We've finished disabling PHP execution in the uploads folder in WordPress.

Last Words

Disabling PHP execution in the uploads folder in WordPress is extremely fast and simple. You just need to create the file, add only three lines of code and then save it. It takes less than 2 minutes. However, this simple task can help you avoid a lot of troubles, so don't hesitate to do it right away!

In addition to disabling PHP execution in the uploads folder, you should also use security plugins to protect your WordPress website better. And through time, hackers will come up with more new sophisticated tricks to hack websites. Thus, don't forget to keep up to date with the latest news on WordPress website security at GretaThemes!

How to Add Apple Business Chat Button to Your WordPress Website

GretaThemes — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 03:34:41 +0000

Apple Message is a feature that allows webmasters to add the business chat button and phone / call button to their website. It's very useful and convenient because users can contact the website owners directly to ask for help. Therefore, as a website owner, you should definitely add the business chat button to your WordPress website to increase the user experience.

During the implementation, you need to use some HTML code, so it's relatively difficult for the non-tech savvy. But don't worry because we will walk you through this process step by step.

Note: The business chat button is available on only Apple devices. If users don't use these devices, the button will be hidden.

Step 1: Sign up for Business Chat

First, go to the Apple Business Register page and sign up for Business Chat with your Apple ID. It's quite easy, so I won't go into details.

Now, you already have your own Business Chat ID. Save this ID somewhere because you will need it in the next step.

Step 2: Add the Javascript Library

Next, you have to add the Javascript Library to display the Business Chat button to the website. There're two methods to do it:

Method 1: Edit code in the theme file

Find the <head></head> or </body> tags in your theme file. Their locations will be different depending on the theme. For example, I'm using Justread theme, so the <head><head> tag is in the header.php file, and the </body> tag is in the footer.php file.

After you find these above tag, add this code before the </body> tag or into the <head><head> tag:

Method 2: Using Slim SEO plugin

Other than editing code in the theme file, you can use Slim SEO plugin to add the code without going to the theme file and looking for the <head><head> and </body> tags.

Slim SEO is totally free, so you can find it on wordpress.org easily. On the Admin Dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New, and then install and activate the plugin as usual.

After that, go to Settings > Slim SEO and add the above code to the Header Code or Body Code sections.

And don't forget to click Save.

In addition, Slim SEO has many other useful features to help you automatically optimize WordPress websites for SEO. You can learn more about these features here.

Step 3: Display the Business Chat Button in the Desired Position

In this final step, you need to display the Business Chat button in the widget area you want. This can be done by adding some HTML code to the widget. The HTML code must have the following structure:

I make an example with an attribute in the form of data-apple-business-id. Do you remember the ID taken in step 1? Now, it is the time to use it. My ID is ca0db090 and I want to add the chat button in a container-style banner, so my <div> tag is:

Note that the data-apple-business-id attribute is required. It's used to specify the Business Chat ID's owner and send your messages to them.

Besides, there are many other classes and attributes that you can use for the HTML code. You can find the most popular classes and attributes in the list below:

Classes to display chat or call buttons:

apple-business-chat-banner-container: display both chat and call buttons
apple-business-chat-message-container: display chat button only
apple-business-chat-phone-container: display call button only
etc

Attributes to customize the display of chat / call buttons (colors, fonts, size, ...)

data-apple-banner-font-family: choose a family font for the Call to action button
data-apple-banner-icon-background-color: choose the background color (the circle) of the icon
data-apple-banner-icon-color: choose the colors of chat and call buttons
Etc.

Attributes related to the interaction between customers and website owners:

data-apple-business-group-id: determine the department that receives the calls / messages. For example, you can assign the ID of "Customer Service" or "Technical Support" departments to this attribute.
Data-apple-business-phone: Enter the phone number that users use to contact you if they can't chat. In case you don't add this attribute, the Call button will be hidden.
Etc.

In addition, you can find all the attributes and classes of Apple here.

After having the needed <div> tags, add them to the desired position using the HTML editor. For instance, I want to display the Business Chat button in a widget at the footer of Justread theme and here is the way to do that.

On the Admin Dashboard, go to Appearance > Widget, choose the Custom HTML widget, and then choose to display the widget on the footer.

Next, insert the following code to the widget:

class="apple-business-chat-banner-container"
data-apple-business-id="ca0db090"
data-apple-business-phone="0987725475"
data-apple-banner-cta="Got Questions? We can help."
data-apple-banner-context="Chat with one of our pros to get your offer for iPhone Xs."
data-apple-banner-scale="1"
data-apple-banner-background-color="rgb(27, 63, 104)"
data-apple-banner-text-color="rgb(255, 255, 255)"
data-apple-banner-icon-background-color="rgb(255, 255, 255)"
data-apple-banner-icon-color="rgba(0, 210, 143, 0.3)"&gt;

Finally, click Save.

We've finished displaying the Business Chat button on the footer of the WordPress website. From now on, Apple users will see the Business Chat button display on the footer like this:

You can style the button and display it in other positions in the same way with the above code, classes, and attributes. Try it, and show us in the comment section!

Last Words

Using code to add the Business Chat button to the WordPress website may be quite difficult for WordPress beginners. But if you follow this tutorial strictly, it will definitely work. After you have the Business Chat button on your site, don't forget to reply to customers' calls and messages. It will help build trust between customers and the website owner, thus improving your brand and increasing the conversion.

In addition to adding the business chat button, you can also add the live chat button and Facebook customer chat button to your WordPress website. These features help you reply to customer questions more promptly.

How To Make Your WordPress Site Fast And Optimized For Mobile

GretaThemes — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 03:31:48 +0000

Most netizens are now using their cell phones to access the internet. Some no longer view websites on a personal computer or laptop; they prefer to surf using their smartphones to search and tap into your site with ease. Thus, your website needs to be accessible on the various devices that people use today. To prepare for this eventuality, you need to learn how to create a mobile-friendly site to accommodate your users.

If your site is built using WordPress, you should also check for high speeds, meaning your web pages should automatically load once the audience clicks on any link. When a website is slow or unresponsive, they tend to look for other sites with better performance. This will result in lost traffic and revenue.

What Makes A Site Mobile-Friendly?

Before you learn how to improve your site's speed and optimize it for mobile display, you need to orient yourself on the qualities of a mobile-friendly website:

It Has Responsive Display

The foundation of a mobile-friendly website is a responsive design. Without such a design, the audience will see only a miniature version of the desktop site, making them scroll vertically and horizontally to find anything they need on your site.

It Has Proper Text Formatting And Readable Fonts

Like the desktop version, your main goal is to make your content readable for your target audience. The content should use readable fonts and have proper text formatting. Novelty fonts like scripts and cursives will make it harder for people to read your content, especially on a smaller screen.

Be aware of the sizes of your fonts, too. They shouldn't be too small that your audience will have a hard time reading it, and not too large that it occupies most of the space on their screens.

For formatting, you need to keep your blocks of text short and break them when needed. Using headlines and bulleted lists makes it readable for most people. However, you should only use this formatting when it makes sense on the article or content.

Google offers a lot of beautiful fonts, to learn how to use them in WordPress, refer to this article.

It Has Optimized Media Display

When optimizing images and other visual elements for your mobile site, you should always test them first. Ensure that they have the right size and quality to look good on smartphones or tablets. Remember that the images and infographics should have the ability to fit or be resized, depending on the screens where they're being accessed. That way, users won't need to scroll incessantly to see the complete picture.

It Has Mobile-Friendly Navigation

Navigation is crucial because this is how your audience will find what they need. When optimizing your site for mobile display, you need to think about touches and taps rather than mouse clicks. Also, reduce the need for any data entry when you optimize a site for mobile display. Since smartphones are smaller, typing information can become a chore. It will help if you organize the navigation so people will find what they need without having to type into the search space or contact you without filling out a form.

How To Increase WordPress Site Speed on Mobile

A slow and cumbersome website can adversely affect the user's experience and drastically decrease overall conversion rates. As a result, it becomes imperative to speed up a slow website. If you're unsure of how to check the site's speed and reasons why it may be going slow, you should contact services like gr0 or eLightUp to help you optimize your mobile pages to load fast.

If you want to explore site speed optimization on your own, here are some simple things you can do:

Use Compression

Many web hosting providers use compression to increase web page loading speed. Although this technique reduces the page size, the effect is usually minimal because most users scan the web page content without noticing the compression settings. To ensure optimal performance, you have to make sure that all pages are correctly compressed before the site goes live.

Increase Cache

When a page is retrieved from the server, the browser will search through the cache to find more information about that page. If the page wasn't downloaded from the cache, this search could take place. The purpose of the cache is to reduce the load time of the web page and maximize site speed. The cache has to be set up according to your website's requirements.

Remove Useless Plugins

WordPress offers more than 50,000 plugins. You might be overwhelmed at first and end up installing far too many of these on your site. Know that plugins are one of the reasons why your site might not be loading fast enough. The more plugins you have, the more your database will process a larger number of queries, which slows the site down. Extra plugins also cause the databases to bloat, which can affect their efficiency and increase load time. You should also ensure that you update your plugins from time to time. Outdated ones could compromise security.

In addition to removing the data of unused plugins, you should delete other unused data, read more here.

Choose A Good Web Hosting Service

Choosing a good web hosting service will do wonders in terms of your site speed. Not all web hosting services provide the same capacity and features. Thus, it's essential to test each candidate before choosing one that suits your site's needs.

Summary

In today's digital age, a mobile-friendly website is essential as the number of mobile users is rising. Since there are more mobile device users than before, many businesses and companies are adapting with the times by converting into mobile-friendly sites. They know that a mobile-friendly site may just be the first step toward building better customer service.

Thus, your mobile-friendly website should have a responsive display and proper font and text formatting. Mobile-friendly navigation is also a must so people can search the site easily. The website speed is also essential to keep your customers and audience happy. Aside from optimizing the images, increasing cache, and removing useless plugins, you need to choose the right web hosting service to ensure that your site loads quickly. Improving customer experience is the key to having increased traffic and better revenues in the digital world.

How to Add Countdown Timers into WordPress Websites Easily and Quickly

GretaThemes — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 06:25:34 +0000

A countdown timer does not only show up on big days like New Year's Eve or Christmas. It is now a popular feature for flash-sale landing pages or coming-soon websites, helping visitors know the exact time of events. If you want to add this feature to your website but don't know much about coding, here we come to save the day. In this article, we will show you how to add countdown buttons to WordPress websites easily and quickly.

When & Why You Need Countdown Feature

You can add a timer that counts down to start or end dates for these kinds of site:

Coming-soon websites
Websites having important events (movie release, music tour, etc.)
Landing pages for marketing campaigns
A flash sale or promotion
...

Using countdown timers gives you many benefits:

Help visitors to easily follow the exact start and end date to keep up with events.
Contribute as a professional visual aid for your websites.
Hurry visitors and stimulate them to take action, thereby increasing the conversion rate.

How to Add Countdown Timers

There are many ways to add countdown timers in WordPress, for example:

Coding: Of course, you need to be a developer. If not, you have to hire one or a trusted website development company. This choice might cost a lot of money and effort, and things might get tricky when errors occurred.

Using page builders: This method is much easier and requires no coding at all. However, not every page builder has a built-in module for countdown buttons, or you might need to pay for premium versions to have this feature.

Using themes with built-in countdown features: Normally, countdown timers are available on themes specially made for coming-soon sites. But some other themes also support this feature. However, not all themes suit your website, or you simply do not want to change your current WordPress theme.

For example, above is a built-in countdown timer in EventPress - a business theme. You can read a detailed review of this theme here.

Using a dedicated plugin: Compared with the three choices above, this is the easiest and also fastest choice. No coding required, no extra cost, and no need to change your website appearance!

Below is how you can easily and quickly add countdown buttons into WordPress websites by a plugin.

Add Countdown Timers into Websites by Plugins

Step 1: Installing plugins

There are many plugins available that help you add countdown buttons/timers to your website. We suggest Countdown Timer Ultimate as the easiest, fastest, and most beautiful plugin to get this work done.

This free plugin is available on wordpress.com, so you can go to the Admin tab > Plugin > Add new to install and activate the plugin.

After Countdown Timer Ultimate is activated, it might notify you about website data sharing with the plugin developer as below:

You can skip this notification right away as it is not needed.

Step 2: Create and Install Countdown Buttons

Firstly, go to Countdown Timer > Add Timer. You should see a menu displayed the same as the following picture.

Don't forget to name this button to organize and manage it better.

Here are the options and configurations for the display of countdown timers. In that, the most important part is the Expiry Date. You will configure the timer to countdown to the exact time you want here:

For example, in the picture above, I let the timer count from now to 23:59:59, December 31, 2020.

NOTE: The plugin follows the time you set for the website. For example, the plugin is displaying my time zone as UTC+0. If you want the timer to match a time zone you want, please go to General Setting.

Step 3: Configure the Countdown Button's Appearance

The rest of the settings page mentioned above allows you to configure the countdown timer's appearance, making it look more appealing and suit your website better.

For example, to adjust countdown buttons to make them fit the layout, you can enter the desired size in Countdown Width. However, if the size entered is too small, like below 50px, the button will nearly disappear from the page. I was once confused when I saw no button because of that, so please note this one.

Because countdown buttons provided by Countdown Timer Ultimate are round-shaped, you can also adjust the size of circles and borders in Background Width and Circle Width.

To mark buttons with different colors to distinguish them with ease, and make the website more vibrant, go to Foreground Color.

After configuring the appearance for buttons, click Publish to save changes. Below are my settings:

Step 4: Display Countdown Buttons on Your Website

Going to the Countdown Timer section on the right menu, you should see a list of countdown timers. Copy the shortcode of the timer you need.

Then paste that shortcode to any post or page you want.

Below is a countdown timer displayed on my site:

You can display countdown timers on widgets as well. Use the Customizer tool or go to Appearance > Widget, choose the Text widget, paste the shortcode, and then drag the widget into a place you want (sidebar, footer, etc.)

Here's the result:

All done!

Verdict

Creating countdown buttons for begin and end dates of events is not that difficult, as you can see. The Countdown Timer Ultimate, though limited in designs for countdown buttons, is still an easy-to-use plugin to get the work done quickly.

Besides, you can also see how to create add-to-calendar buttons to help customers/clients remember your event better. By combining this button with the countdown button we showed you how to add above, you will surely have an appealing and effective website.

3 Steps to Set Post Expiration Date in WordPress

GretaThemes — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 10:25:49 +0000

Hiding a post on a designated date automatically in WordPress is an amazing and convenient feature that you should try. It is not that hard to have this feature on your site; you only need to use a specialized plugin like Post Expirator and configure it a little more.

Let's go and see how you can get this done!

When to Create the Expiration Date for Posts?

When you have a post that only values on certain days, you need to delete or hide it on the expiry date to avoid misleading. For example:

Recruitment posts
Promotion announcement
Short-term contests, competitions, etc.
...

Normally, if you want to delete or hide posts, you need to remember the expiry date and do the work manually. It might be very troublesome, especially if you sleep your mind and forget the date. Thus, all you need is a plugin that handles everything: hiding posts automatically, moving posts to another place after a period of time, etc.

How to Expire Posts / Pages in WordPress

Step 1: Install and Activate Post Expirator Plugin

Post Expirator is the most common plugin to create expiry dates for posts with more than 100.000 activations on wordpress.org.

Firstly, you need to install and activate the plugin by going to Admin Dashboard > Plugins > Add New. In the search box, enter Post Expirator and then click Install Now > Activate to start installing and activating the plugin.

So you have done with the installing and activating progress. Let's move up to the configuration!

Step 2: Basic Configuration for Post Expirator Plugin

Before setting up an expiry date for a post, you should configure Post Expirator a little bit. Basic configuration in the Settings section of the plugin helps to adjust some items based on your need and purpose (such as time format, post status after expiry dates, ...).

First, go to Settings > Post Expirator. The setting page of the plugin will display as below:

You should see 4 tabs that are:

General Settings: This is the most important tab to set up expiry dates
Defaults: Includes configurations for two post types: post and page
Diagnostics and View Debug Log: These two include configurations that help diagnose and fix bugs. However, if you are a basic WordPress user, you can skip this tab.

Now let's take a closer look at each tab.

General Settings Tab

In this tab, you should see some entries such as:

Defaults

This entry includes some options:

Date Format and Time Format: Choose your familiar time format to manage the feature easily and avoid confusion.
Default Date/Time Duration: This one is the most important. I will make it clear in Step 3, so just set it as None for now.

Category Expiration

Sometimes, you don't want to delete the post but move it to another category so that visitors can find it again if needed or for any other reasons. For instance, an expired recruitment post will be moved from "December Recruitment" to "Expired Posts" category.

In Category Expiration, choose a category that you want to move expired posts in. If not, leave this part blank.

Expiration Email Notification

In this part, you can set up the system to send a reminder email to website owners when a post expires so that they can check and avoid mistakenly hiding the post. There are 3 email options for email sending. The developer has mentioned the detailed instructions for each of them. Therefore, you can read it and follow all the steps.

Post Footer Display

Normally, only you could see the expiry dates set for posts. Thus, if you want visitors to know them too (such as expiry dates for candidates to submit their CV on time), you have to add a notification in the footer. For example, I added one that said: "The promotion will expire at EXPIRATIONTIME EXPIRATIONDATE.

Defaults Tab

In this part, there are some optional settings for each post type. Pay attention to these settings:

Active: Display a section on the sidebar in the post/page editor to set expiry dates. You should enable this one as default.

How to expire: After expiration, your posts/pages will be set to the status that you choose in this part. I will clarify this for you in Step 3.

That's all for the basic settings you need for Post Expirator plugin. Don't forget to scroll down and click Save Changes, by the way.

Besides, because the plugin follows the time settings of your WordPress website, you need to set the website time zone you want by going to Settings > General > Time Zone.

Step 3: Set Expiry Dates for Your Posts

Set a Default Expiration Date for All Pages/Posts

You can make all posts/pages recently published on your website to expire after a few days. Go to Settings > Post Expirator > General Settings > Defaults > Default Date/Time Duration and choose Custom.

After, enter the default expiry date for all posts/pages right after you published them. For example, if you want them to expire after 1 month, 2 weeks, and 8 hours after being posted, go to Custom and enter +1 month 2 week 8 hours.

After expiration, your posts/pages will be set to the default status in the Defaults tab. You can also change posts/pages to all these statuses below:

Draft
Delete
Trash
Private
Stick: pin on top
Unstick: unpin on top
Category: Replace: move to other categories
Category: Add: add to other categories
Category: Remove: delete from the current category

Set Expiry Dates for Each Post/Page

First, go to the Editor of a post/page you want to expire after X days.

On the right sidebar, you will see the Post Expirator section. Tick Enable Post Expirator to turn on the expiry date function.

Next, enter the exact date (day/month/year) that the post will be hidden or deleted. Remember that this date follows the time zone you chose in Step 2. Lastly, choose the post/page status after expiration in the How to expire section.

Here I set the page status after it expires as Draft, so my page will be saved as a draft at 8.00 AM, December 20th, 2020. You can see the result below:

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. All done here!

One last thing, keep in mind that Post Expirator plugin always prioritizes statuses and expiry dates of each post/page more than the default ones set in the Defaults tab.

Verdict

Setting up expiry dates for posts helps you hide or delete posts after an amount of time effortlessly. This feature is notably helpful for recruitment or flash sale content on websites. For better post managing, you definitely should not miss this feature.

Bonus: you can also use Meta Box plugin to manually reorder them. Click here for detailed instructions.

How to Create a High-Converting Product Page

GretaThemes — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 03:21:44 +0000

Product pages are the cornerstone of any eCommerce enterprise and a crucial element of inbound marketing strategy. Brands that master the optimization of their product pages are able to boost their conversion rates to double digits.

Product page optimization for higher conversion rates is one of the biggest challenges online retail businesses face, which may explain the surprisingly low conversion figures. In this article, we will take a look at six of the most effective methods of creating and optimizing product pages to motivate your prospects to become your customers.

What Is a Product Page and Its Benefits?

A product page is an eCommerce website page that contains all the relevant product information, such as images, descriptions, specifications, prices, quantity available, and more.

The purpose of a product page is to help customers with their purchase decision and lead them to conversion. According to one recent study, only 3.3% of eCommerce product page visitors make a purchase. While on the whole, the average eCommerce website conversion rate stands between 1% and 2%.

Some of its benefits also include answering common questions about a product, providing user reviews and product comparison, and making the purchase process easier.

Which Tools and Methods Can You Use to Create a Product Page?

Content management systems such as Shopify, WordPress, and Magento are used for creating fully functional eCommerce websites that convert. You can hire a website development company or a developer to create a product page.

If you use WordPress, there are a lot of tools to create a product page easily and even without any dime. You can use page builder, Gutenberg, custom fields along with installing a shopping cart plugin like WooCommerce.

How to Create a Product Page that Is Highly Converting

Some of the essential elements of a high-converting product page include:

A short, descriptive URL
A concise CTA
Legible pricing, shipping, and product information
Hi-res images of a product
User-generated reviews
Social proof
...

However, the first step toward making a product page that converts is to create content that matches your users' needs.

This means anticipating your shopper's search intent, optimizing your content for keywords they use, listening to their pain points and needs online on forums and social media, and delivering what they expect to find. Or you can use some UX tools to find out the way they interact in your website to have a good preparation for the next campaign.

Here are the steps to take in order to create a product page that matches your users' needs.

Prioritize Your Unique Value Proposition

Your unique value proposition (UVP) outlines your products' main benefits and serves as your product page's centerpiece.

Everything that your business does revolves around UVPs and the benefits your customers get by using your products. That's why your UVPs must be crystal clear through timely and understandable messaging and copy.

The most effective product pages are about selling benefits, instead of product features. Explain to your prospects what they will get from purchasing your products and how your products can help solve their pain points.

Think about the main value you bring to your customers. Be very specific when establishing what your products do for people.

Then, ask yourself what makes this value truly unique. How do you stand out against the competition, what makes you different?

A unique value proposition can be a simple tagline that appears right on the product/service landing page. How you present it is equally as important as what it says -- use bold, legible typography that makes the UVP stand out and make sure it's above the fold.

A unique value proposition should be immediate and appear right at the beginning of the product page's copy. The title should be all about describing the product in the most descriptive language.

In a nutshell, your visitors should take note of your UVP 5 to 10 seconds from entering your website. This is important as 55% of people spend less than 15 seconds on a page.

State Your Pricing And Product Features Clearly

The product's price must be clearly visible and displayed in a bigger font than the rest of the product page copy, so as to avoid misunderstanding and confusion that may arise from the price not being prominently displayed.

The product price and any additional costs like VAT and shipping should also be clearly displayed.

As for product features and specifications, best practices suggest that product pages should have a tab dedicated to features such as product dimensions, color, weight, and other defining qualities.

Such info helps shoppers get a better understanding of the product and helps them with the buying process.

Upsell And Cross-sell

Shoppers who decide to buy one of your products may still be interested in more items.

Your product pages should strive to inform users about your products, but they are also an opportunity to showcase related products that a buyer is likely to find interesting as well.

Cross-selling and up-selling suggestions increase shopper's value. This also instates a sense of trust because you are curating personalized product recommendations for them.

A New York web design agency, Digital Silk, points out that upselling and cross-selling suggestions should appear in a product detail page's lower section because you don't want to distract your shoppers from their original buying intent.

The product suggestions should be in some way related to the main product or the buyer's purchase history and interest.

As for products related to the main item, this could be anything from accessories for the product to an item that complements it.

If one of your cross-selling or up-selling items is out of stock, don't worry: present shoppers with an email capture form so they can be notified when the product is back in stock. If the items are in stock, make sure buyers can add it to their wishlist so they don't forget about them, if they're not ready to buy immediately.

Create Designs that Match User Behavior & Interaction

Design, layout, and navigational elements also play a pivotal role in converting eCommerce shoppers.

Here are some tips to follow in order to improve the overall user experience on your online store.

Utilize Breadcrumbs For Better Orientation

Hierarchy and history-based breadcrumbs are the cornerstones of every eCommerce navigation.

Hierarchy breadcrumbs make it easier for shoppers to browse your collection of products because they can move up and down your category organization without problems. Without these breadcrumbs, they would feel stuck and disoriented and, ultimately, frustrated -- which will prompt them to leave.

This type of breadcrumb is not history-based and doesn't necessarily take your customers back to what they were looking at previously.

It's important to use both hierarchy and history-based breadcrumbs on product pages because shoppers will land on them in different ways. They will sometimes want to look at related products in the same category and sometimes they will want to return to where they were a minute ago.

Use Attractive and Authentic Product Image

Professional, high-resolution images of your products in action as well static display are essential so that shoppers get a better idea of how your product looks and feels like.

Images should be large enough so shoppers can zoom in on their details, but the images should also be optimized so as not to slow the website down. Make sure you get a professional photographer that will take care of all the aspects such as lighting, color saturation and angles to make photographs as attractive as possible.

A bonus tip: Enable user-generated content in form of reviews with images. The customers that have brought an item may want to submit their review along with their own image of a purchased product. This helps grow prospects' trust in you as a business and could have great implications for your conversion rates.

Prioritize Readability

The typography and fonts you use are a vital consideration for your shoppers' user experience and shopping satisfaction. Pick a font that is easy to read, not too large or too small, and contrasting enough against your website's background.

How you format your pages will also contribute to better readability: use shorter, two-line paragraphs, enough line clearance, and white space to give other elements some "breathing space."

Add Some Call to Action

Provide Social Proof To Reduce Hesitation

Social proof elements include user ratings, reviews, client testimonials and influencer marketing. The point of social proof is to build trust with customers.

As much as 95% of online shoppers look for online reviews before they make any purchase and 84% of them trust the reviews of others. Also, having more than 50 reviews for one product can increase its conversion rate by 5%.

Reviews help your shoppers decide to buy a product by providing the data needed to make an informed decision. Giving them the option to upload an image as they use your product will convince future shoppers and nudge them towards conversion.

Your product page design should incorporate social proof, customer reviews, and, if possible, a gallery of images of people using your products.

You can take this up a notch by asking your shoppers to leave their personal details for more personalized reviews that lend even more convincing power. For example, Sephora asks their shoppers about their eye color, skin type, and hair when they leave a review and shoppers can filter reviews by these parameters that match theirs, to better determine which products might work best for them.

Stir a Sense of Urgency

Buyers that are hesitant to buy or don't feel a particular incentive will often leave your product page without converting.

By adding a sense of urgency to your products, you can instill a strong motivation to buy: the fear of missing out.

There are many ways in which you can add a sense of urgency to your eStore, but the most common is to limit the time to buy and/or quantity of items.

For instance, you can add a countdown clock to your website's homepage, showcasing the expiration date and time of your special deals.

Another strategy that is effective at raising conversion rates is displaying how many items of a certain product you have left in your stock.

Use CTAs To Inspire Action

Call-to-action buttons are your eStore's direct invitation to conversion and everything that you do content-wise on your website should find its purpose in this.

The important thing to note is that your CTA buttons should, ideally, point to one or at most two different conversion points so as not to dissipate shoppers' attention. Also, CTAs should all have the same design across the eCommerce site because this lessens confusion and strengthens familiarity.

Besides, for maximum effectiveness, your first CTA should ideally be located above the fold and it should point to the sale or deal that is most current in your store. Plus, every CTA button should be clearly visible and highlighted on the page, meaning the use of vibrant, contrasting colors and a brief but highly enticing copy is advised.

The said copy can be anything, from the more generic "Add to cart" to "Buy now" which lends more of a sense of urgency. Or you can get the creative and bold and use something offbeat, in line with your branding.

Bonus Tips For Creating A Product Page That Converts

Optimize Website Speed

As much as 40% of users will leave a page if it takes more than three seconds to load, while 79% of online shoppers that are not satisfied with website performance will not buy from the same site again.

Slow-loading eCommerce websites miss out on capturing leads and converting them, making page loading speeds one of the crucial factors in customer conversion.

Big eCommerce websites, with lots of pages and products, are at risk of becoming too sluggish. Your page-loading speeds can be optimized in one of the following ways:

Remove excess HTML, PHP, JS and CSS code
Optimize and compress image sizes
Use premium hosting plan
Enable browser caching
Streamline your product offering by removing poor-selling products
Simplify your site structure, sitemap, and product network

Utilize SEO

Search engine optimization is the cornerstone of any highly-converting eCommerce website.

On-page and off-page SEO techniques help your eStore rank high in Google search results, get in front of highly-qualified prospects and answer your shoppers' search intent.

The aforementioned website speed optimization is also an SEO signal: Google favors high-speed websites and ranks them higher.

Another way to optimize your website for search engines is to include a section with long-form blog content that helps and informs your visitors on topics that matter to them.

To further solidify your SEO efforts, you should also:

Use well-researched keywords in your content to target users with and front-load them in your content, product titles, descriptions, meta tags, title tags, etc.
Optimize your image names and alt-tags
Use H1, H2, and H3 headers
Write a unique meta description for each page

To get more tips on writing an SEO-friendly eCommerce site, please read this article.

Add Call and Chat Buttons

You should add some tools to interact with your customers whenever they want a consultation, you should. The tools can be:

Livechat
Chatbot
Call buttons (like Apple business chat)

Conclusion

Creating or optimizing an existing product page for conversions is a multifaceted process that taps into various website aspects, from on-page SEO over navigation to content creation.

It is critical to cover all bases, mentioned in this article, to ensure your eCommerce product pages capture the attention of the highest number of leads and prospects possible and convert them using social proof, quality content, and excellent UX.

Best Plugins to Back Up Your WordPress Website

GretaThemes — Mon, 25 Jan 2021 03:02:34 +0000

Creating a backup is one of the best ways to protect your WordPress website from losing data. You can manually back up your WordPress site, but it's quite difficult and time-consuming for the non-tech savvy. Therefore, you should use backup plugins to save time and effort.

However, choosing a suitable one is really not easy because there are too many backup plugins out there, both free and premium. Don't worry, we collected the best plugins to back up WordPress websites right here. Let's discover them now!

UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is among the most popular scheduled backup plugins at this time. It helps you backup / restore data easily and quickly within a single click.

Moreover, UpdraftPlus allows users to upload backups of their WordPress website into many cloud services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, ... Thus, users can access the backups from every device.

Like other scheduled backup plugins, UpdraftPlus allows you to automatically and periodically backup your site. It can be seen that UpdraftPlus is standout from others in terms of features and stability. This plugin is trusted and used by 3+ million WordPress users. Therefore, you can be assured that you're in good hands.

Highlight features

Upload to cloud services: Dropbox, Google Drive, ...
Automatically and periodically backup websites
Backup / restore data easily and quickly within a single click

BackWPup

The most highlight feature of BackWPup plugin is backing up the database, main files, and wp-content folder. It's really useful because some plugins that have the database backup feature only back up your posts and don't backup other things that you uploaded into the posts such as pictures, videos, ... Therefore, if you use those plugins, images, and videos will be broken and you'll have to fix them by manually backing up the wp-content file.

In addition to cloud services (such as Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, etc), BackWPup allows you to export the backups to a local directory or FTP servers. And of course, it also has the automatic backup feature.

Another interesting and convenient feature of BackWPup plugin is that it can optimize your database and troubleshoot any issues during the backup process. It's really useful, especially for people who still haven't used another plugin for this similar feature yet.

Highlight features

Back up the database, main files, and wp-content folder.
Export the backups to a local directory or FTP servers
Optimize the database and troubleshoot any issues

BackUpWordPress

BackUpWordPress plugin is famous for backing up your entire website. It's very smooth and easy to use. This plugin works perfectly with shared servers or wherever that doesn't have much space left.

However, BackUpWordPress plugin doesn't back up all your files and folders, so you have to do it manually and regularly. It's a bit inconvenient. But it's also an advantage of BackUpWordPress because backups generated by this plugin are very light. Therefore, you can even send them via email or back up to anywhere without worrying about the file size.

BackUpWordPress isn't the first solution for everyone, but it's so useful for websites that their data is updated on a regular basis. The website owners can utilize this plugin to back up their sites every day, or even every hour to make sure that their precious data is always safe.

Highlight features

Back up the entire website
Easy to use
Generate very light backups

Duplicator

You might be surprised because Duplicator is "not really" a backup plugin. In fact, it's famous for migrating or cloning a WordPress website from a location to another. However, you can still utilize it to back up specific areas of your website.

Duplicator plugin comes with a lot of features to help you deal with many tasks. And the most outstanding one is that you can develop test websites and staging areas. Thus, you can do your test on these sites without affecting your real site. It's a very useful and convenient feature that helps you avoid mistakes and errors.

In addition, Duplicator plugin backs up every element of your website. Therefore, it's the best choice for migrating your website to a new server because you don't need to re-install WordPress core. Overall, Duplicator plugin can fit your requirements, whether it's backing up a specific area or the entire of your website.

Highlight features

Migrate or clone a WordPress website from a location to another
Allow users to develop test websites and staging areas
Backup the entire website

BlogVault Backups

BlogVault Backups plugin comes with a unique advanced feature that other plugins don't have: real-time backup. In fact, this feature is unnecessary in many cases. However, it will fit the needs of eCommerce website owners that don't want to lose any order's data. Losing order data can decrease the company income, or even affect the customer experience and bring a lot of troubles. Therefore, BlogVault Backups plugin is really a great solution for eCommerce websites.

Besides, BlogVault Backups plugin allows users to back up into cloud services like Amazon S3, Dropbox, or the company's servers. BlogVault Backups saves your backups up to 365 days, which is really an impressive term. It's also a big advantage that makes this plugin outstanding.

Besides, BlogVault Backups plugin also encrypts backups so that you can be assured that your data is safe. This feature will be very useful for websites that contain sensitive data. Additionally, this plugin has a friendly user interface, which makes it very easy-to-use.

Highlight features

Back up in real-time
Save the backups up to 365 days
Encrypt backups
Friendly user interface

CYAN Backup

CYAN Backup plugin isn't so popular, but it will meet the special needs of users. This plugin has a lot of options on the settings page, which can make you confused a bit. But don't worry, you can still skip them and work with default settings.

When using CYAN Backup plugin, you have various options for scheduling: monthly, weekly, daily, or even hourly. Besides, you can choose a term for automatically back up, for example, every 2 hours, every 3 months, etc. In addition, you can choose areas that you don't want to backup. This is really convenient and flexible.

Moreover, you can set up CYAN Backup plugin to automatically delete old backups to reduce memory usage. Hence, this plugin works really well on servers that don't have much space. If you are in trouble with tons of backups that make your site heavy, try CYAN Backups!

Highlight features

Support various options for scheduling
Exclude the areas that you don't want to backup
Delete old backups to reduce memory usage

Last Words

As you can see, each plugin has its own pros and cons. Therefore, you should determine what your site needs and what the plugin provides before making the decision. Backups can save your website someday, so don't forget to back up your site on a regular basis. Still, if you don't know how to do it, refer to this article.