Posts Tagged ‘wordpress development’

A complete guide on WordPress Hooks, Actions, and Filters

July 18th, 2022

Developers must be aware of both WordPress actions and filters when working with WordPress professionally; in other words, they must be mindful of WordPress hooks. Hooks are what enable us to modify, enhance, and extend WordPress through an API in our themes, plugins, and WordPress development.

Hooks WordPress, actions, and filters are powerful tools for creating custom functionality in your WordPress website. They provide developers with a layer of abstraction that gives them the flexibility to build customized solutions for their clients.

WordPress is a popular platform that allows you to create custom functionality without worrying about repetitive code, clunky programming logic, or other backend coding headaches. These tools also allow developers to control how they interact with their new WordPress site and where they might take them next. This article will explain WordPress Hooks, Actions, and Filters and how they work together to help you build robust WordPress solutions.

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WordPress Hooks: what are they, and how do they work?

A WordPress hooks order is a function you can create in your theme or WordPress plugin. It Hooks files to run before, after, or instead of a WordPress action. They are designed for two main reasons:

When certain conditions are met in posting articles, pages, and custom content onto your site, carry out a task. To control how specific calls and interactions with your site’s code work within the core code of WordPress.

Hooks operate on conditions that must be met before executing via WordPress themes or their related actions. Requirements can vary in how they’re implemented, and much like actions, they differ in terms of what they could potentially be used for.

Developers can attach functions to the WordPress hooks list by calling them events with names like save the post. Your part is attached to (or hooked up to!) the name as a reference. The hook’s added functions are executed when it is run at a specific point in the WordPress load process.

How do hooks work?

It can be challenging to understand how hooks operate at first, so we’ll break down what occurs when a WordPress hook is activated (executing the functions to perform actions and applying filters appears to be what developers refer to as) into simple steps to try and help.

Step 1: WordPress hooks the action or filter function.

Step 2: The hooked action or filter is executed, and the WordPress hooks that were run will immediately return the value true. This lets WordPress know everything is OK and should continue to the next step (i.e., proceed to the next hook in the system).

Step 3: Depending on the filter or action used, this answer may be some updated data for WordPress, or it may be a simple truth to declare that it was finished successfully. The action or filter function then executes whatever code it contains.

Step 4:  WordPress hooks present during the function’s execution now run again. This is why this process continues at regular intervals: each time it returns true, WordPress also runs the next step to check if any more hooks need to be run. If there are none, it will proceed with processing at its usual rate.

Step 5:  The first hook called in this example has returned true, meaning WordPress should run all the remaining themes (there are two in this example). This means they’ll all run and go through their respective steps until they reach a final state — which is a return value of false (in our case, “I’m done!”).

Key points to remember about WordPress hooks

  • WordPress hooks are a crucial WordPress feature that lets developers add custom code at specific points during the PHP processing of WordPress.
  • These customized PHP functions, called hooked functions, are written by developers. Actions and filters are two different categories of hooked functions.
  • Action hooks and filter hooks are the two different types of hooks. Filter hooks and action hooks both “hook in” filters and actions, respectively.
  • Utilizing their filter hooks, filters receive code or markup; they modify it, and then they
  • Must return the modified content so WordPress can use it in its regular processing.
  • In contrast, actions are not required to return a value, and their action hooks frequently do not pass specific parameters to the action.

What are the different types of hooks?

In WordPress, there are two different kinds of hooks: actions and filters. Although they act somewhat differently despite being very similar, it is essential to note the difference. Let’s examine each in turn.

Action hooks

Action hooks, named after how they function, let you add code to the action of a plugin. They allow you to add custom code before and after a “hook,” or event, the specific part of WordPress that your actions and filters are attached to.

Actions are known as plugins because they extend WordPress’s core functionality by letting you create custom post types (add-ons), pages, admin user roles, and other WordPress plugin Hooks functions without changing the core of WordPress.

This lets WordPress know that a WordPress plugin or theme developer has added an action hook. Into core WordPress files, and they run code executed every time the hook is triggered. A developer can access any functions directly by using the hooks name, with no parameters.

Filter hooks

Filter hooks are different: they filter hooked functions, meaning they change the code being executed by hooks. They can be used similarly to actions, except that filter hooks are only added to core WordPress files and do not function during post-back processing.

Filter hooks are for filtering (or modifying) all kinds of data related to modifications of content on your site and customizing your WordPress website’s UI. Examples of filter hooks include adding and removing support for post formats, modifying widget output, and many more.

Themes and plugins use filters to modify content, customize fields, or change data. The content is entered on the front end of your website, and the filter hooks are added before the content is rendered so they can manipulate the data before it reaches your user’s web browser.

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The difference between ‘action’ and ‘filter’ in WordPress

WordPress Actions

Actions are WordPress hooks that let you add functions directly to the execution of WordPress events. Alone, they only trigger after a specific event, such as an update to the post_content or the saving of a post. However, they can be used in tandem with filters to accomplish some pretty cool things.

Actions can be used in themes and plugins to perform tasks like creating custom post types, pages, and taxonomies (like tags and categories), or any other kind of custom feature built as a plugin that adds functionality to a WordPress site.

WordPress Filters

Liquid Filters differ from Actions because they run based on specific “filters.” They can be used to modify existing WordPress functions or replace them with entirely new parts.

Filters are used to modify content entered into your website’s front-end; it may be information and data from a WordPress post or field data from a user form. In any case, the filter hooks function before the information is rendered so they can manipulate the data before it reaches your user’s browser.

Conclusion

This article taught us what WordPress hooks are and how they work. We also looked at two of the most basic and commonly used actions (the “action hook” and the “filter hooks”), along with two of the most basic and widely used filters (the “String” filter and the “Number” filter).

The best way to learn more about hooks is to make your own! Create a few custom hooks for your theme or plugin to practice this technique. Consider the functionality required for your project related to WordPress maintenance, and then write the necessary code for each hook.

Critical Vulnerability Spotted in WooCommerce on July 13, 2021 – At A Glance

July 27th, 2021

A critical vulnerability regarding WooCommerce and the WooCommerce Blocks feature plugin was discovered on July 13, 2021. Upon learning about this issue, the WooCommerce team instantly directed a deep investigation, audited all associated codebases, and created a security patch to fix the issue for every impacted version which was automatically deployed to affected stores.

Recommendation by WooCommerce

WordPress began releasing auto software updates to WooCommerce 5.5.1 on July 14, 2021, for all online stores running affected versions of plugins. The WooCommerce team recommended the store owners make sure that they’re using the latest version. For WooCommerce, the latest version was 5.5.2, released on July 23, 2021. But, the fixes in this version were not related to the security patch released at that time. They added, that if store owners are also running WooCommerce Blocks, then they should use version 5.5.1 of that plugin.

However, after updating to a patched version, the team also recommended:

  • Changing the passwords for any Admin users on the site, notably if they use the same passwords on numerous websites.
  • Resetting any Payment Gateway as well as WooCommerce API keys used on your site.

Data Compromised?

It’s still unclear whether the data of impacted stores had been compromised or not. As per WooCommerce, the exposed data was specific to what an affected site was storing including orders, customers, and admin info. However, in an email, WooCommerce intimated to web store owners that sites hosted on WordPress.com as well as WordPress VIP had already been secured.

WooCommerce rolled out the security patch to fix the issue with auto software updates still in releasing process. The security patch was rolled out for the security of all stores running on impacted versions of each plugin. The company is still working with the Plugin team to update as many stores as possible to the secure version of WooCommerce.

How Can You Check If Your Store Was Exploited?

Due to the humor of this vulnerability, and the flexibility that WordPress offers in handling web requests, there’s no such way of verifying an exploit. However, you may be able to catch some exploit attempts by checking your web server’s access logs. As per WooCommerce, request logs in these formats were seen between December 2019 and now which indicates an exploit attempt:

  • REQUEST_URI matching regular expression

/\/wp-json\/wc\/store\/products\/collection-data.*%25252.*/

  • REQUEST_URI matching regular expression

/.*\/wc\/store\/products\/collection-data.*%25252.*/

  • Any non-GET (POST or PUT) request to

/wp-json/wc/store/products/collection data or /?rest_route=/wc/store/products/collection-data

Moreover, WooCommerce claimed that requests that they have seen manipulating this vulnerability come from mainly three IP addresses, with more than 98% coming from the first IP address in the following list. So, if you observe any of these three IPs in your access logs, you can confirm that your store was exploited. These IP addresses are as follows:

  • 116.119.175
  • 158.78.41
  • 233.135.21

Which Passwords Do You Need To Change?

As per WordPress, it’s improbable that any of your passwords was compromised. WordPress user passwords are hashed using cryptographic salts, so the resulting hash value is too hard to crack. This concept of salted hash not only protects admin user’s password, but also the passwords of any other users on your store. However, WordPress revealed that it’s probable that the hashed version of the passwords stored in your database may have been invaded through this vulnerability.

According to WooCommerce, depending on the plugins on your store, you may have sensitive info or passwords saved in less secure ways. So, they recommend updating those passwords that the Admin users on your site are using on multiple distinct websites. This is just for your security on other sites as well. WordPress also recommends checking as well as modifying any private or secret data stored in your WooCommerce database. This may involve API keys, keys for payment gateways, and more, depending on your specific store preferences.

Is WooCommerce Still Safe To Go With?

Yes!

Situations like this are unusual but can occur sometimes. However, as a certified platform, WordPress is always ready to respond instantly and work with full transparency in such unfortunate situations. As soon as they learned about the vulnerability, the WooCommerce team has worked nonstop to ensure a fix ASAP. Their continuous investment in WooCommerce security allows them to survive the vast majority of issues. However, in rare cases that could affect stores, the team strives to fix instantly, communicate proactively, and work collaboratively with the WooCommerce Community.

Clap Creative Proudly Sponsors Word Camp Santa Clarita 2021

July 2nd, 2021

Introduction

Word Camp Santa Clarita returns and going to be held on 17th and 18th of July 2021. As we know, WordPress is one of the easiest and powerful hosting platforms to create a free blog and website. This is why it has won the hearts of millions of developers and users alike. WordPress has become the most popular website builder around due to its user-friendly features. WordPress has also built a strong reputation amongst the users and developers in being reliable and always up-to-date with the latest advancement in the tech world. This platform is always evolving and improving to serve and maintaining excellent customer satisfaction to build a strong brand image. With all aspects from WordPress maintenance services to support, WordPress has proven the best platform for websites since the beginning.

It has been close to two decades for WordPress since its start in 2003. It has experienced great growth and success over the years with 40% of the websites being powered by WordPress. With this much growth, it has opened up new opportunities and professions such as WordPress specialists and developers.

Word Camps

One of the strong highlights about WordPress is that it has supportive communities, where everyone shares a common passion for creating exquisite websites. Every single person in the community share as much as possible and this is very helpful in overcoming hurdles to ensure our progress. Fortunately, this opportunity will give us an idea about the latest trends in WordPress development for better handling.

Word Camps is giving us the opportunity to meet different people who enjoy the same passion as you. It doesn’t matter if you are a designer, user, or a professional WordPress developer, all it takes is finding that something that will link you up with the others. Word Camps is bound to give you an incredible feeling where you will gain and take away invaluable knowledge and skill to work on.

There will some excellent speakers attending to give you some valuable information about WordPress, which you can take full benefit of. Word Camps is not only catered for skilled individuals, anyone can join and learn.

Once again it is Online.

Due to the ongoing pandemic situation, Word Camp Santa Clarita will be going online. We know that all of us wish for Word Champs to be held in a venue so that we can meet each other in person.

Well, cheer up! Online events these days are very common in our daily routine ever since the start of this pandemic. Online events have improved considerably, as everyone has been trying to make online events more engaging and lively to entertain and grab the attention of the audience online. There are several plus points in having online events, you don’t have to stress about PCR tests, tickets, quarantine, or else. Rather, you will be enjoying the event from the comfort of your house.

Now, the other plus point here is that the speakers will have ample time to work on making their lecture more informative and engaging as possible. After all, this is what we want from Word Camps- that is to learn.

Clap Creative is Proudly Sponsoring Word Camp Santa Clarita

We at Clap Creative are proud to be sponsoring Word Camp Santa Clarita. Now, block your calendar on the 17th and 18th of July 2021 for the event, this is the perfect way to spend your summer days. We are excited and are looking forward to the event. Clap Creative is truly honored to support the WordPress community.

Clap Creative will never back away from investing in something that we believe in – the WordPress community and Word Camps. We take a great deal of pride in providing the community with positive emotions and support in the best possible way. We are supporting this event and you can check out Clap Creative’s Word Camp Santa Clarita Sponsorship here.

So hurry up! For those of you who have not registered yet, make sure you register now. Word Camp Santa Clarita will provide information on everything related to WordPress. We at Clap Creative are looking forward to seeing you there at the event, even if it is only via the online platform.

5 Must Have WordPress Restaurant Plugins to streamline Online Ordering

July 4th, 2020

The tech era has mushroomed several online business models while leading to a new wave of online start-ups. Out of many businesses, food ordering and delivery businesses are expanding and have gained immense interest from consumers worldwide. Just like other online shopping platforms and sites, online food ordering services ensure comfort for the customers whether they want to book a table online, surf through the menu of a particular restaurant, or have food delivered to their doorstep. It is why many restaurants have also made sure to have an up-to-date point of sale system in place so as to streamline the entire process (click for more information about restaurant POS systems).

However, what you show over the websites and apps of your brand, or how your business is going to seamlessly deliver the food or add to cart functioning needs to be well-organized. Certain features are essential to be baked right into your website and apps so that you can take better care of your technical and marketing aspects to make your online food delivering services hassle-free. So, what are the secret ingredients to bridge the gap between the customer placing their orders and getting the food while sitting on the couch at home? Of course, plugins! They are like the catalysts for automating your online food websites and apps over website development platforms; adding necessary functionalities to operate well. Fortunately, there are a plethora of fantastic restaurant WordPress plugins as well as themes to choose that help in enhancing your site’s functionality. The plugins that are right for your needs, you can effectively convey your restaurant’s brand.

This article reveals some WordPress plugins mentioned below that can help you create an amazing restaurant website.

5 Must-Have WordPress Plugins for Restaurant

RestroPress

RestroPress is a plugin that allows one to easily add a food ordering system to the WordPress website. Through this plugin, you can easily add both order pick-up and order delivery features. It has a user-friendly frontend and backend interface which allows you to easily manage the orders with a pre-built user dashboard to manage the business profile and orders. The checkout process is seamless and it could be further optimized. As a free plugin, RestroPress is quite impressive with some additional benefits. It has built-in additions, push notifications for mobile devices, sales dashboards, and integration with PayPal. The other benefits of RestroPress to make your website a lot easier are:

  • No coding skills are required and provides a user-friendly interface
  • Easy to manage food items, additions, and categories of foods
  • Instant push notifications for online orders
  • The Reporting system that allows you to review sales, customers
  • Provides currency options in the add-ons category

RestaurantPress

It is more of a niche-oriented WordPress plugin. RestaurantPress helps you to create restaurant menus for restaurants, bars, and cafes in no time. The plugin provides modern responsive menu templates that can adapt to any device. It provides the simplest way to create enticing and luscious menu items catering to your need. The menus can be represented in pages, posts, and widgets using a built-in shortcode. The backend is user-friendly so that you can change menu layout, categorical icons, and featured images. RestaurantPress is a perfect solution for creating simple and elegant restaurant menus in three layouts a Single column layout, a Two-column layout, and a Grid layout. It offers other features such as:

  • Enables Shortcode to embed menu in pages and posts
  • Single page support for multiple menu items
  • Gallery support and upload unique icons for categories
  • It is a free plugin and enables plenty of features like responsive design, special sales price, and facilities like translation ready.

Food and Drink menu

This plugin comes with the ability to create separate restaurant menu sections across different locations. That allows you to divide a menu into multiple parts, making it precise and clear for your customers. Create a stylish, responsive restaurant menu for your site easily and quickly. With the menu builder, and easy-to-use layout and customization options, you’ll have your menu set up in no time. It has premium features like highlight dishes with discounted prices, sales, and other special offers. Furthermore, it has icons to indicate dietary preferences and allergens.

  • Responsive restaurant menu that looks great on all devices
  • Add photos and an optional sidebar to display your menu sections
  • Food ordering and delivery by the hours defined by the admin

WPPizza

This plugin was originally designed to cater to pizza delivery businesses, but its flexibility makes it relevant for all restaurants. WPpizza plugin helps you to track the delivery and also gives cash delivery options. It supports over 140 currencies and can generate reports based on sales. It’s advantageous for those businesses to offer food in different-sized portions.

Key Features include:

  • Customers can opt for different payment options, including COD
  • Extensions available for adding ingredients

Food Online for WooCommerce

A smooth-running restaurant ordering system for WooCommerce. It is open-source, simple to use plugin that is compatible with WooCommerce product add-ons. Food Online for WooCommerce is available in a premium version with extended features. You can arrange product items and categories in alphabetical order in the menu.

  • Improved bootstrap and performance
  • Multiple shortcode instances
  • Minicart with increment buttons and display categories on the top bar
  • With product attributes, you can offer services with varieties of size

Choose the Best for Your Website

So, now you know about the trending and the most favorable website restaurant plugins. Select the plugins according to your preferences and restaurant’s needs to create an engaging cum proactive website for your restaurant. Get it complete by reliable and experienced WordPress web design services to fulfill customer expectations and enhance your restaurant image. In case, you already have the website but finding difficulty enabling the plugins and features, get complete assistance from WordPress support services to streamline your WordPress web design.

Leveraging WooCommerce to Transform WordPress Sites to E-Commerce Stores

November 19th, 2019

It is common knowledge that a majority of websites active on the internet today are created using the WordPress CMS. the reason for that is simple. WordPress is easy to use and free. Its incredibly user-friendly and can be set up by anyone even if they have minimal technical knowledge. Even though many platforms are used today for creating e-commerce sites like Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento, WordPress is still being used by many online retailers or companies that even occasionally sell products through their website.

In this post, we will outline some of the steps that you need to follow to successfully set up and launch your new e-commerce site using WordPress.

Step 1) Get Hosting

There are several hosting providers that you can choose from including Hostgator, Bluehost, GoDaddy, etc. Go over all their hosting plans and choose the one that suits your hosting requirements. Compare costs as well as their customer support before making a decision and always check customer reviews.

Step 2) Choose a Domain Name

Your domain name should be something that represents your business. It should also be memorable so that in the crowded internet space and the competitive e-commerce sector, your site can stand out. You can do some keyword research for this purpose to see what are some catchy terms related to your products that people are searching for in your target area. If you want to, we suggest registering all domain extensions like .com, .net, .us, etc to fend off copy cats.

Step 3) Install WordPress

Following the instructions shared by your hosting provider, you can log in to your Cpanel and install WordPress. After the successful installation of WordPress, you can log into your WordPress dashboard using your credentials. It is advised to keep the credentials to your Cpanel as well as your WordPress dashboard private.

Step 4) Set up WooCommerce

WooCommerce takes a WordPress website and helps by transforming it into a fully functional e-commerce store. The steps for setting it up are simple and given below –

  • Download and install WooCommerce. Answer the questions in its setup wizard for an easy set up within minutes.
  • Choose a theme that is compatible with WooCommerce and proceed to install it.
  • Once that is done, you will get an option to add products on the dashboard of your site. Click on add new product and follow the steps to add your first product.

Step 5) Choose a Theme

If the theme you are already using on your WordPress site is not compatible with WooCommerce or you are looking to update the theme, you can choose from a wide range of themes that are perfectly compatible with WooCommerce. Some of the best free WooCommerce themes are – TheShop, ShopIsle, eStore, Storefront, and Easy Commerce. There are several premium themes you can choose from too if you are not satisfied with the free ones.

Step 6) Set up Pages

If you are setting up a new site instead of converting an existing WordPress site to e-commerce, then you need to set up all the required pages like Home, About, Shop, products, Blog, Cart, Thank-you, etc. Even if you did have a working WordPress site before adding WooCommerce, some pages that are unique to e-commerce stores like the Shop and cart pages would still need to be set up.

Step 7) Optimize for SEO

After your e-commerce store is launched, the next step is to focus on its SEO. The first thing to do is install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin. It is considered one of the best SEO plugins and it is free. Then continue to customize its settings as per your requirement. Yoast can then be used to add Meta-Titles and Meta-descriptions to every single page and product. Sitemaps, robots.txt files can also be created using Yoast. There is also an alternate option to Yoast called All in one SEO pack which you can use if for some reason you do not wish to use Yoast.

Conclusion:

The above steps outline the general process for turning your WordPress site into an e-commerce store. It is suggested that you hire a WooCommerce development company with years of experience in creating successful e-commerce stores for your online store. This will give you the help ofcertified professionals that know what achieving e-commerce success consists of.

A Look Into WordPress 5.2.2 Maintenance Release

July 16th, 2019

If you follow various WordPress forums or blogs you would have surely read about the WordPress coming out with the release of its new and improved WordPress 5.2.2. This latest release has led to the fixes of several bugs that WordPress users all over the world would be thankful for. 

Although the release of the 5.3 maintenance version is already making the news, developers are already appreciating how this 5.2.2 maintenance release has significantly focussed on the overall health of the WordPress site. Many agencies that provide professional WordPress support and maintenance services would be using this update to better serve their clients. 

Some things to take note of with WordPress 5.2.2

This version supports a minimum PHP version of 5.6.20. With the 5.2.2 maintenance release, WordPress developers would be able to better utilize various theme functions and plugins. It is advised that if you are using an older version of PHP than the one mentioned before, please update it before installing WordPress 5.2.2. 

The new version makes it easier for developers to troubleshoot and resolve site errors quite easily. This version offers various tools that help developers pinpoint various technical issues that may arise in the site. 

Noteworthy features of the WordPress 5.2.2 maintenance release 

  • Protects Against Several PHP Errors

This release has made it much easier for site administrators to resolve certain errors without the constant help of their development team. This saves the time of the site admins and lets the development team focus on more critical issues. There is also a better way to take your site to maintenance mode than before in the previous versions. 

  • Better Control Over Site’s Health

Not to say that the 5.1 version did not have website health-related features but this new version adds a few more features. Debugging issues would be easier for developers as in this version they can add space where they can save the debug information for the site’s admin or whoever handles the maintenance. 

  • New Dashboard Icons

The latest release of WordPress offers us 13 difference dashboard icons. These icons include the Instagram icon, the inclusion icon, and several buddy-press icons. It will be interesting to see what new icons we would get in the upcoming 5.3 version. 

  • Accessibility Control Related Updates

The WordPress 5.2.2 maintenance release offers better accessibility updates. For people who want to use screen readers and various other assistive technologies along with improving keyboard navigation flow, these updates are a boon. 

  • Keep a Check on Plugin Compatibility 

The 5.2.2 maintenance release with automatically check the compatibility of the installed plugins with the current PHP version of your site. In the event that a plugin requires a higher version of PHP than you are working with, it will not allow you to activate that plugin thus preventing compatibility issues that can surface. 

Conclusion

The WordPress 5.2.2 version can be downloaded from WordPress’s official website. You can also update it by following these steps – 

Go to Dashboard > Updates > Update Now

On websites that support background updates, site administrators can carry out this process without the help of developers. 

2018’s Highlight: BigCommerce Plugin for Your WordPress Site

August 29th, 2018

When it comes to seeking solutions for e-commerce websites, both BigCommerce and WordPress offer completely different services. The key here is to understand which platform will work best for you depending on your expectations from your business. For example, WordPress offers the best option if you plan to build your online store on the foundations of blog posts and other content marketing whereas BigCommerce becomes a better choice when you rely on plenty of external marketing for running your e-commerce store.

Summing together, where one offers the world’s most popular content management system, other excels with the world’s best cloud commerce solution and by somehow linking the two platforms in their respective menus, you will not only gain the ability to build and manage e-commerce experiences directly on the WordPress but also be able to improve storefronts performances and streamline e-commerce management tasks as well.

Though you can manage both these platforms side by side the biggest hurdle you will face is having to handle both the sites from different administrative dashboards, not to mention the hassles of hosting both the elements on separate domains as well. The solution? A BigCommerce WordPress plugin that will assist millions of merchants to grow and customize their store like never before. How? by combining the robust e-commerce engine of BigCommerce with the flexibility of the WordPress platform.

Diving further in, let’s look at some of the benefits the integration of this new BigCommerce WordPress plugin will bring to your e-commerce business. First of all, without ever compromising site content or user experience, you will get complete access to all the industry-leading e-commerce capabilities necessary to grow a successful online business.

Secondly, you can quickly and easily scale the functionality of your e-commerce store up and down according to the market needs along with enjoying the overall experience that is not impeded by back-end bloat once you transfer the commerce elements from WordPress to BigCommerce admin.

Thirdly, web developers with the help of BigCommerce’s large robust ecosystem of apps along with its sizable catalog of fully integrated shipping and payment methods can easily incorporate end-to-end e-commerce capabilities in your WordPress site order to build an e-commerce store that is custom tailored to your business needs.

And last but not the least, installing the BigCommerce WordPress plugin to your WordPress site will guarantee a secure and PCI compliant checkout process which will further enable you to deliver a high-quality website experience to your users without ever having to worry about maintaining PCI compliance.

At Clap Creative, our expert team of BigCommerce developers highly recommend this plugin. Since it’s very easy to install and costs just a meager amount. All-in-all, installing this plugin is nothing but a win-win situation for your e-commerce store.

Hottest WordPress Trends for the Year 2018

February 27th, 2018

Last year had witnessed some of the major updates in website designing whether be it open composition of loosely suspended elements fleeing off-screen or asymmetrical layouts or dynamic compositions with large amounts of intersectional diagonal lines or geometric typefaces to name a few.

And now, we have a new year ahead of us with lots of promises and a bright future for web designing along with some major web development companies competing for the top spot. Among them is WordPress, a leading platform, which provides an open source CMS (Content Management Service) based platform to its clients which runs on PHP and MySQL and is free to use.

WordPress web design services are constantly updating itself ever since its birth in 2003 to fit its user’s needs and are currently powering 29% of the total sites present on the internet with almost half of the top 100 blogs including The Next Web, TechCrunch, CNN Political Ticker etc. running on its platform.

WordPress 5.0

Since its last release of 4.0 in 2014, WordPress had been working hard on its latest version for the past 3 years i.e. WordPress 5.0 which will be released this year. It is expected to have some over-the-top tricks up its sleeves such as Dotnet onecore support, app publish, push notification as a built-in feature, speech to text framework beta to test inputs from speech and most importantly Unique Content Identifier which is why it is considered to be the biggest major release of the software till now.

Let’s find out what other WordPress trends will dominate 2018 keeping in mind many of them are continuations and slight modifications of last year’s developments.

  1. WordPress themes

WordPress was initially built as a platform for simple blogging, now it handles everything from gigantic news websites to fully equipped e-commerce stores. This year we will see some new heavy-duty themes with page builders to customize hand-made stuff along with one-of-a-kind graphics and unique illustrations.

  1. VR based websites

Virtual Reality is slowly becoming mainstream. WordPress website design as of now fully supports virtual reality devices such as Google Cardboard and Oculus Rift with 360 videos and images. This year we will hopefully see more of these themes with built-in features for VR gadgets.

  1. Website push notifications

Push notifications deliver information from a software application to a computing device without a specific request from the client. With web push notifications getting popular these days, WordPress will have to find clever and interesting ways to integrate the prompt into their design.

  1. Microinteractions

Microinteractions, as the name suggests, are small interactions added to elements of a website to enhance user experience. It is a relatively new term but also one of the hottest upcoming trend of 2018. A fine example would be Medium which introduced the ability to leave ‘claps’ for articles one likes.

  1. Animated elements

Animation has been an ever-growing popular trend since its introduction in web design 2 years back. Using animations to your website can bring life to formerly rigid lifeless pages. In 2018, we can expect some new tweaks in this trend with employment of more complex animation design techniques to enhance user engagement.

  1. Cinematographs

Cinematography is the art of creating the illusion of motion images that are played back at a rapid speed and projected on the screen. The popularity graph of this motion-picture photography is continuously going upward and in 2018 too, we will see a noticeable bend towards this trend.

  1. Mobile design approach

Last year mobile traffic beat out desktop computers and turned out to be the main internet device worldwide. Though mobile web design has been a trend for years, 2018 will see an extra attention to these designs with sticky elements at the bottom, hamburger menus and large typography to name a few.

  1. Video headers

Video content is the new king of online marketing strategy so it is only plausible to use Video headers which are decorative elements like header images but with motion. Though not new, it is still developing into a trend in 2018 as WordPress offers readymade themes that feature video headers such as Inspiro, Balzac or Naira.

  1. Deutone web design

Deutone is a half-tone illustration which is made from a single original image with two different colors at different screen angles. Last year we saw more and more websites adopting this style due to its deutone effect that helps highlight the topography of the site. This year too, much emphasis will be laid on creating themes with this colorful design style.

After Thoughts

2017 was an important year for web designing altogether as it saw the rise of many anticipated trends as well as the fall of many neglected ones. This year is similar as well except for one major difference, the release of WordPress 5.0 and it’s much-awaited Gutenberg Editor which is expected to add many new features and changes to the current admin user interface. So, let’s cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Have you unleashed the full potential of WordPress yet? If not, consider our team at Clap Creative which is highly dedicated to keeping up with latest updates and trends.

Checklist to Follow During WordPress Maintenance

December 26th, 2017

WordPress is the most popular content management system there is today and has been for several years.  It started as a platform for bloggers to create their blogs to share their content with the world and to try to make money through it. Now, that WordPress has become a full-blown CMS that so many companies are using to create their websites, keeping a WordPress website maintained is crucial for them to ensure their online image and organic traffic, both remain intact.

Periodic maintenance of the WordPress website is recommended to ensure that the site remains optimized. Regular maintenance makes sure your website’s loading speed is optimal and there are no crashes. In a competitive online environment, you cannot expect your visitors to visit your site again if on their first attempt they have a bad experience.

The Checklist to follow during WordPress Maintenance

During the process of WordPress Maintenance, there are certain things you must take care. Below is the checklist of those steps –

Take Backup of your Site

The first step to be taken before your website is going under maintenance is to take a back-up of your website. Without a back-up, there is a chance that you may lose your entire site. The back-up can be done using various plugins and extensions. Some of the popular plugins for taking a back-up of your WordPress site are – BackupBuddy, Duplicator, and UpdraftPlus.

Delete the Trash

It is recommended that you delete any drafts or trash posts or pages before beginning with the website maintenance. It makes sure your backend is completely clean.

Upgrade WordPress and Themes

If you are using any previous version of WordPress and an update is available, I would recommend that you upgrade your WordPress. Along with the version of WordPress, install any pending update of various plugins that are installed too. You should even update the theme as well.

Delete Unwanted Images

Images can take up a lot of space and make the website heavy. Sometimes we upload certain images in the backend of WordPress but we do not use them on any page or post. You should delete all those unwanted images from your website to lighten the load. You can use one of the many plugins available for that automatically detect and remove images that are not being used on your website.

Fix Broken Links if Any

Having broken links to your website pages can have a negative impact on your website. You must do a thorough check of all the links to your site to make sure they are working properly. Using the Broken Link Checker plugin, this task can be taken care of easily. Once identified, you can work on fixing those links.

Check for System Errors

System errors on your website are not easy to detect without a thorough testing process. With the help of certain plugins like Error Log, they can be detected without much effort on your part. Upon detection, those errors can be fixed or the root cause of those errors can be removed permanently.

Benefits of Hiring Clap Creative for WordPress Maintenance

All these above steps and the many others that are involved in WordPress maintenance can be very difficult to perform on your own, especially if you are someone from a non-technical background that for whom their WordPress site is essential for business. Clap Creative offers WordPress maintenance and support services that help you keep your website up to date.

Under our WordPress maintenance services, we offer – performance optimization, WordPress and theme update, malware removal, backup and security, technical consulting and many other services. To know more about our WordPress maintenance services, contact us today.

Magento Versus WordPress: Which Is The Better Platform?

October 25th, 2017

In the era of digitization, Magento and WordPress have emerged as the most famous platforms for constructing thriving online websites. One of the most frequently asked questions around the globe is which is the better platform between Magento and WordPress?

Comparing Magento with WordPress is like comparing apples to oranges because these are two extremes that cannot be compared. Both of them are equally good and discussed a lot in the world of Website development.

When we start peeping in the hole, we come across many similarities, differences, and some limitations that are related to Magneto development and WordPress development.

What are Magento and WordPress?

Magento is a powerful open-source e-commerce solution. It is designed to customize, manage, set up, and run your online portal. It provides maximum flexibility, scalability, and control.

WordPress is an online, open-source website creation tool written in PHP. It is probably the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today. It allows you to create a beautiful website that truly represents your business.

Also, WordPress emerged as the most widely used blogging platform. It still is! But now it has also emerged as a leading content management system that supports much compliance and delivers optimal performance in various scenarios.

WordPress Vs Magento —- Similarities

On the surface level, these two platforms might seem to be very similar as they both are very SEO friendly, highly customizable, can be extensively themed, and provides a strong online support community. In addition to all this, both Magento and WordPress are content management system that enables the addition, modification, and management of the content in a simple yet highly effective manner.

Magento Vs WordPress —– Differences

When we analyze in more depth we come across many vivid differences between Magento and WordPress that are key deciding factors when we make a choice between them…

1) Difference based on programming language: WordPress is an open-source website tool that has its programming contained within a set of sequenced PHP scripts while Magento is specifically developed for e-commerce and is object-oriented. It is spread across a great number of files and folders.

2) Security: Magento is also more secure than using WordPress third-party plugins.

3) Development Scenario: Magento files are set up across a number of files and folders that share the same name. Where in WordPress all the files are largely contained within the same folder but have a unique naming convention. WordPress has its famed “Widgets” – objects that control the structural elements and design within a template. Magento has both CMS static blocks and widgets – while widgets offer a higher level of overall functionality.

4) E-commerce Plugins: Magento was developed specifically for eCommerce. Just by navigating through the Magento Admin Panel, you’ll notice that an overwhelming majority of it is devoted to eCommerce capabilities like shipping options, payment integration, inventory, price management, gift cards, or order fulfillment whereas for WordPress e-Commerce plug-ins are limited.

5) Based on Selling of products: If the sole purpose of your website is for blogging and content management and you are not intended to sell more than 20 to 25 products then the suitable platform for you is WordPress whereas if your goal is to sell products, then using Magento is highly recommended.

Conclusion

It is purely dependent on the user’s requirements and which platform to use. If the sole purpose of the website is just content management and blogging then WordPress is the one-stop solution. If the purpose of the website is purely buying and selling of goods then you have a large number of products on your website then Magento is the best solution. Using Magento for your business is beneficial as Magento is more robust.