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Posts Tagged ‘Wordpress Maintenance Services’

How to integrate Square payment gateway with WordPress

July 15th, 2022

Whenever you are running an online store, it is important to use all the necessary tools that will help you run things smoothly. Square Payment gateway is one of the major online payment gateways that different online stores are using. If you have just started an online store and you are finding it difficult to integrate Square payment gateway with WordPress, then you are in good hands. 

WooCommerce offers a Square gateway plugin that you can easily install and integrate your Square account with your business WordPress website. Integrating the Square payment gateway with WordPress is fairly simple and you won’t need a lot of hassle to do it. Let’s jump into a complete guide to integrating the Square payment gateway with WordPress. 

What is Square payment gateway?

Square is a payment gateway with an end-to-end processor or a virtual terminal. Square was founded in 2009 and it became an excellent eCommerce solution. 

Square gives merchants an easy way to collect payments from customers by reading credit cards. Their actual product is their in-person POS system. 

Square does not charge any sign-up fees and there are no hidden fees as well. Square provides multiple business features and you will find some costs associated with those features. The small portion of charges will depend on the transaction type. For example, Square will charge a 2.9% fee on Square invoices, Online stores, Online APIs, and eCommerce cards on file payments. 

Square can be integrated easily with your online store and it won’t be a hassle at all. Let’s have a quick look at different ways to connect Square in WordPress.

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Integration of Square in WordPress

Square integration with WordPress is easy and you will find multiple ways to do it. You can integrate Square with a variety of forms in WordPress and it is ideal for small merchants. Square can be integrated into WordPress using the following ways:  

However, in this specific guide, we will share a complete tutorial on how you can integrate the Square payment gateway in WordPress using WooCommerce.

What do you need?

To get started, you only need a few things so you can set up a Square payment gateway easily with your WordPress site. Here’s a list of things you should have to get started. 

  • A WordPress website
  • Square Account
  • WooCommerce Plugin
  • Square for WooCommerce plugin by WooCommerce

Let’s get started with the process of integrating your Square account with WooCommerce so you can start making transactions with no disruption.

How to integrate Square payment gateway with WordPress

To integrate the Square payment gateway, you will have to download and activate the Square for WooCommerce plugin by WooCommerce. If you are running an online store on WordPress, then we are assuming that you are already using a WooCommerce plugin. The first step is the installation of the Square for the WooCommerce plugin and then set it up.

Install Square for WooCommerce

The first step is to install this plugin to support the Square payment gateway with WooCommerce. All you have to do is to navigate to the Plugins tab in your WordPress dashboard and click ‘Add New’.

plugin to support

Once you are on the plugins page, you can search for the plugin named, ‘Square for WooCommerce’ in the search tab and you will be able to see the plugin in the search results. Click on Install the plugin and then activate the plugin.

Install Square for WooCommerce

After activating the plugin, you can now start connecting your site to Square via this plugin.

Connect your site to Square

To start using Square with WordPress, you need to connect your site to your Square account. To do that, you can navigate to the WooCommerce > Settings in your WordPress dashboard.

WooCommerce Settings

After clicking the ‘Settings’ tab in WooCommerce, you will be able to see another tab named, ‘Square’. Click on it to start connecting your website.

Square tab

Here, you will see multiple options including an option named, ‘Connect with Square’. This is where you will connect your Square account with your website. 
It is important for you to have a Square account before you start connecting your website. If you don’t have a Square account yet, then you can create a new account and carry on with the process.

When you click on the ‘Connect with square’ button, you will be redirected to the Square login page. After logging into your Square account, you will see a permission page. You can allow the permissions for WooCommerce to move on from this point.

Permission Page

After clicking ‘Allow’ on the permissions page, you will be able to connect your Square account with WooCommerce. Here, you will be able redirected back to your site with complete authentication.

Square Authentication

After authentication, you can now start setting up Square settings in your WooCommerce. Now, you will have to carefully select the right details for your business including the business location, and product system of record. You can also enable it by clicking on checkboxes named, ‘Sync Inventory’ and ‘Handle Missing Products’.

Square Settings

Click ‘save changes’ and move on to the next step.

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Enabling Square in WooCommerce

The next step is to enable Square in WooCommerce. To do this, you can navigate to WordPress Dashboard > WooCommerce > Settings > Payments. 

Click on the Payments tab to make some changes. 

To enable Square payments, you just have to click the checkbox named, ‘Square’ and then click the ‘Set up’ button.

WooCommerce Settings

After clicking the ‘Set up’ button, you will see a new page. Here, you will have to click the checkbox labeled ‘Enable this gateway’. After doing so, move on to the Transaction Type and select ‘Charge’. After that, you will have to save settings and move on to the next step.

setting up square

Test if Square is working

Now you have set up Square properly with your WooCommerce site. At this point, you can test that Square is working fine by doing a live transaction. 

Change one of your product’s prices to $1 and test with a live transaction. 

You can open your website from a new device and add that product to your cart. You will be able to see the option to pay with your credit card. Make the transaction to see if your Square is set up nicely. 

Questions that people ask

1. Can I connect Stripe without WooCommerce?

Yes, you can integrate Stripe with WordPress without WooCommerce. There are multiple plugins including Gravity Forms & Easy Digital Downloads that you can use to connect Stripe with your WordPress site.

2. Can I use multiple payment gateways with WooCommerce?

Yes, you can use multiple payment gateways with WooCommerce. You can use PayPal, Square, Stripe, and others at the same time with your WooCommerce store.

3. Does Stripe accept both, debit and credit cards?

Yes, Stripe accepts credit and debit cards. Stripe is one of the most popular payment gateways and it gives excellent choices to store owners.

Conclusion

If you have followed these guidelines, then Square is all set up nicely and you can charge using Square now. If you are facing problems, then you can enable debug mode as well to see the errors you are facing or contact our WordPress maintenance team to help install it for you.
For debugging, you will have to navigate to WordPress Dashboard > WooCommerce Settings > Payments > Square. Here, you can enable the ‘Detailed Declined Messages’ checkbox. After saving settings, you can open your website from a new device and go through the checkbox process to understand the error it is displaying.

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Categories: CMS, Ecommerce, Wordpress

Top Secret WordPress Features You May Not Know

November 23rd, 2021

Every WordPress release includes a lot of useful new features, but the sheer number of them may leave them unnoticed. Gutenberg is fully packed with tweaks and shortcuts. Many of these tweaks are hidden inside menus that you may not have seen before.  You’re missing out a lot if you’re not using these, as they can save your time as well as effort. From ways to save time while writing to small tricks that can transform the way, you use WordPress. Here are some unknown WordPress features you must know. These features are sure to revolutionize your WordPress Maintenance Services.

  • Writing Without Any Distractions

One of the toughest aspects of writing in WordPress editor is focusing amidst all of the distracting UI. You have the sidebar as well as all sorts of icon-filled toolbars. However, distraction-free writing mode is there to avert distractions.

It’s as easy as opening up Gutenberg editor and clicking the full-screen button in your toolbar. Just click it, and all that visual noise will disappear from your screen. It’s much easier to stay focused on what you’re writing in the full-screen mode.

  • Customizable Menus With Various Screen Options

One of the best features of WordPress is that it allows you to modify your website in multiple ways. On the other side, the sheer number of options can be daunting. You undoubtedly have a lot of features in your WordPress backend that is of no use.

Getting rid of all of this is as simple as checking a box in Screen Options. Look in the top right corner of your back end’s pages, such as your dashboard, navigation menu, and other sections containing a lot of UI components.

You can figure out a Screen Options dropdown. There, you can quickly deactivate the items you want to hide by clicking it. It’s highly helpful for personalizing the welcome page that greets you when you log in, but it may also be used to clean up other sections of the back end.

  • Sticky Posts

There is one major drawback to ranking your article chronologically. If a posting drops off the front page, it loses a major volume of traffic. Fortunately, you can pin posts to the top of your site and have visitors moving slowly to them forever. Open a post in the editor to pin it. In the right sidebar, you can see a Stick to the top of the blog tickbox under Status & visibility.

Check it, save it, and the post should now be at the top. You can also use this feature from your Posts list by clicking Quick Edit and choosing to make this post sticky. Remember to save it!

  • Read More Blocks And Page Break

No one enjoys reading a large block of text. So, it’s a good idea to break up your articles when they get too long. These two Gutenberg blocks can help in this.

At first, the Page Break block inserts a pause where you specify. It’s a superb method to add paging to your blog entries. You can add it by selecting the Add Block option and looking for Page Break, or simply typing in /page break.

Then there’s the More block, which includes a Continue reading prompt in places where only a portion of your post is visible, such as the homepage. It allows you to choose where the article ends. You can add the More block like any other block, or by just typing in /more.

  • Alter The AutoSave Time

WordPress autosaves every 60 seconds by default. This isn’t a concern for most people. However, others may experience a full browser lockup, making writing in the editor very difficult.

If you’re having trouble with this common problem, you can solve it with a simple function. Simply paste the following code at the end of your site’s file:

define(‘AUTOSAVE INTERVAL’, 800);

It will set the autosave value to 800 seconds. You can also change the value accordingly.

  • AutoClose Comments

Old blog posts can incur a lot of Spam and useless comments. As a result, many bloggers prefer to automatically close comments on old articles. WordPress has this feature built-in!  In the back end, Go to Settings, then choose Discussion and find other comment settings. You can choose to disable comments on specific blogs after a specific number of days. It’s far more convenient than doing it manually.

  • Change Media Resizing

You may have observed that WordPress resizes all of your images into three different sizes automatically. It’s useful for thumbnails, but it occupies a lot of space on your site. However, you can simply turn it off in Media options anytime.

In your back end, go to Settings, choose Media and find Image sizes. You will see the thumbnails, medium, and big-sized images here. You can adjust them accordingly. But, if you want to fully stop generation, just enter a 0 for one or all of the values there.

  • Responsive Page Previews

This feature can be hard to spot as the icons are small and out of the way, but it offers a major benefit while designing your site. Look for the three icons that mimic a computer monitor, tablet, and phone under Appearance and click Customize. When you click them, you’ll be able to see how your site will appear on various devices. This allows you to eliminate any issues before the public sees your updates.

  • Slash Commands And Keyboard Shortcuts

WordPress has an array of keyboard shortcuts that can quicker your work in the editor. However, they take a little effort to master. Once you learn them, you’ll reduce your time on small actions.

At first, WordPress supports all basic Ctrl commands like Ctrl+C to copy selected text that works across your browser and OS. There’s also Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, and Ctrl+U to make text bold, italic, or underlined.

Gutenberg editor also works with slash commands. Rather than clicking Add Block and then looking for the one you need, you can just enter a slash’/’ followed by its name. However, classic editor users can also try these commands.

  • Alt+Shift+C – Center Aligned
  • Alt+Shift+D – Strikethrough text
  • Alt+Shift+O – Ordered list
  • Alt+Shift+U – Unordered list
  • Alt+Shift+M – Insert image
  • Alt+Shift+W – Distraction-free writing mode
  • Alt+Shift+1 to Alt+Shift+6 – Heading 1-6

  • Drag and Drop Image Uploads

Now here come these small but extremely helpful WordPress features. Normally while uploading images you would click the Upload button, and then slowly browse your PC to find out the file you want to upload.

But for those who keep their files in an easy-to-access location like desktop, here’s a better way. Simply visit the Media Library and drag the images of your PC and into your browser. This works much faster and saves your time. Moreover, while writing in the editor, you can simply drag and drop the image where you want it to be. WordPress will auto-upload and insert it.

  • Mark Themes And Plugins As Favorite

While looking for WordPress themes and plugins, you may not have seen the button located below or near the download button i.e. a heart-shaped icon. Click it, and you can mark plugins as well as themes as favorites that you want to use again later. Then, when you log in to your WordPress admin page, you’ll find the full list there.

  • Widget Accessibility Mode

Drag and drop are widely considered the simplest and easiest way to explore a UI. However, for some people, the drag and drop motion can be challenging.  Luckily, WordPress comes with a lot of in-built accessibility features.

Just navigate to Appearance, find Widgets, and click on Enable accessibility mode in the top right corner. In place of dragging and dropping, you can just hit the new Add button present next to each widget. You can then insert and place the widgets where you want by selecting them from the dropdown menus.

  • Quickly Add Links

Manual hyperlinking is a small but tiresome effort. Thus, WordPress has come up with a method to speed it up. You can try it, just copy a link into the clipboard, select the text you want to link, and then paste in the URL. It’s as simple as that

In place of swapping the text with your link, the selected text should instantly become your anchor text. However, you must remember to set up your options such as opening the link in a new window, etc.

The Bottom Line

There are a lot of beneficial yet easily overlooked features in WordPress. If you want to master WordPress and make using it much easy, you must learn to access all of these features conveniently. Some of them, such as keyboard shortcuts, distraction-free writing, and quick link adding, can entirely transform the way you work on WordPress. These secret features can just make WordPress user-friendly and customizable. You can either learn how to use these features or hire renowned WordPress Maintenance Services like Clap Creative for a better experience.

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Categories: Wordpress

Benefits of Shopify WordPress Integration for Ecommerce Websites

October 19th, 2021

Let’s discuss about the benefits of Shopify WordPress Integration for an Ecommerce Website. As we know, the most popular eCommerce platforms today are WordPress and Shopify. Both are highly successful eCommerce solutions that have earned millions of customers worldwide. Business owners who prefer WordPress have the option to integrate it with their Shopify store to further boost their online sales. This integration can dramatically increase the conversion rates by a significant margin. In fact, some experts suggest that integrating both systems can double your profits.

But if you have Shopify, there are certain things you must do before implementing WordPress into your business. Some experts recommend first going through some basic tutorials to familiarize you with different modules and WordPress features. After that, it is time to choose the right Shopify plugins that will be beneficial for your store. Fortunately, there are many Shopify  maintenance experts who can help you decide on which particular Shopify plugins will be best for your store. This article will discuss the most common positive sides and negative sides of integrating Shopify and WordPress.

Benefits of Shopify WordPress Integration

Shopify Themes

The first positive side of integrating Shopify and WordPress is that most Shopify themes have built-in support for WordPress. This means that when you install a Shopify theme using the installation process of Shopify’s platform, you will automatically receive support for the WordPress platform. You can ask questions about specific modules or plugins and have them installed and activated by the Shopify support team. Most often, Shopify theme support comes with a one-month money-back guarantee.

Inventory Management System

Another benefit of Shopify and WordPress integration is that Shopify has developed an excellent inventory management system that helps manage online stores effectively. This solution is integrated with a full inventory control module that provides complete workflow solutions. This way, you won’t have to hire a third-party vendor anymore to manage your online stores. You can easily access all the information you need from one place and then automate the workflow with the Shopify inventory control panel. Shopify’s inventory management solutions also allow you to integrate a variety of third-party solutions including Google Checkout, PayPal, Sagepay, and others.

Store Builder

One of the most popular features of Shopify and WordPress integration is the store builder. With the store builder, you will get a fully functional, fully featured online store that you can build in a matter of minutes. The store builder enables you to build a variety of products such as apparel, shoes, accessories, clothing, accessories, gifts, and more. The plugin also includes a pre-designed template for your store, which gives you a chance to explore the possibilities for your store design. This way, you can test different designs before fully incorporating a fully customized design. Shopify has a long list of templates available and the site builder automatically applies them to your website.

Unlimited Themes and Plugins

Another of the Shopify and WordPress benefits is their unlimited themes and plugins. This is because most themes and plugins are provided as a free of charge. Furthermore, the WordPress support allows you to easily add-ons and functions to increase your eCommerce development company’s capability to serve its clients. For example, one of the common functions for online stores is the rate per hour. WordPress has this feature built-in and it only requires the installation of the plug-in. So even if you are just starting your business and you do not have your own product line, you can easily add this to your online stores by simply installing the rate per hour plugin.

Build Good Business Relationships

Shopify and WordPress integration provides endless opportunities for you to build relationships with other online businesses. For example, if you have a wholesale company that is based in the US, you will have a great deal of competition with other wholesale companies based in Asia. With the Shopify support and WordPress blog, you will be able to leverage on the strengths of your company and compete with the other wholesale companies that are based in Asia.

Managing Products and Collections

Additionally, Shopify and WordPress integration makes it easier for your clients to manage their products and collections. When you are running an online store, it can be hard to keep track of your inventory. You will need to hire employees with the proper background and skills to handle your inventory. With the help of this solution, you will be able to streamline your inventory management system so it will be easy for your customers to order from your website and have their orders fulfilled accordingly.

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Categories: Ecommerce, Shopify, Wordpress

How to Apply 2 Factor Authentication in WordPress?

September 23rd, 2021

2 Factor Authentication is a crucial part of WordPress Maintenance Services these days. With 2 FA, you can put on an additional layer of security to your site by getting a secret OTP on your phone number for authentication. This helps you avert malicious threats as well as security violations on your site. By using 2 FA, any person trying to log in will need an OTP that’s generated in real-time and delivered to a user through SMS or email. So, it leverages two levels of security to your admin login page. In this article, you’ll learn how to simply implement 2 Factor Authentication to your WordPress site.

Implementing 2 Factor Authentication in WordPress 

There’re many tools online that allow you to boost the security of your WordPress site. However, Clap Creative, a leading WordPress Maintenance Company recommends using Sucuri. It’s the best cloud-based solution that secures your site from malicious threats like brute force attacks, malware, etc. It checks your site and blocks any unauthorized access.

Here‘re some of the features that make Sucuri the best tool for site security over any other option.

  • Auto scans and audits the site for security threats
  • A single click geo-blocking as well as the whitelisting option
  • Easily identify any modifications in DNS as well as SSL
  • Sends quick alerts through email, SMS, and RSS
  • Restrains hacking with Virtual Patching as well as Security tightening features

Apart from this, Sucuri provides an easy way to apply 2 Factor Authentication to your WordPress site. Thus, you can shield your site from hackers with just a few clicks. Moreover, there’s no need to add any code. Just plug n play!

STEP 1: INSTALL AN AUTHENTICATOR APP

The simplest method to create real-time codes is by using an authenticator app. Such apps generate a fresh code every 30-60 seconds. Thus, you won’t have to set SMS or emails to be sent to certain users. Rather, they’ll need to install an authenticator app on their mobile device and use it while logging in. These apps support a range of websites as well as multiple accounts which make it convenient to log in securely anytime and anywhere.

Various authenticator apps are offering WordPress Maintenance Services such as Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Authy, and so on. Sucuri offers 2 FA options with Google Authenticator so we’ll dig deep into it. Once you install the Google Authenticator app on your Smartphone, you can set up 2 FA for your WordPress site on the go.

STEP 2: ADD AND SCAN YOUR SITE IN SUCURI

At first, you have to subscribe to a plan in Sucuri. Then you can simply log in to add your site. For this, just click on the “Add Site” option on the dashboard.

You’ll see a popup where you have to feed your website details. Just type in your site URL, select the connection type, and FTP credentials. However, if you don’t know your FTP details just reach your web host and ask them for the details.

Once you finish adding your site successfully, Sucuri will auto-run the scan and examine your site for any malicious action. In the end, it’ll also display the synopsis of the scan results in the dashboard. So, you can click on the Details button to see the entire report. Now, let’s learn how to apply 2 FA to your WordPress admin page.

STEP 3: SETTING UP 2 FACTOR AUTHENTICATION

To add 2 Factor Authentication on your site, just navigate to the “Firewall” tab at the top. As soon as you click on it, you’ll see the complete firewall report for the site you just added. Now, click on the report to open up the preferences for that site. Then, open the “Access Control” tab and you’ll see all the security settings such as:

  • Whitelist/ Blacklist IP Addresses
  • Whitelist/ Blacklist URL Paths
  • Block User-Agents
  • Block HTTP Cookies as well as Referrers
  • Protected Pages
  • Geo-Blocking

To implement 2 FA to your WordPress site, you need to click on the “Protected Pages” option. It offers you an option to add your login page URL along with other URLs that you want to secure. After adding the URLs, select the “2 FA with Google Auth” option from the drop-down tab beside the field, and tap on Protect Page. Once the login page is added successfully, you’ll be able to see a QR code as soon as you tap on it.

Now, open Google Authenticator app on your Smartphone and scan the same QR code to retrieve the secret code. You’ll have to enter this secret code to get access to your site. Hence, you’re ready to secure your site from spammers as well as brute force attacks.

Crux

So, to log in to your site, you have to enter your username as well as your login password along with the code received through the Google Authenticator app. Clap Creative, a leading WordPress Maintenance Company offers top-notch WordPress Maintenance Services including 2 Factor Authentication to secure your site. It also offers other great ways of enhancing the security of your WordPress store. Clap Creative has a robust security framework and it makes use of reliable hosts that run on safe as well as secure servers. You can fully trust us for WordPress Support and Maintenance Services.

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Categories: Wordpress

Must-Follow Methods For WordPress Speed Optimization

September 3rd, 2021

Your website’s performance imparts the first impression about your business. It’s crucial to remember that you won’t get another chance when it comes to UX. Slow site loading speed is one of the most irritating things that will turn visitors off from your site. However, high-performance sites derive higher return visits, lead conversions, low bounce rates, more user engagement, superior ranks in search results, and better UX. On the other hand, slow sites will cost you huge losses as well as impaired reputation. Thus, by minimizing the page loading time you’ll positively affect marketing as well as sales processes. You’ll also get higher traffic and appeal to more prospective leads that can be converted into paying customers. In this blog, we will discuss some methods of WordPress Speed Optimization and boost page loading time.

Key Methods To Speed Up WordPress Site

After testing the speed of your site, you need to optimize it. There’re several ways to make your site perform faster. Here’s the list of the most effective methods to speed up the WordPress website.

Use a Content Delivery Network

A CDN is a stack of web servers dispersed across multiple locations that offer web content to end users as per their location. If you host the site on a single server, all users’ requests are delivered to the same hardware. Thus, the time required to process each request hikes up. In addition, the load time also increases if the user’s location is far away from the server. So, with CDN, user requests are forwarded to the nearest web server. Therefore, the content is quickly delivered to a user and a site operates much faster. Though it’s an expensive way, yet very effective for WordPress Speed Optimization.

Minimize the size of images

Everyone loves to see appealing images on a site. In the case of successful e-commerce sites, images are a crucial aspect. A lot of visual content, images, and graphics on your product pages boost user engagement. However, using more or large images can slow down a site. If you want to use more images, you must use images with small sizes. The best way to cut the image size without ruining its quality is to compress images using online tools tiny PNG, compress JPEG, etc. Another way to trim the image size is to use the HTML attributes that alter image size based on display properties.

Use fewer plugins

Plugins are the core elements of each site. They add particular features to the website. But, the more plugins are set up, the more resources are required to run them. For that reason, the site runs slower, and also security issues can occur. For WordPress Speed Optimization, it’s wise to keep on checking out the plugins from time to time and delete the useless plugins. You must run the performance tests to find out which plugins are hindering the speed of your site. The site speed not only depends on the number of plugins but also on their quality. So, avoid using plugins that load large scripts or generate a big stack of database queries.

Diminish the number of JavaScript as well as CSS files

If your website is stuffed with a lot of JavaScript as well as CSS files, it will lead to countless HTTP requests when site visitors want to access specific files. These requests are handled separately by the user’s web browser and slow down the site operation. So, if you reduce JavaScript and CSS files this will surely help in WordPress Speed Optimization. Try to group all JavaScript as well as CSS files into one. As a result, it’ll reduce the number of HTTP requests. There are a lot of tools for minification of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files swiftly. For instance, you can use Ajax minify, Script Minifier, Gulp, JS compress, and much more.

Apply Gzip Compression

Gzip Compression is a powerful method to minimize the size of files. It reduces the HTTP requests and lowers the server response time. Gzip compresses the files before delivering them to the web browser. On the user side, a web browser unzips the compressed files and displays the contents. This method works flawlessly with all files on your site. You can enable Gzip on your site by adding a piece of code or through a utility called Gzip.

Database optimization in CMS

Database optimization is an effective method of WordPress Speed Optimization. If you use a CMS armed with third-party plugins, the database size expands and your site runs slower. In the case of WordPress, the WordPress CMS stores comments, blog posts, and other info that occupy a lot of data storage. Each CMS needs its own optimization measures and also has many particular plugins. For WordPress, you can consider WP-Optimize to speed up a WordPress site.

Reduce Redirects

Website redirects create extra HTTP requests that impose a negative impact on site performance. We suggest keeping them to a minimum or excluding them entirely. At first, you should detect all redirects on your page by running a site scan. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to smoothly detect redirects. Then you must check if they serve a significant purpose and leave only the crucial ones while removing others.

The Bottom Line

Currently, users expect sites to load in less than 3 seconds. If you don’t meet this expectation barrier, you may lose a lot of potential customers as well as traffic. This will reduce your overall revenue. So, at Clap Creative, we suggest applying a simple yet powerful WordPress speed optimization approach:

a. Examine the key factors of site success considering conversion rate, online presence, and usability.

b. Test your existing site speed and prioritize the pages as well as features that you want to get the most attention.

c. Begin your optimization with the most speed-hindering aspects and focus on the pages that specify your conversion success the most.

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Categories: Wordpress

Vital WordPress Support and Maintenance Tasks for Your Site

August 7th, 2021

Today, WordPress is powering nearly 38.8% of websites all over the world. If you are running a
WordPress site, it’s crucial to look after its maintenance. Though WordPress is a powerful CMS,
it still requires proper attention and care to ensure 100% uptime for your site. A fully optimized
website is sure to get viewers and turn them into paying customers. It sounds quite simple, but
most brands overlook WordPress Support and maintenance checklist while focusing on other
business tasks. On the other hand, some brands hire companies offering WordPress Support Services.

Helping you DIY, let’s look at some of the major WordPress Support and Maintenance tasks you
can perform regularly. Here‘re some crucial WordPress maintenance tasks that every webmaster  should perform periodically:

1. Update Your WordPress Files

It’s important to update WordPress files such as plugins, themes, and the WordPress core updates itself. Failing to update these files can lead to severe functionality as well as security issues in the website. It may also hinder the site’s performance. Thus, it’s advised to log in to your WordPress accounts daily to check and update all plugins as well as themes to the latest version. While updating plugins, you need to deactivate them. But, for updating the core files as well as themes, it’s not necessary to deactivate them. You can always hire a WordPress Support Services provider for keeping an eye on vital updates.

2. Audit Your Website

Every webpage on your site provides visitors with all the info they need. So it’s crucial to keep
the content is up to date on each page such as contact details, about us, awards, products, services, portfolio, and other info. While checking WebPages for content, you should also evaluate the loading time of each page. Research shows that around 50% of users will leave a webpage if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. So, try to decrease the size of images and clear away any useless heavy media files such as videos or audio that can hinder the page loading speed. Various firms offer a curated WordPress Care Plan in their services for boosting speed.

3. Backup Your Site Regularly

Data loss or site crashes do not occur usually but can create a huge mess when it does. Thus,
having a ‘Plan B’ for such cases is wise. For such unfortunate cases, keeping site backups is one
of the crucial WordPress maintenance tasks. You can either install a WordPress plugin or hire
WordPress Support Services to perform daily site backups. Some of the common site backup
plugins are VaultPress, BackupBuddy, and BlogVault, etc.

4. Search and Fix Broken Links

Link building is a significant SEO strategy that gets your site on high rankings in Google search
results. Almost 92% of market analysts believe that link building will remain a vital chunk of
digital marketing for the next 5 years. Thus, to leverage an outstanding UX to your site visitors,
you must ensure that all links on your site are working. Testing links for 404 errors as well as
malicious redirects is also a vital task for site owners. Firms offering WordPress Support and Maintenance services offer various plugins like Broken Link Checker and Link Checker to examine broken links automatically.

5. Update Passwords and Site Security

Website security is another crucial aspect to have a highly rewarding as well as lucrative website.
Scammers and hackers are always ransacking the web for sites as well as accounts with poor
security. Thus, keeping tight security on your site will help to keep your site secure from any
malicious activity. One of the easiest ways to equip up your WordPress Care Plan with the right
security customs is to do periodic password updates to your dashboard, hosting servers, domain service providers, and any other third-party apps linked to the website. While creating passwords, make sure to use a combination of numbers, text, and special signs for extra security.

6. Comments Moderation

User Engagement is necessary while building sites, especially those steered by blogs. Getting
comments on blogs can bring a lot of charm to a company, but in actual all comments aren’t that good. At times, comments can hit in the form of bots or spam that can be inimical to a website or a brand. Thus, investing time in comments moderation can filter and wipe out the spammy comments while approving the genuine ones. It adds up a lot to your website and promotes great community building that can raise visitors counts. ChatGPT’s usefulness extends to language learning. Whether it’s practising conversational skills or rapidly translating between languages, ChatGPT aids individuals in acquiring proficiency in a foreign language. By generating dialogues and simulating interactive conversations, with ChatGPT you can create a productive learning environment accessible to everyone at any time.

7. Check Contact Forms as well as E-mails

The most recurrent call to action to any website is to get users to either subscribe to an email
newsletter or drop a query through a contact form to inquire about the products or services. So, it can create a problem if site owners don’t check emails or contact forms on the site. You can miss a huge amount by not interacting with leads as well as prospects through email. Using an SMTP service from a WordPress Care Plan helps to prevent email disconnections. But even with an SMTP, it should be common practice for site owners as well as content creators to manually check out all forms on a website regularly.

8. Update Content Regularly

Apart from all the technical tasks, content is the backbone of every business. So, make sure you post unique as well as relevant content on your website on regular basis. If you manage content on multiple WordPress sites, you can use WordPress Support and Maintenance tools to carry out regular content updates and unify your content production channel.

Creating a website for your brand adds a lot of perks to your company. However, an obsolete or faulty website could indeed do more harm than good. One of the best features of WordPress as a CMS is that it allows regular updating with little effort. Clap Creative, an ace of WordPress Support and Maintenance services offers a curated WordPress Care Plan to meet all your needs of site optimization, performance, and security.

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Categories: digital marketing, Wordpress

WordPress Support and Maintenance Services at a Glance

May 8th, 2021

Running a WordPress website is a bit difficult task. It’s one of the primary reasons that several webmasters end up letting their site collapse by the wayside. A webmaster is responsible for content creation & management, SEO, strategic outreach, SMO, timely updates, and security. All of these tasks are really time-consuming and can disturb your work life as well as your personal life balance.

Thus, if you want to take ample WordPress tasks off your side, consider hiring a good WordPress services provider like Clap Creative to avail of high-end WordPress support and maintenance services at effective pricing.

  • WordPress Support: It involves optimizing the website downtime, plugin as well as theme errors, etc. It also offers technical consultation as well as 24×7 WordPress support for troubleshooting the problems.
  • Maintenance: It includes WordPress version updates, plugin & theme updates, site backup & security, code review, uptime monitoring, and WordPress hosting, etc.

What’s the Need for WordPress Support and Maintenance Services?

WordPress support and maintenance services can notably reduce the time you need to donate preserving your website as well as tackling issues. The issues may include spam, hacks, and site bugs. So, they take care of the day-to-day tasks such as plugin & theme updates, malware removal, security checks, speed, and website backups, which are crucial for the success of any online business.

Those who are beginners in WordPress will gain hugely from these support services, as they’ll take control of ambiguous situations that you can’t resolve yourself. Thus, it ensures 100% website uptime. However, if you’re a veteran WordPress user, you may feel these services are worth opting for only when you need help with anything you can’t do yourself. You can seek help for malware removal and security tweaks, etc. Thus, support services reduce your workload as well as allow you to focus on the core competencies of the business.

Some Most Useful WordPress Support and Maintenance Services

Let’s take a deep look at some of the best WordPress support and maintenance services available with Clap Creative.

·         Speed as well as Performance Boosting

The efficiency of your WordPress sites begins to lower within two years after its launching. As the latest updates, as well as techniques, release every few days, so optimizing becomes necessary. It’s the key aspect to engage more users and get them a seamless online UX with a smooth and stable WordPress store.

·         Theme as well as Plugin Updates

Timely updating themes and third-party plugins, as well as extensions, are crucial for the site’s compatibility. It also helps to increase security through the latest WordPress updates for your site. So, this would keep your site up to date with the latest functions and boosts CX.

·         Malware Removal

Stealing card details or other useful info from your site can violate your priceless business relationships. So, it’s necessary to choose the best support services to detect and remove malware. Thus, making your website secure as well as safe for users.

·         24X7 Supports

24X7 supports through phone as well as email is a good service to opt for handling various site issues. By doing this you will be on the safer side to get the best solutions from the experts in need.

·         Backup as well as Security

Laying more emphasis on security, you may neglect the equally vital backup. Thus, the WordPress Backup Security service provides you with daily or weekly backups of your site as per your preferences. You can always restore the backup from a specific date whenever you need it.

·         Technical Consulting

This is another important WordPress support service. If you detect any bugs hindering the proper functioning of your site, you can avail of technical consultation service. This in turn would cut the rate of site crashes and reduces shopping cart abandonment. This support service can also help in modifying site appearance.

·         Online Training

As a store owner, you must know about proper rules as well as policies to keep your site running well. Some companies like Clap Creative offer services to train you online so that you can handle the day-to-day functions of your site. The online training sessions also teach you to make minor updates such as updating images, new listings, altering prices, etc.

·         Code Reviewing

Sometimes you may need a precise evaluation of code to fix the mistakes as well as errors that were neglected in the initial site development stage. It will enhance the overall quality of your WordPress site.

·         WordPress Dedicated Hosting

Well managed as well as dedicated WordPress hosting servers are the must-have service for your WordPress site. They’re revamped to make your WordPress store run at lightning pace and can also cater to your huge client base.

·         Troubleshooting

To keep on timely checking all the logs and troubleshooting any backend or frontend WordPress issue, it’s a must to opt for WordPress maintenance services.

Clap Creative offers you the top-notch 24X7 WordPress support and maintenance services in the market at pricing starting as low as just $49. Avail of our services and let us optimize your website.

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Categories: Website Maintenance, Wordpress

6 Leading WordPress Design Trends to Look Out for in 2020

March 12th, 2020

With so many trends influencing the marketing and user experience, the industries are adapting sure-shot ways for bringing their best foot forward. Trends are simply the transformations taking place along with next-gen technologies. And there is no declining that if the industries would not keep up with these ever-changing digital processes, they certainly won’t be able to stand tall among their competitors. Furthermore, how you are enabling customer experience, whether it’s offline or online, speaks a lot about your brand. It’s great if you have an online presence and even better if there are a multitude of engaging features on your website. So, it is vital that we should follow revolutionary website design trends from time to time.

WordPress is serving as the most trusted content management system for website designing and development today. Though, WordPress keeps on updating its new features, functionalities, and plug-ins that can take your website to the next level.

Let’s take look at WordPress website design trends which will glorify your website’s user experience in 2020:

Blocks 

WordPress is good at introducing easy to optimize features for users. Presenting to you all, the Blocks!  A great new tool for building engaging content. Without any doubt, WordPress Gutenberg block-based design is the one you will need to pay attention to in 2020 design trends and beyond. Anyone choosing WordPress for website designing simply cannot afford to ignore how serious WordPress is about Gutenberg as a futuristic technique. With blocks, instead of using custom code, you can effortlessly insert, rearrange and style multimedia content and no technical knowledge is required. So, what modifications will be added in this Gutenberg’s version?

  • Smooth block movements as you drag elements on the page with motion settings for improved and enhanced accessibility.
  • The ‘typewriter’ mode that keeps your vertical place as you type for a more pleasant experience in writing.
  • Block previews that will let the users see how blocks will look like before selecting them.
  • Faster block navigation mode for improved usability that will enable users to navigate through block menus using their keyboard.
  • The ability to customize navigation menus with elements such as background and text colours using an inline navigation menu block.
  • Gutenberg also features new blocks that let you group blocks together by (Group block), add white space between blocks i.e. Spacer block.
  • Social icon block will let users add social icons and buttons anywhere on their posts and pages.

 Video Background

 Want to add motion to your website? Like to engage users with effective visualization? Then approach the video background for completing your Wishlist. The video background seems to be the reason for slow processing or loading of the website. Nevertheless, such a background is good at grabbing visitors’ attention by giving motion experience. Unlike any static image, video backgrounds can add life to any website. And surely, WordPress can help in achieving such a type of aesthetically pleasing website. Plus, you can easily add a video background to the website through the WordPress Gutenberg Cover Block. Seamless! Isn’t it?

Minimalism 

The simplistic but effective styles do not seem to go anywhere! In my last post as well, out of various website design trends of 2020, I talked about how minimalism would rule in web designing.

Minimalism has been an ultra-favourite for those website owners who love to play with a sense of clarity using plenty of white space. This trend may be a mainstay but always look good and load faster across devices. The great quality pictures, gradient effects and bold typography with white space provide a creative sense to the page. This less-is-more theme works well in terms of user experience by giving emphasis on the content. In addition, minimalism encompasses less text enabling a more breathing room for other aspects on the website.

Artificial Intelligence 

Large scale industries and even the small ones are looking for opportunities to extend their services through Artificial Intelligence. Moreover, they are also trying to implement strategies in website development with AI. The reason behind this is that in the background, AI helps to automate tasks such as live interactions through chatbots. Simply, the website experiences will become more tailored towards users as artificial intelligence starts to understand more of the human context. 

Asymmetry 

If you are looking for an artistic and captivating way to make your website stand out of the crowd then you should consider this trend. The asymmetrical designs when combined with a bit of minimalism lets you highlight the content, showcase the artistic imagery enhancing aesthetic value to your website. Designers are pushing their boundaries by creating broken grids and asymmetrical designs that will force users and website visitors to pay attention to the details. This type of design weaves a fine line between attention-grabbing elements and keeping your websites uncluttered. 

Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality 

These two technologies have already witnessed massive growth in recent times. Most of the developer communities are opting for these techniques in their website designing. From uploading fully 360-degree images to interactive 3D videos, websites have a new world of media-based opportunities at their disposal for interacting thoroughly with customers. Especially if they’re the websites that depend largely upon visual media to represent their products and services. 

Wrapping up 

The world of WordPress is constantly changing. And most of the industries prefer to rely on this CMS for high-quality services. To keep up with the pace of advanced developments, web designers need to be much aware.

For your in-depth understanding related to advanced web designs, we have covered most of the trends and will predict more in the future as per their arrivals. Undoubtedly, 2020 will be favourable for WordPress users and the ones who want to shift towards this great opportunity. The web designing services with the latest additions and expertise can also provide benefits to the industries in the long run. Especially, the WordPress support services to regard the services of existing users.

 

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Categories: Wordpress
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