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5 must-have WP plugins for your WordPress Site

WordPress has been termed one of the most popular CMS platforms for website development. Be it a personal blog or an e-commerce website, WordPress has a solution. What started as a blogging tool is today the most powerful and robust content management system that is very easy to use. The key advantage is that it is open source allowing you to edit the code. Today I will discuss 5 top must-have WP plugins for your WordPress website. Though others may have a different version of what I say, the main 5 aspects of any website like design, website optimisation, online shopping or e-commerce, contact form and SEO have to be covered. The key 5 WP plugins I suggest are as follows: Let us look into the 5 WP plugins in detail Elementor : Perfect for Designing a Page Elementor is an easy-to-use drag-and-drop page builder created to ease the design work of your website. You need not know a single bit of code to work on Elementor. You can use a default WP theme and customise the pages with this plugin. Even if you use a paid WP theme with some advanced features and functionalities, you can use Elementor to redesign the pages. You can even design the webpage from scratch using Elementor templates. Elementor is a free plugin and has a Pro version with added features making page designing pretty easy and comfortable for even amateurs. Elementor comes with the simplest drag-and-drop method making it easy to insert any block or element anywhere in your template. Another key advantage of using Elelmentor is that it ensures that the web page created is responsive and will work seamlessly on all devices. LiteSpeed/WP Total Cache/WP Rocket : Optimize your Website You must have a highly optimised website. The loading speed of the website is a matter of concern. The faster the better. You need to be sure that your website loads very fast on all devices. A slow-loading website makes the user drop off quickly and they will not come back to check your website. Eventually, it hurts your conversions. The cache plugins help to optimise the website making it load faster. It significantly reduces server response time. You can even optimise the images to the latest WebP format which helps in faster loading of the images. There are many cache plugins available that help with this. But I suggest using any of these three. Make sure to check the features each offers with the free version and the paid version features. WP Total Cache plugin is a popular plugin with a free and a pro version. Litespeed has free CDN that further helps in load speed times. Do thorough research on which plugin suits you best featurewise and budget-wise. WooCommerce : E-commerce Made Simple If you aim to build an online shopping website, then WooCommerce is the must-have plugin. WooCommerce is a complete e-commerce plugin with a bundle of integrated e-commerce features. You can specify all the required details in your online store from variations to attributes, images and descriptions. Once a payment gateway is integrated the cart page and the checkout process work perfectly. If you want to convert your simple website to an online store, then this is what you want. WP Forms : Connect with Contact Forms Collecting data, and creating subscription and contact forms, are all must-haves on a website. WP Forms allows you to create different types of forms and link them to your web page easily. WP Forms is a free plugin with a paid pro version with more forms for various purposes. Yoast/AIOSEO/Rankmath : SEO Once your website is built, you need to do the SEO for your website making it friendly for search engines as well. The three most popular WordPress SEO plugins are Yoast SEO, All-in-One-SEO (AIOSEO) and Rankmath. All have their unique features and have both free and paid versions. Of course, the paid version opens up to a lot of advanced SEO features in all three plugins.

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Plannng to Buy WP Themes - What to check

Planning to buy WP themes? What to check!

Wordpress, CMS / Babitha Rosy Santhosh

When planning to buy WP themes, there are a lot of factors that you need to keep in mind. Your brand website is your online identity. Your website must be fast, responsive and at the same time attractive. Free or Paid themes? Some people find it an added expense to buy a new theme whereas for some, it is an investment. You need to understand that always free themes have certain limitations. For example, some free themes will not support demo import, putting you in a tough spot when replicating the theme design. Though some free themes support demo import, it may limit the layout options, header styling options, colour options and certain advanced features that will only be available in the Pro version of the theme. Factors to consider when you Buy WP themes There are a lot of websites from where you can buy WP themes. Here are some of the key factors to consider when purchasing a WordPress theme. Before you decide on a theme, make a note of all the features and functionalities you want in your website and opt for a theme that incorporates the majority of the desired features. Also, look for the additional plugins you want to integrate into the site to have all the features you need.

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How to activate/deactivate your theme or plugins via cpanel?

Wordpress, CMS, How-To / Babitha Rosy Santhosh

Introduction If you are web/WordPress developer, you need to know how to activate/deactivate your theme or plugins via cpanel. When you face a critical error on your WordPress website, the main task is to identify who is the culprit. It could be the theme, plugin or even WordPress. The main reason for critical error is version incompatibility. So it is highly important to disable all the plugins and themes and check with the default WP theme. Whenever critical errors start showing up, your access to the WordPress admin panel is restricted/blocked. Hence the only option is to activate/deactivate all themes and plugins via cPanel or the hosting server. Now this is a bit confusing for many. Here we have described how to activate/deactivate your themes or plugins from the hosting server or cpanel of two different hosting providers. One is GoDaddy and the other is Hostinger. Though it is almost the same, the path to get to the required place is a bit different for some providers. Note: Be extra cautious when you attempt to do this GoDaddy Login to your GoDaddy account. Select ‘Hosting’. You will see the list of websites hosted on the Godaddy server. Select ‘Web Hosting’ option for the preferred domain name. The GoDaddy web hosting dashboard will be open. On the top right, you will find the cPanel Admin button. Click on it. The cPanel with a lot of server options will come up. Select the required website name if more websites are hosted on the server under the ‘Web Applications’ – ‘My Applications’. The Installatron page will be opened with the details of all the websites hosted. Look for the website with the issue and opt for the tool to view/edit details. Then select the ‘Files & Tables’ tab from among the three visible tabs. You see the list of all the WP files here and you can enable and disable them here. Look for the WP-content file name. Click on it to view the files and folders that come under this. Here you will see the themes and plugins folder and you can easily enable or disable the plugins. Hostinger Login to hostinger. After you have logged in with your Two-factor authentication, navigate to the Hosting menu. From there opt for Business Web Hosting. If there is more than one website hosted on the server, you will see the number of websites. Now on mouse-over on the number of websites, you will see the list of websites hosted. Select the required one. The hosting page of that website will appear. From the left-hand side menu, under ‘WordPress’ select ‘Security’. Here you will see the WordPress version, and all the installed themes and plugins too. The page will display the theme/plugin name along with its version and the security status along with the Hostinger recommendation. Towards the right side of each listing, you will find three dots which when clicked will show options to either update or delete the respective theme or plugin. If an update is available, you can edit the theme or plugin from here. If there is any security issue, the recommendation option will clearly show the issue and what has to be done. You also have the option to disable the theme or plugins from here. When you are facing a critical error issue, you need to disable all the plugins first. Now check the site if a critical error still shows, if it shows, then you need to disable all the themes and switch to the default theme. If your website can be viewed, then you can be sure that the issue is with one of your plugins. Next is to start enabling the plugins one by one to identify the culprit. Once you identify the culprit plugin, ensure that you either remove it or find out what the issue is with that particular plugin. That was on how you could activate/deactivate your themes or plugins via cPanel or your web hosting server when your WP admin panel is not accessible.

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What are critical errors in WordPress?

Wordpress, CMS, Featured / Babitha Rosy Santhosh

What if one morning you woke up and opened your website to see the critical errors in WordPress? ‘There has been a critical error on your website’ – How often have you been frustrated seeing the critical error message when you open your website? Now, What are these critical errors? How to fix them? The main reason for the critical error is version incompatibility. It can be WordPress, theme, plugin or even PHP version conflict. Always make sure all your plugins and themes are up to date. WordPress must always be in the latest version. When you do not regularly update WordPress, theme or plugins, you are inviting hackers to your website as there will be a lot of vulnerability in the site giving way to intruders. How to Fix Critical Errors in WordPress? The first and foremost thing to do is to update all your plugins, themes and WordPress. Now, once you get the critical error on the website, you may not be able to access the admin panel as well (but at times, it works as well). In that case, you need to log in to your cpanel and update all the plugins and themes. (How to activate/deactivate your theme or plugins via cpanel?) Even after updating the themes and plugins, you still face the critical error issue, check the PHP version. Try changing the version to the latest or the more stable one suitable for your website theme. If that doesn’t work either, it’s time to start debugging the issue. You need to identify what is causing the issue. Is it the theme or any plugin? First, let’s identify if it is the theme issue. For that try to change to the default WP theme. If you could retrieve the site, deep dive a bit more to confirm the same. Try to active other themes as well and check if the critical error is occurring. Now you need to disable all plugins. Then try to activate the theme that you want or the original theme. If a critical error occurs, then you can be sure that the issue is with the theme. The theme would be outdated or would not have been updated for a long time. Otherwise, try to activate the plugins one at a time to identify which plugin is causing the issue. I agree, that fixing critical errors in WordPress requires a lot of patience and is time-consuming. Once you identify the culprit, remove it. Then activate all the required plugins one at a time. Once you retrieve your site successfully, make sure to update all your plugins and themes regularly.

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All about Parent Theme and Child Theme

CMS, Editor's Pick, Wordpress / Babitha Rosy Santhosh

Today I will jotting about parent themes and child themes for WordPress themes. When developing a website on the CMS platform WordPress, you will come across various themes with a multitude of features and you will always be confused about which to choose and what are the things you need to consider. Most of the themes come with just one option. However, nowadays, we have seen that many new themes have a parent theme and a child theme. Have you ever wondered what the purpose of having a child theme and what are its benefits? What is a parent theme and a child theme? The child theme is a theme that inherits the design and functionality of the parent theme. So then what is the purpose of having a child theme? Yes, you thought it right. You can tweak the code of the child theme. Sounds interesting! If you are a good coder and want to modify the basic design of the main theme a bit according to your preference, then you can do it easily with the child theme. The most interesting thing is that any theme updates will only affect the parent theme and not the child theme. Hence you can rest assured that your customisations will not be lost after a theme update. How to install a child theme? Once you purchase a theme to develop a WordPress website, you get to download the theme files. After you extract the theme files, look if the folder contains a parent theme and a child theme. Now, how to identify a child theme? Check for the zip files in the folder. You will find the zip files of the theme. Along with that if you find another zip file with the name of the parent theme followed by the word ‘child’, then it is the child file of the theme. Suppose the name of the theme is legenda.zip, the child theme will have its name as legenda-child.zip. If you are sure you will not be making any customisations, then you can install the parent theme. But, if you will be making major customisations, then you need to work on the child theme. So first install the parent theme and then install the child theme. Next, activate the child theme. You are done! Please note that a child theme requires a parent theme to function properly, but not vice-versa. However, there are a few things that you need to keep in mind when customizing a child theme, which I will cover in another article.

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Know More About Content Management System

CMS, Editor's Pick, Wordpress / Babitha Rosy Santhosh

Designing and developing a website in the earlier times, was not as easy as it is today. You had to write every bit of code, without any syntax errors, debug it, check for the design issues, rectify them and then repeat the whole process till you got things perfect. But with the advent of CMS platforms or Content Management Systems, things have changed a lot and there is no looking back now. A person with zero coding skills can create stunning websites on these platforms. However, if you are a coder, you can go that extra mile by incorporating some of your coding skills and hacks. What is CMS or Content Management System? Content Management System, more popularly known as CMS, helps you build a website with ease from scratch, create pages, and modify and manage content without any technical know-how. There are a lot of features that it offers including storing images, storing and retrieving data, document handling and much more. Popular Content Management Systems There are a lot of content management platforms available. Here is the list of the most popular platforms. WordPress Shopify Wix Magento Joomla Drupal BigCommerce However, the most popular among them is WordPress which tops the list. It is the easiest content management system and nearly half of the websites on the internet are built on WordPress. The popularity of WordPress only seems to grow. Apart from these, there are a lot of not-so-popular platforms as well, like Ghost, TYPO3, Substack etc which we will cover in another blog. What kind of websites can you build with CMS? There is no limit to the type of websites built on such platforms. With WordPress, you can build any website like a static website, blog, eCommerce site, auction site, coupon site, portfolio, Education website and much more. However, platforms like Magento and Joomla are good for making eCommerce websites. So are Shopify and Wix. Each has its pros and cons. We will go into detail later. Advantages of using a Content Management System Easy to set up and maintain SEO Friendly User Friendly Extensive functionality with add-ons and plugins (though some are paid plugins, you get readymade ones that fits your need) Design customisation options available Cost efficient

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