Plugins

WPEka
10 Best WordPress emailing list building plugins in 2019
Admin Posted On June 17, 2019

Optin Monster

Thanks to the internet spreading its wings at a rapid speed, connecting to the desired audience isn’t a dream anymore. Whether you’re a small-business owner or run an enterprise, if you wish to target a certain segment of people, that’s completely possible online today. Out of all the techniques, email marketing is one such thing that has made a lot of things easier. On top of that, if you can get an adequate WordPress email plugin, what else would you need, right?

Did you know active email accounts are anticipated to touch a mark of 5.6 billion in 2019? That’s wonderful, isn’t it? No wonder why 93% of B2B marketers use this platform to get exposure to their content. That’s all because there’s a lot to gain and probably nothing to lose.

So, if you haven’t tried this old and tested method yet, now is the time to do so. Here is the list of 10 best WordPress emailing list building plugins, specifically curated just for you. But, before reaching that point, let’s understand a few advantages that one can gain from email lists and marketing. So, ready to dive deeper? Scroll down and know more.

Importance of Email Communication in Business:

In a way, the importance of having email communications is quite high when it comes to establishing a long-lasting relationship with the audience. So, here are some ways through which this method can benefit you strongly.

  • Helps Be in Touch with The Audience:

Through emails, you can be in touch with your potential clients and existing customers consistently. Whether it’s letting them know about the latest discount or what’s happening with your brand, emails can help you achieve this goal. Also, most of the people on your list might be already interested in your business; thus, the engagement level will be higher as well.

  • Reaching Customers in Real Time:

With an increase in the usage of mobile phones, a majority of people see their emails in mobile devices. Therefore, you wouldn’t have to wait for them to sit in front of the desktop, see your email, and then reply to it. Furthermore, a mobile-friendly template can also help convert leads to customers easily.

  • Personal & Engaging Feeling:

Although there are several other methods to communicate with the audience, however, emails come with a personal touch. Thanks to a few hours spent digging information; you can find out the perfect time to send emails to your target audience. This way, you wouldn’t invade their privacy, and they’d hear you better as well.

  • Easiest Types of Marketing:

On the basis of performance and the kind of results that it produces, email marketing is one of the easiest and benefit churning types that you can use. It doesn’t demand a lot of monetary investment unless you’re purchasing an advanced and expensive plugin for the same. A few hours spent strategizing, and then tracking the results can set everything right.

When it comes to email marketing, you wouldn’t need a professional by your side. Thanks to its easiness, even a newcomer can get their hands over the tricks and techniques quite easily. Hence, you can save yourself a huge amount that you’d have otherwise spent on an expert for the same.

 

10 Best WordPress Email Plugins:

Now, coming to the main reason, here is the list that you can navigate through and find the best plugin for your use.

Optin Monster

Although this one started as a plugin for WordPress, however, now OptinMonster has been converted into a cloud-based app. This simply means that all of your opt-in forms get managed from one central location, enabling you to get a helpful overview.

Along with deploying new forms, you can use this plugin to edit the existing ones, conduct a split test, and monitor the progress. If you have multiple sites, this would be a great option for you as you can easily concentrate more on conversions.

Pros:

  • Well-designed templates
  • Easy to use editor
  • Integrates with popular ESPs

Cons:

  • Limited flexibility in free version
  • Necessitates Google Analytics to view stats
  • No automatic A/B testing

Pricing:

Although the free version is available in WordPress.org; however, if you want advanced features, there are different packages, costing $9/month to $49/month.

mailchimp

When it comes to email marketing, MailChimp is one such name that shouldn’t be missed at any cost. The availability of this WordPress email plugin has made it easier to bridge the gap between website and MailChimp account for seamless performance.

Its user-friendly and mobile-optimized sign-up forms make it easier for you to convert the target audience into customers. Moreover, it also comes with efficient integration and is compatible with other major plugins as well.

Pros:

  • Provides thorough reporting
  • Generous plan
  • Good template editor

Cons:

  • A bit inconsistent
  • Bad customer support
  • Frequent updates

Pricing:

If you want the free version, you can download it from the WordPress inventory. On the other hand, the premium version can be used at a starting price of $9/month.

SendInBlue

This one is an official plugin from SendinBlue email marketing services. With this plugin, you can easily run all of your email marketing right within the WordPress dashboard and achieve a lot of goals.

It comes with custom built subscription forms that you can embed anywhere on your website, be it pages, posts, or widget areas. You can also use drag and drop interface to create email templates right from scratch.

Pros:

  • Easy and quick creation of campaigns
  • Create separate contact lists for users
  • Drag and drop interface

Cons:

  • A limited number of attachments
  • Lesser font options
  • Not many options for templates

Pricing:

You can get both free and premium options. The selection would be totally upon your requirements. Its premium plans start from $21.50/month.

extension-mailpoet

This simple and trustworthy plugin is one of the excellent solutions when it’s about creating automated emails, newsletters, autoresponders, and post notifications. Its signup widget also allows you to capture subscribers.

Not just that, but with this plugin, you can also drop your images, posts, as well as social icons in the newsletter for better exposure. Its free version lets you send emails to almost 2000 subscribers, which is quite a good deal if you have a small business.

Pros:

  • Drag and drop editor
  • Automatic blog post notification
  • Mobile-friendly templates

Cons:

  • Restrictions in the free version
  • A bit complicated for new users
  • Not optimization for every aspect

Pricing:

Apart from its free version that you can get from WordPress inventory, it also has a premium version that would cost you $149/year.

Newsletter

The newsletter is another consideration option, developed specifically to help users meet their email marketing needs. This plugin lets you add a pop-up or a subscription form on your website. Apart from that, you can also segment your leads with the help of its multi-list targeting.

And, sending the newsletter to get more exposure to your content is always possible with this plugin. Adding more to it, Newsletter also has inbuilt reporting; thus, you can keep track of how emails are performing and what needs to be improved.

Pros:

  • Integration with other tools
  • Easy customization and optimization
  • Availability of pop-up

Cons:

  • No support for Elementor
  • Default Font
  • Slow support

Pricing:

Apart from its free version, Newsletter also comes with a premium version that can be purchased by paying a price of $65/year if you’re a blogger and $249/year if you have an agency.

SumoMe

If you’re looking for one such plugin that can provide you a comprehensive list of features, SumoMe could be the one for you. It’s a complete marketing solution that’s used by experts of several industries, such as Social Media Examiner, Airbnb, and more.

In context with the newsletter feature, SumoMe offers opt-ins, like welcome mat scroll-in popup mixed with exit-intent technology. You can also get a form of the customizer to communicate the brand’s identity. And then, you can also find customizable templates, signup boxes, and A/B testing in premium packages.

Pros:

  • Variety of forms
  • Easy customization
  • Seamless sharing

Cons:

  • The unnecessary blue box on the site in free version
  • Expensive premium packages
  • Often timeout of the dashboard

Pricing:

If you’re fine with limited features, you can download the free version. But, if you want the premium version, the package would cost $39/month and $468/year.

WPForms-WPKore-Review-2

Next on the list is this preferable WordPress SMTP plugin that has been helping a lot of people out. It’s one of the most beginner friendly plugins that you can use for your newly designed website. It comes with a drag and drop functionality that makes it easier to build forms.

Moreover, this user-friendly plugin also provides several beneficial features, such as basic form fields, email notifications, captcha for spam protection, thank you page for form confirmation, and many others.

Pros:

  • Drag & drop builder
  • Powerful features in free version
  • Surveys & polls add-ons

Cons:

  • Limited functionality in free version
  • No complex features
  • Less advanced for professionals

Pricing:

WPForm Lite can be downloaded from WordPress.org. Or, you can get the premium one, starting from $39.50/year.

MailOptin-Review-The-Best-WordPress-List-Building-and-Automated-Newsletters-Plugin

When it comes to creating attractive newsletter signup forms, MailOptin can help you better in this regard. With options like sidebar forms, notification bars, slide-ins, and popups, this plugin surely knows how to keep your requirements fulfilled.

MailOptin makes use of WordPress customizer as the form builder with different templates that you can customize as per your own needs. It also comprises features to boost your conversion rate, like scroll trigger, A/B testing, Lead Bank, Exit Intent, and more.

Pros:

  • Easy customization
  • Several useful features
  • Easy to setup & use

Cons:

  • Analytics can be improved
  • Slide-in forms are less pushy
  • Not many customization options

Pricing:

You can get both the free and premium versions of MailOptin. While the former can be downloaded easily, the latter one would cost you $69/year, $169/year, and $269/year as per the requirements.

Just as you can comprehend from the name, this one is a flexible and powerful SMTP WordPress plugin that lets you create emails, lead generating landing pages, automated texts, and much more. It also provides a variety of striking mobile-friendly templates that you can further filter on the basis of campaign type and your industry.

To make things even easier for users, Leadpages plugin comes integrated with lead capturing pop-ups; thus, you can entice your audience effortlessly. And then, their comprehensive inbuilt payment forms will also help you out to a great extent.

Pros:

  • Easy to use and create forms
  • Advanced analytics
  • Freedom to create collaborating CTA buttons

Cons:

  • No option for live chat
  • No free version available

Pricing:

This specific plugin comes with three different packages, priced at $25/month, $48/month, and $199/month. You can choose the one as per your requirements.

sendpress-best-free-WordPress-newsletter-plugin-email-marketing

Last but not least, the SendPress Newsletter is one of the best alternatives to some popular emailing list building plugins. This plugin can also be integrated with your Gmail account or web host. In this plugin, you can find a variety of amazing features.

Be it statistics tracking, editing option, or customizing the templates; everything is available just at the click of a button. And then, it’s even best if used for personal blogs, small businesses, and NGOs.

Pros:

  • Capability for unlimited subscriber
  • Quality security auditing
  • Sync with different plugins

Cons:

  • Not suited for enterprises
  • Limited features in free version
  • Slow support

Pricing:

If you want the free version, you can download it from the WordPress repository. Or else, there are four different plans available in the paid version, starting from $39/year.

Wrapping Up:

Now that you’re familiar with the importance of email marketing, you can move ahead and execute your campaigns right away. So, although these above-mentioned email plugins are popular for one or the other reasons, you get to decide which one suits your requirements the best.

While some of these plugins might have better features than others, you must research thoroughly before deciding upon any. In case you’ve got something else in your basket that isn’t mentioned in this list, do let us know by commenting below.



Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
0

Winning WP
Top Seven Best Membership Plugins for WordPress (2019)
Admin Posted On June 17, 2019

50 Great Examples of Extremely Famous Brands Using WordPress (2018)

WordPress Deals

Membership websites let you try for one of the Holy Grails of business: Recurring income. Tempt someone in with your exceptional content just once, and that person could remain a paying customer for months to come — or, if you’re lucky, maybe even years.

Thanks to a superb collection of membership plugins, WordPress is, without doubt, one of the best-equipped platforms for powering a feature-rich, flexible membership website.

These membership plugins provide lots of useful features. You can:

  • Restrict content.
  • Create tiered membership levels.
  • Set up one-time or recurring billing structures.

With a membership plugin taking care of all the behind-the-scenes tasks, you’re free to focus on crafting the excellent content that’ll keep your membership site ticking over.

Remember, though: good content is vital — for your membership website to succeed, it’ll need to provide real value. If you’ve cracked the art of creating outstanding content, and know exactly how to reach your potential audience, recurring membership riches await!

But which membership plugin should you choose? Let’s take a look at seven of the very best WordPress membership plugins available (both free and premium)…

Restrict Content Pro (From $99)

We kick things off with Restrict Content Pro. This plugin’s part of the highly regarded Pippins Plugins family, which also includes Easy Digital Downloads and AffiliateWP. As such, you can trust that you’re in safe hands.

Restrict Content Pro

Starting at $99, Restrict Content Pro is one of the more affordable membership plugins on today’s list. However, don’t let the price tag fool you: Its functionality packs a serious punch, and it’s user-friendly throughout.

For a start, you can create an unlimited number of membership levels, meaning you can implement a multi-tiered membership structure — for example: Free, silver, gold, and platinum memberships. You can also configure trial memberships and offer discount codes to entice visitors.

You can integrate with popular payment gateways – including Stripe and PayPal – and automatically charge members with recurring billing.

Restrict Content Pro also includes some useful back-end functionality, including easy-to-digest analytics reports. These reports let you track membership numbers over custom time periods, giving you the opportunity to monitor growth levels. You can also view and manage an overview of all members, past and present, from one handy screen.

Creating and protecting content is super easy, too. Directly below the WordPress editor, you’ll find a meta box titled restrict this content. From here, you can choose what membership levels are able to view the content, plus whether or not to display an excerpt for non-members. You can use this meta box to restrict access to any post, page, or custom post type. Or, you can also restrict entire categories, or just parts of content using a shortcode.

While Restrict Content Pro starts at $99, you’ll also want to consider the $249 Professional Plan, which gets you access to 17 new add-ons on top of the 12 free add-ons. These add-ons tack on powerful functionality like:

  • Content dripping
  • Group memberships
  • Multisite site creation
  • More options for restricting content by date

Official website

MemberPress (From $149)

Next, we have arguably the best-known membership plugin available to WordPress users: MemberPress.

MemberPress

Starting at $149 a year, you can access what the developers claim to be “the easiest membership site software you’ve ever seen.”

In just a few clicks, MemberPress lets you restrict access to any post, page, or custom post type you wish. If you’d like to restrict access in bulk, you can lock entire categories or tags, too. You can also restrict access to any files in your WordPress Media Library, which allows you to create, say, PDFs that only members can download.

There are also built-in integrations for restricting bbPress (forums), Blubrry PowerPress (podcasts), and WooCommerce (eCommerce). For example, you could create a members-only podcast site for your podcast’s premium content.

As with most membership plugins, MemberPress lets you create premium memberships, with access to Stripe, Paypal, and Authorize.Net, depending on your plan.

You can create both one-time plans and automatic recurring payments. Members also get their own front-end area where they can manage their memberships, including an option to upgrade/downgrade and only pay the prorated difference.

Obviously, the more paying customers you have, the healthier your website’s financial position — and MemberPress ships with plenty of cool features for maximizing conversions.

For a start, this includes pretty pricing pages (another way of saying stylish pricing tables). You can play around with the content, organization, and styling of these tables — with several built-in themes to choose from — to find the best-converting combo.

Email marketing is still as powerful a weapon as ever, and MemberPress is compatible with 13+ email marketing services to help you integrate it into your arsenal. And if you want to create your own affiliate program, the $349 Pro plan includes the Affiliate Royale plugin, which lets you create your own army of loyal promoters.

Not enough? MemberPress also supports content dripping and coupon codes, along with plenty of other helpful features.

Official website

Paid Memberships Pro (FREE to $297+ for Pro)

With 14+ free add-ons and 64+ premium add-ons, Paid Memberships Pro is one flexible WordPress membership plugin. Plus, the core version is also 100% free, which makes it easy to get started with and test out.

Paid Memberships Pro

So what makes it so popular? Well, as I mentioned above, one of the big advantages is flexibility. The fact that there are so many add-ons means you can add a ton of different functionality to your site. But because each feature is a separate add-on, it also avoids bloating your site up with features you don’t actually need.

And if there’s not already an add-on for what you want, there are heaps of pre-made code recipes for all kinds of little tweaks.

For now, though, let’s just start with the core membership site functionality that all sites need. You get all the important stuff, including:

  • Lots of options for restricting content, including shortcodes, Gutenberg blocks, PHP functions. Or, you can restrict entire posts, pages, custom post types, or even categories.
  • Option to sell one-time or automatic recurring memberships, including free/discounted trials, one-time signup fees, etc.
  • Content dripping.
  • Support for 6 payment gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.Net.
  • A membership area where members can upgrade/downgrade/cancel their memberships.

Then, there are the 70+ add-ons you can use to tack on all kinds of features. Here are just a few examples of the types of things you can do:

  • Give members their own Multisite network site.
  • Add an affiliate program.
  • Integrate with Zapier automation.

You can browse the full list of add-ons here.

Beyond that, the developer also offers a free Memberlite theme that helps you create a great-looking membership site from day one.

In the end, if flexibility is key for you, Paid Memberships Pro is a great option. The only potential downside? Price. With access to all the paid add-ons and code recipes starting at $297, it’s one of the pricier plugins on this list.

Official website

WooCommerce Memberships ($149)

I’m sure you’re already familiar with the excellent WordPress eCommerce solution, WooCommerce. The next item on today’s list, WooCommerce Memberships, extends the core WooCommerce plugin, letting you create awesome, scalable membership websites.

WooCommerce Memberships

As you may expect from such tight-knit integration, this extension enables you to use all of WooCommerce’s relevant functionalities. Most importantly, this includes any of the 100+ WooCommerce-compatible payment gateways — PayPal, Stripe, Amazon Payments, Authorize.net…you name it. Members can also use the WooCommerce customer area to manage their memberships.

WooCommerce Memberships also supports all of the standard membership plugin functionalities — restricting content, drip-feeding content, and premium memberships, among others.

Because it’s based on WooCommerce, WooCommerce Memberships also gives you some neat eCommerce integrations. For example, you can offer free shipping to your members, which lets you create your own mini version of Amazon Prime. Or, you can offer special discounts – like 10% off to paying members.

The one feature lacking from WooCommerce Memberships is recurring billing. However, you can add this functionality by integrating another extension, WooCommerce Subscriptions, for $199.

The WooCommerce Subscriptions extension is arguably the best recurring payment plugin for WordPress, and, when used in conjunction with WooCommerce Memberships, it lets you add important features, such as trial memberships, recurring billing, and member upgrades/downgrades.

Official website

MemberMouse (From $19.95 a month)

MemberMouse is one of the most feature-rich membership plugins when it comes to built-in functionality, while still managing to keep things pretty user-friendly.

MemberMouse

MemberMouse allows you to restrict access to any published post, page, or custom post type. In just a few short seconds, you’ll be able to specify which membership levels can access what content — plus, you can drip-feed content by configuring a time release. The one downside is that, while you can restrict posts by category, you cannot restrict custom post types by category – only one at a time.

Included with MemberMouse is one of the most detailed reporting suites found in any membership plugin. You can access this from the WordPress dashboard and it includes lots of key metrics you can target to increase profits, such as

  • Total members
  • Average retention duration
  • Average customer lifetime value

If you want another way to boost your revenue, you’ll love some of MemberMouse’s more advanced features, such as one-click upsells and downsells.

However, my favorite feature is pricing A/B testing, which lets you optimize your pricing strategy to maximize subscribers and revenues.

MemberMouse also offers several integrations:

  • 8 different payment gateways, including PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.Net
  • 4 email marketing services, including Mailchimp

Want to recruit an army of affiliate marketers to sing your praises and promote your website? Great, because MemberMouse is also compatible with any affiliate network.

While there’s a lot to like about MemberMouse’s feature list, there’s one thing that some people don’t like – it’s not GPL. In part, this means that the underlying code is obfuscated and you won’t be able to make direct edits to the source code.

MemberMouse does add its own hooks that you can “hook” your code edits into, as well as an API. However, if you want to do something beyond what the hooks and API let you do, you’re kind of just out of luck with MemberMouse, whereas most of the other plugins would let you tweak the source code as needed.

Plans start at $19.95 per month for up to 1,000 members and go up from there depending on how many members you have and which features you want.

Official website

WP-Members (FREE to $59 for Pro)

For those of you working on a tight budget, WP-Members represents the second free option on today’s list. Its free core lets you block access to content for non-registered users, converting your WordPress-powered website into a fully functional membership site.

WP-Members

You can restrict content via a simple settings screen, from which you can blanket-restrict all of your posts or pages, or restrict individual post or pages. Or, you can also use shortcodes to partially restrict content.

WP-Members can also auto-generate excerpts for restricted content — based on the number of characters — or you can create excerpts for yourself. This is a neat feature, because you can leverage carefully crafted excerpts for SEO purposes.

WP-Members also sets you up with front-end login and registration forms, as well as 120+ action and filter hooks that you, or your developer, can use to customize things.

As a free plugin, there are two obvious limitations.

First, you can’t create custom menus for registered users, so even casual visitors will be able to view your menus in full.

However, the biggest limitation is that you can’t charge for memberships — not unless you upgrade to the Site Membership Subscription plugin, costing $59 a year.

Upgrading gives you access to priority support, premium code snippets, exclusive tutorials, and a members-only support forum. It also means you can access the 10 premium add-on modules, which include:

  • PayPal Subscriptions — visitors can pay for memberships using PayPal, including trials. Recurring membership payments are collected automatically.
  • Advanced Options Tab — extends the settings page, with plenty of additional user-requested fields.
  • Logged-in Menus — lets you create custom menus for registered members.
  • Mailchimp Integration — lets you integrate Mailchimp with your membership website.

Official website

AccessAlly (From $990)

AccessAlly is kind of like a marriage between a WordPress membership plugin and an LMS plugin. So if you’re looking to offer online course content to your members, this might be the tool for you…though it’s not cheap.

AccessAlly

One of the most unique things about AccessAlly is how it’s built to integrate with marketing automation and CRM tools. In fact, when you set up your restricted membership content, you’ll integrate AccessAlly’s tags into your marketing automation tool as part of the process. As such, you’ll need to use one of these 5 tools:

  1. InfusionSoft
  2. Ontraport
  3. ActiveCampaign
  4. ConvertKit
  5. Drip

I know that sounds a bit complicated – and it is a little more upfront work – but the end result is that you’ll have this powerful automation and segmentation built into your membership site from day one, which can help you engage members in unique ways and boost your conversion rates.

For example, if someone starts checking out but doesn’t finish, you could automatically send them a reminder email with a special unique coupon just for them. Or, you could automatically send a member an upsell after they finish a course or lesson.

There are also some other nice conversion-boosting features, like the ability to offer one-click upsells and order bumps (think those marketing funnels people are always talking about!), and AccessAlly also includes built-in functionality to create your own affiliate program.

There’s no beating around the bush — AccessAlly is the most expensive option on this list by a big margin, so it’s definitely not going to work for everyone. But if you think you’ll take advantage of all the powerful automation options it gives you, it’s definitely one to consider.

Official website

Final Thoughts

WordPress users are spoiled for choice when it comes to membership plugins. As a result, narrowing today’s post down to just a handful is far more difficult than usual — the list could easily have been three times as long!

All of the plugins featured represent excellent selections, though — each is easy to use and comes equipped with all the essential membership features needed to satisfy most users. This includes the ability to ‘lock’ content, monetize your website by selling premium memberships, and drip-feed content to increase membership lifespans.

However, it’s the additional features that’ll determine which membership plugin’s right for you — and this is where the plugins stand apart from each other.

For example, if you…

  • Want the most flexibility, consider Paid Memberships Pro and its 70+ add-ons.
  • Are already running a WooCommerce store, WooCommerce Memberships might be right for you.
  • Don’t care about GPL and just want something with a ton of built-in features, you might be happy with MemberMouse.
  • Want to be able to set up powerful marketing automation, you might be willing to spring for AccessAlly.

All of these membership plugins have something unique to offer, so figure out which features are essential for your website, then check to see whether your preferred plugin supports them.

Using any of the above membership plugins? Thoughts?

Colin Newcomer is a freelance writer and long-time Internet marketer. He specializes in digital marketing and WordPress. He lives a life of danger, riding a scooter through the chaos of Hanoi.

Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
4 Views
0

WP Lift
The Best 9 Free WordPress Invoice Plugins for your Business
Admin Posted On June 14, 2019

Divi Deal

Quality free invoice plugins for WordPress can accept online payments from a variety of vendors and processors.  To get the most compatibility for online payment processors, you do have to pay for it as most plugins have a premium paid version.  If you do most of your business locally with cash and check, you could get away with not having online payments, but that would be a disservice to your clients and to your future clients who only pay online.

Divi Deal

The ability to produce invoices through a plugin is vital to today’s business climate as it can get pretty tedious typing each one out by hand.  This is why these plugins were created in the first place, to make things easier for you as the business owner.

WordPress has many plugins available that can generate invoices and keep track of your clients for you.  This can keep things tidy on your end and make your business run more efficiently.  We’ll look at a few of the best free WordPress plugins that can generate invoices and manage that side of the business, including payment processing options.

The Best Free Invoice Plugins for WordPress

Sliced Invoices

sliced invoices plugin

Sliced invoices is one of the most popular free WordPress plugins out there with over 5,000 active WordPress websites using it.  It’s also highly rated on wordpress.org’s repository.  With Sliced, you can get quotes and invoices created as well as checking up on those invoices to see which have been paid and which are outstanding.  Sliced also uses native WordPress dashboard widgets for reporting.  Also included in the free version, you can set automatic payment reminders to your clients, invoice cloning and templates, and saved line-entry items.

For prices starting at $79, you can get premium add-on bundles to the software which brings in options such as PDF quotes and invoices, dedicated client areas, recurring invoicing, deposits, and more payment options such as Stripe, 2Checkout, and Braintree.

Go To Sliced Invoices

Sprout Invoices

sprout invoice plugin

Sprout is another popular plugin with over 2,000 WordPress sites using the software.  Sprout has high ratings all across the board with users on the repository.  Many accolades have been given about the beautiful layout and design of Sprout’s UI.  With Sprout, you can produce estimates (quotes) and invoices, and like Sliced, they use native WordPress dashboard widgets for reporting.

You can manage your invoices, customize email notifications, configure payment settings, and so much more.  Sprout lets you use your custom design and logos on your projects with nested line items and unlimited invoices and estimates.  They can accept PayPal Pro or Standard and offline payments (Cash or Check).  Sprout also has many extensions available that can integrate with WP Forms and Gravity Forms.

Sprout also offers premium packages that start at $59 which include options such as time tracking, recurring payments or subscriptions, deposits, PDF invoices, payment reminder emails, Toggi and Zapier integration, and the ability to accept payment on Stripe, authorize.Net, 2Checkout, and many more.

Go To Sprout Invoices

Littlebot Invoices

littlebot invoice plugin

Littlebot is a newcomer to the game having only been in business for the last couple of years.  Littlebot’s invoicing plugin comes with an excellent package of features that can help your business.  The genius of their setup is that it’s a plug & play stand-alone application with no need for third-party plugins for integration needed.   Littlebot can create estimates and invoices and has the capability of accepting payments via Stripe or Plaid with a premium add-on to the software.

Go to Littlebot Invoices

Flexible Invoices

flexible invoices plugin wordpress

Flexible Invoices comes with a lot of features for a free plugin which includes features normally tied-in with premium payments.  You can add, edit, and delete invoices and also manage currencies, figure in tax rates, and payment methods.  You can also generate and download invoices with a date range, and you can add custom numbering to your invoices using shortcodes to your preferences.  Customized summaries and reports and PDF printouts round out all the features of this beautiful plugin.

Go To Flexible Invoices

Invoicing

invoicing invoice plugin wordpress

WP Invoicing is a lightweight and simple program to use with minimal features and the focus on quick and sparse setup.  There are a few features included such as invoices and quotes (there’s a separate free add-on for this), customized tax rates, saved line items, email notifications, recurring invoices, and payment via authorize.net, WorldPay, and PayPal Standard.

There is a paid premium version which includes PDF invoices and more payment options, including Sage Pay, PayFast, 2checkout, PayPal Pro, Stripe, and offline payments (Cash or Check).

Go To WP Invoicing

WP-Invoice

WP-Invoice plugin

WP-Invoice is one of the most popular plugins around for WordPress with over 5,000 WordPress sites using the software.  WP-Invoice comes with a lot of features to use including reports, unlimited invoices, the allowance of partial payments, custom logos and design, saved line items, and the ability to connect with WP-CRM for more client management in more detail.  WP-Invoice can accept payments from PayPal, 2checkout, Stripe, MerchantPlus, and Interkassa.  Premium add-ons include quotes, electronic signature, business locations, PDF invoices, and more payment gateways available.

Go To WP-Invoice

Invoicing with InvoiceXpress for WooCommerce

invoicexpress woocommerce invoice

If you work with WooCommerce, InvoiceXpress works well within that framework with many cool features.  You can create simplified invoices and issue documents manually through the software.  Many premium features are also available including invoice sequencing, three languages (English, Spanish, and Portuguese), priority tech support, delivery notes, and other functions.

Go To InvoiceXpress for WooCommerce

Qinvoice Connect for WooCommerce

Qinvoice can produce quality invoices within the WooCommerce framework with the ability to save and edit them.  You can also generate packing slips for invoices and utilize layouts from a wide selection.  Be mindful that a subscription to Qinvoice is required to use this plugin.

Go To Qinvoice Connect for WooCommerce

WP Smart CRM & Invoices

WP Smart CRM & Invoices

WP Smart has a lot of features available for WordPress users including annotation timelines, CSV import, invoice creation, quote creation, PDF downloads, custom logo and designs, a customized numbering system for your invoices, and other great features.

The premium version comes with even more options including multipage invoices on PDF, importing contacts from other plugins such as WooCommerce, attached emails, custom contacts and data, improved Scheduler with drag & drop / clone-copy abilities, and a full page view.

Go To WP Smart CRM & Invoices

These are just some available free invoicing plugins for WordPress that have the most features.  As previously mentioned, to get all the features of a plugin, you do have to pay up for it as a premium add-on.  As no two businesses are the same, do your due diligence and find the best one that works for your business.

Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
0

WP Tavern
WordPress Spanish Translation Team Now has Meta Sites, Apps, and Top 200 Plugins 100% Translated – WordPress Tavern
Admin Posted On June 14, 2019

WordPress Spanish Translation Team Now has Meta Sites, Apps, and Top 200 Plugins 100% Translated – WordPress Tavern

The Spanish WordPress community hit a remarkable milestone with translations this week. Polyglots volunteers have now translated the meta sites, WordPress apps, and the top 200 plugins at 100% completion, with no pending translations to review.

The size of the team is a major factor in reaching this milestone. According to stats Naoko Takano shared at WordPress Translation Day 4 last month, Spanish is the locale with the most translation contributors (2,863), followed by German (2,399), Italian (2,190), Dutch (1,584), and Russian (1,515). It is also one of the top non-English locales installed, with 5.0% of all WordPress sites using the translation. WordPress.com reports similar numbers, where Spanish is the second most popular language for blogs at 4.7%.

Rocío Valdivia, a Community Wrangler at WordCamp Central who lives in Spain, gave us a look at what is behind the team’s extraordinary growth and momentum. She identified several key factors that have contributed to their success in working efficiently and sharing useful information among team members during the past 2-3 years.

“We created a Slack instance some years ago, but at the beginning it was common for people to join and ask for support questions,” Valdivia said. “Now we have some protocols: the general channel is an only-read channel. If someone ask for support, we send them with a kind predef to the es.wordpress.org forums, where they get answers in a few hours. There are no questions in the forums waiting for longer than six hours ever, as we have a very active support team that coordinates in the #support channel of our Slack.”

Valdivia said that removing the noise of support requests has given the team very productive channels for translations, plugin and theme translations, meetups (where Meetup organizers share tips and resources using a shared Google drive folder), and WordCamps (where WC organizers share info, tips, answer questions in Spanish, and share resources like email templates.)

“Besides all of this, we’ve worked very well passing the philosophy of the project to the new members from the most experienced ones,” Valdivia said. “For example, people do very soft transitions from one lead organizer to the next one.”

Although some WordCamp attendees have complained in the past that not much is accomplished at Contributor Days, the Spanish community has had success using these opportunities to transfer knowledge to new leaders and contributors. The community hosted 10 WordCamps in 2018 and Valdivia estimates they will have 9-10 in 2019. WordCamp Barcelona 2018 and 2019 had 400 attendees and 180 people at their Contributor Days. WC Irun 2019 had 220 attendees and 100 participants at Contributor Day. WordCamp Madrid 2019 sold out with 600 attendees and approximately 200 participated in Contributor Day.

Although the Spanish community has experienced contributors across several WordPress.org teams, such as WPTV, Community, Support, and Polyglots, Valdivia said they are a bit thin on Core contributors.

“We’re lacking people with experience contributing frequently to Core,” Valdivia said. “We have some of them who have contributed several times, but still need more people with more involvement to be able to pass all this info to newcomers.”

Strong local meetups are another factor in the Spanish community’s success at keeping translations up-to-date. In addition to the largest team of translators in the world of WordPress, Spain has the second highest number of meetup groups and events per month. Spain is running 64 local meetups, with a population of 46 million people, compared to 201 groups in the U.S., which has 7x the population size (327 million).

“The language barrier has been an issue for years, as not everyone speaks English and not everyone feels confident following conversations in English,” Valdivia said. “So, being able to train our own teams of contributors in our own language and having our own shared resources and channels, has been very useful.”

Would you like to write for WP Tavern? We are always accepting guest posts from the community and are looking for new contributors. Get in touch with us and let’s discuss your ideas.



Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
8 Views
0

Winning WP
Top 7 Best Testimonial Plugins for WordPress (2019)
Admin Posted On June 7, 2019

50 Great Examples of Extremely Famous Brands Using WordPress (2018)

WordPress Deals

In his 1984 book Influence, Robert Cialdini introduced the term “Social Proof” to the world. To this day social proof remains an important part of marketing using social and psychological influence.

One of the most common ways of demonstrating social proof is by showing how others feel about a product or service using testimonials. Even if you do not realise it, everyone encounters testimonials on a daily basis. It is impossible to escape testimonials as they are used in newspapers, television advertisements, websites, products, and more.

Displaying testimonials on a WordPress website is simple as there are dozens of testimonial solutions on the market. By integrating testimonials on your website you can demonostrate value and help turn visitors into readers and customers.

In this article I would like to share with you what we at WinningWP consider to be the best testimonial plugins for WordPress.

1. Jetpack (FREE)

Jetpack is known for its numerous security and performance features, however the popular plugin also has a custom content types module that can be used to create new custom post types such as testimonials and portfolios.

Once you have activated testimonials from the Jetpack writing page, a testimonials area will be added to your WordPress admin menu.

Activating Testimonials in Jetpack

When you create a new testimonial you can state the name of the person, enter their quote in the main content box, and assign a featured image.

You can then insert the testimonial into posts and pages using the testimonials shortcode. A shortcode widget can also be used if you want to display testimonials on sidebars.

Six attributes are available for the testimonials shortcode, but the output looks basic and there are no options for improving the design.

Jetpack Testimonial Example

Jetpack testimonials is a great choice if you want a simple testimonial solution, however there are better alternatives if you want more control over how your testimonials look.

2. Easy Testimonials (FREE / $59+)

Easy Testimonials is a feature-packed testimonial solution that comes with five Gutenberg blocks for displaying testimonials individually, randomly, in a list, in a slideshow, or in a grid.

The plugin lets you customise every aspect of testimonials. You can define the excerpt length, thumbnail size, whether the date is displayed, whether testimonials are cached, and whether ratings are displayed. Testimonials can be categorised too.

The text used for testimonial shortcodes can also be modified and all testimonials are Schema.org compliant to help your testimonials stand out in search engines.

Easy Testimonials Single Testimonial View Options

Five testimonial styles are available, however 100 more are made available if you upgrade to Easy Testimonials Pro.

Retailing from $59 for a single license, the pro version adds a front-end form for collecting testimonials from visitors, spam prevention, a testimonial carousel, and a notification system for letting you know when new testimonials have been submitted. There is also an option to import and export testimonials in CSV format.

WordPress Multisite is supported in the higher priced $199 business license and $599 agency license.

An Example of Testimonials

Easy Testimonials is one of the best testimonial WordPress plugins available today.

It offers hundreds of options for changing what information is displayed in testimonials. The inclusion of custom CSS and theme selections makes styling testimonials simpler too.

3. Strong Testimonials (FREE / $39+)

Strong Testimonials is a quality testimonials plugin that allows you to display testimonials individually, in a list, in a grid, in a slideshow, or as a form so that visitors can submit testimonials.

All of the display options are controlled through a dedicated views section. For each viewing mode the options are divided into query, fields, actions, and styling. This lets you define exactly which testimonials are displayed and how they are styled. A shortcode is provided once you have saved all settings.

Another great feature of Strong Testimonials is custom fields. Using custom fields you can tailor testimonials to suit you and your website.

Strong Testimonials Fields

A basic license for Strong Testimonials Pro retails at $39 per year and gives you access to the country selector extension.

The plus license at $69 per year increases support and updates from one website to three. It also unlocks four additional premium extensions: Review markup, custom properties, advanced views, and assignment.

You need to jump up to the $99 per year business license to unlock the multiple forms and custom form fields extensions. This plan also increases usage to 25 websites, however you can remove the usage restriction by upgrading to the agency license at $249 per year.

An Example of Strong Testimonials

Strong Testimonials is a fantastic testimonial solution. Its styling and custom fields options really set it apart.

The pro version of the plugin unlocks many additional settings that are restricted in the free version. You do, however, need to purchase one of their higher-tiered plans in order to gain access to all premium extensions.

4. Testimonials Widget (FREE / $29.99+)

Testimonials Widget is a popular testimonial solution that lets you display testimonials using widgets. There are widgets to display testimonial categories, testimonial archives, a testimonial tag cloud, and one for rotating testimonials using a slider.

The main settings area of the plugin has dozens of settings; most of which can be enabled or disabled via a checkbox.

Although the plugin emphasises its use of widgets, shortcodes are provided to let you insert testimonials into posts and pages.

Unique shortcodes are available to display testimonials in a slider, to show testimonial archives, to show recent testimonials, a testimonial tag cloud, and more. There are many attributes for each type of shortcode so I encourage you to test them using the provided shortcode examples.

Testimonials Widget Settings

A single license for the premium version of the plugin retails at $29.99. Additional plans are available for those that needs support and updates for more websites; however all licenses give you full access to all features.

Upgrading gives you access to 5 star ratings, testimonial caching, excerpts, additional shortcodes, user submitted testimonials, and more.

An Example of Testimonials Widget

If you are looking to display testimonials on sidebars, Testimonials Widget is a great option. The testimonials slider widget stands out as it lets you customise everything from within the widget.

You can, of course, insert your testimonials into posts and pages too. You should be able to style the output the way you want if you follow the provided shortcode examples.

5. Testimonials Slider ($22)

Testimonials Slider is a premium testimonial solution that has support for the Gutenberg editor and the EU’s GDPR compliance.

It comes with six beautiful testimonial templates: Slider, rotator, carousel, cards, list, and grid.

When you have selected a template you can then add new testimonials and drag and drop them into the position you want. You can also adjust the styling of the layout and add your own custom CSS.

Edit Text of Testimonials Slider

Testimonials Slider does not only let you display a photo of the testimonial author, you can also display links to their social media profiles and upload a logo of their company. A rating can also be displayed.

Once you have completed your testimonial, it can be inserted into your website using a shortcode.

An Example of Testimonials Slider

Testimonials Slider is available from CodeCanyon for $22. In my opinion, it is one of the most stylish testimonial solutions for WordPress on the market.

I encourage you to check out the demo of the plugin to get a full appreciation of what Testimonials Slider can do.

6. Super Testimonials (FREE / $14)

Super Testimonials is a simple testimonial WordPress plugin that features four testimonial design templates. For each testimonial you can add a rating, featured image, company information, and more.

The plugin has few options, however testimonials can be assigned to categories, there is a shortcode for displaying testimonials in a widget, and attributes are available to help you assign a theme, sort items, and display testimonials from a particular category.

Edit Super Testimonials

The pro version of Super Testimonials is available for only $14. It adds 20 slider templates with 60 skins, 10 list templates with 30 skins, and five grid templates with 15 skins.

It also adds over 100 shortcodes and many new styling based shortcode attributes. Testimonials can be displayed in columns too.

An Example of Super Testimonials

The free version of Super Testimonials is easy to use and produces nice testimonials, however like Jetpack’s testimonial custom post type, it offers few configuration options.

At only $14, I think Super Testimonials Pro is the better option as it offers dozens of additional testimonial templates and skins. Check out their demo page to see them in action as they look great.

7. Testimonial Rotator (FREE)

Testimonial Rotator is a popular slider testimonial WordPress plugin that is free to use.

The plugin can be used to display testimonials in professional slides. Several transition effects and thumbnail sizes are available and you can specify the speed at which slides move on.

You can also define exactly what is displayed in your testimonial template and choose to randomise testimonials that have been assigned to the slide.

Edit Testimonial Rotator

The plugin has other useful features such as a testimonials custom post type archive page, a custom CSS box for styling your testimonials, and the ability to assign ratings, featured images, and author information, to testimonials.

Although the plugin is 100% free to download and use, there is a theme package available from $19.99 that adds five additional testimonial layouts to the two layouts that are already included. No additional functionality or options are added if you purchase this package.

An Example of Testimonial Rotator

Testimonial Rotator is a great looking testimonial solution. The two layouts that are included will be sufficient for many, however you can purchase additional themes or create your own layout template.

It is a good choice if you want to display testimonials in slides.

Honourable Mentions

Over 20 testimonial WordPress plugins were tested for our preparation of this article.

Three good testimonial solutions that just missed our list are AP Custom Testimonial, Testimonial, and Stars Testimonials.

AP Custom Testimonial is an interesting testimonial plugin that offers five testimonial layouts, a dynamic shortcode generator, and a number of useful design settings. A pro Version of the plugin is avaiable that adds more themes, but it has unfortunately not been updated for a number of years.

Testimonial is another good solution to consider. Once you have added a testimonial, you can use the included shortcode generator to style the output and define how many testimonials are displayed.

In the free version you can display testimonials in slides, however if you upgrade to Testimonial Pro, which is available from $39, you can unlock an additional five additional layout types such as grid and masonry. Upgrading also lets you assign social media profiles to testimonials, adds ten additional themes, and unlocks hundreds of additional customisation options.

An Example of Testimonial

Another testimonial solution to check out is Stars Testimonials.

Once you have created a testimonial using the plugin, you can select the testimonial layout and style. In the free version you can use a grid layout and choose from one of five styles.

Create Shortcode in Stars Testimonials

Stars Testimonials Pro is available from only $14. Upgrading gives you access to wall and slider testimonial layouts in addition to six additional styles.

What I love about the plugin is that it shows you a preview of all layouts and styles when you are creating testimonial shortcodes. Once you have selected your style, you can customise general settings, change colours using a gorgeous colour selector, and preview the final output.

I recommend checking it out.

Final Thoughts

I hope you have found this list of the best WordPress testimonial solutions useful.

All of these testimonial WordPress plugins have their strengths and weaknesses, however Easy Testimonials and Strong Testimonials stood out for me as they both offer hundreds of customisation options in addition to professional testimonial templates.

Used/using any of these? Thoughts?

Kevin Muldoon is a professional blogger with a love of travel. He writes regularly about internet marketing on his personal blog and actively talks about technology on YouTube.

Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
24 Views
0

WP Tavern
Automattic Adopts Alex Mills’ Plugins – WordPress Tavern
Admin Posted On June 7, 2019


Automattic announced today that a team inside the company will be adopting Alex Mills‘ plugins and continuing their development and support. Mills, also known around the web as @Viper007Bond, was a WordPress core contributor and prolific plugin developer who passed away in February 2019 after a battle with Leukemia.

At one time last year, Mills was the primary author for and contributor to more than 40 plugins hosted on WordPress.org. The current collection seems to have been pared back to 17 of his most popular plugins. According to stats from WP Tally, these 17 plugins have a cumulative download count of 138,665,603 and a cumulative rating of 4.55 out of 5 stars.

“Since all of my plugins are open-source, they are free to be forked by reputable authors in the WordPress community. It would mean a lot to have my legacy go on,” Mills said in his farewell post earlier this year. The plugins are all free without any pro versions or monetization efforts attached to them.

“I’d never monetize any of my plugins,” Mills told the Tavern after his popular Regenerate Thumbnails plugin passed 5 million downloads in 2017. “I write them for fun not profit. It would be a conflict of interest anyway due to my employment at Automattic.”

Regenerate Thumbnails is active on more than a million WordPress sites and passed the 10 million downloads milestone in January 2019. It has already been downloaded more than 7,000 times today and has regularly received 3K-12k downloads per day throughout 2019.

The enduring popularity of Regenerate Thumbnails is a testament to Mills’ commitment to writing future-proof plugins. What started as a small plugin to fix a client’s problem in 2008 quickly became an indispensable utility for millions of WordPress users transitioning between themes with different image sizes. For those users who could never write their own script to generate new thumbnail sizes, Mills’ plugin was a little piece of time-saving magic that exemplifies the significant contributions plugin developers can make when they write and share code that solves a common problem.

Automattic plans to fork each of Mills’ GitHub repositories and will add them to the Automattic Github account. The team behind this effort is also adding the following paragraph to each plugin’s readme file:

In February 2019 Alex Mills, the author of this plugin, passed away. He leaves behind a number of plugins which will be maintained by Automattic and members of the WordPress community. If this plugin is useful to you please consider donating to the Oregon Health and Science University.

Automattic will also be answering support queries on the forums and the team is open to receiving help from other members of the WordPress community in maintaining and supporting Mills’ plugins.

“In times gone by authors left works of music, novels, poetry, and letters on their passing,” Donncha Ó Caoimh said on the Automattic Engineering blog. “They were static works of art frozen in time. Alex leaves behind his code that will continue to evolve and operate in a living world used by thousands (millions?) of people every day as they go about their online lives.”

Would you like to write for WP Tavern? We are always accepting guest posts from the community and are looking for new contributors. Get in touch with us and let’s discuss your ideas.

Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
14 Views
0

Colorlib
15 Best WordPress Auction Themes and Plugins 2019
Admin Posted On June 5, 2019

Essential

Trying to sell properties or possessions quickly? Why not consider an auction marketing for that? Auctions are definitely effective, speedy and fun marketing tools that are rapidly growing in popularity as a means of selling real estate, vehicles, and other range of auctions. In fact, there has been a tremendous increase in the use of the auction method of marketing for real estate and personal properties. Consequently, auctioneers opt for strong media advertising, direct mail and other powerful marketing techniques to get the word out about the auction and attract bidders to it. Luckily, having an online presence for properties that offer auction features is far more effective, interesting and powerful. Today lets dig in into these precious tools that will help you showcase properties and make use of auction features for your business. Check out these WordPress auction themes and make your website an excellent marketplace for auctions.

High impact marketing draws attention to your property. Thus it provides maximum exposure and high visibility to the market. That’s what auction can do to your possessions. How excellent it would be to acquire the best tools to help you create an exceptional marketplace through a WordPress-driven website? In this list of amazing WordPress auction themes, you’ll have plenty of themes to feast with. Moreover, you’ll also find useful WordPress auction plugins that will empower your eCommerce website and make it more effective.

So, chill out and let these themes provide you the best marketing solution to the conversion of your property or possessions.

Essential

Essential

Auction is a powerful marketing strategy that will help you eliminate numerous inconvenience on selling and buying properties. With a resourceful website that will cater to buying and selling of properties through auction/bidding, managing business is easier and quicker. Here’s Essential, a responsive WooCommerce and auction theme with user-friendly design.

Essential is ever ready to empower your website as it utilizes WooCommerce as a powerful eCommerce platform coupled with the premium WooCommerce Simple Auctions extension. Now you can set up your online shop or auction website in no time! Apparently, Essential has 2 homepage variations, 2 slider types, unlimited color schemes, and more. Furthermore, it’s also packed with widgets, shortcodes and other amazing features. As Essential is built with cross-browser compatibility and fully responsive, customers can access your shop without limit on the device or browser utilization. You can easily access it regardless of the device and browser you use.

More info / Download

Auction

Auction

Create an atmosphere of excitement and competition through an auction website. Here’s Auction, a car dealer WooCommerce WordPress theme with modern, intuitive and clean design. Auction is built using Bootstrap framework hence your site with Auction will always have a mobile first design. Of course, the WooCommerce plugin integration ensures that you have a fully functional online store. Moreover, Auction comes with color management for easy implementation of the color schemes and for branding purposes.

That’s not all, Auction has incredible widgets and shortcodes that will fortify the theme’s performance. Also, they will help ameliorate the look and feel of the site. When it comes to coding, this theme is well documented, has clean codes for easy editing and follows the best coding practices as well. Therefore, achieving an SEO friendly website is never a problem when you pick Auction. Then, having good ranks at search engines will be more possible. Other notable features include user-friendly options panel, cool pricing tables, sliders and more.

More info / Download

Adifier

Adifier

Auction isn’t a new marketing method. In fact, it has become one of the most popular and powerful marketing tools that speed up sales and reinforces the brand. Here’s Adifier, a classified ads theme that can serve as a resourceful and powerful means to create an auction website. What makes Adifier a great tool from these WordPress auction themes is its numerous 14 prebuilt and ready-to-use demos. With the intention to provide you ample options in setting up your website, Adifier gives you those various demos having different layouts and elements on each.

Considering monetization methods, this theme has lots of ways for you to earn with your website. Specifically, you can create packs with a limited number of ads; charge users through subscription modes; or combine the previous two and limit number of ads. Meanwhile, you may also offer different charges depending on the type of promotions you use. You can use the bump up ad, highlight ad, urgent ad, top ad and Map promotion. Check out other amazing features of Adifier today!

More info / Download

AdForest

AdForest

Real estate, automobiles, and other auction materials can benefit from auction marketing. If you wish to acquire the most suitable theme for your website then check out AdForest from these intuitive WordPress auction themes we’ve collected for you. AdForest is a classified ads theme that has abundant functional and ready-to-use demos for your auction sites. Apparently, it has 12+ adorable good to go websites with outstanding front-end user interfaces. AdForest has a bunch of core features that can make your site stand out.

One is the most promising feature of AdForest is the Bidding in the advertisement. But if you wish to turn off that feature, that’s also possible through the backend options panel. Another is the anti-spamming or security feature where user registration needs verification through email. What’s more? It also comes with a multi currency feature, image reordering, messaging system and so much more. Of course, setting up an online store needs empowerment from eCommerce plugin. That’s not an issue with AdForest, its WooCommerce integration makes it easier for you to manage the online store.

More info / Download

Classiads

Classiads

If you want properties to sell quickly at a fair price, you can take advantage of auction marketing. Here’s Classiads that is ready to render a seamless showcase of properties or possessions for buying and selling. It’s a perfect choice for your business as it is super flexible and feature-rich theme. Since Classiads is packed with plugins, widgets and shortcodes, it has become one of the best selling classified ads themes in ThemeForest. With the 22+ premade websites, you have extensive possibilities in setting the most useful website.

Aside from that, there are irresistible core features that you may have a hard time to resist. One that’s worth to mention is its bidding system. Specifically, Classiads helps users to send their offers in private and can check totals, highest, lowest and average bids. Furthermore, it utilizes the advanced search system where users can filter contents via keyword suggestions, price and address radius range bar. In addition, this theme also features the review and rating system so users can share their experience through rating and reviews which is truly influential and powerful at the same time.

More info / Download

Classiera

Classiera

Auctions generate more interests and impose greater value on any properties. If you plan to create a website where you can implement such a powerful marketing scheme then you should take a look at Classiera. It’s a classified ads WordPress theme that is packed with 16+ premade homepage layout designs. All of these have super user-friendly features for easy to use and awesome user experience. Tailored for showcasing ads, Classiera has a bidding module and inbox messaging system to provide easy communication within the website between buyer and seller.

This theme also features a user dashboard and submit ads styles. This way, you can easily manage listing records at the front end. For a more captivating and transparent display of charges, Classiera uses unique pricing plans through table styles. Additionally, it wouldn’t be easier for you to manage online stores without the help of the WooCommerce plugin. So, this theme integrates it to take advantage of an eCommerce website. It’s also fully responsive, has an advanced search bar, unlimited colors, Google map integration and more.

More info / Download

Classifieds

Classifieds

Auctions give greater value to your possessions than other sales techniques do. So, utilizing it for your buying-and-selling business is a cool choice! Here’s Classifieds, one of the most magnificent themes from this list of WordPress auction themes. It’s built to be fast, powerful and responsive so you can compete with the top notch websites in the market. With this theme, you can showcase properties or anything you want to advertise in a clutter-free manner.

Specifically, it lets you search for the properties with ease through the advanced search options that include categories, keywords, location and radius. Classifieds also comes with creative pricing plans so users can easily identify which plans they would prefer for the ads. Particularly, users can submit ads with an amazing level of exposure. Hence, you have unlimited ways to monetize with this theme.

More info / Download

Classify

Classify

Auctions can draw attention and makes a great advertising tool for both personal and business properties. Here’s Classify an exceptional, modern and most powerful theme with practical and cutting edge features. There’s no better way to make buying and selling business more efficient than to acquire the best theme from these WordPress auction themes. With Classify, you have plenty of homepage variants that you can choose from. Whether you want to have a Google map homepage, listing sidebar, listing fullwidth, with shop or homepage without Slider and map you always have wonderful options to pick. Whichever you prefer, all of these demos are worth every penny.

Classify theme allows you to easily monetise with your website through the pay per post, video ads, featured ads and regular ads. Even more, Classify’s full WooCommerce integration can make monetization scheme more efficient with a host of cool features such as Ads Pricing Plan. The advanced search widget enhances intuitive user experience for your audience that makes search more usable and functional. Crafted using Bootstrap framework, this theme will always render consistent mobile first design across devices.

More info / Download

Trade

Trade

With the massive advantages auction brings to both sellers and buyers, building a website where you can do an efficient transaction is much valuable. In case you decide to venture in this line of marketing, obtaining the most suitable theme is priceless! So, pick from these WordPress auction themes and kickstart your business with ease! Trade is a classified ads theme with clean, modern and minimalist design. It contains 4 useful, ready-to-use demos for your classified ads website. These can be installed with one click so you never have to worry about having difficulty on the installation process.

Trade comes with premium WordPress plugins that will surely enhance the performance of your website. Particularly, this theme integrates the Visual Composer for easy drag and drop page building. Crafted using the Bootstrap framework, Trade will look good on all diverse devices including mobile, tablet, laptop and desktop. What’s more? The theme is also SEO friendly, compatible with Contact Form 7, and has unlimited color and skin.

More info / Download

Motors

Motors

If you wish to create urgency in selling the properties or possessions, you may want to consider auction marketing. Since the world of online auction is very competitive, you must ensure that you have the most competent theme from this collection of WordPress auction themes. Motors is a listing theme that is useful for classified ads, car dealership, car rental and more. It has various demos for classified listing with different homepage layouts that you can choose from. As it utilizes the one-click demo import, this theme lets you set up your website without hassle.

Bundled with plenty of plugins, widgets and massive shortcodes, Motors can effectively fortify your website. Premium plugins integrated into the theme includes WPBakery Page Builder for easy page building; WooCommerce that will enhance your website with the most professional, reliable and secure eCommerce plugin; Bootstrap for a consistent wonderful and organized view of your content on different devices.

More info / Download

Knowhere Pro

The auction method of marketing provides quick conversion of possessions to cash. It’s one of the most flexible types of advertising either for personal or business properties. If you wish to manage well your buying and selling business, you might want to consider Knowhere Pro. It’s a multipurpose classified directory theme that fits to be in this list of WordPress auction themes. Specifically, this theme contains 5 prebuilt demos for travel guide, city portal, buy/sell property, job portal and classified ads.

Knowhere Pro’s WPBakery Page Builder integration allows you to create pages with ease. You can drag and drop elements to fully complete the pages of your website. This theme also integrates the SUMO memberships WooCommerce Membership Plugin where you can sell memberships with ease. Knowhere Pro allows a user to add listing with the relevant information needed including images for the listing. Other amazing pages include pricing tables, FAQ, contacts, profile pages, and more.

More info / Download

CarSpot

Accelerate sales by utilizing an auction feature in your classified ad websites. Here’s CarSpot that you ought to give time for evaluation from these awesome WordPress auction themes. It comes with 6 fantastic pre-built demos that can be installed with one click. If you wish to create an online vehicle marketplace then this is the theme you’ll only need. Furthermore, CarSpot has 6 stunning, responsive and modern homepage layouts that you can opt for. Basically, you can have the classical style, modern, Google map listing, carousel slider, buy and sell or the simple yet elegant default.

Specifically, this theme offers a fresh and creative design for bidding or auction. With its bidding module, you can allow users to activate bidding from the backend. This theme has the most advanced and comprehensive features which include comparison, search filter, modern gallery, review system, bump up ads and so much more! Additionally, this theme has a complete messaging system so both user and seller can have effective communication.

More info / Download

Wyzi

The effective and appropriate way of advertising is essential to make auction a success. Well, having a nice, user-friendly website is a good start! Here’s Wyzi, a WordPress theme that is best to use for business finder, service provider, booking, directory listing or auction. It comes with 9 amazing prebuilt demos that are all well-crafted for business solutions. With the Wyzi’s Real Estate Listing demo you can easily create an advertisement of different properties with auction marketing. This theme is built using Bootstrap so your content will always look seamless despite the device you use in accessing it.

Moreover, Wyzi also integrates the Visual Composer for setting up the pages of your website via drag and drop. Hence, you can choose how your layout should look like without touching lines of codes. Furthermore, this theme also integrates the WooCommerce plugin so you can easily manage online store. What’s more? Wyzi has an internal messaging system so buyers and sellers can easily keep in touch with the transaction with ease.

More info / Download

Zoacres

Auctions have become a legitimate way to sell real estates. Regardless of the types of properties you wish to buy and sell, this WordPress auction theme, Zoacres is a wonderful tool to acquire. Zoacres is a real estate theme that comes with 5+ premade niche demos that are installable in one click. Built using Bootstrap framework, Zoacres has a great design and layout even on mobile and tablets.

This theme is highly customizable and is ready to provide user-friendly features for your website. Moreover, the theme has 15+ different styles of homepage layouts that you can take advantage of. With these layouts, you truly have ample options in setting up the website you need. Since WordPress plugin boosts the performance of the theme, Zoacres never fails to integrate those useful plugins. That’s not all, there are also notable features that can make the theme even more competitive. These include Contact Form 7, translatable ready, smooth parallax scrolling and more.

More info / Download

FlatAds

Disposing of properties takes a lot of time. But you can reduce that time by placing it on auction. For classified ads website, it’s best to include the auction feature for smooth and fast transaction. Here’s FlatAds, a classified ads theme that is also ideal to be in this list of WordPress auction themes. FlatAds offers 3 amazing homepage layouts – layer slider, shop and Google map. It has a clean, sleek and modern design built using HTML5 and CSS3. This theme has a strong focus on usability, typography and overall user experience. Hence, it integrates awesome plugins, widgets, shortcodes and other useful features.

With FlatAds you have full control of your website including the colors, fonts, layout and other styles. Basically, this theme allows you to turn on/off features ads. Since it is compatible with the WooCommerce plugin, buying and selling won’t be a headache. It’s also SEO optimized so good ranks at search engine are possible. Other cool features include PayPal integration, Google map integration, bbPress for forums, Twitter integration, working contact form and so much more!

More info / Download

WordPress Auction Plugins

If you already have a nice classified website but doesn’t have the auction marketing feature, you can check out these auction plugins that we’ve included in this WordPress auction themes. These premium plugins can truly reinforce your website into a more powerful, user-friendly and complete marketing tool.

WooCommerce Simple Auctions

Plugins enhance the functionality of a website. Additionally, these tools are seamless when it comes to advancing the theme’s features. WooCommerce Simple Auctions as the name implies is an advanced auction plugin for WordPress. This plugin has the ability to verify credit card/payment details before a user places a bid. In addition, it lets you easily manage auction details like setting the start and end time for auction, define the start price, price increment, reserve price, buy it now price and so on and so forth. Moreover, it comes with intuitive widgets too which include ending soon, future, latest, featured, recently viewed and more. Apart from that, this plugin also provides email notifications for outbid notes, auction win, payment reminder, auction finish, etc. Check out this complete solution for auction website now!

More info / Download

WordPress WooCommerce Marketplace Auction Plugin

Here’s another smart, resourceful and innovative auction plugin for WordPress that will provide you the best solution to your auction marketing needs. As this plugin only works with WordPress WooCommerce Multi Vendor Marketplace, that Marketplace Plugin is required. Specifically, this plugin lets the seller add standard, incremental, automatic and reserves auction. Similarly, the admin can do all those tasks as well. For the customer, this plugin also allows them to place the standard bid as well as the automatic bid. Meanwhile, it would be more interesting and proper to send notifications to the customers when someone places new bids. Well, that wouldn’t be a problem with this plugin as it sends those notifications without hassle. What’s more? Sellers are also given the opportunity to write a review for certain products in the list.

More info / Download



Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
19 Views
0

WP Lift
Free WordPress Plugins For Restaurants: Reservations, Menu, and more..
Admin Posted On June 3, 2019

How To Create A WordPress Popup Contact Form (Open Form In Popup)

Would you rather manage your restaurant’s website or be in the kitchen? Some days, it’s probably a tough call, but it’s doubtful you spent time developing a menu and customer base to devote your time to juggling a menu, booking, and review website. Luckily, your WordPress website provides you with access to all of the time-saving free WordPress plugins for restaurants you need to launch your new eatery online at your leisure.

To start, you may only want to host a basic menu and ensure your restaurant appears in search results. As time goes by and your business takes off, additional plugins can help streamline online reservations and to-go orders.

On the free restaurants’ plugins end, there are options to meet all of your business needs. However, most of the free options do offer a pro version with additional features if you feel the need to explore as your needs change.

Preparing for Free Restaurant Plugins

Most of the plugins referenced below provide an uncomplicated setup process. However, you may want to do some prep work before logging into WordPress if your goal is to complete your website relatively quickly.

Unless you want a bare-bones presentation, photos of your dishes are a must. Having a full restaurant menu prepared is desirable if you wish to streamline separating dishes into categories like desserts, soups, or salads. Drafting a brief blurb or pulling the description from your physical menu for each dish is also recommended. For a niche restaurant, such as a vegan establishment or a bakery with gluten-free goods, be prepared to feature a few nutritional details for your offerings.

Restaurant Menu by Moto Press

Restaurant Menu by Moto Press

The MotoPress Restaurant Menu plugin is a great menu building option if you prefer for your menu to exist for total review but want individual dishes also to maintain pages on your website.

Restaurant Menu lets you create categories to suit your menu. You can focus on food types, such as appetizers, desserts, and salads, or provide a full breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu instead. All of the above is also an option. Within each menu (or category), each dish is displayed with a photograph, name, and other descriptive elements of your choosing.

Of benefit for search engine optimization and information sharing — each dish receives it’s on a page on the website — consider the dish the menu equivalent of a blog post within the category. On the dish page, you can specify additional nutritional details, share more photos or feature customization options.

Additional features:

  • Allows for switching individual items and categories on and off as a group
  • Features or hides tags and ingredients
  • Offers the ability to build unlimited categories and menu items.
  • Provides multiple menu display options ranging from a six-column grid layout to a single-column list.

Get MotoPress Restaurant Menu

Quick Restaurant Menu by Things for Restaurants

QUICK RESTAURANT MENU plugin - plugins for restaurants

For restaurants with different offerings based on the day of the week or the time of day, Quick Restaurant Menu offers a streamlined, automated solution. The plugin specializes in making sure the right menu is displayed at the appropriate time based on your predefined timeline.

When a visitor arrives at your website at noon, for example, your lunch menu would appear while a 4 p.m. visitor would see the dinner menu.

While it’s not a deal breaker when you need a free time-based menu delivery option, Quick Restaurant Menu does require you to create an additional menu entry for the same item if pricing changes are present between lunch and dinner. For dishes offered at the same rate, you can easily add the item to multiple menus without making a new entry.

The restaurant menu is easy to manage with unlimited menu options and unlimited menu items.

Additional features:

  • Headers and footers can be added to each menu individually.
  • Photos, descriptions, sizes, and prices are displayed for each menu item.
  • Responsive layout for mobile viewing.
  • Drag and drop interface.
  • Custom CSS can be inserted based on your needs.

Get Quick Restaurant Menu

Restaurant Menu, Food Ordering System, Table Reservation by Gloria Food

Free Online Ordering System For Restaurants - plugins for restaurants

At this point, you may be thinking, “Please, not another menu plugin.” Alas, this Gloria Food plugin is a menu option, but it’s features are much more varied and extend beyond the menu.

Marketed as a freemium option, Gloria Food provides a robust set of features in its free version, hoping adopters will choose a premium option to accept payments through a branded mobile app.

Like the options above, the restaurant menu features allow you to build a custom menu using your pictures and customized food items.

The Gloria Food version differs slightly through access to stock food images. Menu items can also be easily customized to including sizing variations as well as choices and add-ons available in your restaurant.

For enterprises with heavily customizable recipes, such as burgers or pizza, the options are endless.

The free version does allow for orders and can customize open and closing times for multiple service hours, such as delivery times that extend past hours of operation.

Additional features:

  • Takes orders in advance for later fulfillment.
  • Accommodates multiple delivery zones with various minimum order value requirements.
  • Provides real-time order confirmation and fulfillment times.
  • Delivers analytics.

Get Gloria Food Plugin

Google Maps Widget

Google Maps Widget

Is your restaurant branching out or in a sometimes hard-to-find location? The Google Maps widget plugin helps you “get on the map” with a custom Google Map for display on your WordPress site.

Add multiple locations for your chain to a single map or zoom in to show customers nearby landmarks next to your restaurant. Additional customization options provide you with access to increased mapping tools that can assist customers with navigation to your business.

Get Google Maps Widget

Don’t forget to check out our discount coupon on Google Maps Widget.

Bookly by Bookly

bookly restaurant plugin

When you are ready to accept reservations online, the Bookly plugin provides a robust scheduling plugin for WordPress. The free option contains all the services you need, but a premium option does provide online payment access and additional settings.

For customers, the Bookly form presents a calendar of available reservation blocks, or appointments, at your restaurant. A customer selects the time block, fills in contact details, and receives a text or email verification regarding the reservation. A follow-up text is also sent as a reminder before the booking.

Bookly provides business owners with a control panel, so no coding is required to get the system up and running on your website. You can modify the appearance and branding of the plugin to suit the restaurant industry and manage your calendar from the admin panel. Should you need to cancel a reservation, you can do so from the panel, and the customer is automatically notified.

A unique feature of value in the restaurant industry is the ability to color code appointments or reservations. When a large party makes a reservation, you can highlight it separately to ensure proper staffing levels on the night of the event and adjust your table configuration in advance.

Bookly is best utilized by restaurants that accept reservations and walk-ins unless the service is actively managed and heavily customized to reflect the customer capacity of the restaurant. Without attention to details, such as capacity and party size, when setting up the system, it would be possible to overbook and cause increased wait times at your establishment.

Get Bookly

Check, please?

From reservations to menus and online orders, the best free WordPress plugins for restaurants provide a full range of services in their free versions. Access to virtual payment options, however, is an upcharge for the major players.

Is your restaurant looking for a plugin to help with another aspect of restaurant management? Do you have a favorite not mentioned above?

Let us know in the comments below.

Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
1 Views
0

WP Beginner
6 Best WordPress Slider Plugins – Performance + Quality (Compared)
Admin Posted On May 31, 2019

Best WordPress slider plugins compared

Are you looking to add a slider in your WordPress site? There are dozens of WordPress slider plugins on the market that you can use.

However, not all slider plugins are created equal. Most of them load too many scripts which slow down your website.

In this article, we will compare the top WordPress slider plugins based on their speed, ease of use, and overall features. The goal is to find the best WordPress slider plugin in terms of performance and quality.

The Problem With WordPress Sliders

Most WordPress sliders are slow. If it is not properly coded, a slider can significantly increase your page load time. If you do not have a good WordPress hosting service, then your server may respond even slower than normal.

The other problem with WordPress slider plugins is ease of use. Most of them are bloated and come with a learning curve for beginners.

Last but not least, you want to make sure that your WordPress slider is mobile responsive. A lot of them are not.

So how do you go through hundreds of slider plugins and check for all of this? Well, you don’t have to. We did the research for you and below are our results for the best WordPress slider.

The Contenders for Best WordPress Slider Plugin

For the sake of this article, we chose the top and highly recommended WordPress slider plugins. While doing our research, we noticed that these slider plugins were among the most used and recommended.

We decided to run some simple tests and see how each one of them performs. The criteria we are looking for is speed, ease-of-use, features, and compatibility.

Ready, let’s get started.

Speed – Which is the Fastest WordPress Slide Plugin?

The #1 problem with sliders is that they could slow down your website. Performance and speed not only affect user experience, but they also have a significant impact on SEO.

This is why slider speed is on the top of our comparison. We want to see which is the fastest slider plugin and then we will compare their features to see if the performance impact can be justified.

To find this out, we installed each slider plugin on a demo WordPress site. We uploaded the same images to create a slider. We didn’t change any other settings and embedded the slider on a blank WordPress page.

After that, we used Pingdom speed testing tool to run the test. Following are the results of our test for each slider plugin.

Slider Plugin Page Load time Requests Page size
Soliloquy 860 ms 22 679 KB
MetaSlider 863 ms 25 229 KB
Smart Slider 3 865 ms 19 382 KB
Slider by Nivo 928 ms 16 306 KB
Slide Anything 866 ms 18 324 KB
Master Slider 900 ms 22 345 KB

As you can see in the above scores, Soliloquy was the fastest loading WordPress slider in our tests. Closely followed by MetaSlider.

If you want a high-performance fast WordPress site, then Soliloquy is the best WordPress slider for you.

Now you might think that all other sliders performed well too. Why do we think that Soliloquy is the fastest?

If you notice the test results, you will see that Soliloquy increased page load size without affecting the speed.

This is achieved by using a neat little trick. Basically, it loads your cover slide first and then other slides are loaded asynchronously. In other words, you can upload high-quality slider images with minimum impact on performance.

Ease of Use – Which WordPress Slider Offers Better User Experience?

Creating sliders is not as simple as we would like it to be. There is too much technical language used in the user interface of all top WordPress slider plugins.

We want our slider plugin to be beginner friendly and something that just works out of the box. Let’s see how our top contenders perform in this regard.

Soliloquy

Soliloquy is the most beginner friendly WordPress slider plugin on our list. You can simply create a new slider and then just drag and drop your images.

It takes care of the other things like resizing images, choosing a slider theme, navigation style, etc. You can simply hit the publish button to save the slider.

Soliloquy user interface

The reason why it’s easy to use is that it uses the WordPress coding guidelines and blends in with your native WordPress admin interface. Soliloquy has a simple but intuitive user interface to create slides using the default WordPress media uploader.

Adding your slider to WordPress posts and pages is also a breeze. Soliloquy gives you a number of options including shortcodes, a Gutenberg editor block, a button for the old classic editor, and a widget.

Soliloquy block in Gutenberg editor

MetaSlider

MetaSlider is another easy to use WordPress slider. Creating a new slider is quite simple and it automatically takes care of all the technical settings for you.

MetaSlider user interface

It gives you options to choose different slider scripts, slider theme and styles, add captions and SEO titles, and more. Beginners can ignore all those options and can simply insert slider anywhere on their site using shortcode, Gutenberg block, widget, or template tag.

Smart Slider 3

Smart Slider 3 uses a different user interface which feels different than the rest of the WordPress admin screens. It is somewhat easy to use and beginners can find their way around.

Smart Slider 3 user interface

However, it packs a lot of options which may not be as easy to discover for beginners. The overall user experience is satisfactory and you can easily add a slider into posts and pages using the default block, shortcode, and template tag.

Slider by Nivo

Slider by Nivo is a free slider plugin that is easy and quite straight forward. You can simply upload slider images using the media uploader and rearrange slide order with drag and drop.

Using the same media uploader interface, you can add captions, link, and alternate text to your slide images. It comes with shortcodes and template tags so you can add a slider to your posts, pages, and template files.

Add new Nivo slider

Nivo Slider is an image slider and does not support video and other multimedia type. It comes with a nice bundle of themes that you can use and lots of transition effects to choose from. However, if you are counting on features and options, then Nivo falls behind other sliders on this list.

Slide Anything

Slide Anything allows you to add anything into a slider. You can add text, HTML, images, videos, or anything else you want. It is not as easy to use or intuitive as some other WordPress sliders and many of them also allow you to add other types of content.

Slide Anything slide editor

You will have to insert all your slide content inside an HTML editor. This makes it a bit difficult to keep your slides the way you want them to be.

Master Slider

Master Slider is another slider plugin with a non-native user interface that looks different than the rest of the WordPress screens. It is easy to use, but many of the options are hard to locate.

It starts with a template selection and automatically imports some demo slides for you to start with. You can then delete those slides and replace them with your own.

It has beautiful templates and can be easily inserted into WordPress posts, pages, and sidebars by using the shortcode, Gutenberg block, and template tag.

Master Slider works best with WordPress themes that automatically load jQuery on each page load. If your theme doesn’t do that, then you will need to change plugin settings and force it to load assets on page load.

Features – Which Slider Plugin for WordPress Offers More Choices?

If all you want to do is create simple image slide shows, then any of the free WordPress slider plugins on this list can do the job.

However, Soliloquy and MetaSlider come with a lot more features. They are fully responsive sliders and look equally beautiful on all devices and screen sizes. Both support video slides, HTML 5 videos, featured content slides, themes, animations, and transitions.

They both offer simple and easy to use interface and they both have additional add-ons that you can install to add more features.

Soliloquy has slightly more features like WooCommerce add-on for product slideshows, social media integration, Instagram add-on, and more.

Pricing

Cost is another decisive factor that might help users choose a slider plugin for WordPress.

Here is the price for a single site license of these plugins.

Slider Plugin Single Site License
Soliloquy $19
MetaSlider $39
Smart Slider 3 $35
Slider by Nivo Free
Slide Anything Free
Master Slider Free

Among the paid plugins Soliloquy may look the cheapest, but their single site license doesn’t give you access to all the add-ons. You’ll need the developer license to access all add-ons, which costs $99.

On the other hand, both MetaSlider and Smart Slider 3 give you access to all add-ons even with a single site license.

Conclusion – The Best WordPress Slider Plugin

After comparing these plugins we can confidently say that the best WordPress slider plugin award goes to:

Soliloquy

It is by far the fastest WordPress slider plugin in the market. It follows all of the coding best practices, it is very well documented, easy to extend for developers and even easier to use for users.

Use our Soliloquy Coupon to get an extra 10% off.

Our second choice would be SmartSlider 3. It offers a very good balance of functionality and performance. The user interface is easy to use for beginners as well as developers.

We hope this article answers the questions regarding the best WordPress slider plugin in terms of performance and quality. You may also want to see our comparison of the best WordPress caching plugins to improve your website performance.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 6 Best WordPress Slider Plugins – Performance + Quality (Compared) appeared first on WPBeginner.



Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
1 Views
0

Winning WP
The Eight Best Commenting Plugins for WordPress (2019)
Admin Posted On May 31, 2019

WordPress Black Friday and Cyber Monday Hosting Deals - Top Picks 2018

WordPress Deals

An active comments section can add real value to your blog posts, and WordPress makes it easy to accept these comments, coming with a built-in system preconfigured. But is the native system up to the job? In this article, we’ll share useful comments plugins that can enhance or replace the default WordPress comments system.

It can be disheartening when quality content fails to get the recognition you feel it deserves. As a result (rightly or wrongly), many bloggers seek ‘content validation’ by chasing publicly visible engagement metrics, such as blog comments.

Blog comments are far from just a vanity metric, though. A commenting system has been an integral part of the WordPress core since its earliest days — and with good reason: comments are the ideal way for site owners to engage with their readership.

Comments can also enhance the content, as commenters often dig deeper into a particular topic or provide an alternative viewpoint. In fact (depending on the type of content), you’ll find that many people enjoy reading the comments section just as much as the content itself. This is most notable with news articles, where other readers’ opinions can offer different perspectives on a situation.

If you want your blog to receive lots of comments, though, you need the right infrastructure in place on your website. In this article, we’ll compare the eight best WordPress commenting systems — including the default WordPress one — to see which is the best choice for your site.

Let’s get started.

Native WordPress Comments

WordPress users don’t need a plugin to accept comments on their blogs, because the WordPress core ships with a built-in commenting system.

The native WordPress commenting system is relatively basic, admittedly, but it still does the job. You’ll find it in use on many blogs — probably because it comes preconfigured and pre-activated on any fresh WordPress installation — and, like the core, it’s free to use. In other words, you don’t have to do anything to use it — and that suits many time-short webmasters to a T.

The biggest advantage of the native WordPress commenting system is its front-end usability. To leave a comment, visitors need only leave their name and email address, and, optionally, their website URL. With few hoops to jump through, visitors will be more inclined to leave a comment.

However, there are numerous drawbacks to using the native WordPress commenting system — which, for the record, has barely been developed in over a decade. Users who comment won’t receive response notifications, there’s no support for user feedback (like upvotes or downvotes), and it lacks social media integration. Plus, as many WordPress users will tell you, it leaks spam like a sieve.

If you like the WordPress commenting system’s simplicity but find its weak points frustrating, I have good news for you: There are plenty of plugins out there that upgrade and extend the native system’s functionality — let’s dig in…

Disqus Comment System

Disqus

Disqus is a hosted comments platform that’s one of the most popular commenting systems in the world. It works externally to WordPress (using the Disqus API), so it can also be used on other sites and systems, such as Blogger, Tumblr, Squarespace and so on.

It’s one of the most feature-rich commenting systems available, offering a step up from the native WordPress commenting system in many important areas.

For a start, it’s one of the more aesthetically pleasing commenting systems. It supports nested comments, social login, and reply notifications — in fact, visitors can actually reply to responses via email, so they’re more likely to engage with other users. Visitors can also leave rich media in their comments, such as images and videos.

Visitors can comment via their Disqus account, too, which is a cool prospect as Disqus users can ‘follow’ other users and view their comment history — including comments on other blogs. This makes it a great way for like-minded users to stumble across other valuable resources — and some people may find your blog this way.

From the webmaster’s perspective, you can moderate comments either from the front end, back end, or directly from your email inbox — a level of flexibility that gives it an immediate advantage over its competitors.

The Disqus commenting system isn’t perfect, though. In fact, Disqus is guilty of a major commenting faux pas — by default, it requires that visitors sign in before commenting. Sure, there are plenty of options for quick logins (social logins with Twitter, Facebook, and Google+, or a Disqus account), but this extra hurdle can irritate visitors, many of whom will simply skip commenting altogether.

Social logins also threaten visitors’ privacy, giving them another reason to be unhappy. However, the upside to this is that this policy keeps spam to a minimum and encourages better quality discussions.

Additionally, Disqus makes money by monetizing your users, including building a profile of your users and selling that data. For that reason, a lot of privacy-focused webmasters don’t like Disqus (Chris Lema has a good post about this).

So in the end, you’ll need to balance those drawbacks with all the extra functionality that you get.

wpDiscuz

wpDiscuz plugin

wpDiscuz is a native WordPress plugin that tries to capture much of the same functionality you’d get with something like Disqus, just in a self-hosted package. It has quickly established itself among the best on the WordPress plugin directory, with 50,000+ downloads and an impressive 4.8 out of 5 rating — not bad at all.

wpDiscuz comes equipped with all of the standard functionality you’d expect from a commenting plugin — an intuitive user interface, nested comments, and multiple comment sorting methods (newest, oldest, and most upvoted).

However, it’s also built for speed. The plugin ships with built-in “lazy loading,” which means the comment section is only loaded as and when it’s needed — i.e. when the visitor reaches the bottom of the post. It also supports AJAX submissions and “load more comments” buttons, which means visitors won’t have to reload the page to use the comments section.

wpDiscuz offers loads of integrations, too. It’s compatible with a number of the top anti-spam plugins — including Akismet — and will also pull avatars and profile details from top member plugins like BuddyPress. And if that wasn’t enough, visitors can also log in via their favorite social network accounts — or you can offer anonymous comments, should you wish.

The most exciting integration, though, has to be wpDiscuz-Postmatic. This combo allows commenters to respond to comments directly from their inbox, just by firing off an email. This super-convenience can encourage deeper and more meaningful conversations to develop, ensuring a more active comments section.

As you can see, this is a fantastic feature set for a free plugin. However, you can also unlock more functionalities by purchasing premium add-ons. There are 16 add-ons to date, with my favorites being:

You can also purchase a bundle of all the add-ons for $99.

Thrive Comments

Thrive Comments plugin

Thrive Comments is a premium self-hosted WordPress comment plugin that completely replaces the native WordPress comments system with its own interface.

It comes with a bunch of improvements on both the frontend and the backend, but let’s start with the frontend goodies.

First off, Thrive Comments adds an option for visitors to upvote and downvote comments, much like you see on Reddit. Based on these upvotes, you can opt to feature the “best” comments at the top, or you can even manually feature a comment.

To encourage users to leave comments, you can assign gamification badges so that active commenters get special recognition, and threaded replies make it easier for users to interact with specific comments.

Thrive Comments also makes it easier for users to leave comments in the first place:

  • It adds a “Leave Comment” button at both the top and bottom of the comment feed – no more scrolling to the bottom of a lengthy comment list just to leave a new comment (Howard noted the importance of this feature in the comments section of this post)
  • Users can log in via social media to leave a comment

Beyond that, users can also subscribe to comments to receive email notifications for new replies.

Another unique feature in Thrive Comments is its focus on driving conversions by letting you interact with visitors after they leave a comment. You can:

  • Display a custom message or open a lightbox from Thrive Leads
  • Redirect them to a page
  • Ask for a social share

And you can also display different after-comment CTAs depending on whether or not a user has left a comment before.

That’s all on the frontend of your site. But Thrive Comments also adds its own custom moderation area on the backend that gives you a nicer way to moderate comments, along with tons of keyboard shortcuts to speed up your work.

Finally, while Thrive Comments does replace the native WordPress comments with its own interface, there’s no lock-in. All your comments are still stored in your WordPress site’s database, and if you stop using Thrive Comments, your comments will still keep working with the native WordPress comments system.

ReplyBox

ReplyBox

ReplyBox is an interesting new WordPress comments system from Ashley Rich, a developer at Delicious Brains (who make a number of wonderful WordPress tools).

While ReplyBox is platform-independent, it’s super easy to set up with WordPress thanks to the dedicated integration plugin at WordPress.org.

Like Disqus, it’s a hosted comments platform, which means your comments live on ReplyBox’s servers. With that being said, ReplyBox also syncs your comments with your WordPress site so that there’s no lock-in, and you can also import existing WordPress comments to ReplyBox. That is, you can stop using ReplyBox at any time and you won’t lose your comments.

The most unique thing about ReplyBox is its focus on privacy. Unlike Disqus, ReplyBox doesn’t monetize your users, which means ReplyBox has no need to track your users (remember, one of the criticisms of Disqus is that it tracks your users and sells that profile data).

In addition to privacy, ReplyBox also focuses on offering a lightweight solution. In fact, the entire ReplyBox embed comes in at under 17 KB, which is almost 30x smaller than Disqus, according to the developer.

ReplyBox uses Akismet for spam filtering, and it also cuts down on spam by requiring users to register for a ReplyBox account or log in with Google to leave a comment. Visitors can also:

  • Edit their comments after submission (if enabled)
  • Subscribe to new comments
  • Use markdown to style comments

ReplyBox interface

You’ll be able to manage and moderate comments from the ReplyBox cloud dashboard, and you can also opt to receive email notifications for new comments.

ReplyBox is free for up to 10,000 monthly page views. After that, paid plans start at $10 per month for up to 100,000 monthly page views, and $5 per month for each additional 100,000 page views.

Replyable / Postmatic

Replyable

Replyable and Postmatic are two similar commenting solutions from the same WordPress developer. Replyable is listed at WordPress.org and more focused on just comments, while Postmatic is a premium solution that offers everything in Replyable…plus more email marketing features.

Let’s go through what Replyable does first, because it offers a really unique way to boost engagement in your comments section by bringing in email.

At a basic level, Replyable offers “Subscribe to comments via email” functionality…just in a much smarter way than most other comment plugins.

What makes it “smarter”?

First, Replyable avoids spamming your visitors with individual comment notifications in two ways:

  1. It uses machine learning to rate comments and only send email notifications for high-quality comments. For example, if someone just comments “Thanks!”, Replyable won’t waste people’s time with an email notification for such a trivial comment.
  2. If your comments section is super busy, Replyable will automatically combine multiple comments into a single digest rather than sending separate emails.

Plus, the comment notification emails just plain look great, and offer a better experience by including user avatars and comment threading in the email body.

Second, Replyable is a two-way conversation. That is, people can respond to comments by sending an email, which is much more user-friendly than requiring them to come back to your website just to respond (though that’s also a downside – there’s no incentive for people to return to your site).

Plus, you can moderate comments via email as well, which is another neat feature that can let you quickly approve comments even when you’re away from your WordPress dashboard.

What’s more, Replyable handles outbound email delivery to ensure your comment notifications don’t end up in spam.

Replyable is compatible with the native WordPress comments system, as well as some of the other self-hosted plugins on this list, like wpDiscuz.

Replyable has a limited free plan, and then a premium plan starting at just $2.99 per month.

Then, there’s Postmatic, which offers all the functionality in Replyable, plus additional non-commenting goodies like:

  • Email subscribe widgets
  • The ability to send newsletters, including automatic digests of your latest posts
  • Monetization options

Postmatic starts at $20 per month, and you can learn more about the feature differences between Postmatic and Replyable in this post.

Note – Replyable used to be called Postmatic Basic. The developer rebranded Postmatic Basic into Replyable in 2017.

WP Facebook Comments

WP Facebook Comments plugin

Love it or hate it, most of us have a Facebook account. What’s more, whether we’re avid posters or not, we all visit Facebook at least semi-regularly. And guess what? So do our readers.

WP Facebook Comments uses the same commenting system found on your Facebook wall. The first benefit of using Facebook comments is that visitors will recognize this format immediately, and instinctively know how to leave comments.

Other advantages include one-click social logins (with Facebook, of course) and reply notifications. Also, because of the Facebook association, visitors are more likely to share your content, and, because a Facebook account is a prerequisite for commenting, expect a significant reduction in spam.

The biggest downside to Facebook Comments is that it’s somewhat tricky to integrate, involving creating an app over on the Facebook for Developers website, which can be quite a technical process.

In my opinion, the Facebook commenting system is a bit of an eyesore, too. Customization options are limited, and this means it’s unlikely that WP Facebook Comments will blend with your blog’s design. At its best, it may look slightly out of place; at its worst, it could look downright ugly. For example, the plugin lets you choose between a light and dark color scheme, but that’s it.

There are also some problems inherent to using Facebook comments — problems that no plugin can rectify. For example, some internet users prefer to maintain online anonymity. No matter how good your content is or how easy the commenting system is to use, they’re not prepared to break this. Facebook comments displays each commenter’s name and profile picture, so some people will avoid commenting as a result.

On the flip side, because of the name and profile picture, people will try harder to make well-received comments — we all love validation, after all. Therefore, expect the comments section to be filled with higher-quality, thoughtful conversations.

Jetpack Comments

Jetpack Comments

Jetpack offers arguably the widest-ranging functionality of all WordPress plugins. Included in this complex suite of features and functionalities is Jetpack’s very own commenting module — Jetpack Comments.

Unlike most of the other plugins on today’s list, Jetpack Comments isn’t a commenting system in its own right — it’s an upgrade of the native commenting system. However, as a result, Jetpack addresses several of the native system’s most obvious shortcomings, while retaining all of its strong points. This has resulted in a large user base for Jetpack Comments, making it a worthy part of conversations surrounding the best WordPress commenting systems.

For example, visitors are still only required to leave their name and email address (and optional website) to comment, streamlining the commenting process. However, Jetpack also offers a social login feature — with WordPress.com, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ accounts supported — for one-click access.

Visitors can also choose whether or not they want to receive email notifications of any follow-up comments, giving the conversation the opportunity to evolve into something more meaningful.

Jetpack Comments is easy to install, too — just sync it up to a WordPress.com account, and then activate the Jetpack Comments module. Job done!

The main criticism leveled at Jetpack is, with so many features, it’s a hefty lump of a plugin. Much of the code is simply baggage, meaning your website is carrying unnecessary weight.

CommentLuv

CommentLuv plugin

CommentLuv is a specific feature upgrade to the native WordPress comments system, rather than a standalone commenting plugin.

It takes an incentivized approach to commenting. When a commenter fills in the optional website field of the comment section, CommentLuv automatically adds a titled link to their latest blog post.

You can also use CommentLuv to grow your email list by providing further incentives. For example, you may decide to let registered users choose which post they want to link to, or you can offer to dofollow their links.

Because many bloggers comment exclusively for the backlink, this means you can expect an active comment section, and, with the tantalizing prospect of a titled link, many commenters will go the extra mile to make sure their comments attract clicks.

Of course, CommentLuv’s biggest selling point — the backlinks — is also its biggest downfall. CommentLuv is likely to attract a huge influx of comments of a ‘self-promotional’ nature.

Is it spam if someone has read your headline and decided to write a short, barely relevant comment just to get the backlink? Probably, so you’ll have to be extra diligent when moderating your comments.

While CommentLuv had been without a developer, it was recently taken over by Elegant Marketplace, who is maintaining the free version and working on releasing a premium version with even more functionality. So despite what you may have read on other sites, CommentLuv is now receiving active maintenance/support as of May 2019.

Final Thoughts

There are pros and cons to every commenting system featured today. This makes it impossible to declare an outright ‘best’ commenting system.

If you’re relatively inexperienced with WordPress and want to run your comments with minimal fuss or configuration, the native commenting system is perfectly adequate. You can also enhance the native system’s functionalities with plugins such as Jetpack, Replyable, or CommentLuv. Or, for a bigger overhaul, you can consider Thrive Comments or wpDiscuz.

If you’d prefer to outsource comments to an external system (and lessen the load on your server), go with Disqus if you want the absolute most functionality, or ReplyBox if you value privacy and performance over depth of functionality.

There’s a time and place for the other systems, as well. For example, if your website thrives on viral and social media traffic, WP Facebook Comments might be the best choice.

My tip: Weigh up the strengths and weaknesses of each system, consider how the features fit your site’s needs, and then make your decision. If you’re currently using a commenting system that you’re unhappy with, this makes your task easier — analyze where your current system is falling short, then pick a system that addresses the most obvious issues.

So what’s the best commenting system for WordPress? Thoughts?

Colin Newcomer is a freelance writer and long-time Internet marketer. He specializes in digital marketing and WordPress. He lives a life of danger, riding a scooter through the chaos of Hanoi.

Credited Source


Continue Reading
0
16 Views
0

  • - Advertisement -

- Advertisement -