DEV Community: ZealousWeb

Boost Trust & Engagement on Your WordPress Site!

ZealousWeb — Mon, 26 May 2025 11:27:42 +0000

Build trust, boost credibility, and enhance user experience on your WordPress website with ZealousWeb Technologies’ powerful plugin — the Smart Showcase for Google Reviews.

Smart Showcase for Google Reviews is a powerful WordPress plugin designed to seamlessly display customer reviews from Google My Business on your website. With a variety of display options, including grids, lists, sliders, badges, and popups, this plugin helps businesses build trust and increase credibility. It offers customization through custom CSS and shortcodes for easy placement on any page. You can filter reviews by rating, keyword, and location, as well as reply to reviews directly from the admin interface.

The plugin supports multilingual websites and complies with GDPR, ensuring a secure and accessible user experience. It integrates effortlessly with popular page builders like Elementor, WPBakery, and Divi, allowing for easy customization. Additionally, it includes advanced features such as admin notifications, review reply forms, and widget designs for sidebars and footers. Whether you want to showcase reviews to improve SEO or add a “Review Us on G” button, Smart Showcase for Google Reviews enhances both the functionality and the appearance of your site.

Why it stands out:
✅ Display reviews by rating, keywords, or location
✅ Customize appearance with shortcodes and custom CSS
✅ Admin reply functionality with email notifications
✅ Multi-language and GDPR-compliant
✅ Includes widgets for footers and sidebars
✅ "Review us on G" button to encourage new reviews

Plus, it keeps all reviews stored in your WordPress database (CPT) and allows you to moderate and manage them easily from the backend. Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, the Smart Showcase for Google Reviews plugin is your go-to tool for turning satisfied customers into powerful social proof.

Add this plugin to your site today and let your happy clients do the marketing for you!

User Registration Using Contact Form 7 Pro

ZealousWeb — Mon, 19 May 2025 05:36:18 +0000

The User Registration Using Contact Form 7 Pro plugin allows you to seamlessly integrate user registration forms into your WordPress site using the popular Contact Form 7 plugin. With this powerful tool, users can easily register or sign up on your site through a customizable form. Whether you’re managing a membership site or just looking to simplify the user sign-up process, this plugin is the perfect solution.

Features include easy form integration, custom field support, automatic user role assignment, and more. This plugin also supports popular integrations like Google Reviews WordPress Plugin, enabling businesses to showcase their reviews directly on their site. Save time, improve usability, and make user registration hassle-free for your visitors.

Features:
Profile Dashboard: Access a centralized hub where you can view key information and manage your account efficiently.

Edit Profile: Easily update and customize your profile information to ensure it's always accurate and up to date.

Change Password: For enhanced security, conveniently change your password whenever needed, ensuring your account remains protected.

Social Sign Up + Login: Enable users to sign up and log in using popular social media platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Apple.

Push Notifications: Set up push notifications to be sent to registered users on your site, keeping them informed and engaged.

Compatibility with Multi-Step for Contact Form 7: Ensure seamless integration between Contact Form 7 and the Multi-Step extension, allowing you to create intuitive and user-friendly multi-step forms.

Auto Generate Password: An email consisting of an auto-generated password will be sent to the users after their registration is completed on the site.

Debugging: There is a debug mode option for debugging.

Woo-Commerce : All WooCommerce field integration for the users to collect the data.

Validation : You can set custom validation message for reset password and forgot password.

Password Features : Option to use for forgot password and reset the password.

Auto-login : After registration you can set auto-login and user redirect on defined page with login into the site.

Social Sign Up + Login: Enable users to sign up and log in using popular social media platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Apple.

Email Templates for Contact Form 7: Customize email templates for Contact Form 7 or bypass the default email notifications entirely. This allows you to send personalized registration and login email notifications.

Multilingual Support: Provide support for multiple languages on your site, enabling users to view and interact with content in their preferred language.

Advanced Custom Field Mapping: Create advanced custom fields for user profiles, with only text and textarea options, and map them to corresponding Contact Form 7 fields. This allows for a more personalized user experience.

New Features:
WooCommerce Field Mapping

BuddyPress Registration Compatibility

Compatibility of WordPress VIP.

Shopify vs. BigCommerce - A Heads-Up For 2021

ZealousWeb — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 13:10:08 +0000

Here is a glimpse of Google Trends comparison for Shopify and BigCommerce popularity in the past five years.

Popularity may be a deciding criterion for some of us when considering hiring a Shopify expert or BigCommerce for our eStore.

But apart from that, there are a plethora of other factors that can help facilitate the decision.

Let's understand Shopify and BigCommerce individually.

The Best and Not-So-Best Of BigCommerce

Founded in 2009, BigCommerce is a public company that provides a SaaS eCommerce platform. Since its launch, BigCommerce has aced three areas where most eCommerce platforms fell short;

APIs: Since you don't have access to the source code when working with most SaaS platforms, APIs are how you get your website to function better and add cutting-edge features. The difference remains when merchants try to access the APIs. BigCommerce allows merchants to lodge 400 requests per second, contrary to many other platforms that offer in single digits.

Product Variants & Options: BigCommerce allows you to include up to 250 product options as opposed to other eCommerce platforms. It is not advisable to exhaust all the limits, but it's always nice to know that you have options.

Additional Functionalities: BigCommerce generously offers a plethora of additional functionalities such as in-built marketing and analytics tools to categorize customers according to multiple verticals created from their sales pattern.

BigCommerce is considered a powerful eCommerce platform because of its versatility and ability to handle complex websites efficiently.

Having said that, there are a few significant disadvantages that come with BigCommerce.

Cost and Limitations: As rational business owners, our goal is to minimize cost and acquire something that has good RoI. But with BigCommerce, when you choose a basic plan, you have a selling limit of $50,000 per annum. In addition to the plans, BigCommerce offers themes at a slightly higher price than any other eCommerce platform.

Community: BigCommerce's community is not very vast and might not be the right choice for considering dropshipping. Shopify's dropshipping is perhaps the best when compared to other eCommerce platforms. The reason for that is its vast community that grows by the day.

Steeper learning curve: BigCommerce might appeal to the DIY crowd, but the most challenging aspect of BigCommerce is its theme editor and the admin panel. It might work with first-time users since they haven't seen or worked with a much simpler version. But for the ones that have seen a few eCommerce platforms, BigCommerce is undoubtedly tricky.

The Best and Not-So-Best Of Shopify

Shopify began in 2004 and took shape as a full-fledged eCommerce store by 2006. The founder, Tobias Lütke, identified a gap in the market looking at the poor online shopping experience. And thanks to that, we have Shopify to revolutionize the eCommerce arena.

Let's look at three superlative reasons why Shopify is the BEST eCommerce platform. Be warned - these reasons are persuasive enough to get you to hire yourself a Shopify expert and have your eStore up and running!

Dropshipping: Dropshipping is a fulfillment model for over 33% of the online sales industry. Shopify has adopted and encourages the dropshipping model across its merchant base to appreciate the use of this cost-effective method. When closely look any Shopify eStore, you'll stumble upon two things; a) It has exemplary features, a vast plugin store, and appeals to the DIY crowd. b) It has a robust community spread across the globe - meaning more contacts. Hence, Shopify allows you to reach out to merchants and wholesalers worldwide and take you and your product places!

Automatic Abandoned Cart Functionality: Now, to make the comparison fair, BigCommerce also has this feature but at a much higher cost than Shopify. In Shopify, you get this feature at USD 29/month, whereas in BigCommerce, you get it at USD 79.95/month - round it about to $80 per month. So, at a difference of $50, you still have some essential features missing.

Ease Of Use And Flexibility: Shopify is a super-easy platform to work with; even a ten y/o can efficiently work with it and not face major technical issues. BigCommerce has more robust functionality, which might add to the complexity of your eStore - making it challenging for the DIY crowd. Shopify allows easy plugin integration, and since it has a vast app store, all you've got to do is choose and install.

Like any other eCommerce platform, Shopify has its disadvantages. But as rational business owners, you should only let these affect you if it affects your business.

Scalability: When considering Shopify, you must be careful about the estimated size of your eStore. What's common between BigCommerce and Shopify is that they're both well suited for small to medium-sized businesses. While you can tweak BigCommerce to work for large companies with high sales volume, you cannot do that with Shopify.

Search & Filter: Shopify's search & filter aren't as robust or multi-layered as other eCommerce platforms. If you're looking for a guitar on a Shopify hosted eStore, chances are that you will only get results for a guitar without further specs into what kind. As merchants, if you wish to add in a specific layer, you might have to create a separate page or scower through the app store to find the right one to help you.

The Ultimate Winner

Let's be specific here - if you're looking for an eCommerce platform for a small to medium-scaled business at an affordable cost with a lot of features, then Shopify is your lord and savior! Shopify is a boon to the DIY crowd, and when you hire Shopify experts, you can have yourself a unique website with a lot of flexibility.

BigCommerce requires less third party integration because things are already coded in, but it is an expensive solution for small to medium-scaled businesses.

So, if you're a start-up or a medium scale business, then hands down, Shopify should be your only choice.

If you’re still looking for someone to explain it better, ask for a consultation from an expert team of Shopify developers at ZealousWeb!

How To Configure Varnish In Apache With Magento 2

ZealousWeb — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 12:36:50 +0000

Magento is a Content Management System(CMS) built in PHP, Zend framework and MySQL database. It’s a free and open-source system. If you are in eCommerce business then Magento will be a very important eCommerce web application for you that runs with many other open-source applications like, Apache, MySQL and many more.

Now defining further, Apache is one of the most popular web server software which validates a computer to host one or more websites that can be examined over the internet using a web browser. In 1995, The Apache Group released its first version of Apache. The digital presence of a business is increasing day by day and in the era of high-speed internet your website speed matters to increase the revenue numbers.

Are you suffering from the speed with Magento 2 and the apache server? Here we came up with the solution on how to boost your Magento store by configuring Varnish. The combination of Varnish and Magento 2 is incredibly popular for speeding up your website’s overall performance. So, let’s get started.

See below step by step guide to configure varnish with Magento 2 and Apache

● Connect your server using putty or terminal and run below command to install varnish

sudo apt-get install varnish

● Once you install varnish you can check installed varnish version by running below command

varnishd -V

2) Configure Varnish in Magento

Step 1

● Login to Magento admin panel
● Go to stores > Configuration > General > Web > Base URLs (Secure)
● Change the Offloader header to X-Forwarded-Proto from SSL_OFFLOADED and save the configuration

Step 2

● Go to Stores -> Configuration -> Advanced -> System -> Full Page Cache
● Change the Caching Application to Varnish Cache (Recommended) from the Built-in Cache.
● Flush Magento cache

3) Add varnish.vcl on server

● Login to ssh with root user and Rename the file [MAGENTO_ROOT]/var/varnish.vcl to [MAGENTO_ROOT]/var/default.vcl

● Go to the location of varnish by the following command

cd /etc/varnish/

● Take the backup of the original default.vcl file and put the default.vcl file which is exported from Magento.

mv default.vcl default.vcl.original mv /var/www/html/magento/var/default.vcl.

4) Check DAEMON_OPTS

● Open the /etc/default/varnish, locate for the DAEMON_OPTS. It should display like below

DAEMON_OPTS=”-a :80 </code>

T localhost:6082 \ f /etc/varnish/default.vcl \ p thread_pool_min=1 \ p thread_pool_max=1500 \ p http_resp_hdr_len=42000 \ p http_resp_size=98304 \ S /etc/varnish/secret \ s malloc,768m”

5) Change varnish port from 6081 to 80

● To change varnish port from 6081 to 80, we need to edit the system service configuration as follows:

Sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/varnish.service

● The above command will open a file in which you need to find the line as below:

ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -F -a :6081 -T 127.0.0.1:6082 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,256m

● And comment it with the hash symbol as below:

#ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -F -a :6081 -T 127.0.0.1:6082 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,256m

● Below this line, add a line as following:

ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -F -a :80 -T 127.0.0.1:6082 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,1536m

6) Change the Apache listening port from 80 to 8080

● Open the Apache ports configuration file and change it as follows:

Nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf Listen 80 -> Listen 8080 Nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/magento.conf ->

7) Restart varnish and apache service

● Now we need to run following commands for restart varnish and apache service and also for check their status:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo service apache2 restart sudo service apache2 status sudo service varnish restart sudo service varnish status

● You can check the ports by the following command:

sudo netstat -ltnp | grep :80

8) Configure Varnish for the HTTPS or SSL

● To make the varnish work with the HTTPS or SSL, you need to do reverse proxy. For reverse proxy you must enable the following modes:

sudo a2enmod SSL sudo a2enmod proxy sudo a2enmod proxy_balancer sudo a2enmod proxy_http

● To enable reverse proxy to do as follows:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/magento-ssl.conf

● Locate the SSLEngine on and paste the following lines before the SSLEngine on

ProxyPreserveHost On ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:80/ RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-Port “443” RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-Proto “https”

● Restart the apache by this command:

sudo service apache2 restart

● Also, check the status of apache by this command:

sudo service apache2 status

9) Verify varnish cache is working or not

● To verify varnish is working or not, you can check it by the following command:

curl -I -v –location-trusted ‘https://www.example.com’

● Using the below command will provide you with an updating list of URL requests going to the back-end (Misses).

varnishtop -i BereqURL

●The below command will provide you with an updated list of ALL requests.

Varnishtop -i ReqURL

10) How to remove (uninstall) varnish?

● Sudo apt-get purge –auto-remove varnish
● In apache and conf file, change the port to 80 as it was there before.

nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf Listen 8080 -> Listen 80 nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/magento.conf -> sudo service apache2 restart

Wrapping Up

We hope that the above-discussed steps will provide you with configuring varnish in Apache with Magento 2. Make sure when you are following these steps in Magento 2 the platform must support varnish 4.x and 5.x. Whether your site is unresponsive or not working properly, varnish continues to serve cached content to visitors. These benefits of varnish are enough to make you configure it in Apache with Magento 2.

The combination of varnish and Magento will benefit you in various ways, from increasing your website’s overall speed to enhancing customer experience.

Still facing issues in configuring then you can always contact professional web developing agency for the best outcomes.