If you have decided to choose WordPress for your business website, then your next task would be to choose the perfect theme from hundreds of themes that range from business website templates to personal. While choosing your theme, you should be very careful, as the success and the look and feel of your site will depend much on the chosen theme. When it is about choosing the right and a feature rich WordPress theme, you will understand that popularity comes with a price tag. With thousands of themes obtainable easily for free, it is natural to get lost in the different options on the web.

So, here in this article we will discuss with you the key points that you should consider while choosing the theme for your site that meets your business requirements.

Make a list of the features you actually need:

It is absolutely essential to determine the exact features that your business would need before selecting a theme. The WordPress Feature Filter makes it easy to customize your search for the free themes that match your specific needs. If you have a design in your mind, then it would make it easy to choose the theme and it will help you to attain the objectives of your site without going for unnecessary themes that might just be a clutter for your site.

Remain simple:

With lots of WordPress themes coming with multifaceted layouts, varied colors, flashy animations and etc., it might be a bit confusing to choose the perfect theme for your business. So consider something that has a simple design layout as it will help you to support your business goals. Ensure that the theme looks elegant without compromising on the quality. It is very important that your presentation style is not very complicated and helps you to get new subscribers or business.

Free theme Vs Premium theme:

Another point that you should consider is whether to choose a premium WordPress theme over a free one or not. Free themes are often developed as a passion project and may not offer great support or updates. And premium WordPress themes come with good documentation, regular updates and access to support.

Responsive design is a must:

While talking about responsive themes, it is important for you to know that such themes are known for their adjustments on different screen sizes and devices. Since a huge amount of traffic is generated from mobile nowadays, and even Google prefers mobile friendly websites, choosing a responsive WordPress theme is important as it brings a lot of opportunities for your business.

Compatibility with browsers:

Your users might be using different browsers, so to make your website easily accessible to all, you should consider a WordPress theme that is browser compatible. Though most WordPress themes are tested by the developers by using sophisticated browser compatibility testing tools, but in case they don’t, then run some basic test and check if they are compatible with Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome and etc.

Design and usability:

The prime focus of your theme should be to ensure that your business is easily accessible to all and is at the same time very attractive to the visitors. The design can be subjective, and in that case you can look for some professional designers selling their themes. You also need to make sure that users can easily move through the site and the design is built considering convenience in mind.

Look for customization options:

Creating a perfect website takes a lot of effort and it is also important to keep your website updated with latest features. An excellent means to see if the theme is worth all your efforts is to check the review of the people using it. A customizable theme will help you to make direct changes to the style sheet. You can make your site attractive with very less effort. Plugins like Visual Page Editor helps to develop complex structures without a single touch of code.

For a long time, the developers’ community acted as purists with respect to Web Apps Development. There was a strong belief that custom coding from scratch could be the only option. However, after many Open Source platforms providing faster mechanisms, the developers have adopted new methods. And, WordPress is one of the market leaders due wide range of WordPress plugins.

Supposing, you require an airline company and wish to build a self-service app. Probably a couple of years ago, you would have required custom development from scratch. The major task is to provide set of dynamic bridges between the website backend and the CRM. Developing a similar Web App using WordPress would certainly save time in development efforts.

However, the larger advantage is how easy it makes to provide additional features. WordPress plugins for customer portals and service portals could connect your site with your CRM instantly. Moreover, it also enables you to use single CRM license for your entire customer base as a user.

The world of websites and web development as a whole has a lot to thank WordPress for. At present, WordPress alone powers 29% of the Internet. Moreover, the market share of the WordPress CMS alone is over 60%. What makes us love WordPress so much? Ease of use, the Open Source Community, the beauty of the platform, the blog, so on.

If we unfold the mystery, and go down to the micro level, the answer could be WordPress Plugins. The availability of the WordPress Plugins for diverse use-cases is parallel to none. With plugin library of over 35000 and over 800M downloads, WordPress is truly the king of the CMS!

The Evolved WordPress Sites

WordPress alone powers over 80% of world’s most popular websites. To continue doing so, WordPress as a platform and along with that the WordPress plugins must evolve. Not too long ago, the developer community encountered rumors(?) of insecure WordPress sites. For a long time, we believed that WordPress sites cannot handle the large volumes of traffic.

At present, WordPress powers heavy traffic media sites and performance driven ecommerce sites. The robust use cases within the WordPress framework are possible due to the wide plugin library. Further, WordPress rolled out yet another Security & Maintenance Release with the version 4.9.1. Post version 4.0, WordPress addressed most vulnerabilities. And extensive plugins ensured scalability.

The Next Question?

Majority of the small to medium enterprises are empowering themselves with CRM applications. Integrations of a website built on any platform with a CRM could be a tricky business. However, it is an essential integration as it automates several business processes for your business. WordPress and the Web 3.0 provides just the perfect platform to build robust web applications.

WordPress Plugins Are Not Vulnerable!

It is not a question. Not anymore! There are many aspects that makes a WordPress site vulnerable and plugins are not just the reason. Sure, not a logical one…

Based on the facts shared in the beginning of this post, it is obvious that hackers would target WordPress sites. It is a volume game. Finding a weak spot in WordPress core would affect higher number of sites than to do so in any other platform. And, so does the impact for WordPress plugins. As a site owner, you would want more secure options for your site.

However, the increasing penetration of WordPress into the top tier of brands demands higher security for WordPress plugins. And, in the past few years, the developers have worked towards ensuring so. Additionally, the past few years also portray that there is no such thing as safe website in literal sense. It is all about the best you can do to safeguard your website. And, how effective your backup & prevention tools are.

Conclusion:

From Bloomberg to Wall Street Journal Blog, there are many leading media sites powered by WordPress. And Media remains the domain to own the higher traffic per site across any region. The world of WordPress plugins is vast and capable to build an ecommerce store to sustain high performance.

Understand the challenges and ensure security measures. Enjoy development using WordPress plugins, after all, they deserve the due credit for making the internet so beautiful and fun to interact with.

The Importance of WordPress Rest API

While developing web applications with WordPress, developers connect the application to third-party programs and services through specific application programming interfaces (APIs). They further use a variety of APIs to enhance the WordPress application’s functionality and user experience. WordPress REST API enables programmers to connect their application to other software and services in a simpler and more efficient way. The developers can use the plug-in to make their WordPress application connect with other websites and services by overcoming differences in data forma and back-end programming languages.

Understanding Important Aspects of WordPress REST API

JSON Data Format

They can use the plug-in to make the WordPress application communicate with third-party software and services by sending and receiving JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) objects. JSON is a modern and human-readable data format. Also, JSON has encoders and decoders for most widely used programming languages. Hence, the WordPress application and third-party software can exchange data in a mutually intelligible format. The developers can further connect their WordPress application seamlessly to a variety of software and services by writing simple JavaScript code.

REST Methodology

WordPress has designed the plug-in as a universal connector by using Representational State Transfer (REST) methodology. In addition to having a simple data format, REST also allows developers to use commonly used HTTP methods like POST, GET, DELETE and PUT. At the same time, the methodology can facilitate exchange of data in both XML and JSON format. The REST methodology simplifies the communication between two programs. It further makes the WordPress application exchange data with other websites and services in both XML and JSON format.

Compatibility with Other Web Programming Languages

While developing websites with WordPress, programmers have to write code in PHP. At present, PHP is the most popular server-side programming language. But it lacks many advanced features provided by modern programming languages like Ruby, Java and C#. Hence, many developers nowadays prefer writing web applications in modern programming languages. The WordPress REST API will make it easier for programmers to connect WordPress applications to other websites and services regardless of their server-side programming language. The seamless connection will further help programmers to eliminate common compatibility issues.

Facilitate Custom Web Application Development

The WordPress REST API will make it easier for developers to build custom web applications according to varying business requirements. As they can use the plug-in to access third-party information and resources from many sources, the developers can easily enhance the look, feel, and functionality of the web application. Many developers can further create custom websites without relying on traditional WordPress interface. They can further use the tool to build the front-end and back-end of a WordPress application in an entirely new and more efficient way.

Optimize WordPress Applications for Mobile Devices

At present, major mobile operating systems like iOS and Android support JSON data format. As WordPress REST API allows applications to exchange data in JSON format, it becomes easier for programmers to optimize WordPress applications for mobile devices. Many developers can use the plug-in to developer and run mobile applications with WordPress. They can further develop and deploy mobile apps efficiently by using WordPress as the back-end. The WordPress REST API will enable many developers to create native mobile apps by leveraging their existing programming skills.

Simplify Third-Party Content Integration

The WordPress REST API will make it easier for programmers to integrate content from various sources into a website. Likewise, the tool will simplify the process of making the content and resources of a WordPress website accessible to other websites. The WordPress developers can use WordPress more efficiently as a content management system to manage and source website content from multiple sources. They can further use WordPress REST API to make websites deliver more relevant and contextual information to users on a regular basis.

On the whole, WordPress REST API makes it easier for programmers to connect their WordPress applications to other websites and devices. The developers can use the plug-in to create custom websites according to varying business requirements, while integrating content from various sources and optimizing content for mobile devices.

Everyone knows the importance of using WordPress as the CMS for developing a great website. It is an amazing platform to create websites on a small level as well as on a large enterprise scale. This is because WordPress is so easy to learn as a beginner and scalable too to meet the needs of any large-scale business website.

A successful blog dems posting amazing content on daily basis to make Search Engines happy. This may seem to be as easy as ABC but when we think on the ground levels, we see the reality! First of all, you can easily hire a WordPress developer to set up your WordPress website and second thing is you can also gain more traffic to your website by the tips that we will be considering in this write-up.

Blogging is a field which demands too much time because it takes time to think of an idea, write on it, polish the content and then publish it! Then starts the act of sharing it and almost begging on social media platforms to get more views and shares. It can become very annoying at times especially when you are working so hard to create the content.

The tips we are going to discuss here will help you get easily found by more people and it shows that smart work is the key rather than just hard work which can actually drive you mad at most of the times.

1. Change Heading Styles with a Tap of a key!

Saving time is one of the most important things you can do when you are a blogger and creating content has already taken your days to polish the final piece.

Use Ctrl + 2 (if you are a Windows or a Linux user) and CMD + 2 (if you are a Mac User). This is used when you want to change the H2 tag and then this function can be executed by putting the cursor on the line.

2. Save time by automatically linking to your existing content / posts:

WordPress offers an easy way to link to an existing content. Sadly, the option to link to your existing content or posts are easily ignored by most of the bloggers when they are publishing their posts in the WordPress blog.

In the Click / Insert Link in the content editor, a pop up box appears and a list of already existing content to help you choose what you want to link in your present post.

3. Easily Paste Rich text- No need to format!

Div Codes and formatting from another website or blog content can be conflicting with your blog's format so the best thing to paste the text in your WordPress blog would be to click on the plain-text clipboard icon in the Menu Bar!

4. Appropriate Image Size should be used:

A WordPress blog without images may seem to be dull and boring. So, to enhance the quality of the blog, you can place the well-designed exclusive images to your posts. It can seem very tempting but you have to use images with appropriate size otherwise there will be bad impression on your WordPress blog. If you want help of WordPress developer, go ahead!

In the same way, you can use Image compression tools to take advantage of the SEO benefits and drive more traffic easily to your blog.

Most of us are aware of the continuing popularity of WordPress blogs and websites. Yet, a lot of businesses and bloggers do not recognize the advantages they offer. So, we have come up with a list of 5 unique ways on how WordPress plugins give more advantages than other blogger sites that provide plugins (like Joomla or Drupal).

Live Chat Plugins

You have an edge over your competition when you use WordPress particularly for your business sales. WordPress Live Chat plugin lets you directly engage with customers to answer their queries and discuss issues. They would certainly love to talk to someone who is real, and including this in your customer service is an effective way to build a lasting relationship with them. This is where WordPress works to your advantage.

It is Easier to Create Email and Booking Forms

Though WordPress directly competes with Blogger, its widget functions make it a winner over them. As a matter of fact, even if you are not a technical person, WordPress plugins let you create booking and email forms. This can benefit low tech small-scale businesses that want their customers to find an easy way to provide their information.

Social Media Share Buttons

You can create social media buttons to let your readers share your content by using WordPress’ easy format for installing plugins. This is just great, since the idea behind websites and blogs is about sharing information and marketing products. Since social media is basic to online marketing, you need to include easy to access share buttons to expand your audience. WordPress sees to it that this is available via a variety of plugins and widgets. You can try the share buttons below.

Security

Creating WordPress plugins have made it possible to have access to a number of the best security features. The thought behind years of security data and technology has finally developed into some exceptional plugins. These protect your information, as well as that of your customer, to create a secure online experience.

Effective SEO Tools

Without a doubt, WordPress comes with the greatest number of accessible SEO plugins. It gives you a unique advantage due to the wide range of effective and comprehensive plugins you can choose from. SEO is among the most essential marketing tools that a website or blog should use. When you want to draw more viewers to your site, your site should be equipped with SEO plugins so that Google can notice you over other sites.

Over the years, all the tools that have been optimized for WordPress have given it an edge over its competitors (and for this reason it rules the web).

Always keep in mind that you need to add plugins to your site so that it can be the best it can be. All you need to do is to make the most of them.

Whether you have a WordPress website promoting your company products and services or a blog showing your writing capabilities, security of both is of prime importance. Google blacklists almost 20,000 websites for malware and 50,000 for phishing. If you are serious about keeping your WordPress site up and running then securing it online should be on top of your mind. The WP core software is completely secured as it is checked by hundreds of developers daily, even then the security risks still prevails.

With the increase in number of cybercrimes and online attacks affecting the servers of many websites daily, risk elimination is not the goal anymore but risk reduction is. Do not worry as the capable and efficient WordPress Tech Support is always present to offer the best technical guidance to its customers regarding any issue affecting their WordPress site. However, let us first understand why WP site security is so important for all WordPress operators.

Why Is WordPress Security So Important?

A hacked WordPress website can cause a serious blowback to your online reputation as well as business. Online hackers can easily steal personal information, passwords and install malicious software on your WP site thereby rendering it useless. If you want to retain your website as well as your business, then securing your online presence is the first thing to do.

How Can I Secure My WordPress Site Against All Possible Attempts Of Unauthorized Access?

The experts at the WordPress Support have come up with four tips on how you can ensure total security for your WP site. Kindly follow the guidelines mentioned below.

Continuous WordPress Site Updation:

WordPress is an open-source content sharing software that is regularly maintained and updated. By default, WordPress always installs minor updates automatically while for the major updates the user has to initiate the process. It comes with a number of themes and plugins that can be installed and on your WordPress website.

Password And User Permission:

One of the most common way to hack into your WordPress website is through the use of stolen account password. This can be avoided by ensuring that strong password is used, this is a combination of letters, alphabets and symbols making it difficult to be remembered. A strong password can be used not only for your WordPress admin area but also for FTP accounts and WordPress hosting account.

Install A WordPress Backup Solution:

The first line of defense against any hacking attempt is to have a complete backup of your WP site. These allow you to have the complete backup of your website in case your website is hacked or the server fails. There are a number of WordPress backup plugins available that you can utilize to create a backup of the whole website.

Enable Web Application Firewall:

One of the easiest way to protect your WordPress site is to use a web-based application firewall. This firewall will block all malicious traffic before it even reaches your WordPress site. The experts at the WordPress Support can be your guide in providing total security to your site.

Last month saw the 15th birthday of WordPress and since its release in the market, the CMS has evolved a lot and has come up with various features and functionalities. Whenever we talk about WordPress, the first thing that comes to our mind is that of a great blogging platform. But with years, this concept has slowly changed and WordPress now supports ecommerce solutions and responsive designs too. By default, WordPress comes up with posts and pages as their prime content system. But users can easily create many custom content types as needed.

Did you know that Custom Post Types could help you segment your content within WordPress?

As said above, WordPress development comes up with a handful of content types as default. Posts and pages are the most commonly used ones and they are the ones to categorise and separate content within WordPress. The content can be segmented into different areas of the WordPress admin panel and offer unique sets of data per data type. This data then can be used customised displays for the users when the website goes live. Custom post types extend the WordPress simple pages and posts and allow the users to create content types that are augmented by specific and unique templates to present the data to website visitors.

When and why should you use custom post types?

Depending on the type of content that you are willing to publish on your WordPress website, you can develop them. A new custom post type can be a great idea if you have plans to start publishing something that should be kept apart from any other posts and pages. For example, having a section separately for your books on your WordPress review website will make the content easily understandable to your audience and also distinguish the reviews from the rest of your web content. In fact, this will also help you to set certain specific parameters for each of your book and then display alongside the review.

Get to know about some popular off the shelf plugins to create CPTs

Finding it difficult to create your own custom plugins for CPTs? There is nothing to worry about as there are some very good ready to use plugins for creating custom post types. Have a look:

Easy content types: This plugin provides an extremely easy to use interface to them, meta boxes and taxonomies. It is a feature rich plugin and the dashboard explains what they are and how you can work with them. Each module is well documented with every field labelled and explained.

Custom Post Type UI: This plugin is easy to use and lets you create new post types, corresponding taxonomies and also edit the them that are already existing on your site. Another important thing that you can do with this plugin is that you can import a custom post that you have on any other site.

Toolset Types: This plugin allows you to customise the WordPress admin by adding the content types, customised fields and taxonomies. It helps you to manage them, and all these can be done via the WordPress admin panel.

Types: This is a popular free plugin that enables you to create custom post types, fields and taxonomies. This plugin stands out from the rest due to its developer-friendly and user friendly interface. If you know coding, then you can use the PHP API or else you can use the simple GUI. It also handles custom fields well, which you can add to posts, pages and also users.

Pods: The plugin is very simple when compared to any other on the list. But it offers you the functionality that you might need in most cases. The two main sections of the plugin are Post Types and Taxonomies. In order to use this plugin, you don’t have to have any coding skills as everything is there via a handy interface.

WordPress for an Easy Website

Chances are that you have already heard of WordPress. But what is WordPress? Simply put, WordPress is web software that you can use to create your own website or blog. Since it was released in 2003, WordPress has become one of the most popular web publishing platforms, and today it powers more than 70 million websites. Because it is built on industry standard php and mySQL, the WordPress hosting platform can run on just about any modern server.

But what many people do not realize, WordPress is not just a blogging tool. It is also a highly flexible content management system CMS which gives you the opportunity to build and manage your own full features website using only your web browser. Best of all, it is completely free. It is constantly improving and evolving. That’s because WordPress is an open-source project which means that hundreds of volunteers from all around the world are constantly creating and improving the code for WordPress software. And there are thousands of plug-in, widgets, and themes that enable you to build a completely custom website for just about anything that you can imagine.

How does WordPress work?

Since the early days of the Internet, websites have been created in HTML, a programming language that utilizes complex instructions called tags to format text, images, page-layouts and so on. Your web browser then reads the HTML code interpreting the tags to render and display the content of a particular page. These days, you can install WordPress on your own web hosting account in a few minutes. And once installed, it enables you to use a simple, web-based editor to create web pages without having to learn HTML. There is even a hosted version at WordPress.com, that allows you to create a new WordPress website in just a few seconds. The down-side to this method is that you do not have your own domain name, but instead you are using a sub-domain. Most Internet professionals agree that registering and building upon your own domain name and website is more valuable in the long run than spending the same amount of time to build a website using someone else’s domain name. This is why it is recommended that you get a shared web hosting account and install WordPress on your hosting account. Many shared hosting accounts include an easy click-to-install feature that makes installing WordPress on your own hosting account using your own domain name a snap.

• johnday.WordPress.com
• johnday.com

With your own domain name and your own web hosting account with WordPress installed, you are in control of your own content and your own website.

WordPress is a great choice for your website or blog:

1. It’s open source, which also means it is free for commercial or private use. Hundreds of people working on it, WordPress is constantly improving and evolving.
2. It is user-friendly. Rather than having to hire a web designer or contact your webmaster when every you want to make a small change to your website, you can easily manage and update your own content all without having to learn HTML. If you know how to use the basic formatting tools in Microsoft Word, you can edit your site.
3. It’s flexible and extensible. There are literally thousands of plug-ins and themes, both commercial and free that enable you to easily change the entire look of your website or blog or even add new features like polls or contact forms with just a few clicks.
4. It is easy to find support. So if you want to add highly customized features, its easy to find support or hire someone to help you. The official WordPress forum that is very helpful to find answers to all your WordPress questions. Other support options include the WordPress Stack Exchange or WP Questions that offer answers to your questions. There are thousands of developers who can help you as well.
5. WordPress is SEO friendly. WordPress is standards compliant and includes everything you need to ensure that your content is optimized for search engines which is critical to your websites’ success and visibility in search engines. In short, WordPress is made to do SEO well.
   • Fully compliant with W3C standards
   • Built in support for RSS and Ping-O-Matic
   • Clean, search engine friendly code
6. You will be in control of your own content. Some other publishing platforms limit what you can or can not do on your own website. And your locked into that service, so if it ever shuts down you could easily lose all your content. With WordPress you can import your data from other systems like blogger or tumbler. And you can easily export your data to move away from WordPress, should you choose. You are in control of your website and your content.

Design a website with WordPress and a Web Hosting account:

The following steps outline the process you will go through when setting up a WordPress website on your web hosting account.

1. Buy domain name and web hosting
2. Install WordPress from cPanel
3. Change settings and permalinks structure
4. Add essential plug-ins
   • Better WP Security – secure your WordPress website
   • WP Super Cache – speed up and improve the performance of your site
   • WordPress SEO by Yoast/All in One SEO Pack -optimize your site’s posts and pages for search engines
   • Contact form – add a simple contact form to a page on your website
   • Google XML sitemaps – create and submit your XML sitemap to Google for better indexing
5. Install theme
6. Add content

Web hosting account and WordPress

WordPress allows you to focus on your content – as opposed to countless hours of working the design and workflow – you will more likely than not enjoy running your site on this CMS. So if you are looking for an easy tool to build your own blog or website without having to learn complicated HTML, no other system makes it this easy. And you will find that WordPress is incredibly flexible with thousands of themes, plug-ins and support options to ensure that your site will continue to grow with you in the future. Most web hosting comes with WordPress ready to install with just a few clicks and the support staff at your web host are most likely very familiar with WordPress for your assistance.