Copying a Live WordPress Site to a Localhost

Today we have a step-by-step walk through on how to move a live WordPress website to a local host. This way you can run WordPress offline. Why would you want to run WordPress offline? Maybe you wan to to play with new plugins or themes or test changes before making them on your live site. Whatever the reason, it’s not hard to do and it doesn’t take long. Anyone can follow this tutorial and quickly have a locally hosted WordPress site. This way you can use WordPress without being connected to the internet.

I made this tutorial because I thought it would be useful. The WordPress Codex is a great reference and can help you do many things, including moving a live site to a local host. For some users, it can be hard to understand. Especially beginner. The language can often seem confusing and convoluted.  This tutorial shows you simply how to move your site without the hassle. This is a companion post to our recent article on How to Install WordPress Locally With XAMPP. Read more

9 Google Maps Plugins for WordPress

Need to add Google Maps to WordPress? There are lots premium Google Maps plugins for WordPress that can make the process much easier. There are so many in fact, that it can be tough to know which one will suit you best. In this article we’ve collected 9 of the best WordPress plugins for Google Maps. All of these plugins can be used to add responsive Google Maps to any post, page or sidebar.

If you are running a business from a physical location, such as a brick and mortar store, your success will depend on people finding your location. People aren’t going to spend too much time browsing your website to figure out how to find you. This is why it’s important to make yourself as accessible as you can.

The best way to do this in WordPress is with a plugin. Although Google Maps has it’s own API, it’s not the most elegant tool. First off there is a bit of a learning curve to overcome, second the Google Map API doesn’t provide many options for customization.

This article outlines 9 plugins to help you embed a custom Google maps with WordPress. These plugins enable you to add locations, markers, directories, meta info, animations, custom icons and more. Easily build professional maps with no coding, no API keys and no unnecessary stress.

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WooCommerce Addons to Accept Credit Card Payments with WordPress

WooCommerce Addons to Accept Credit Card Payments with WordPress

Nearly any online selling WordPress project wants to accept credit card payments without problems or technical difficulties. One of the reasons people love WordPress platform so much is because it makes selling products and accepting payments online very easy. Setting up a payment gateway can be one of most lucrative, yet difficult tasks while creating and managing a website. This is an area where you will have to do at least a minimal amount of research, or hire professionals as an alternative way of solving the issue.

There are lots of plugins on the market that can help you to achieve your goals. Free ones, usually end up sending customers away from your site. Most small businesses will want to add a payment gateway directly on their website. This way people would not have to leave your site and you can provide smooth transactions for your customers. This post will go over a few terms related to accepting card payments directly from your website with WordPress. We will also introduce a list of plugins to help you in this direction.

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Comparing The Best WordPress Page Builders

Drag-n-drop page builder is the most convenient way to create and customize website elements of any complexity within your WordPress project. This type tools is also known as WYSIWYG editors: “what you see is what you get”. The most important thing about WYSIWYG editors is that they allow you to create and edit your WordPress website without any special knowledge of HTML, PHP, CSS, JavaScript or other web development and design spheres.

We have gathered 4 of the best WordPress page builders to compare their features in this article. These well-known WYSIWYG editors are: WPBakery Page Builder (former Visual Composer), Fusion Builder by Avada, Divi Page Builder by Elegant Themes and Cornerstone Page Builder.

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How to Style Contact Form 7 With Ninja Kick: Contact Form Plugin

There are many reasons why you’d need a contact form on your WordPress website. You can use them to produce leads, provide customer service, get feedback, give quotes and book appointments among other things. Web forms are a problem that has been solved many times over. Finding a plugin to help is usually the most practical solution. Unless you are a good web programmer and you can bang out a web form in a couple minutes, there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel.

Recently we published a post on how to Styling Contact Form 7 in WordPress. While Contact Form 7 is an awesome contact form plugin and easy to use, you may want something a little more powerful. Perhaps you are looking for ways to make your form stand out so you get as many responses as possible. One way to build a killer contact form is to use Looks Awesome’s Ninja Kick: Contact Form plugin. Use it to create a engaging forms and record your submissions. Read more

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Cache Enabler – WordPress Cache Plugin Review

If a cookie falls on the ground for 5 seconds there’s a good chance I won’t pick it up and eat it (the condition of the floor is another matter altogether). The 5 second rule isn’t just for food. If a website takes longer than 5 seconds to load on a decent connection, than there’s a good chance I am going to bounce. We all know that website performance is important. It can make a big difference in UX as well as your bottom line. Faster loading times mean better SEO, a reduced bounce rate, increased ROI and a more responsive feel.

Fortunately it’s not hard to fix slow loading times. There are many different ways to tweak performance and get an edge. One way is to utilize HTTP caching. It’s one of the easiest ways to accelerate performance by reducing latency. HTTP caching is useful for web applications. Read more

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The Best Plugins to Create a Multilingual WordPress Website

According to the WordPress download counter, version 4.5 has been downloaded over 44 Million times by people all over the world! Since I typed the previous sentence the counter has gone up by at least 20 more. While all those downloads may not be active installs, it gives us a good idea of how many websites use WordPress.

You can make a multilingual website to reach more people. There’s no reason to limit your website to a single language. Multilingual plugins for WordPress can make it much easier to translate pages, posts and other sections with text on your website. This list has some of the most reliable and popular multilingual plugins for WordPress. Read more

Styling Contact Form 7 in WordPress

For most people creating a WordPress website, a contact form is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. An effective contact form doesn’t need to be fancy, it just needs to serve it’s purpose. As long as email is still around – contact forms are something that most websites should have. Displaying links to your social media accounts and an email address is fine, but contact forms make things even easier for people to contact you. You can use your contact list for lots of useful things like building marketing purposes, customer support issues and more.

If you decide to dive into WordPress without a whole lot of background knowledge (like I did), one of the first things you will end up fiddling with is a contact form plugin. Contact Form 7 has been downloaded over 6 million times! With over 1 million active installs, it is by far the most popular contact form plugin for WordPress. It works great and it is free. One of the best things about it is that you can use it to learn. Read more

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The Anatomy of a WordPress Theme

Using a WordPress theme is one of the fastest and easiest ways to get a high quality website. A good theme can allow you to implement all the latest design trends and get a site up the same day (5 minutes to install). Knowing the anatomy of a WordPress theme can help you get a better understanding of how a WordPress theme works.

The best thing about themes for many people is how simple and easy it makes your work. All you need is some basic knowledge to carry out complex tasks. There are many things a WordPress user can do without having any technical background at all. If you are looking for a theme, checkout out our WordPress Theme Repository. When you are theme shopping, make sure and choose a theme that has all the functionality you want built-in.  Read more

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20 Big Brands That Use WordPress to Power Their Website

In 2003 WordPress started out as a blogging platform built on PHP and MySQL to help bloggers do their thing. Back then, nobody could predict that it would become one of the most powerful CMS solutions on the planet.

I am not talking about The Chicago Manual of Style when I say CMS (also abbreviated as CMS), I mean a fully functional content management system. This list post contains 20 leading brands that use WordPress. You can check these sites out to get some ideas and what WordPress is capable of. Read more