Magento vs. WordPress: Best CMS for eCommerce Website

With the abundance of eCommerce platforms, online merchants and E-retailers find themselves in indecisive scenario wherein they seem confused and become unable to choose the right e-commerce platform for their online business. As operating an online business craves for a considerable sum of investment, patience, regular vigilance on the development of new trends in the industry, constant website updating, etc, people involved in online business always want to stay ahead of their competitors and multiply their ROI with the consistent procession of time.    

When you look for feasible options to develop an eCommerce website, WordPress and Magento, appear as two prominent platforms. Both of them are open source platforms and have the utmost efficiency to increase the revenues, but it is really a challenging task to decide which one is ideal one for your eCommerce business. Therefore, you need to read out a comparison between WordPress and Magento carefully and then take decision accordingly:

Basics of WordPress and Magento:

• WordPress

WordPress is an open source publishing tool and Content Management System and was invented on May 27, 2003 by Matt Mullenweg. Currently, 76.5 Millions people are actively using this popular CMS and its overall contribution to the Global Internet is 26%. It gets installed quickly and is affordable for bloggers and website owners because they can maintain it themselves easily. It has a healthy market share of 58.9% and is quite popular among tech-savvy people, bloggers, site owners,online business operators, etc.

• Magento

Megento is an open source content management system & feature-rich eCommerce platform, invented on March 31, 2008 by Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner. Presently, 501,036 people are using it actively and it powers around 1.3%websites available on the internet. You can install is easily. When you use this platform as E-commerce, you need the assistance of an Expert magento Developer to perform you works easily and smoothly which cost you some money. It has a market share of 2.7% and is 5 years junior to WordPress in age.

What is the goal of your website?

Although both platforms are content management systems, but it's crystal clear that Magento was created especially for E-commerce. Its functionality is created for business and selling products and services. If you want to sell products, then you should use Magento. If your aim is to just post contents on blogs/websites to generate traffic and monetize them, then you must go for WordPress.

Major Similarities between WordPress and Magento:

• SEO Friendly

Both WordPress and Magento are SEO-friendly platforms and users have a great chance to increase the visibility of their E-commerce stores in the SERPs of Google. These two platforms are built with clean code and permit users to optimize their websites very well for better ranking and high traffic.

A lot of options for customization

Both Magento and WordPress allow users to control their websites completely. Users can control their site's contents as well as their look and functions. Generally, E-commerce stores allow their users to change only specific aspects of their store's aesthetics. But, when you use Magento and WordPress, you can easily change and customize your store and display it in the way you want. You can use a wide range of plugins for both these two platforms to expand your E-commerce store and make it suitable for the needs of your customers.

• Open source

Both Magento and WordPress are open source platforms, which allows you to download, install, modify easily and quickly. These two platforms are maintained and assisted by committed communities comprising users and web developers. These communities toil hard at all the times to update the platforms and help other users when they have issues while using these platforms.

Comparisons between Magento and WordPress

• Usability

WordPress is Easier to use and you can run your store smoothly. Knowledge of complex technical coding is not required for developing a WordPress website. Magento is also user-friendly, but many people face problems while using it. It happens because it is developed for high skilled web developers with advanced technical knowledge. If you are not comfortable with this, don't use it otherwise you will always require the assistance of an experienced Magento expert.

• Blogging

WordPress is a multi-purpose content management system, ideal for blogging and content management. A clear advantage over Magento in terms of Blogging. Magento is also a powerful CMS, but WordPress beats it when it comes to the flow of post maintained on the site.

• Inventory management

When it comes to inventory management,WordPress is not as useful as Magento In terms of E-commerce functionality. If you want to accumulate only a small number of Stock keeping units (under 100), then use WordPress, otherwise you will face problems. Magento is ideal for amassing thousands of stock keeping units on your site because it allows you to add numerous products and categories and integrate them with POS system in case you have an offline store also. It is ideal for eCommerce business.

Availability of options to customize your website

WordPress is highly customizable with the availability of pre-made themes and plugins available. But, you may require the help of experienced WordPress professionals to give your site a professional look. Magento has Lots of customization options . Making use of Magento Extensions to improve the functionality of your site. You may require the assistance of a professional Magento developer for giving your site a professional and business look.

Final Thoughts

Which one is Good For E-commerce?

Online merchants who have serious budget constraints and want to operate a small business , should go for WordPress. All those E-retailers who wish to run multiple stores within a single Admin interface and have various products and services for sale, must opt for Magento.

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Guide for Creating a Perfect WordPress Blog

WordPress is an amazing content Management system which allows Internet users to build an online asset quickly and easily. It is widely used by Millions of tech-savvy people and every day, new people are joining. Using WordPress is extremely easy and convenient because it is much better than other CMS platforms and if you do quality SEO (that meets the standards of major search engines), your site is likely to rank well in Google. 

Apart from these basic traits, you can use several plugins for WordPress to make your site better and look engaging for your users. For many people, WordPress Blogging is an amazing hobby and they start their day with it. As a novice blogger, you may have several confusions floating into your mind as how to create a perfect WordPress blog and make it popular. Some useful tips detailed here below will help newbie bloggers as well as other bloggers to get complete advantage of WordPress Blogging:

1. Choose A Web Host

Choosing the best web hosting is one of the key factors of every successful website which can't be overlooked. If you want to make your site popular quickly and increase conversions for your online business, then you need to choose a good hosting for your WordPress website. There are several WordPress hosting options available for you such as Shared, VPS, Dedicated, and Managed WordPress hosting. You can choose any one of these according to your budget and requirement. Always keep in mind that a reliable and better web hosting will give your visitors a better user experience and you will have a great readership on your blog and site. Choose a good hosting service that is fast, well secured, tech-supported by experts at all the times.

2. Set Up your hosting Account

To Set up Hosting account Name, Go for the Home page and click “ Sign Up Now”. Now You need to choose domain Name. 

If you already have a domain Name, you can enter that here. If you want to book new domain for your site, you will have to provide following personal information:

Once you have chosen your domain and hosting package, click on the “Next” button to purchase your domain. Once you do it, you have to create a password for your account. Set a strong password for your account. Now install the WordPress. 

3. Unique Idea

The world of Internet is limitless and almost everything is available on it. There are numerous websites that are present online already and thousands other websites go online on a daily basis. So, the competition is very high and you need to present some unique and interesting contents on your websites in order to attract traffic. Always keep in mind that Search engine crawlers works faster than you think and duplicate contents are easily identified by them. If you post copied and irrelevant contents on your site, it will result in poor ranking of your websites in different search engines. Just create unique and informative contents for your targeted users in plain and simple language. Adding Images, videos and links to your contents make your websites a reliable source of information. 

4. Decide your Aim

When you operate websites, you invest lots of time, money and energy and you expect heavy RIO too. When you run a WordPress Website, you should have goals for points mentioned below:


5. Time deadline

When different people work on a website, it becomes important for them to perform their assignments on time and contribute to the project. In order to run your site properly and smoothly, make sure you are following time deadline strictly and responsible persons are performing their assignments very well. Make everyone accountable towards their assignments to run your site smoothly.

5. Determine Your Budget

There are many companies that apply a “do-it-Yourself” strategy to save their money while creating and running a website, but this is not a right approach. Behind a successful website, a lot of factors contribute such as cost of hiring SEOs, content writers, web designers, website security experts, web hosting, future maintenance & updates etc. You need to have good budget to fulfill these requirements for your website. You can change or modify your budget according to your requirements. 

6. Website Design

In today’s tech-savvy world, a website is mandatory for almost all organizations to gain success. There are numerous WordPress development companies that provide same products and services and they compete against each other to grab the maximum share of business available in the market. Therefore, you need to design your website in such a wage that it differentiate yourself from your savvy competitors and make your the first choice of your potential customers.

Your website should have a unique design that reflect your logo, icons, color palette, the imagery, the graphics, etc. An eye-catching website produce a powerful impact on your visitors and help you to generate more leads and revenue. 

7. Smart Selection of WordPress Plugins

There are many WordPress plugins, using which you can incorporate extra functionality into your site and make it more attractive and user-friendly. These plugins offers you access to lots of options on images, contact forms, social media sharing feature, newsletter sign-ups, etc, and customize your website without doing difficult coding. However, you need to choose WordPress plugins carefully as using several plugins on your site will make it slow and increase its bounce rate rapidly. 

8. Suitable Templates

Templates are the most excellent resources for online businesses for the reason that they do coding for you. It is necessary for easy site navigation and simple information architecture. Before selecting a particular template for WordPress, consider some factors such as the format, design, page structure, accessibility of the creator and functionality. It is not necessary that all WordPress templates will suit your specific needs, but you can check them in “live preview” option. You must make sure that the theme you have selected reflects your business very well.

9. Use Google Analytics

You can use Google Analytics ( A free web analytics service) to track your visitors who browse your website. This tool helps you to get all information about your site's visitors such as their location, demographics, search methods and more. Just install a plugin on your site that allows you to use Google Analytics on your website and track conversion rate. For this, you need to set up conversation tracking. This will help you to understand the browsing behavior of your targeted customers and make changes in site accordingly. 

10. Preview every element of your WordPress Site

You need to update your site regularly with unique contents and make it viral with the best practices of SEO, SMO, Email marketing, etc, to gain traffic back to your site. In fact, you need to take care of all elements of your website cautiously. This will help you bring loyal customers to your site and will give you adequate feedback and recommendations. 

Important point to Note

Never expect that your new site will perform tremendously and will rank in top 10 in Google and other search engines overnight. If you run your website properly using the above mentioned tips, you can achieve your long-term objectives easily with great ease. Just try to make your site is relevant and recognizable to the World's leading search engines.

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Advantages of Converting HTML to WordPress Website

The success of a company largely depends on its website. If a company is available online, their customers and potential customers are engaged on the Internet even if it doesn't perform well at its physical store. That is why, most of the companies get their websites made in order to expand their business rapidly with their online presence.

Most of the websites are created using HMTL code. Actually, HTML is the markup language used to display web pages and you need to hire an expert web developer to create an HTML website for your business. Apart from creating websites, you need to update it regularly with new contents that provide the latest information about your business activities. All these cost you a considerable amount of money and you tend to go for an affordable option as soon as possible. 

Many times, it happens that your decision to stick with HTML doesn't reward you with ROI. In that unfavorable scenario, you can think of changing your HTML website to WordPress without having any doubt in Mind.

As a matter of fact, WordPress is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) that powers around 24% of the entire Internet with intense adaptability and user-friendliness. Have a look at the key advantages of changing HTML to WordPress Website detailed here below:

1. WordPress is affordable

As soon as you convert your HTML website, it comes under your content. Now, you don't need to hire a costly web developers/ web firms to update content on your website. You can easily make changes in your website and publish new content yourself. It helps you to save a lot of money and you no longer require someone’s help to deal with technical issues while posting articles, photos, or videos on your website.

2. Free WordPress Themes

Free WordPress themes help website developers to understand WordPress coding standard and best practices in an easy way and they become able to operate site's content proficiently that attracts huge traffic in a short span of time. 

3. Free WordPress Plugins

There are lots of free and useful WordPress plugins that expand the functionality of a WordPress website and tailor it to serve a wide variety of website purposes.

4. High Ranking in SERP of different search engines

In order to generate sales, a website has to compete several other websites( that provide same knowledge) and rank up in SERP of different search engines. As WordPress is SEO friendly, Search engine crawlers are able to read out and index the content of WordPress websites in an easy way. A number of settings and plugins offered by WordPress can be utilized to improve Search Engine Optimization easily. 

5. Enhancement of Social media traffic

Different social Media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Pinterest, Google Plus+, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr, Reddit, Snapchat, WhatsApp, StumbleUpon, etc, help you establish your brand in the crowd of numerous silimar companies and you become able to gain new customers to make progress in your business. When you update your WordPress website, it automatically gets shared on different social media forums and you get traffic in bulk and increased conversion. 

6. Automatic updates

WordPress allows you to schedule your post when you have to publish many contents. When you schedule your post on your WordPress site, it automatically gets published on the fixed time and keeps your users engaged at all the times. 

7. Security

As WordPress offers several free security plugins, by making use of any one of them, you can make your website safe from hackers and other online threats. 

8. Convenient for Novice 

As novice have no experience in coding, WordPress is good for them. There is no need to learn anything extra to get started with WordPress. Bloggers can easily make use of it and can build up their identity on the Global Internet.

Conclusion

A modern and up-to-date website is the main key to success for any business or company. If you have a HTML website, just convert it to WordPress in order to enjoy huge traffic to your website and obtain desired success.

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“Only the Best for Our Clients” - HireWPGeeks HTML to WordPress Conversion service

WordPress powers a solid 26% of the CMS-using sites on internet and the numbers are increasing not from peer-pressure, but the absolute adaptability, user-friendliness, and control provided by this platform. So if you want to switch from boring old HTML to WordPress’ dynamic interface, you won’t find many who would protest. And that vague panic in the back of your mind over lost site data or design can be driven away. You can leverage all the wonderful WordPress features without losing your online footing with HireWPGeeks.

HireWPGeeks offers HTML to WordPress conversion services that are W3C validated and cross browser compatible. Their team of seasoned developers and expert analysts work diligently to ensure pixel-perfect HTML to WordPress conversion, meticulously coded by a team of professional developers to preserve the integrity of your old site design (if you so wish) and prevent any data loss that may damage your business prospects.

HTML to WordPress conversion is a simple-in-theory-only process with often undesired outcomes: You may be told to fit into WordPress mold, but not by HireWPGeeks’ team of experts. All projects by HireWPGeeks are reviewed to ensure maximum functionality, cross browser compatibility and unparalleled performance for great user experience and search engine results ratings on all devices. The company builds a brand new WordPress website with your own HTML website as a foundation and WordPress’ feature-packed platform as scaffolding. Delivery is made after rigorous revisions and pixel perfect designs are brought to life with constant collaboration between clients and our developers. Every last feature is inserted after your approval, allowing projects to be developed with pin-point precision using previews and real-time comments and edits to your specifications and the team’s own exacting quality standards.

HireWPGeeks has a solid client satisfaction record of more than 5 years in service. They have catered to clients across the globe and delivered conversion services timely and efficiently. The company understands business goals and requirements and employs its knowledge of the platform and expert insight to provide highly scalable enterprise grade solutions at cost effective rates. Their motto: “Only the best for our clients”. Their solutions are processed using latest platform-specific technologies and the most future-proofed trends and methodologies.

HireWPGeeks extends unwavering, round-the-clock technical support to their clients and patrons. Their responsive team of support staff is only a call or a message away.

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Outsourcing WordPress Development? Let HireWPGeeks take the mantle.

Once you’ve made the shift to WordPress as your content management platform, nothing else will ever measure up in sheer user friendliness and ease. But to get the WordPress website that truly reflects your brand’s individual identity isn’t something you can accomplish with commonly sold themes and plugins. To stand out in a sea of ‘premium theme’ websites, hire a WordPress developer. But why stop there when you can hire an entire team of ingenuous, crafty WordPress Geeks instead?

HireWPGeeks is a WordPress development company delivering outstanding WordPress services to clients across the world: From letting you hire WordPress developers (of your choice), customize your CMS to something spectacularly your own, to designing and developing entire portals and chains for any niche and industry vertical imaginable, even to bring you home to WordPress from some other platform with X to WordPress conversion services. They have the whole thing covered.

HireWPGeeks strongly believes in user-centric, comprehensive, and cost-effective WordPress development. They have a team of 75+professional developers, working consistently and using the latest and best in tools, trends, and technologies to code, compile, and collaborate within the strictest of time-constraints. With over 5000 projects to their name in 5 years and more than 1500 satisfied clients, this company can claim to have a 95% client retention ratio and helps clients save up to 45% of their outsourcing cost.

“The great thing is, HireWPGeeks makes development a collaborative effort using communication and trust,” says one satisfied (and recurring) client who prefers to stay anonymous. The company is known for combining astute business strategies of clients with the technological intuition and competence of their pro Geeks to deliver high-end WordPress development solutions that conform to specific needs and scale elegantly with increasing demands over time. Since the company is proud of every single project they complete, there’s a strict, straight off 100% satisfaction or Money-Back guarantee on every deliverable. This confidence on something so vague and relative comes from scrupulous attention to detail and on-the-dot delivery of WordPress solutions that have fit seamlessly with over 1500 clients’ enterprises till date.

Unlike the spammy sites begging for scrapes, HireWPGeeks is dedicated to assisting its clients. The responsive team at HireWPGeeks is available round-the-clock to answer all questions and attend to any grievances clients may have with their services. We make sure you can outsource WordPress development and have peace of mind at the same time.

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5 Reasons to Keep Updating your WordPress Website Regularly

WordPress, as the most well-loved content management system on the internet, lives up to its name because legions of developers contribute to the core and work on updating it and making it better everyday. WordPress pushes out at least 2-3 major version updates (recognizable by all the news made and named after famous jazz musicians), and releases about a dozen or so minor version updates as security and maintenance releases.

Here’s why you should keep pace with this fast paced development and update your WordPress website as regularly as possible:

1. New features

Some of the features that could only be included in a WordPress website thanks to plugins in the platform’s older versions are now actually integrated into the core.

New features and fixes are the main attractions and focus-points of every version update. In WordPress 4.5, features like performance optimized images and inline linking, responsive previews etc. were integrated within the core. Other features like oEmbed support, new text formatting tags and shortcuts, even multisite compatibility were brought to core with updates, while before they would have depended entirely on the mercy of plugin, code snippet, or unimaginable entirely.

Make WordPress core (development forum) is always active and you’ll find it positively littered with feature discussions and even requests/ wishes from users like yourself.

2. Improved UI

WordPress core contributors make it a point to improve upon the existing back end admin dashboard user interface with all major and minor version updates that are undergoing discussions and taking place. Responsive previews aside, WordPress core always comes with sleeker but otherwise unnoticeable interactions in your admin dashboard that let you streamline your workflow and publish your content with any hassle.

3. Theme/Plugin Compatibility

Chances are that a popular, and good theme or plugin will be updated as soon as WordPress core releases an update. Basically, all good theme and plugin developers keep pace with WordPress updates.

This means that most of the best and latest themes and plugins will be unable to work on ‘old enough to be obsolete’ versions of WordPress.

4. Performance

WordPress also deprecates some of the more repetitive or redundant functions and calls, making coding easier for your one of the best WordPress customization company. There are also new functions and script libraries and elements added to the core with the aim to improve performance as well as give your developers more stuff to work with.

5. Security

This is the most important reason why you should update your WordPress website.

Despite the practice of responsible disclosure, hackers do find out the core vulnerabilities of a previous version and try to exploit them. This puts every WordPress website powered by that specific WP version at incredible risk. Also, this happens on all platforms. At least WordPress is prompt with responding to the problem.

Security and maintenance patches are released for every major version update to cover as much extra ground as possible to keep your website secure. Make sure you update your WordPress site as soon as update is available.

EndNote

Core WordPress aside, you should also work to keep your WordPress themes and plugins updated to their latest versions for the exact same reasons mentioned above. It’s one of the 5 commandments of basic WordPress maintenance and makes your site healthier – always a good thing in the long run.

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Static HTML website or Responsive WordPress Theme: What to Choose?

Nowadays, business owners are creating fully-fledged websites to maximize the sales and productivity of their business. A site gives an ideal way to promote and convey their organizational messages to a large number of people effectively and efficiently.

Although there are several content publishing platforms out there on the web, picking out the best and most reliable option is always a tough job, especially for beginners. People usually get confused between the WordPress sites and Static HTML sites. They always want to know the benefits of using WordPress over a static site.

Obviously, both the methods help you create a beautiful business site, but still there are some basic differences that apart them from each other. With that in mind, we bring you this blog post where we will compare the WordPress with the static or HTML site and find out the best option for you. Today, more and more people are switching their website from, HTML to Wordpress theme and enjoying the hassle free CMS.

WordPress: A Popular Content Management System

“WordPress is considered to be the most preferred CMS as it powers more than 75 millions of sites on the internet.“

WordPress is an open source content publishing tool written in PHP. It was started back in 2003 as a blogging platform, but now it has evolved as one of the most robust content publishing platforms.

It allows you to create anything from a content-based site to an eCommerce site, without even paying a license fees. It comes with millions and thousands of convincing themes, plugins and extensions to let you build a custom website, without any heavy lifting. You can customize your site from the user-friendly and intuitive admin area. Even, a beginner can create, develop and manage their WordPress site.

Besides its popularity, some users get confused between the WordPress.org with WordPress.com.

WordPress.org is a self-hosted platform that you can use it for free. Here, you are responsible for your site maintenance, means you have complete control over your site. On the other side, WordPress.com is a hosted platform. It means all the sites are maintained by WordPress.com itself.

Let’s explore the benefits and limitation of using WordPress.

Benefits of WordPress sites

1. Easy to Operate/Update

One of the biggest benefits of using WordPress is its user-friendly functionalities. Yes, you can add, customize, update and delete the content of your site with ease.

You just need to log in your WordPress site and add new pages according to your needs, without any technical guidance or assistance. It includes an intuitive user interface that makes it super easy to add or update web pages in a matter of few minutes.

2. Fully Customizable - Comes with Thousands of Themes and Plugins

WordPress is a powerful platform that offers a ton of stunning themes and plugins (both free and premium) to help you build a purpose-oriented website with ease.

There are loads of beautiful and fully responsive themes to let you create a unique site for your business. These themes offer various customization options that you can use to tweak the design, layouts, font size, color backgrounds, and even structure of the site, without getting your hands dirty in coding.

Similarly, WordPress plugins allow you extend the functionality of your site according to your business needs. It gives you the flexibility to add anything- from social sharing icons to contact forms. You can boost the functionality of your site by installing the most relevant plugin into your WP site.

3. Excellent Community Support

WordPress comes with an extensive and supportive Community. It is supported by millions of users, experienced designers, and developers, who have already developed many WordPress projects.
You can ask your questions on the support forums and they will solve your WordPress related query within 24 hours.

The Downside of WordPress

1. Maintenance is completely in your hands

If you choose WordPress, you need to regularly maintain or update your WordPress, installed themes and plugins. You are completely responsible if something goes wrong with your site.

Note: You can also utilize the managed WordPress hosting who will manage your site on regular basis.

2. Uses lots of Resources

A WordPress installation alone is useless. You need to install a theme and a bunch of few plugins to run a business site effectively. Well, it is not difficult as WordPress offers plenty of themes and plugins. But the use of too many plugins could break down the speed of your site.

In fact, WordPress also uses an extensive number of resources than a static HTML site unless you hire a reliable WordPress hosting service provider.

Static HTML website: A traditional way of building site

HTML is the markup language, which is used to represent web pages. You can find many websites using HTML with different markup and scripting languages to build web pages.

Developing an HTML site is not as easy as you think. You may need to hire a professional web developer who can develop HTML site for you. They build sites using HTML, JavaScript, CSS and other advanced tools and technologies.

HTML pages are static. This means if you want to change or tweak the design of your entire site, you will have to access the file for each page manually, and make the changes accordingly. The entire process is time-consuming and requires a lot of coding skills.

Now, let us look at some benefits and limitation of creating an HTML site for your business.

Benefits of using a static site

1. Run a site with low resources

HTML sites usually don’t require servers with MySQL or PHP installed on them. You can run them on a low-priced server with low resources. However, you can find many good web hosting providers who offer top-notch PHP and MySQL support.

2. Require less maintenance

Once your site gets launched, you don’t need to worry about regular backups and updates. If nothing is updated, you can simply backup your site once and forget about it. You don’t need to perform the same task again and again.

Downside of HTML sites

1. Increases your Costs

Having a static HTML site simply means you need to spend more money on hiring experts who can help you in developing and managing static site. This will increase your overall development cost.

2. There is no updates

If you are novice static site owner and want to upgrade your site, you need to learn the HTML and CSS programming languages. Or else, you need to hire a developer who can develop a site for you. They can add new pages, update old content, and upload videos and images into your site.

Which is the best option? WordPress or HTML

Now we are familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of both the website. Let’s explore the best option for your business site.

If you are sure that you will never want to update or customize your site, then static HTML site is a good option for you.

But if you want a flexible and user-friendly option, then you should go with WordPress. Here, you can create, manage, update and modify the content of your site on your own, without any coding skills. In fact, WordPress is also an ideal platform for those who want to expand their business site to generate more money.

Conclusion

Now it’s completely up to you whether you want to go with HTML site or use WordPress to create user-friendly business sites. You can choose the best option as per your requirements.

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Why it is Essential for User to buy a Premium WordPress Theme

In Envato’s Power Elite Wall of Fame, every single spot is taken by a WordPress developer. Considering that WordPress-centric products can be covered in 2 subsidiaries (out of total 7), that’s saying a lot.
 

WordPress is open source through and through, but that doesn’t mean that any ‘related’ products are free too. It’s an undisputed fact that premium WordPress products sell like hot cakes. There’s nothing shady about it. It’s just one of the few ways to earn money through open source technologies nowadays. There are entire empires built similarly on WordPress.
 

The Question you’re asking as a user, of course, is why should you buy a premium WordPress theme (like all the other people spending their money to line developers’ pockets) when you can get a perfectly fine one for free.
 

Bet I can answer that and change your mind about usefulness of premium WordPress themes in four points.
 

Advantages:
 

• Design:
 

Looks do matter. Come on, be realistic – you are vying for attention on a medium that is literally chock full to the gills with endless entertainments/information/et al. You think boring, lifeless designs are going to cut it? No.

I am, by no means demeaning the free themes, but the designs of a premium WordPress theme are unmatched not only in stunning looks but also highly customizable options that can be easily worked by non-coding users.

• Support:
 

Anyone who has ever faced a technical problem during WordPress setup and lost 5 years of their life worrying over it will agree that professional support is the best thing ever.
Although the community is great and you can get answers, the unspoken implication is eventually. With premium themes, you don’t have to ask for help from anyone and wait till a Good Samaritan comes along to lend you a hand.


• Updates:
 

Premium WordPress themes are almost always updated in sync with major (and even minor) WordPress core updates. That’s why the WP Core development team releases the ‘Release Candidates’ before the main event – so users whose entire sites are running on premium themes and plugins could be spared if they have responsible developers who will update the theme functions and more in conjunction.
The new features are just icing on the cake.


• Unique Features unavailable as plugins:
 

The best description for this point is an example. The theme JobListing (available at themeforest.net) is a directory/board theme for WordPress, and the kind of features it has are unique to it.
 

While plugins give you functionalities, premium themes often have unique features which only work for theme users. This creates less compatibility issues, smoother performance, singularly amazing WordPress theme customization options, and as a bonus, makes your competition green with envy.

EndNote
 

The competition keeps the field of premium WordPress themes almost crackling with endless variety. Developers know that to sell better, their themes have to BE better. The most a free WordPress theme signifies is free time on a developer’s hand or a random experiment.
 

It’s obvious now, isn’t it?

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Top Benefits of Opting for WordPress Development

There’s no shortage of articles across the internet which supposedly tell you what to stand to gain from custom WordPress development.

This post isn’t like them. 

Instead of raving on about the ‘SEO benefits’ and ‘responsive design’ and ‘cross-platform compatibility’, which, let’s face it, are standards features you can get from thousands of good themes and plugins, this post will seek to come straight to the point.

What exactly do you as a business/agency owner stand to gain from bespoke WordPress solutions?

What “Custom WordPress Development” means:

To clear some notions; WordPress development usually includes one or both of the following:

• Custom Theme Development

Editing/rewriting the code of your existing theme or creating a custom theme from scratch

• Custom Plugin Development

Installing/implementing existing plugins (free or premium), editing the code in those plugins so for error-free performance, and creating a custom plugin from scratch

WordPress customization is for creating a website that you want, without errors and issues. That translates to remodeling the look, feel, and functionalities.

There are additional services your WordPress development company could provide. None of them would include “conversion rate optimization”, “competition assessment”, “better content” etc. Those are nothing but meaningless rehashing of your business goals which a development company will have nothing to do with anyway.

WordPress customization: A Metaphor

So instead of buying a suit from, say, Walmart, you are getting a ‘tailor-made’ suit created specifically for your ‘measurements’.

Here’s where it gets interesting: You are the one who has to create a strategy for online success; the development company only implements it on your website. Basically: The developers will lead the horse to water, but you’ll have to make it drink.

Benefit of WordPress Development:

You get exactly what you pay for; nothing more, nothing less.

Although WordPress can be customized with themes and plugins, a vast majority of them are created to appeal to a broad range of users for simple commercial viability. Let me give you an example:

Example: Suppose you want to integrate the live chat feature on your website, and for the same ends you find a plugin you like. You will then need to see if it has:

• Required features: Less means it’s not of use to you, More means it’s needlessly complicated
• Payment Plans that don’t put a strain on your pocket
• Team-player: Only after you have bought, installed, and run the plugin will you know if it’s even compatible with the rest of your site

You bypass all those considerations with a custom solution: Same functionality, components with those features that you specify and need, and it’s made to be compatible with your WordPress setup.

Scalability, performance, SEO-benefits, and everything else are just icing on the cake. You shouldn’t have to be reminded of those. WordPress packs these ‘features’, it’s only fair that your solutions pack these too without you having to ask for them.

Endnote

To adapt a website to your needs, not the other way around: Custom WordPress Development solves problems that are specific to you.

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Keeping up with the Community: WordPress 4.5 Beta 2

After a whole armada of patches released with WordPress 4.5 Beta 1 just last week, the team of developers working tirelessly on core has already come up with new patches and fixes.

In an attempt to ease the non-coders and beginners into our awesome community, here is a brief overview of major fixes and patches in the latest 4.5 Beta 2 release:

1. strip_meta() fatal error on resize in ImageMagick

There was a fatal error when users uploaded images and resized it via ImageMagick (RCIG plugin: aka, responsive images). This occurred due to incomplete meta stripping during resize.

The patch (33642) resolves this error by changing default quality from 90 to 82. Further patches added new thumbnail and image resize functions. The patch also removes all image profiles except ICC, ICM, and EXIF set as image property. 

2. “Horizontal Rule” in WYSIWYG editor (TinyMCE)

New inline patterns are being added to core. The Horizontal Rule <hr> patch is for TinyMCE text editor in WordPress.

The purpose, for those unfamiliar with this HTML tag, is to create a line break that separates content. The Horizontal rule (<hr>) has been tested on iPhone, Mac, and Chrome and behaving well.

3. “Paste as Text” notice is now dismiss-able (TinyMCE)

Another patch added to 4.5 Beta 2 makes the oft annoying “Paste as Text” warning modal permanently dismiss-able after second time. This should improve editorial workflow.

The development on this feature is now closed. It is now set to be released with WordPress 4.5.

4. Selective Refresh support enabled in core themes

This customization feature gives users the ability to preview titles and taglines while a core theme (like Twenty Eleven) is in use.

Users can now shift + click to focus on control areas and test the PHP filters which will be applicable once you publish.

All said, there are a little over 100 changes and fixes that have been made within the week since last beta release.

Endnote

The version is still under development, so it’s not meant for live or production websites.

You can do your part as a budding WordPress developer by downloading the nightly builds, downloading the beta zip, testing it yourself, and suggesting (or maybe even making) improvements.

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Basic Security Tips for WordPress Beginners

 

Welcome to WordPress.

You are now a part of a sprawling community of WordPress users, developers, and geeks. And your website is one of 16 million others currently powered by WordPress.

You already know about user-friendliness, the vast variety, and utter control you get to exercise over your WordPress website. But it’s not all fun and games until you learn how to keep it safe.

WordPress is as secure as you make it. So let’s harden your defenses against common attacks.

1. Back Ups

These are necessary for maintenance, security, and just general peace of mind.

A backup is your safety net in times when a) your website crashes, b) you lock yourself out, and c) you get hacked.

All you need to do is install a trustworthy backup plugin and use it to create scheduled backups of your website. Try one like Backup Buddy (premium, has good auto restore features), BackUpWordPress (free), WordPress Backup to Dropbox (mostly free, great for creating and storing site wide + database backups on cloud), and SaaS like VaultPress, UpdraftPlus, et al.

Tip: Create a backup schedule that coincides with your general maintenance schedule. Essentially, anytime you upgrade something on your website, your backup should save it. 

2. Download from Trusted sources only

Most WordPress websites are open to attack through theme and plugin vulnerabilities.

Make sure you download absolutely nothing from sources that reek of malicious activity: typically websites offering premium goods for free are major culprits. A few bucks saved now will come back to give you grief later.

Trusted sources like the official WordPress repositories (for themes and plugins) are safe, along with large marketplaces like Envato (ThemeForest and CodeCanyon), iThemes, StudioPress, etc.

Tip: Exercise the same caution before hiring a custom WordPress development services provider.

3. Strong Passwords and Admin username

It may sound harsh, but if you’re too lazy to change the default username and couldn’t be bothered to use a strong password, you deserve to get hacked. At this point you’re practically inviting attackers.

Long, strong passwords are your first line of defense against ‘standard’ brute force attacks. The length and complexity exponentially increases the time it would take to crack your password. Mix up random letters in upper and lower cases with numbers and characters.

Also change the default username (“admin”, are you kidding me?) to something less obvious.

Tip: Set up a new account and assign admin role to that, and delete the previous “admin” username account. It’s one of the simplest ways.

4. Security Plugins

Oh, now we’re talking.

Security plugins are your website’s personal anti-virus systems, in that they will whet your website and exterminate any malicious bits left behind by potential attackers. This is essential: WordFence (The best and largely free plugin with exhaustive features for site security, login, two factor authentication, etc.)

There are more options (like Login Lockdown, iThemes Security, etc.) but WordFence has enough features to do all their jobs on its own.

Tip: Feature packed plugins fulfill more requirements, and make it easy to keep your plugin-count under tight control. This is good for both security and performance.

5. Update Consistently

Most good Plugins and themes, and the WordPress core itself, roll out updates on a regular basis. Your job is to update to the latest version.

You may have noticed that within a few weeks of every major platform update (last one was 4.4 Clifford), you will get minor version release notices (last one was 4.4.2). These are fixes for security vulnerabilities.  Themes and plugins also keep pace with the updates for error-free performance and more tightly-knit security.

So update. Consistently.

Endnote

Once you have set up a routine for maintenance and security, you can progress to advanced tactics to harden WordPress by checking out even more security tips and this complete checklist.

It’s a war out there. Do your part by keeping your wits around you, and be safe.

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Everything You Need to Know While Picking a Responsive WordPress Theme

The rapid use of different mobile devices for browsing internet influences web designers and webmasters to create mobile-friendly websites. With the use of a responsive WordPress theme, you can design or optimize your business website for different mobile devices and viewports. These themes are cross-browser compatible and offers lots of customization options to improve the usability of your site.
 

However, with such an extensive range of options, it becomes quite challenging to make an intelligent decision on what to consider while picking a good responsive theme – free or premium.
 

To make your work simpler, we bring you some of the useful tips you need to consider while picking out the most suitable and powerful responsive theme for your site.

1. Decide what resolutions are supported and obviously how
 

If you are new into the web design world, let me tell you that responsive designs utilize Media Queries to reformat the design of a site when the screen resolution is under a particular number of pixels. For instance, a site’s design might restructure for the mobile device when it encounters the screen size is 480x or below.
 

You can make a use of Resizer tool in your browser to automatically put your PC browser window to test common device sizes. With this tool, you can test the desired responsive theme before making any final call.

2. Consider the content hierarchy
 

If your site’s content doesn’t fit at mobile screen sizes, then you can simply drop it out from your site. For instance, widgets and sidebars of a website are usually hidden at smaller screen sizes and they won’t appear on a scrollable page.
 

It might be okay for your purposes, but identifying what is hidden, and what is re-designed as your window size becomes smaller.
 

However, with the use of good responsive theme, you will easily handle your sidebars and also create flexible widget areas for your site. With content reformatted for smaller screens, you need to consider the content hierarchy to make sure that the order in which it arrives is suitable for how you propose to showcase your site rather then moving down the content on the scrolling page.
 

3. Know how menus are managed
 

The width of your navigation area can be affected by several items and the length of your navigation labels. In fact, it can affect the look of your navigation bar on different devices. If you can’t handle your navigation bar, then your nav might split in odd places on small mobile devices.
 

But you can choose the best responsive theme that uses the compelling navigation system. When the desktop version uses a traditional link bar, then this changes to a tappable menu while reformats for small screen devices.
 

You can also make a use of custom WordPress theme development at HireWPGeeks to ensure a more accessible and usable design for your site.

4. Advertisement on your website
 

Some of the ads serving systems do not optimize the ad content for different devices. And this creates conflicting issues with a responsive design. In fact, ads are dealt with JS tags and iFrames, and it can cause formatting issues badly.
 

If you want to serve ads, try to work out on a strategy of how you will either turn on/off advertisement at multiple sizes, or you can also provide alternative ads only for mobile visitors.

5. Video handling
 

Videos play a vital role in encouraging potential visitors towards your site. But it can create issues with the responsive design because of the nature of embedding. If you want to optimize the size of your videos for multiple devices, then you need to employ the special HTML markup correctly.
 

Note: if you don’t find a video in the theme’s demo, you can ask the author for any provisions made in your responsive theme to handle video content.

Conclusion
 

These are some of the useful tips that will help you create a mobile-friendly design for your website.

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How Switching your Website to WordPress can Benefits you

Undoubtedly, WordPress is the most promising software used for building and customizing company websites, service-based sites, professional and personal blogs and even e-commerce stores. This content management system has gained a lot of popularity because it’s advanced and user-friendly features including the extensive range of themes and plugins.
 

With the help of WordPress themes and plugins, you can customize the look and feel of your site according to your needs. And the best part of using WordPress is that you don’t need to a technical expert. Yes, you heard it right. You can edit your site, without getting your hands dirty in coding. And this is the main reason why businesses are switching their traditional sites with WordPress.
 

Here, in this post, we will discuss the five advantages of switching your site to WordPress.

1. WordPress is Manageable
 

It is super-easy to create, edit and delete the content on WordPress sites. WordPress also keeps their back-end upgraded so you don’t need to take stress on the part of a site’s safety and security.
You can install the plugins and themes into your sites without any technical knowledge and also tweak the design within a few clicks. In fact, you can easily update your installed themes to the newer coding standards just after creating a solid foundation.

2. WordPress is Accessible
 

This content management system allows you to add, edit and publish content on the site anywhere, anytime with an internet connection.
 

It means you access your site and upload the content even from your mobile devices. Isn’t it incredible!

3. Search Engine friendly
 

There is a false myth that WordPress is a search engine optimized content management system.
Of course, it is a search engine friendly tool, but still you need to optimize your site manually to get best possible results. And with the help of SEO plugins like SEO by Yoast, you can optimize the content of your site for search engines quickly and efficiently.
 

Note: WordPress offers a super-easy framework which makes it simple for Google to crawl your site on SERPs.

4. WordPress is fully Customizable
 

Customize or tweak the design of your WordPress site/blog with beautiful and fully responsive themes. WordPress offers myriads of free and paid themes that you can use to create a customized site. You can change the design, color, size and overall appearance of your site within a few clicks.
 

Well, you can also hire the WordPress customization expert that can help you in creating more advanced, more reliable and more professional website in a short time period.

5. Easy to learn CMS
 

Now you don’t need to be a technical expert for creating a professional looking WordPress website. You don’t even need to learn any programming languages like JavaScript, CSS, PHP, and HTML.
 

In fact, you can also watch tutorial videos on how to set up a first business site on WordPress? Or other related tutorials to gather some basic knowledge about this CMS.
 

With the guidance of video tutorials, you can create and develop anything from a business site to well-developed online store, without getting your hands dirty in codes.


Conclusion
 

WordPress as a content management system makes it simple to set up a fully-functional and intuitive website, without any coding. Plus, it offers countless benefits that you won’t find in any other CMS software. And that is the reason why people are converting their HTML sites into WordPress.

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Advantages Associated with Responsive WordPress Themes

From the today’s point of view, responsive web design is playing an indispensable role in the web designing sector. The growing usability of smartphones and tablets are imposing the website owners to optimize their conventional websites for different mobile devices and screen sizes.

However, designing a website for different devices and mobile platforms is not a cup of tea for non-technical users. It requires serious coding, time, money and in-depth web design technique. But with the introduction of Responsive WordPress themes, you can easily optimize your website in minutes.

WordPress offers plenty of responsive themes that will help you create not only a beautiful web design for your site, but you can also make your site compatible with multiple devices such as desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. Plus, these themes are packed with various advanced features such as valid and secure coding, cross-browser compatibility, SEO and

performance optimized, and multiple language support.

In this blog post, we will share some advantages of using responsive WordPress themes for your WordPress websites.

1. One Site version from multiple devices

The best thing about responsive themes is that they look amazing on different devices and screen sizes. It means you can see a website version on all smartphones and large desktop computers. A responsive theme reduces the work of building multiple site versions for different devices (such as desktop computers and smartphones).

So, it is better to use a fully-responsive theme for your website as it will optimize your content, images and other aspects for different devices and mobile platforms.

Well, you can also opt for WordPress theme customization services if you want a fully-fledged mobile-ready website for your business.

2. Increase traffic on your website

Around 40% of web traffic comes from mobile phones, and having a responsive theme means you are allowing mobile visitors to access your site from their mobile devices. Through this, you will increase your web traffic and convert them into potential customers.

With responsive themes, you can create and customize your website to make it more engaging and eye-catching. You can instantly construct beautiful and well-coded web pages that can attract both web customers and search engines such as Google and Bing.

3. Enhanced Brand Awareness
 

A design of a website represents you and your brand. So, it is important for you to build a website that can fulfill the needs of both the desktop viewers and mobile viewers. You can give your visitors the enhanced user-experience by integrating fully-functional responsive theme.

You can give your web customers the opportunity to access your website even from their mobile phone. And if you have an eshop, then allow them to buy products online right from their smartphones or iOS phones.

4. Boosts search engine ranking

Search engine optimization is the most advanced online marketing technique that promotes your online business/website among web audience across the world. Under this technique, your website is optimized with an objective to generate the higher ranking for search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

But if you have a responsive WordPress theme, then you can instantly increase your search engine ranking because half of the searches being down with the mobile devices by the mobile visitors– which shares a huge percentage in web traffic.

Conclusion

So, what are you waiting for? Pick out the best responsive theme from the pool and integrate in your site to reap all the above mentioned advantages.

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