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For a portfolio to do an adequate job of showcasing your work, it has to cover lots of bases. As an example, the text must relate closely with the image its focus is on, and it has to attract visitor attention without taking the focus away from the image itself.

You need the right tools to make this happen. There are plenty of themes on the market that have the right tools when your goal is to create a decent portfolio website. On the other hand, if you want your portfolio website to serve as a truly valuable asset, “decent” just won’t cut it.

What you want, is a stunning, awesome, or award-winning portfolio website. Creating one that meets such a high standard is well within your reach – but you have to pick a theme that can actually help you make that happen.

Like one of the following:

1. Be Theme

It has a library of 450+ customizable pre-built websites. It offers all the flexibility you need to build a top-quality portfolio website. And it’s easy to use. It’s also the biggest WordPress theme on the market and it’s called Be Theme.

Be’s professionally-designed prebuilt websites are but one of its many powerful core features that includes everything from its Muffin Builder editor, a shortcode generator and a large shortcode generator library, a brand-new Header Builder, and a wide selection of portfolio grids, layouts, and other useful portfolio-building features.

A subset of these customizable pre-built websites can serve as starting points for a portfolio website project. Of particular note is BeAgency, a one page pre-built website featuring a beautiful Ajax portfolio. BeAgency and has been a preferred choice of a variety of agencies looking for the best way to showcase their products.

Be offers an impressive collection of powerful website-building capabilities, and whether you’re a pro or your proposed portfolio website is your first one, you’ll like what this responsive, SEO-friendly WordPress theme offers, and you’ll like its excellent customer support.

2. Kalium

An excellent choice for portfolio and blog websites as well as for online shops, Kalium gives its users a great selection of theme options, layout designs, and drag and drop content elements to work with to build a portfolio website that showcases your work for the world to see.

Select one or more of Kalium’s demo sites to get your project started. Simply clone the content you want to work with using WPBakery, the world’s top page builder and the 100+ shortcodes and a variety of bonus elements that also come with the package.

As for your portfolio; Kalium gives you 30+ different carefully-crafted portfolio item types in 7 main categories to work from. Each category has options for aligning images, controlling spacing, and incorporating textual information.

And, one thing more. Kalium is delightfully easy to use.

3. Uncode

The fact that Uncode, with its 50,000 sales is one of ThemeForest’s all-time best sellers is one good reason why this pixel-perfect theme could be a good choice for you. There are many more of course, and you could go through the entire list of Uncode’s features to see what they are.

But if you really want to see what this creative multiuse theme could do to help you create an awesome portfolio website, you need to visit Uncode’s website and browse the user-created website library.

You’ll be impressed and inspired by what you see; whether your next project will be a portfolio website or another website type.

While building your portfolio website, you should find plenty of good use for this creative multiuse theme’s advanced grid system and its adaptive images system and advanced Masonry/Isotope/Carousel features. Your portfolio will shine brightly on large screens and hand-held devices alike.

4. Bridge

Bridge is perfect for just about any web designer. The fact it happens to be the best-selling creative theme on ThemeForest points that out. Bridge is ideal for all types of websites, and that includes portfolio websites.

Developed by Qode Interactive, Bridge features open-ended customizability, a variety of portfolio building options, and gives its 110,000 happy users 5-star support.

5. The Gem

TheGem has been called the ultimate WordPress toolbox with respect to its features and capabilities, which include unlimited portfolio website-building options. TheGem gives you 20+ flexible portfolio layouts to work with together with a flexible grid system and a host of column, gap width, loading, and pagination options along with animation and hover effects.

TheGem is designed to significantly expand your portfolio design and build options.

6. Hello

Hello is a lightning-fast, friendly, and free theme that won’t slow you down. It also happens to be the ideal WordPress theme for Elementor. It’s such a good fit that whenever Elementor is updated the majority of the testing is done on Hello.

This open source theme supports all of the most widely used and popular WordPress plugins. It’s literally a theme without boundaries.

7. Movedo WP Theme

MOVEDO is a creative multipurpose WordPress theme featuring a clean, modern design, high quality code, amazing flexibility, and 24/7 support. Some of its seldom seen elsewhere features are truly amazing. You’ll be able to accomplish the seemingly impossible with MOVEDO’s super-crispy moldable typography and ultra-dynamics parallax effects.

Whether your project involves a general or specific-purpose (e.g., portfolio) website, MOVEDO adjusts to your creativity.

8. Pofo

With more than 150 pre-built elements, 200+ demo pages, and 25 home pages, Pofo is well equipped to meet the challenges any website type could throw at you, but where this blazing fast, highly-flexible multipurpose WordPress theme really shines is in the portfolio, blog, eCommerce arena.

Pofo is an ideal choice for creating a stunning portfolio website; and if you want to add blogging and/or eCommerce capabilities to your website, so much the better.

Conclusion

When you’re faced with several hundred multipurpose themes, many of which appear to have what you need to create a decent portfolio website, searching to find a perfect match, or even a good one, can be a headache. You might have to resort to trial and error in hopes of finding one that will serve you best.

It’s much easier if you have only 8 to choose from. It can still be a challenge because one may seem better in some ways than the next; but you’re actually faced with a can’t lose proposition. Pick one that you feel will get the job done, and you won’t be disappointed.

The post Top 8 Portfolio WordPress Themes Designed for Creatives appeared first on Hongkiat.

You’ve heard how good WordPress is in terms of expandability, customization and you decided to give it a try. Installing a basic copy of WordPress won’t take too long; but if you are looking for more stability, traffics, search engine optimization, etc, here’s few of my recommendation – The things you should do after installing WordPress.

Get WordPress.com API Key, Activate Akismet

Akismet is a plugin that’s bundled with the WordPress installation that will intelligently get rid of all the unnecessary comment and trackback spams. This will be especially handy when you’re going to use the WordPress native comment system.

In order for Akismet to work, you’ll need an Akismet API Key. The key is free, but you’ll need to request for one and apply it on the Akismet plugin. Sign up with WordPress, get Akismet Key.

Once you’ve obtained the key, go to the Settings > Akistmet Anti-spam and enter the key. You’re all set

Change Permalinks

Permalink is the URL format of your posts and pages. By default, WordPress set it up to with a query string for example https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/?p=1 which refers to the page or post with the ID of 1. Not only that this format does not look so nice, it’s also not user-friendly to type in and SEO-friendly. Ultimately, the URL does not tell what the page is all about.

To change the Permalink, go to the Settings > Permalink. Usually setting it to /%postname%/ would be the best. This will change the URL to https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/example-post/.

Install Additional Gutenberg Blocks

Gutenberg or the Block Editor is future of WordPress in that each component is composed with a block unit. WordPress already comes with some essential blocks to write up posts and pages such as the Paragraph block, Heading block, Image block, etc. You can install a plugin that to enrice your content with more blocks, such as the CoBlock.

CoBlock comes with some advanced blocks such as the Pricing Table Block, Author Profile Block, Icon Block, Map Block to add Google Maps, and a lot more others.

If you’d like to create your own block easily without having to code from scratch, Block Lab is a brilliant plugin.

Install SEO Plugin

WordPress is already comse with a couple of basic SEO optimization, such as with the Permalink setting, an improved page title tag, and adding the noindex when the site is set to private. But if you’d like to go further with the SEO optimization, you will need to install a plugin.

There are plenty of so called SEO plugins in WordPress repository. One that’s most popular is Yoast SEO. It comes with the title and description meta editor, Sitemap XML, Breadcrumb navigation, content analysis, and a lot more.

Add Social Media Sharing Buttons

On top of an SEO plugin, having the Social Media button onto your site may be handy for your users to share your content in social media like Facebook and Twitter. With the counter number, you can show how many times that your articles have been spread out in these social media sites.

There are a huge number of choices when it comes to this type of plugin. If you’d like to a simple plugin that’s easy to use without too much bloats, I can recommend installing Social Pug.

Strengthen Security

Securing a site is tough. I honestly would recommend for you to hire a professional to review your site. This would typically involve on reviewing the plugins, theme, and the server configurations to ensure every corner of your site is properly secured.

For the starter, you can install a plugin like iThemes Security. This plugin will allow you to implement several of security best practices on to secure WordPress in just a few clicks away, such changing the login and dashboard URL, remove the user admin, change the wp-content path, and a lot more.

Add Contact Form

Adding contact form on your site allows your readers to reach you out easily. It also helps increase trust worthy of a site because, well, you’re easily reached out. Unlike in the early days of WordPress, today there are a number of very good plugins that allows you to add an advanced contact form easily with drag-and-drop such as Ninja Form, and WPForms.

What about caching?

This allows your site to load faster by generating static HTML page and serve it instead of processing the page through PHP on every page load. Although there are a number of WordPress plugins to enable caching, I would recommend a server-side caching such as Varnish cache or nginx fastcgi cache. It’ll be more reliable and perform much faster than any WordPress plugins.

You can refer to WordPress official guide to enable Varnish.

The post You’ve Installed WordPress – What’s Next? appeared first on Hongkiat.

How many web designers have dismissed everything they’ve heard about multipurpose themes? They did so under the assumption that a multipurpose theme is like the proverbial Jack of all Trades. It may be able to do anything you ask of it, but none of it never well.

That assumption may or may not have been true when multipurpose themes first came on the scene. We really don’t know. But it’s certainly a false assumption today.

There are situations where a specialized theme may serve you better. But in most cases, a multipurpose theme will not only get the job done but absolutely nail it.

Select one of the themes presented here for your next project and what do you think will happen?

It will absolutely nail it.

These 12 multipurpose website-building solutions are not only that good. They’re the best.

1. Be Theme

Every multipurpose theme has its own set of special features and tools that enables it to successfully take on virtually any website-building project a web designer puts it to use. Be Theme has them in spades. With 40+ powerful core features including the newly-minted Header Builder this, the biggest WordPress theme ever, also boasts an outstanding collection of over 400 pre-build websites.

These pre-built websites cover more than 30 different business and industry sectors and niches together with every website type and style you’re apt to encounter. They’re responsive, customizable, and include functional design elements that guarantee the finished product will feature a UX that will engage users and successfully guide them to the website owner’s goal.

Other notable core features include the Muffin Builder/Editor, and advanced options panel, shortcode generator, layout generator, and a host of design elements, options, fonts, and special effects.

Select a pre-built website (you can upload it with a single click), start customizing, add your own content, and you can create a ready-to-go website in as little as 4 hours.

2. Jupiter

Jupiter X is another multipurpose theme that can handle virtually anything you can throw at it. Go down its list of website-building features, and you’ll likely agree that the claim that Jupiter X enables you to build the unbuildable has merit.

You won’t have to worry about working around header and footer-building limitations common to most themes. You can build your own. You’ll also be able to customize online shop features like carts and checkout pages that many themes don’t allow you to do.

Creating customized popups, special forms, and out-of-the-ordinary menu styles will never be a problem either.

It should not come as a surprise to anyone that this scalable, developer-friendly theme is attracting so many new fans. Jupiter X is a total makeover of Jupiter, a creation of a member of the Power Elite Envato Hall of Fame, Artbees.

3. Uncode — Creative Multiuse WordPress Theme

Uncode owes it exceptional flexibility in large part to an adaptive grid system that’s by far the most advanced system of its type. This creative theme, one of ThemeForest’s all-time bestsellers, also features an impressive adaptive images system that detects a visitor’s screen size and rescales your images accordingly.

There are 200+ option-rich design modules to work with plus 28 powerful Visual Composer modules. Its hierarchical theme options feature gives you incredible control over your layout and content, a feature you’ll genuinely appreciate whenever you’re tasked with creating a portfolio that’s a cut above average.

Rather than go down the full list of features, we suggest you visit the Uncode site and browse its showcase of user-build websites. You’ll definitely be impressed to see what others have been able to accomplish using Uncode, and most probably inspired as well.

4. Kalium

This remarkably easy to use multipurpose theme sports an outstanding selection of theme options, layout designs, high-quality full-content design demos. Coupled with its drag and drop page building feature, Kalium gives you the flexibility you need to be able to create websites of any type or style.

You’ll get periodic updates for the life of the product, and you can rely on top-notch customer support as well.

5. TheGem — Creative Multi-Purpose High-Performance WordPress Theme

A very large Swiss Army knife may or may not have been on TheGem’s authors mind when they created it, but they certainly came up with a software equivalent — a multipurpose theme that many look upon as the ultimate in website-building toolboxes.

Its 150+ demo pages, 50 and counting multipurpose design concepts and flexible page layouts help you get any project for any startup, business niche, or creative agency, off to a quick start.

6. Brook — Creative Multipurpose WordPress Theme

Any listing of Brook’s features in so tight a space is going to miss out of everything this best-selling multipurpose creative theme can offer. The best approach is to visit Brook’s website and see for yourself.

Remarkably worth mentioning here is the bunch of premium plugins namely WPBakery Page Builder, Revolution Slider, Font Awesome 5 Pro, the excellent collection of homepage, blog, portfolio layouts, hundreds of custom shortcodes, mega menu, parallax scrolling, and so on.

7. KLEO — Pro Community Focused, Multi-Purpose BuddyPress Theme

This community-focused multipurpose theme lets you put a working site in place in minutes. Easy setup, drag and drop page building, and a 1-click demo import are part of the reason. Another part of the reason could be that Kleo is a plugin’s best friend.

If you have a special plugin or two that you need to get the job done, you won’t have to worry about whether it’s compatible with Kleo. Unlimited possibilities await.

8. Bridge

Bridge is an ideal choice for creating a website for any business niche. It’s more than 110,000 happy customers will attest to that.

The WP Bakery page builder, Revolution Slider, Layer slider and other plugins in combination with Bridge’s open-ended customizability and its library of 370+ pre-made websites will get your project off to a fast start and take you anywhere you want to go.

9. Pofo — Creative Portfolio, Blog and eCommerce WordPress Theme

If you’re looking for a modern, crazy-fast, and SEO optimized theme for your creative agency or business website endeavors you should consider giving Pofo more than a casual glance.

Pofo’s great selection of 1-click demo pages, ready-to-go home pages, and 150+ pre-built design elements will give you all the flexibility and customization options you’re ever likely to need — whether its for a blog, portfolio, or an eCommerce application.

10. Crocal — Premium WordPress Theme

Crocal is brand-spankin’ new; and like any new kid on the block it’s eager to show its stuff. Crocal was created by a #1-rated ThemeForest author, which should tell you a lot about it.

This new multipurpose theme features an advanced grid system (i.e.,it’s extremely flexible), its Gutenberg optimized, fully compatible with the latest version of WordPress, and GDPR requirements compliant.

11. Schema

If your website creations are stunning but don’t seem to get much traffic, Schema will solve the problem. Not only is it an outstanding website-building theme, But Schema will also guide search engines through your site, element by element, it will load your website fast, and it will add clean code to your website.

12. Movedo — We DO MOVE Your World

You won’t find a magic want in any multipurpose themes. You won’t find one in MOVEDO either, although you might think there’s one hidden in there somewhere.

This top-rated theme’s ultra-dynamic parallax effects, unique animations, and ability to make things appear to move that actually don’t, might be just what you need to give your websites that extra dose of spark and pizzazz.

Conclusion

We’ve tried to make your search for a better multipurpose WordPress builder a little easier. Enjoy this selection of the best of the best. You’re not quite done yet, however. You still need to find which one suits your needs best, and that can take a little extra time.

Don’t worry too much about getting hung up on making a decision. You really can’t make a wrong one in this group.

The post 12 Eye-candy Multipurpose WordPress Themes to Choose From appeared first on Hongkiat.

To develop WordPress locally in our computer, we need a local server with Apache and MySQL installed in our computer. The easiest way to get these is by installing a packaged application, such as WAMP for Windows, and MAMP for OSX.

However, installing WordPress within it is less straightforward. First, we need to put the WordPress files in its corresponding folder, which is usually named htdocs, create a database for it, input the required information to connect WordPress to the database, and set a user account before we can finally get the site to run.

Combine it with the setup of a virtualhost, and the number of WordPress sites that you have to handle, and the process will certainly be even more convoluted. If you found yourself in this situation, you might want to try an application called ServerPress.

Recommended Reading: Beginner’s Guide To WordPress Multisite With MAMP

Using ServerPress

ServerPress is a local server application that is built specifically for developing WordPress, as well as bbPress and BuddyPress. It comes with the feature that allows us to install WordPress quicker than originally possible. It is available for Windows and OSX; Grab the installer here, and follow the instruction as per your OS.

Once the Web and Database services (Apache, MySQL) are running, we are ready to install WordPress.

Installing WordPress

Before proceeding, please note that if you are using Pow, you may need to deactivate or uninstall it to avoid a conflict, because both Pow and ServerPress use a .dev domain name.

To create a new WordPress project, select Create a new development website.

Name your website domain, and select the WordPress version you would like to install. In the Site Root section, you can see where the site will be installed.

Click Next button. ServerPress will automatically set the required stuff (tables, servername, virtualhost, etc) automatically. Follow the next step to create an Admin user for your site.

Your new website is all set.

Moving and Changing Domain Name

With ServerPress, it is also possible to change or copy your current sites with another domain name, which only takes a few clicks.

Select Remove, copy, or move an existing website.

Select your site, and chose whether you want to Copy, Move, or Remove it. In this case, as you can see from the screenshot below, I would like to move my website; putting it under a new domain name.

Set your new site domain name. Then, in the Site Root section, you can also specify the folder location for the website. Click the Next button. It will take care of everything. And we are done.

Final Thought

If you do not want a messy and complicated way to setup WordPress and virtualhost, ServerPress could be a good alternative. With it, you can have it up and running in only a few clicks. Give it a try.

The post How to Install WordPress on Local Computer Easily with ServerPress appeared first on Hongkiat.

Building a WordPress Theme is so easy with template tags. You can add the_title() to display the post or page title, and you can use the_content() to display post or page contents. There are many more template tags in WordPress that we can use to display other things.

But when it comes to displaying only particular things on your theme, you might want to create your own template tag. In today’s tutorial, we are going to walk you through this not-too-complicated process. Let’s get started with the fundamentals.

Recommended Reading WordPress Conditional Tags (And Snippets) For Beginners

Basic Template Tag

If you take a look at the WordPress Core sources, you will find that a template tag is basically a PHP function running a set of codes with some parameters.

To create your own template tag, you can write a PHP function in functions.php within your theme directory, for example.

 function my_template_tag() { echo 'This is my template'; } 

Then, in your other theme files, say, single.php or page.php, you can add the function, like so.

 <?php my_template_tag() ;?> 

This will display the ‘This is my template’ that is echoed inside the my_template_tag() function.

Creating a WordPress Template is really that simple. Alright, let us now take a look at a slightly more advanced example.

Page View Count Template Tag

In this example, we are going to create a template that will show view count for each post and page.

First, install and activate WordPress.com Stat in Jetpack. And make sure that you have connected Jetpack to WordPress.com. The reason we use WordPress.com Stat is that the View data will be stored in WordPress.com rather than in our own database. This could save on our server load.

Create a function in your functions.php named the_view(), like so:

 function the_view() { } 

We will put the function (the template tag) in a page or post, so we need to get the page and post ID number. This can be retrieved using get_the_ID();.

 function the_view() { $id = get_the_ID(); } 

We can then use a function to retrieve the number of views from WordPress.com Stats by using stats_get_csv();. This function accepts several parameters ( find the complete list here).

In our case, we need to add the days, which specify the time range of the view count, and the post_id.

 function the_view() { $id = get_the_ID(); $page_view = stats_get_csv('postviews', 'days=-1&post_id='.$id.''); } 

In the code above, since we set the days parameter to -1, we will retrieve the view count of the given post ID from the very beginning, from when the WordPress.com Stat plugin is activated.

Once we’ve the number, we just need to echo it, as follows.

 function the_view() { $id = get_the_ID(); $page_view = stats_get_csv('postviews', 'days=-1&post_id='.$id.''); echo $page_view[0]['views']; } 

That’s it, our new template tag for displaying page view count is done. You can <?php the_view() ;?> anywhere in page.php or single.php. For example:

If you have any questions, please feel free to put them in the comment section below.

The post How to Create Custom WordPress Template Tags appeared first on Hongkiat.

WordPress plugins provide great ways to add and extend functionality to WordPress. There are thousands of plugins in the WordPress directory. Some of them you would find quite helpful.

The ones you choose would naturally depend on the purpose and type of your website. Finding the right ones will involve some searching. Finding the best ones would likely require even more effort on your part.

We’ve taken a look at what we believe to be some of the best WordPress plugins on the market going into 2019. You might not have a need for all 10 of them, but one or two could really make your day.

With that in mind, we suggest you take a look.

1. Amelia

Taking appointments may seem like a minor task but the reality is it can take up more valuable time than it should, and managing multiple bookings and appointments takes up even more time. Taking appointments manually is usually restricted to business hours, and if someone is away from the phone a potential client could grow impatient and look elsewhere.

Amelia is a software booking solution for any WordPress webisite that avoids problems like these. For a one-time fee it provides the most professional booking service you can imagine, it’s on the job 24/7, and it doesn’t make mistakes.

Amelia’s interface is a pleasure to work with. Clients can book appointments in seconds while Amelia matches them with available employees or employees of their choice, manages those appointments and processes online payments. More than 1000 users selected this WordPress software solution in its first 6 months and gave it an average rating of 4.8.

2. wpDataTables

“Powerful” is often overused when reviewing software tools, but it fits wpDataTables hand in glove.

There are numerous table and chart-building tools that provide everything needed to build simple tables or charts, and you can build these simple tables and charts with this WordPress plugin as well, but where wpDataTables really struts its stuff is when:

• You’re dealing with massive amounts of data (e.g., hundreds of thousands of rows)
• Your data can come in a variety of formats
• You need a table/chart that’s responsive, interactive, front-end editable, and easy to keep updated
• You want your table/chart to be attractive (hence customizable) and be able to highlight key data elements (i.e., conditional formatting)
• And, you need a tool that’s fast, reliable, and easy to work with.

Few plugins can accomplish more than a fraction of these requirements, much less all of them.

wpDataTables can and does. It’s simply the most powerful table/chart-building plugin on the market. More than 20,000 businesses and individuals will tell you so.

3. NextGEN Gallery & NextGEN Pro

NextGEN is a WordPress gallery plugin that comes in free (NextGEN Gallery) and premium (NextGEN Pro) versions. NextGEN Gallery has been the industry’s standard gallery plugin for many years. It’s extremely easy to use to create simple galleries yet it’s powerful enough to satisfy the most demanding imaging professionals, creative artists, and photographers.

With NextGEN Gallery you can manage and display thousands of images with ease in a variety of album and gallery display types and sell prints and digital downloads.

NextGEN Pro’s package of extensions gives you an even more powerful and versatile tool. Many users that start with NextGEN Gallery may eventually upgrade to the Pro version or take another approach and add a bundle of Pro extensions to the free version for a fee.

No matter which approach you take, satisfaction is guaranteed.

4. Logic Hop – Personalized Marketing for WordPress

Content personalization is generating lots of buzz these days, and with good reason. It’s making people more money by increasing conversions and sales. Logic Hop makes it easy for anyone to personalize WordPress and automatically display targeted content based on behavior, geolocation, UTM codes, and much more. With powerful tools and ready-made recipes, Logic Hop will be your new favorite plugin. Try it free for 14 days. Their team will help you get up and running!

5. Rank Math SEO

Swiss Army knife owners know how incredibly useful these tools can be. Owners of the Rank Math SEO plugin feel the same. This “Swiss Army knife” of SEO plugins has everything needed to make your sites SEO friendly.

You’ll also like the way Rank Math’s Content Analysis feature makes it easier to write SEO-friendly content. This super-useful plugin loads quickly and is easy to work with.

6. MapSVG WordPress map plugin

This top-of-the-line mapping plugin features a variety of map-creating approaches you’re unlikely to find in any other software solution of its kind. MapSVG enables you to incorporate image maps, customized interactive vector maps and Google maps into your sites.

You can also create maps from JPEG or PNG files, overlay a custom SVG file on a Google map, and add directory information and markers to maps you intend to publish.

7. Heroic Knowledge Base

An online presence that features a knowledge base to aid users (and aid website owners as well) can significantly contribute to a site’s overall UX and help to increase conversions.

Heroic Knowledge Base helps users find the information they seek and does so quickly thanks to its super-fast Ajax search feature. This plugin also provides article feedback and other information that helps to determine areas in which a website can be improved.

8. Blog2Social – Smart social media automation for WordPress

This all-in-one WordPress social media solution plugin enables you to schedule and share your posts on 16 different social media networks. You can share your posts with others whenever you like and in the format you prefer.

Blog2Social has a social media calendar you can use to schedule posts on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and 12 other social media networks.

9. WordLift

Here’s a great opportunity to put artificial intelligence to work for you, and what better way is there than this AI-driven WordPress plugin that automates structured data markup using natural language processing to improve your content, navigation, and website rankings.

WordLift not only goes about the business of learning things about your website, but it also helps you build the data that Google needs to rank your pages higher.

10. Heroic FAQs

You’ve probably long since realized that an FAQ page beats calling or chatting with customer service any day of the week. Putting together an FAQ page that stands out and is truly helpful to website users is what the Heroic FAQs WordPress plugin does best.

Assemble, order, categorize and add images using drag and drop. Heroic FAQs works on any PC or mobile device and is optimized for touch devices.

Conclusion

Any one of these best-of-the-best WordPress plugins can make your day. If you can find two or more that will be of use to you, you’ll soon be achieving new heights in website design.

Users will like what they see and can use. They will speak well of you whether you’re a website owner, a website designer, or both.

Enjoy the ride!

The post Do You Know All These Essential WordPress Plugins? appeared first on Hongkiat.

Despite improvements in the WordPress media manager, one thing has not changed: how WordPress stores media (e.g. files, images, videos, and audios) in the server.

Currently, WordPress organizes files into date-based folders, unless we opt out of it from Settings > Media, in which case, all uploaded media files will not be categorized into subfolders. So far WordPress does not provide many options to customize this particular area.

If you’re not cool with this, and would like to customize the path structure of where these files are stored, e.g. storing it in a folder with a name that matches the post permalink, or changing the “uploads” name to something else, this is the quicktip to follow.

With the help of a few plugins, we can now make our website more personalized and easy to organize with custom file structures.

Recommended Reading: How To Rename Your WordPress WP-Content Directory

Changing the default “uploads” Folder

WordPress, by default, will store the uploaded files in the wp-content/uploads folder. WordPress allows us to customize the upload folder destination. One good reason to change this default is to make your website look less WordPress-y.

Instead of wp-content/uploads, let’s upload the files to a folder named files. First we need to create the folder.

Now let’s tell WordPress to upload our files in that folder. Open the WordPress wp-config.php file, and then add the following code after require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php'); declaration.

 define('UPLOADS', 'files'); 

New uploaded files should now be stored in a “files” folder, as shown below.

This ability was actually available through the Setting > Media editing screen back in version 3.0. WordPress replaced this with the above function in version 3.5.

If you are too afraid that you will screw things up when editing wp-config.php, you can install this plugin called Upload URL and Path Enabler by Gregory Viguier, which will bring the option back into the Setting > Media page. Note that although this plugin hasn’t been updated for more than 3 years, the plugin is still working well in WordPress latest version as there isn’t much of change in this area in WordPress.

Once it has been installed, you will find 2 input fields, as shown below:

These 2 new options will be useful, say, if you want to deliver your files through a sub-domain. Assuming you have created a sub-domain (from your hosting control panel), there should be now a new folder which links to the sub-domain. Set the folder name in the “Store uploads in this folder” field, and the sub-domain in the “Full URL path to files” field.

Your file should now be delivered through the sub-domain.

Note that if you opt for the sub-domain as the above example you might need to point DNS for the sub-domain accordingly to your site IP address

The post How to Customize Media Upload Directory in WordPress appeared first on Hongkiat.

Are you looking for a faster way to build a website? Then, the first step you should take is to look into WordPress if you haven’t done so already. WordPress is the most popular CMS on the market today. There is a huge number of themes and plugins that can be used with WordPress.

With WordPress themes you can create any type of website. Many of them bring a variety of powerful design and website-building options. With all these at your disposal, you now know how to launch a WordPress site successfully.

The problem you’ll face lies in having to choose among hundreds of WordPress themes. Some of them have much more to offer than others. We’ve made the search easy for you with this selection of 15 of the very best WordPress themes. They will help you get the New Year off to a great start.

Starting with:

1. Be Theme

Be Theme is at the top of the list for a reason. If there’s a website of any type to be built or one that is to be used for any particular business niche, this multipurpose WordPress theme can do it.

The reason? 40 powerful core features ranging from tools to templates, and from special effects to website essentials such as responsiveness, SEO friendliness, and of course performance.

The most powerful of these features is arguably Be’s library of more than 400 pre-built websites. These pre-built websites aren’t merely layouts. Each has been professionally designed and crafted, and each satisfies the latest design trends and standards for a given website type or business sector.

These pre-built websites have appropriate functionality embedded in them, and each one can be installed and ready to go with a single click. Add the powerful page builder, Layout Generator, Admin Panel, the Shortcode Generator and shortcode library, and a whole host of grid and design options, plus the new Header Builder, and you have a formidable web design toolbox at your disposal.

2. Bridge

This best-selling creative WordPress theme offers a perfect solution to your web-building needs. Thanks to its tons of website-building options and open-ended customizability, Bridge has the honor of being the most popular creative WordPress theme on the market today with its 100,000+ happy customers and its 5-star rated support.

A library of more than 376 and counting pre-made websites and modules that make it easy to create listings, shops, magazines, blogs, and nearly anything else accounts for Bridge’s huge popularity – and you create any or all of them without any need for coding.

Visual Composer, Timetable Responsive Scheduling, Layer Slider, and Revolution Slider also help make up the package; a website-building package that’s fully deserving of a good, close look.

If you’re not yet convinced, set a few minutes aside to browse Bridge’s pre-made website library. It’s a game-changer.

3. Brook

Brook is another multi-purpose creative WordPress theme that will serve you well no matter what subject matter your website addresses. Obviously, performance, in addition to its features and capabilities, has a lot to do with Brook being a ThemeForest best seller.

The authors have been doubly careful to ensure their code is squeaky-clean, which in turn guarantees that the theme will perform as smoothly and seamlessly as possible.

With a wide collection of frequently updated premade layouts for homepages, portfolios, blogs, alongside a comprehensive set of popular and powerful site-building tools, Brook can totally secure its position as one of the best sellers on ThemeForest.

Moreover, premium plugins namely WPBakery Page Builder, Slider Revolution as well as a strong WooCommerce online shop in the list of site-building goodies also play a role in enhancing the user experience and satisfaction.

4. TheGem

TheGem’s ThemeForest users have described this multipurpose WordPress toolbox as being the most beautiful theme on the market. TheGem’s flexibility and the diversity of its designs is simply overwhelming.

The Behance network of top web designers obviously met their goal of creating a modern, responsive, and high-performance theme that beginners as well as professional designers can use for a wide range of business niches, non-profits, blogs, online shops, and more.

5. Uncode – Creative Multiuse WordPress Theme

It takes but a few short hours to build a mind-blowing portfolio to showcase your best efforts with Uncode. It’s simply a matter of selecting a template and running with it. Uncode is extremely user friendly and it features all the functionality you need.

You’ll find Uncode’s web designer’s showcase to be a source of inspiration, and especially helpful whenever you encounter “creator’s block”. Uncode is fully integrated with WooCommerce and you’ll love the themes new layout management options.

6. Kalium

Kalium’s impressive selection of layout designs, theme options and drag and drop content elements will enable you to showcase your work as you’ve always wanted to, even when it’s the first time you’ve used this popular and uniquely well-organized WordPress theme.

Full content design demos, premium bundled plugins and premium fonts are included in the package. Periodic updates guarantee that Kalium is always in sync with WordPress as well as the latest website design trends and standards.

7. Houzez – Highly Customizable Real Estate WordPress Theme

Real estate agents and agencies require website functionality that even the best multi-purpose themes are typically unable to provide without extensive coding. Hence the need for a specialty theme like Houzez with its advanced property search and listings functionality, a unique property management system, and a feature-rich admin panel.

This WP theme does not use a cookie cutter approach either. It can be easily customized to precisely fit a real estate agency’s business model.

8. Avada WordPress Theme

Avada gives its users the ability to create virtually any design style they can envision. With its professionally designed demos, powerful website-building tools, a responsive framework and a whole host of design options, Avada has been a #1 best seller for 5 years running and has positioned itself as the most highly trusted and complete WordPress theme on the market over that time.

Coding is not required, and you can expect superb support.

9. Real Homes

Real Homes has been put to use by more than 17,500 purchasers. This specialty WordPress theme for the real estate sector has been given a 4.66/5-star rating according to reviews by a significant number of those purchasers.

The reason for this high rating is in part attributed to its easily customizable property advanced search and flexible property listing features. Real Homes also offers frontend property submission and major payment gateway options.

10. Grenada – Creative Ajax Portfolio Showcase Slider Theme

Grenada is an elegant and innovative theme, which is what you want if your objective is to build and elegant and innovative website. Features include creative portfolio sliders, super-fast Ajax page load, video background support, and menu options.

Grenada is responsive, and it is fully compatible with the new WordPress 5.0 feature, the Gutenberg editor. Just choose your favorite layout and drag and drop your way to success.

11. Pofo – Creative Portfolio, Blog and eCommerce WordPress Theme

Pofo focuses on three key areas; portfolio design, blog design, and eCommerce design and functionality. This makes this creative and modern design theme ideal for creative teams, agencies and artists, businesses and bloggers.

There are more than 150 pre-built design elements to work with plus an abundance of home pages and one-click import demo pages.

12. ForumPress

ForumPress gives you the opportunity to create a manage a successful forum with WordPress, a capability lacking or poorly addressed in most other WordPress themes. Powered by bbPress, ForumPress focuses on the forum functionality and design necessary to encourage your website community’s interest and desire to collaborate.

It takes but a few seconds to set up a forum, after which you can tweak to suit the needs and desires of any forum community.

13. KnowAll

This fully featured knowledge base WordPress theme is #1 in its class. With KnowAll, you can provide customer support 24/7, whenever you are away from the job, or when a customer requires a quick response to a common or repetitive question.

KnowAll even gives your customers suggestions in those cases where they’re not sure where they need help of what to ask for. KnowAll also cuts down on problem ticket management requirements.

14. MOVEDO – We DO MOVE Your World

MOVEDO is a top-rated, best-selling WordPress theme that got that way because of its cutting-edge designs, unique animations, and mind-bending ultra-dynamic parallax effects.

MOVEDO’s top-rated ThemeForest author team has taken full advantage the effect that movement, whether it’s real or an illusion, has with respect to attracting and engaging website visitors. This might be a good time to try something new in your website building endeavors.

15. Schema

What Schema accomplishes is something most web designers struggle with, and that is to help search engines find the important features they’re looking for. Schema guides search engines through your website one content element at a time.

Schema also takes into account code quality, page load times, Google algorithm friendliness, and other features that lead to higher search and ad ratings and UX improvements. A valuable tool to have.

Conclusion

Picking a premium WordPress theme should never have to be a problem. Our selection of 15 of the very best WordPress themes should make finding one that meets your needs easy.

Admittedly, it can take a little time to find a perfect fit. Especially, when every one of them is a top-of-the-line product in every respect. It should at least be comforting to know that you can’t make a bad choice.

Happy Hunting!

The post How to launch a WordPress site successfully? With one of these Top WP Themes appeared first on Hongkiat.

Allowing clients to manage their websites in their native languages is an important aspect of accessibility. If you develop a WordPress site that may have users from non-English speaking countries, it can be necessary to translate the theme.

Localizing the theme doesn’t mean you translate the content on the frontend such as posts and pages; instead, it refers to the theme-related content in the admin area: the theme’s description, options, and the customizer.

The WordPress Core Team puts a huge emphasis on the translation of WordPress Core. It’s already translated to many foreign languages; that makes WordPress a truly global content management system.

Localizing the theme can be extremely useful for clients who use the admin area in their own native language, otherwise a significant part of their admin settings (the settings under the “Appearance” menu) will be displayed in English, while the other parts of the dashboard in their native language. It’s not really a seamless experience.

Internationalization vs. Localization

Making a theme accessible in other languages requires 2 key steps: internationalization and localization. I18n (internationalization) and l10n (localization) represent the two sides of the same coin.

I18n is a process in which theme developers add features to their themes that make later translation possible. When a theme is provided with i18n features, it’s called translation-ready, but it doesn’t mean it’s already translated.

Translation happens during the l10n process, when a translator, the developer, or the site owner translates the theme to a foreign language, making use of the i18n features the theme author previously added to the theme.

In this guide we will take a look at how to provide l10n for a theme, or with other words how to translate it to a foreign language (in our example, to Spanish).

1. Find Translation-Ready WordPress Themes

You don’t have to be a developer or know how to code if you want to localize a WordPress theme, you only need to speak the chosen language.

First of all, you need to find a translation-ready WordPress theme. It’s an easy task, as in the official WordPress Theme Directory they are marked with the “translation-ready” tag.

You don’t have to do anything else than clicking on the “Feature Filter”, check the “Translation Ready” feature, hit the “Apply Filters” button, and choose the theme you like the most.

2. Add Translation with Poedit

If a theme is tagged as translation-ready, that means the author already added i18n features to it. Each translation-ready theme contains a file with the .POT extension that enables you to easily translate the theme.

First of all, you need to find this file; it’s usually located inside the /languages folder. The .POT file is a translation template file that can be translated to any language. You need to load this file into the Poedit translation editor program.

As Poedit is a standalone program running from your desktop, you need to download and install it first. There are other translation editor softwares out there too, but probably Poedit is the most widely known. If you choose a different software, it’s recommended to use a gettext editor.

After you got through Poedit’s installation process, you will see the following screen:

2.1. Create New Translation

Unfortunately the “Translate WordPress theme or plug-in” option can only be chosen by users who upgrade to Poedit Pro, so we will choose the second option, namely the “Create new translation”.

After clicking on it, select the .pot file that you’ve previously located. When this happened, you need to choose the language in which you want to do the translation from a dropdown list.

In this tutorial we will choose Spanish, but the translation process works the same way with any other languages.

2.2. Translate The File

The translation itself is a quite straightforward process in Poedit: the source text is sliced into shorter strings, and you need to translate these strings one by one. The good news is that you don’t need to translate the whole file at once, you can save your work, and return to it when you want to continue.

2.3. Check Translation Properties

Before saving the translation it’s a good idea to check the translation properties. You can find them under the Catalogue > Properties top bar menu item. The first two items inside the Translation Properties pop-up, the Project name and the Language are set by default by Poedit, but it’s important to pay attention to the next one, Plural Forms.

Plural forms are an important aspect of translation, as in every language plurals follow specific patterns that the translation editor software needs to know to properly handle them.

Plural forms use the following syntax: nplurals=2; plural=(n != 1); (in the case of the Spanish language).

Poedit sets the default plural translation rules, but you can modify them if you wish. You can find a list about the appropriate plural forms in many languages in this handy cheatsheet, but if you want to understand how plural forms work in gettext editors, read this user guide about it.

You can also set the charset in Translation Properties. The default is UTF-8, and that is the safest to choose, as it can be used for all languages, but of course you can go with a more specific charset too, such as iso-8859-1 for Latin-1 languages like Spanish.

On W3C’s checklist you can always check if you chose the right one for the language you want to do the localization for.

2.4. Save The Translation Files

When you save the translation, it’s crucial that you use the right format. At the end of the file’s name you need to include the appropriate country and language code.

WordPress uses the gettext language-country codes, you need to add the appropriate language code first, followed by an underscore, and finally the country code, for Spanish the proper format is es_ES.

Luckily Poedit is such a handy program that if you click on the Save button in the top menu bar, it provides you with the right language code inside the “Save as… ” pop up window. The first two letters stand for the language code, and the second two letters for the country code.

You also need to type the name of the theme before the language-country code, so the example file will be saved under the twentyfifteen_es_ES.po file name. The .PO (Portable Object) file contains the translation, and you need to open this if you want to modify the translation later.

If you take a look at the /languages folder of your theme, you will notice that Poedit also saved another file with the .MO extension. It’s a compiled translation file, and you also need it if you want your localized site to work properly.

3. Upload Your Translation Files

Now that the translation files are ready, you need to upload the modified theme to your server with the help of an FTP client. You can upload the whole theme again, but you can also insert only the two new translation files (.po and .mo) to the /languages folder of your theme.

Final Note

You need to create separate translation files (respectively a .PO and a .MO file) with Poedit for each language you want the theme to be available in.

What is really cool about WordPress is that if your client changes the language of the admin area under the Settings > General dashboard menu, WordPress will automatically pick the appropriate translation files for the theme.

The post How to Translate WordPress Themes for Better Accessibility appeared first on Hongkiat.

There’s a major shift in WordPress with Gutenberg. It’s an ambitious project lead mostly by the people at Automattic to change the WordPress TinyMCE editor, in a radical way. It brings a new paradigm – a so-called “Block” to WordPress. Each component such as Paragraph, Image, or Headings is now a block built with React.js.

However, the use of React.js has sparked some hot debates within the WordPress community, highlighting problems like licensing in which many argue that it’s not compatible with GPL, hence urge to use an alternative.

So, in this post, I am going to introduce you to ClassicPress, a great alternative to WordPress without Gutenberg and React.js. Let’s read on to know more.

Read Also: Gutenberg: All You Need to Know About WordPress’ Latest Editor

Why do we need a WordPress Alternative anyway?

React.js and the Block concept will spread across the WordPress administration area, even though React.js’ learning curve is quite steep. At the moment, it is only replacing the classic TinyMCE editor. Next, this change is going to replace the Customizer as well as the Admin interface entirely.

For developers, businesses, and indie developers, this change is going to affect in a big way. They’ll need to spend a huge budget to retraining their clients as well as regularly update their themes or plugins to be compatible with Gutenberg.

The entry-level developers are going to be hit the hardest. What was once an easy change and fix with a few lines of a snippet, will soon require a leveled up skill in JavaScript to do the same in WordPress.

These are just a few among many frustrations stemmed by the Gutenberg push. In response to this, some people in the WordPress community have taken a quite strong action seeking out a new platform.

Introducing ClassicPress

ClassicPress is an initiative led by Scott Bowler and a handful of contributors as an alternative to WordPress without Gutenberg and React.js, (at least for the moment). In fact, ClassicPress team has already planned version 2.0.0 of the project where it’ll begin to roll out new changes and features.

ClassicPress practices a more democratic way of letting the community decide the project’s direction. There are a few interesting ideas proposed by the community, for example:

Minimum PHP version should be 7.0

WordPress was started when PHP was still at Version 4 and OOP (Object Oriented Programming) only existed in PHP5. If you dig into the source code you will find it full of legacy code. Given the size of the project and the number of users, it won’t be easy for WordPress to drop support for the older PHP versions.

ClassicPress, being a new project, has plenty of flexibility for change. In fact, it has already set PHP5.6 as the minimum PHP to support. Supporting newer PHP versions will provide ClassicPress a performance boost, a better security, as well as an interesting differentiator from the developer’s point of view.

Add API for additional required plugins

A great idea taken from a modern dependency manager such as Composer and NPM. This feature will allow developers to define dependency for their plugins and themes. So, for example, when a user installs a theme, it will automatically install the other plugins that the theme depends on.

Remove XML-RPC

XML-RPC is an outdated specification that allows outside applications such as a mobile and desktop app to interact with WordPress. WordPress now has its own JSON API that makes using XML-RPC irrelevant. On top of that, the xmlrpc.php endpoint poses some vulnerabilities.

Another interesting thing I found in ClassicPress is that you can find or submit new features proposals as well as vote for them in the Petitions page and the active community will surely respond to your suggestions.

What’s next?

ClassicPress, at the moment, is still in its early stage. The team and the contributors are currently developing version 1.0.0 and already have a plan for version 2.0.0. The development is done with Git and published as a Github repository.

As compared to SVN, which WordPress is still using to manage the Core project repository, using Git will make it easier for developers to contribute to the project with “Pull Request”, just like the way to contribute to a modern open source project these days.

Being a fork and inheriting a familiarity from the most popular CMS, ClassicPress has the potential to be as popular as WordPress in the days to come. It can also grow to be its own entity by introducing its own features that may never happen in WordPress.

It’s nice to have a useful alternative to WordPress and I will be watching the project closely.

The post ClassicPress: Alternative to WordPress without Gutenberg & React.js appeared first on Hongkiat.