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Introduction to Unit Testing for WordPress

While many of us have heard of unit testing, it’s not a big topic of discussion in the WordPress community. Yes, there are tests for WordPress core. Yes, many of the major plugins like WooCommerce have unit tests, but that doesn’t make it easy to jump on the unit testing train. 

While you can find lots of content about unit testing PHP applications, there aren’t many people talking about unit testing specifically for WordPress. There is precious little written about where to start for developers that are ready to increase their code quality and want to learn how to add tests to their work. Even worse, some of the tools for unit testing in WordPress don’t work as advertised, or are using older versions of PHPUnit. Problems you’ll have to discover on your own as you try to start testing.

That leaves many people who want to get started with testing on a multi-hour journey to get even the basic default tests running for their plugin.

Today we’re going to solve that problem by giving you an up-to-date look at how to start unit testing your WordPress code.

Things to Have Installed

Before we dive into unit testing, I’m going to assume you have Laravel Valet and WP CLI installed. I use these excellent directions from WP Beaches to install Valet, though I use the mysql instructions not the MariaDB ones. 

You can find the instructions to install WP CLI on the WP CLI site.

If you’re on Windows, you may have a bit of extra digging to do so you can run unit tests. The WordPress Handbook has some instructions on the extra steps you’ll need to take.

Install PHPUnit for WordPress on Laravel Valet

Our first step is to install PHPUnit. While PHPUnit is currently on the 9.x branch, WordPress only supports 7.5.x which means we’ll need to install this older version.

Open up the terminal and use these commands.

wget https://phar.phpunit.de/phpunit-7.5.9.phar

chmod +x phpunit-7.5.9.phar`

sudo mv phpunit-7.5.9.phar /usr/local/bin/phpunit

phpunit --version

The command above, download PHPUnit. Then we make the file executable so it can be run. Next, we use the sudo command to move the file to the proper location on our computer. Finally, we check for the version number, which should return 7.5.9 when we run the final command.

Now we’re ready to set up our plugin with WP CLI and take a look at our first tests.

Setting Up Our Plugin

We can make starting a plugin, and getting our unit test scaffold, easy with the WP CLI scaffold command. This command will create a plugin for us, and add all the files we need to have a foundation for our tests.

In the terminal, make sure you’re in the proper WordPress directory you want to use and then type wp scaffold nexcess-unit-tests. That should give you a folder structure that looks like this.

– bin

    – install-wp-tests.sh

– tests

    – bootstrap.php

    – test-sample.php

– .distignore

– .editorconfig

– .phpcs.xml.dist

– .travis.yml

– Gruntfile.js

– nexcess-unit-tests.php

– package.json

– phpunit.xml.dist

– readme.txt

If you want to build out the basics of a plugin but not include tests then you’d use the –skip-tests flag, which will skip the generation of test files. You can see all the options available for this command in the WP CLI documentation.

Depending on how your code editor and file system are set, you may not see the files that begin with a . because they’re considered hidden files. For our purposes today, they don’t matter so don’t worry about it if you don’t see them.

Now we need to hook our unit tests up to MySQL so that it can create dummy data for us to test against. Open up the wp-config.php file for your WordPress installation now because you’re going to need to find the db_user and db_pass for the next command.

To finish installing the tests change to your plugin directory and run the following command.

bin/install-wp-tests.sh <db-name> <db-user> <db-pass> localhost latest

Make sure you use a different db-name than your WordPress install. You don’t want your unit tests messing with your data, you want it creating its own test data in its own database. Otherwise, the db-user and db-pass will be the same as your wp-config.php file.

The final two parameters tell the testing framework to connect to localhost and to install the latest version of WordPress to test with. Unless you know better, just leave those settings as they are.

If we were to run phpunit now, we’d still have a few errors to resolve. First, for some reason WP CLI doesn’t add the name attribute to the <testsuite> block in the sample tests. Open phpunit.xml.dist and change <testsuite> to <testsuite name=”Unit Tests”> and save the file.

Also note here that inside the <testsuite> block PHPUnit is told to ignore the tests/test-sample.php file. Let’s duplicate that file and rename it to test-nexcess.php so that we have a file which will run. Then open the new file and change the class name to NexcessTest. The file should look like this now.

<?php

/**

 * Class NexcessTest

 *

 * @package Nexcess_Unit_Tests

 */

/**

 * Sample test case.

 */

class NexcessTest extends WP_UnitTestCase {

    /**

     * A single example test.

     */

    public function test_sample() {

        // Replace this with some actual testing code.

        $this->assertTrue( true );

    }

}

Now we’re ready to run phpunit from the terminal. Once you’ve done that you should see something like the image below.

Now that we’ve confirmed that PHPUnit is running our tests, let’s dive a little deeper and write a test to make sure that WordPress is adding users properly.

setUp and tearDown

Most unit tests will require specific data to be added to the testing database. Then you run your tests against this fake data. To do this you use the setUp and tearDown functions in your testing class.

Let’s create a user and then make sure that the user has the edit_posts capability. Add the following function to the top of your class.

   public function setUp(){

        // make a fake user

        $this->author = new WP_User( $this->factory->user->create( array( 'role' => 'editor' ) ) );

    }

Then add this tearDown function to the end of the class.

public function tearDown(){

        parent::tearDown();

        wp_delete_user($this->author->ID, true);

}

This adds a user with the role of editor before we run our tests, and then removes the user after we’ve run our tests.

Now let’s write a simple test to verify that the user was added properly and has the proper capabilities.

   public function testUser(){

        // make sure setUp user has the cap we want

        $user = get_user_by( 'id', $this->author->ID );

        $this->assertTrue( user_can( $user, 'edit_posts' ), 'The user does not have the edit_posts capability and they should not' );

        $this->assertFalse( user_can( $user, 'activate_plugins' ), 'The user can activate plugins and the should not be able to' );

    }

Above we start by getting the user object based on the fake user we created. We’ll need this object to test our capabilities which we do next with the assertTrue and assertFalse statements.

In this instance assertTrue is expecting that our user_can( $user, ‘edit_posts’ ) returns true. We’re testing to make sure that the user object provided is given the edit_posts capability, as an editor should have. If this were to return false, we’d see the message provided in our unit test output in the terminal.

Next, we test to make sure that the same user doesn’t have capabilities of an admin user. Here we use assertFalse while checking for the activate_plugins capability. This should return false because activate_plugins` is for the Admin role in WordPress not for Editors.

Once you have that code added after your setUp function, head to terminal and run phpunit. You should see 2 tests are okay, with 3 assertions.

PHPUnit considers our testUser function to be a test, and the assertTrue/assertFalse statements inside to be assertions.

What does that factory thing mean?

Before we finish here, let me draw your attention back to our setUp function. Specifically the factory section when we create a new user. 

When you use the WP CLI scaffold, it gives you access to the WP_UnitTest_Factory class. This class is there as a helper to create the data you’ll need to run your tests properly. You can use this factory to create posts, attachments, comments, users, terms, and some other things for WordPress Multisite.

This is not the only tool you can use to mimic WordPress for your tests though. In a future post we’ll look at WP_Mock to test parts of WordPress that the built-in factory doesn’t reach very well.

Today, we covered a fair bit of complex ground as we looked at unit testing your WordPress projects. I know when I started unit testing it looked daunting, but it’s worth it if you want code that works, and lets you know when you’ve broken something, so your customers don’t have to find the problem for you. Over the long-term, you’ll save time and headaches by writing testable code and aiming for decent test coverage in your projects.

Further Resources

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When is it time to leave Shared Hosting & upgrade to Managed WordPress?

One of the best things about shared hosting is the low monthly price. One of the worst things about shared hosting is the low monthly price. The reality that both statements are correct presents a constant challenge to customers who are slowly outgrowing their initial decision to use shared hosting. 

Before we start talking about when it makes sense to leave shared hosting and upgrade to a Managed WordPress solution, let’s highlight why so many people start off with shared hosting.

The 3 reasons people start with shared hosting

While there may be many reasons why people choose shared hosting for their first WordPress and WooCommerce sites, there are three that rise to the surface anytime you find yourself talking about hosting.

First, the low price can’t be beat. 

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you they’re looking for lower prices. This isn’t anything new. 

In the days before wireless phones, where people paid for phone lines, there was a constant desire to look for lower prices for both local and long distance calls. That’s partly because no one understood the complexity that was hidden from them. 

Hosting is very similar. Since everything technical has been abstracted away, it all seems easy and therefore, it shouldn’t cost that much. Shared hosting offers monthly hosting at prices lower than a complicated Starbucks order. 

Second, no one knows what resources they’ll eventually need. 

Another dynamic when it comes to hosting is that few people can predict how well their site will do (in terms of traffic) and how that relates to the resources they’ll need. 

This is similar to the challenge that homeowners face when considering solar panels. They’re often asked by professionals to evaluate how many kilowatts of energy they’ll consume in a day or month. Most of us have no idea because it’s a resource that we don’t measure directly or need to keep track of.

When it comes to hosting, it’s hard to know if you’ll need a lot of CPU or a little, whether you will see consistently high RAM utilization or whether it will peak at random intervals. When you don’t know, sometimes it’s just easier to buy an inexpensive plan to start with and see how it goes.

Third, most of us underestimate the need for advanced support. 

The third and final reason most people get their start with shared hosting is that they don’t place a high value on advanced support. If you’ve never hosted anything before, it’s especially easy to hope that everything will work out and you’ll never need to make a phone call.

Most customers of shared hosting assume that support will be there when they need it and rarely test to see if that’s actually true. Then, when they really need support, it’s somewhat shocking to discover that it doesn’t perform the way we assumed it would.

Signs that it’s time to shift to Managed WordPress Hosting

As you can imagine, the signs that it’s time to shift to managed hosting are the very reasons why someone may have chosen shared hosting to begin with:

Low prices create slow performance

Those low monthly prices are available because your website was placed on a shared infrastructure that houses thousands of other sites. The assumption is that you won’t get enough traffic to create a problem, and when you have a problem you won’t notice it. Often you’ll notice your site getting slower over time. That simply means the server your site is on is getting more and more packed. That’s what high density shared hosting is all about – packing the most sites on a set of servers. Slow performance is a sure sign that it’s time to think about making a move. 

Slow performance and connection errors require more resources

Even worse than a site that gets slower and slower over time is a site that stops loading or presents 502 errors (or 503, 504, etc.). Even if you don’t see these errors, your customers will. More importantly, your website will be “down” for those customers, which can impact your brand or revenue. These errors tell you that you need more server resources and likely a different configuration of your setup, but that isn’t available for $4/month.

Poor support experiences mean you need better expertise

The third way to figure out you need to shift from shared hosting to managed WordPress hosting is potentially the easiest one to spot. If you submit a ticket and the majority of the work is put back on your plate, you know it’s potentially time to make a change. Hosting companies that offer managed WordPress plans staff their support with experts who understand what you’re going thru and can help you. Shared hosting often doesn’t want you getting on the phone at all, redirects you to their knowledge base articles, and invites you to solve your own problem.

When is it time to make the move to Managed WordPress?

The answer to the question is rather simple – the time to make the move from shared hosting to Managed WordPress is whenever you experience any of the following:

  • A site that is so slow that customers leave before the page loads
  • A site that seems to consistently get slower, month over month
  • A site that gets connection errors / becomes unavailable for others
  • When support organizations want you to do most of the work yourself

When you experience any of these situations, you may want to check out Hostdedi Managed WordPress or WooCommerce hosting.

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Managed WordPress vs DIY vs cPanel: Which Is Best?



BACKUPS

  • cPanel: You can connect to cPanel’s backup tools, but know that it will save the files onto the source destination by default. This might be acceptable, but it should be noted that, in the unfortunate event that your server ever crashed, your backups would go along with it. 
  • DIY: To ensure you have proper backups, you’ll need to configure what you want backed up and when. This will involve continuously testing your backups, verifying them, and manually removing them so as not to overload your space. It’s a continuous and complex process, but it’s better than losing a backup before you really need it.
  • Managed WordPress: We take care of the boring and time-consuming work for you here, backing up every site on your account and removing old backups as needed. You can set up a daily schedule that suits your needs and run one-offs in between as desired. You can also rest easy knowing your backups are saved for 30 days on a separate server, eliminating risks and increasing security overall. 

PLUGINS AND CORE UPDATES

  • cPanel: cPanel offers the ability to install WordPress onto a website. The process involves downloading it, uploading it, and verifying it. It’s work for certain, but it gets the job done. Plugins can be added through the WordPress repo, but updates must be done on a manual basis, backing up the site (as previously mentioned), confirming the details, and agreeing to the update. Once it’s live, you can check your site to make sure everything worked as expected. 
  • DIY: There are many plugins and services that can assist with general updates, but nothing can automate the process for you for all. This leaves you in the driver’s seat to confirm updates for the many plugins you use on every WordPress site you manage. You’ll also need to spend some time after the updates to make sure everything still works right on your site — it’s not something that happens often, but plugin updates can adjust all sorts of functions and features you expect to be safe.
  • Managed WordPress: Nothing is left to chance with the managed approach. We run checks before any given plugin is automatically updated using our visual comparison tool, confirming your site will still look the same after the update as it did before. 

MANAGING MORE THAN ONE SITE

  • cPanel and DIY: Everything required for regular upkeep is done on a per-site basis. Multiple third-party tools are needed to simplify the process, which often comes with additional expenses and management tasks.
  • Managed WordPress: Every Managed WordPress account comes standard with iThemes Sync, giving you the ability to manage all of your sites in one beautiful dashboard at no additional cost. You’re also able to set up reporting and notifications as needed, tailored to your portfolio’s needs. 

CACHE + PERFORMANCE

  • cPanel: If you want to keep your individual sites running fast and smooth, you’ll need to investigate what plugins are available based on your specific capabilities. The best of these will not be free, but the alternative is too expensive. The management of these will all be on you, though some automation may be included with more premium options.
  • DIY: There are many things that require configuration and this will be necessary for every site you manage. All costs associated with the services employed are added to your monthly investment and obtaining support may be challenging, as each service is separate and solely focused on their product alone. The DIY hosting approach will also require regular tests and verifications, because setting these things up wrong is worse than not using any at all! 
  • Managed WordPress: From Varnish to Memcache to Redis and more, we take care of the licenses and support for you, preconfiguring all to help you run the fastest, most stable site possible. 

OVERALL CONTROL

There’s a common misconception that Managed WordPress is really just about giving up control to the host, but that couldn’t be further from the truth… 

In reality, you’re gaining MORE control! With more free time to focus on things that matter and access to SSH, phpMyAdmin, and your database, you can do everything you could with the DIY approach and more with Managed WordPress

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4 Best WordPress Page Builders for 2020

If you’re using WordPress, you already understand how important good page builders are. They allow you to take full control of page layouts, manage site elements as drag and drop modules, and even tweak the website’s header and footer. 

Without a good builder, you can only edit the rows and columns in the page body of your WordPress website and make minimal adjustments to its header and footer. 

With them, you can create great websites without any coding skills or design knowledge. Depending on your needs, this will either save you time or money. Let’s explain how. 

Normally it takes website developers hundreds of hours to learn the basics of website development, but with page builders, you can build a complete website from scratch in just a couple of hours.

Maybe you’re a small business owner and just want to hire someone to create a custom website for you? In that case, it’s good to know that great website builders can cost as low as $50. That’s quite a bargain since getting a custom small business website usually starts at $3,000, with many custom sites reaching $50k or more.

Taking all of this into account, it’s safe to conclude that WordPress page builder plugins are essential for creating custom designs and filling them with wonderfully styled content. For this article, we made sure to test and research all the popular WordPress page builders. Keep in mind, once you choose a page builder, you may want to stick with that one, since switching could cause pages to bread or slower speeds.

Read on to see our choices for the Top 4 page builders of 2020.

Beaver Builder

Features listed on the official website

Live Front End Editing, Shortcode and Widget Support, Mobile Friendly / Responsive, Developer Friendly, Translation Ready, Supports Posts, Pages, and Custom Post Types, WooCommerce Support, Hand Off Sites to Clients with Editor Mode, Tuned & Optimized for SEO, Multisite Capable, Reusable Templates, Save and Reuse Rows & Modules, Import/Export, and much more.

Pricing information

Beaver Builder comes with 3 pricing plans and they are: 

The Standard plan costs $99 one-time. It can be used on unlimited websites, and it includes all premium modules and templates.

The Pro plan costs $199 one-time and includes the same features as the Standard Plan, with the addition of the Beaver Builder Theme and multisite capability.

The Agency plan costs $399 one-time and includes all of the features of the Standard and Pro Plans, plus advanced multisite management and white labeling.

There is a free version available, and all three plans come with one year of support as well.

Embed video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCNDDQ7Jrs8

Divi Builder

Features listed on the official website

Drag & Drop Building, True Visual Editing, Custom CSS Control, Responsive Editing, Design Options Galore, Inline Text Editing, Save & Manage Your Designs, Global Elements & Styles, Undo, Redo, & Revisions, Multi-Select & Bulk Editing, Find & Replace Styles, Built-In Split-Testing, WooCommerce Modules, Global Website Styles, and much more.

Pricing information

Divi Builder, made by Elegant Themes, comes with just two pricing plans: 

  • Yearly Access
  • Lifetime Access

The Yearly Access plan costs $89/year and includes these features: Access to Divi, Extra, Bloom & Monarch, hundreds of website layouts, support, and it can be used on an unlimited number of websites. 

The Lifetime Access plan is priced at $249 one-time and includes the addition of lifetime updates and lifetime support. 

No free version is available, but there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Embed video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf2ay9YyHEE

Elementor

Features listed on the official website

Drag & Drop Editor, 300+ Designer Made Templates, 90+ Widgets, Responsive Editing, Popup Builder, Theme Builder, WooCommerce Builder, In-line Editing, Full Site Editor, Global Widget, Motion Effects, Global Custom CSS, Popup Builder, TypeKit Integration, 100% Responsive, 24/7 Premium Support, and much more. 

Pricing information

Elementor Pro offers three pricing plans: 

The Personal plan, which is priced at $49/year for one site, includes 50+ widgets, 300+ templates, Theme Builder, WooCommerce Builder, and one year of support. 

The Plus plan costs $99/year, comes with the same features as the Personal Plan, and allows you to use Elementor on 3 different websites.

The Expert plan costs $199/year, comes with the same features as the Personal Plan, and it can be used on 1,000 different websites.

There is a free plugin version available as well, and all paid plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Embed video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZlgNmbC-Cw

Thrive Architect

Features listed on the official website

Instant Drag & Drop Editing, Landing Page Templates, Pre-Built Conversion Elements, Ultra-Flexible Column Layouts, Total Font Customization, Style Every Detail, Perfect Mobile Experience, Mobile Responsive Editing, Dynamic Animations & Actions, Inline Text Editing, and much more.

Pricing information

Thrive Architect comes in three tiers:

  • Single License
  • 5 License Pack
  • Thrive Membership

The Single License plan costs $67 one-time and it’s intended for one website only. The 5 License Pack plan costs $97 one-time and, as the name says, it can be used on five websites.

The Thrive Membership plan costs $228/year for up to 25 websites and includes access to all plugins and themes from ThriveThemes.

All plans include 334 landing page templates and come with unlimited free updates and one year of support.

No free version is available, but there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Embed video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeNWi8TaeO8

Feature Comparison

It takes time and practice to learn which features you need. Some will be immediately obvious and fit your current need, but it’s good to plan for the future as well. 

Using the table below, you can quickly see what may be a great fit for your needs.

Beaver Builder Divi Builder Elementor Thrive Architect
Live demo YES YES NO NO
Free version YES NO YES NO
Pricing starts from $99 one-time $89/year $49/year $67 one-time
Website usage at this price Unlimited websites Unlimited websites 1 website 1 website
User friendly YES YES YES YES
In-line editing YES YES YES YES
Number of templates Not stated 1198 300+ 334
Product support 1 year While subscribed While subscribed 1 year
Updates Not stated While subscribed While subscribed Unlimited

Understanding Important Features

Having a cursory understanding of the lingo used across the page builders will go a long way to helping decide which you need, and which you can go without.

Responsive Editing means that the website you are building will automatically adjust itself for different devices and screen sizes. It also means that the builder includes additional options for customizing each version of the website separately.

Multisite is a feature that guarantees compatibility with WordPress Multisite and allows you to make changes to several websites from a single WordPress administration panel.

Live demos and free versions are very important because they allow you to test the builder before making an investment. Especially important for tight budgets.

Pricing per website should be considered if you think there is a reasonable chance you will need to use the builder to create several websites. Some of these builders come with a license that allows you to use them without any limits. 

User friendly means that the page builder is easy and quick to learn, doesn’t require specialized knowledge, and allows for a pleasant and intuitive workflow.

In-line Editing is a feature that allows you to add content like text to the live site in real time, without opening additional windows and moving away from the full-page preview. All of our recommendations include this feature, as we believe it is an essential part of a user-friendly workflow.

Templates are pre-built page layouts made from existing page builder elements. The more the better, since this allows you to quickly access dozens of page designs and just fill them with site content or tweak them to your heart’s desire.

Product support shouldn’t be underestimated when it comes to page builders. As you get familiar with a page builder, you will want to set some advanced settings like custom CSS, which might require a developer to get involved. This is where good support comes in, and helps you avoid additional expenses whenever possible.

Other Noteworthy Page Builder Mentions

Here are some other great page builders for WordPress that didn’t make our Top Four list:

  • Brizy
  • Themify Builder
  • Oxygen
  • Visual Composer
  • WPBakery Page Builder
  • SiteOrigin Page Builder

All of the above page builders are great candidates and we highly recommend checking them out as well.

Save Time and Money Using the Right Page Builder for You

Testing Page Builders and picking the one that works best for you can take some time, but there is an enormous return on investment.

We hope that this article will serve its purpose and save you the energy and money required to test out dozens of them. We made sure to highlight the important features so that you don’t settle for the wrong one. 

It is our firm belief that if you try out these four page builders in their paid form, you will get the best experience of features and overall satisfaction of use. This is the best way to find the one that fits you and to, finally, make an informed buying decision.

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A Beginners Guide to WordPress CSS

You want your WordPress website to look great on every device and for every visitor but your out-of-the-box WordPress theme only gets you about 90% of the way there.

There are still a few things you’re concerned about — things that CSS could help you fix.

This beginner’s guide to WordPress CSS will give you a walk-through on how to edit CSS in WordPress to help you build a more beautiful, intuitive, and better-performing website. Most CSS classes for WordPress would take you through these same steps.

An Introduction to WordPress Editing

When using WordPress, you can customize CSS using one of three different editors that the service provides. 

Visual Editor

The visual editor is a post and page edit feature of the platform. It has been described as WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). That means everything on the page, as you can see it, is exactly the way it will look to a website visitor.

This is an editor that will allow you to create content without coding. There is a toolbar at the top of the page that is similar to familiar programs like Microsoft Word. You can use the tools found there to alter your text and the appearance of the site. 

There is also an Add Media button which enables you to include images or videos in your post. WordPress plugin developers can also add buttons on your visual editor toolbar to help you create more features and styles for your live site. 

Drag-and-Drop Editor

A Drag-and-Drop Editor is one of the simplest ways to edit your site. It uses an elementary concept as the basis of its platform. You grab something, you pick it up, and you place it somewhere else. 

While drag-and-drop is not a standard WordPress feature, there are several editors that can be installed that will give you this easy-to-use editing platform. 

When using the Drag-and-Drop Editor, you can select an element of your site and drag it to a new location. You effectively drop the element in the desired location. If you’re unhappy with how that looks, you can start over again and move it somewhere else. 

Theme Editing

Theme editing refers to your ability to edit the theme or template of your WordPress website. 

There are two different kinds of themes that you would edit: Parent Theme and Child Theme. The Parent Theme is a full and complete WordPress theme, with all of the proper elements in place. A Child Theme has the look and feel of its Parent Theme, but it can be modified. 

The way you will edit your CSS WordPress theme differs based on which theme you’re using. Visual themes use the Visual Editor while drag-and-drop themes use the Drag-and-Drop Editor. 

For more on editing your WordPress theme, check out “Understanding the WordPress Theme Editor.”

What Does CSS Mean in WordPress?

Your WordPress website is built with a variety of languages including HTML, PHP, CSS, and MySQL. 

For now, we’re going to focus on HTML/CSS.

HTML acts as the content structure for your website (text, images and other media, hyperlinks, etc.) and CSS dictates how that content looks (e.g., colors, fonts, positioning of elements, margin, and padding). 

Let’s use a quick example. 

A simple line of text in HTML might use a <span> tag. But to change the visual characteristics you must use CSS. The <span> only defines the content, not how it should look. 

Here are some examples of visual properties we could change with CSS.

  • Font color
  • Font size
  • Font family
  • Background colors

Imagine it like a house. HTML represents the rooms, layout, and architecture. CSS represents the paint, choice of trim, and flooring. 

CSS gives the house its “look.” Every house has floors, rooms, and walls, but how you paint and arrange those floors, rooms, and walls is what makes the house uniquely yours. CSS can be used to add elements or take others away. You can hide page titles on WordPress with CSS.

Where Do I Find CSS in WordPress?

To find the CSS files for your WordPress theme, look under Appearance then select Editor and select the file marked style.css. 

From this window, you can edit the files directly and then Save

An Introduction to CSS Syntax and Selectors

CSS is comprised of style rules that are interpreted by the browser, and then applied to the elements of your document. 

The Parts of a Style Rule

  • Selector − A selector is an HTML tag at which a style will be applied. This could be any tag like <h1> or <table>.
  • Property − A property is a particular characteristic of an HTML tag that can be changed. An example of this might be “color” for text elements. 
  • Value − Values are assigned to properties. For example, color property can have value either red or #F1F1F1. View the complete Mozilla CSS reference to view all properties and possible values for each property.

Syntax

The syntax of CSS is a series of rules consisting of a selector and a declaration block. 

The selector block points the code toward an HTML element. The declaration block changes the property of that selector based on a series of values. 

selector { property: value }

To add more rules (as many as you want), it is standard practice to give each property, value, and declaration its own line. That would look something like

selector {
  property1: value;
  property2: value;
}

Selectors

There are many different selectors you can identify through syntax in order to change the properties of an HTML element. 

Some of them include:

  • Type selectors
  • Universal selectors
  • Descendant selectors
  • Class selectors
  • ID selectors
  • Child selectors
  • Attribute selectors

How Do I Use CSS in WordPress?

You can use CSS in WordPress to control

  • Color, size, and style of text,
  • Spacing between paragraphs and headers,
  • How images and other media look,
  • How your site looks on different screen sizes, and more. 

1. Control the Color, Size and Style of Text

First, you would want to decide on a HEX or an RGB color value that matches the color you want. You can use a free tool like Canva to see a number of different values for colors on the spectrum.

To target all paragraph tags (<p>) we need to write the CSS rule so that the selector targets those <p> elements.

p {
  color: value-will-go-here;
}

Let’s pick a nice red out from a color wheel. We’ll use #ea1520. 

That would mean the rule is

p {
  color: #ea1520;
}

And we’re good to go! 

Add that to your theme stylesheet (style.css) and all the <p> tags should be red once you reload the page.

Now, what if we also want to change the size and the font style adding elements like bold or italics? We just need to write rules for all of those properties on their own lines in the same target above. 

p {
  color: #ea1520;
  font-size: 26px;
  font-style: bold;
}

The documentation for the font-size and font-style CSS rules can be found on their appropriate documentation pages at developer.mozilla.org

2. Control Spacing Between Paragraphs, Headers, and More

The colors and sizes all look great — but what about the spacing? 

Is everything too cluttered? Or worse, is everything way too far apart and making the website hard for people to navigate?

This is where you want to embrace the use of the margin property. 

The margin is the space around an element, including the top, bottom, left and right. 

If you want more space between headings and the paragraph that comes after them, you would want to increase the bottom margin on that heading tag.

The Mozilla documentation for the margin property has an interactive example that lets you test several margin rules on a particular element to see how it reacts on the page. 

Once you understand the margin property well, let’s write a rule that adds margin-bottoms to every heading.

h3 {
  margin-bottom: 25px;
}

Now our H3 headings should have at least 25 pixels (px) of empty space below them for all screen sizes.

3. Control How Your Images Look

Through CSS you can affect the placement of your images along with the borders around them, how tall and wide they are, and more. 

Here are some examples of coding that you can use for the borders, scaling, and centering of your images.  

Border:
img {
  border: 1px solid #ddd;
  border-radius: 4px;
  padding: 5px;
  width: 150px;
}

<img src="http://blog.nexcess.net/paris.jpg" alt="Paris">

Image scaling:
img {
  max-width: 100%;
  height: auto;
}

Image centering:
img {
  display: block;
  margin-left: auto;
  margin-right: auto;
  width: 50%;
}

4. Control How Your Site Looks on Different Devices and Screen Sizes

You’re able to control the look of your site across various devices. That’s important in today’s climate with users accessing web content through their computers, cell phones, and tablets. 

Below is an example of CSS code that can rearrange your page for a device with a maximum page width of 480 pixels. 

@media only screen and (max-device-width: 480px) {
        div#wrapper {
            width: 400px;
        }

        div#header {
            background-image: url(media-queries-phone.jpg);
            height: 93px;
            position: relative;
        }

        div#header h1 {
            font-size: 140%;
        }

        #content {
            float: none;
            width: 100%;
        }

        #navigation {
            float:none;
            width: auto;
        }
    }

How Do I Edit CSS in WordPress?

You can edit CSS in WordPress manually via an FTP client or with the assistance of a plugin.

Adding CSS to WordPress Manually

In order to manually add CSS to WordPress, you’d have to be using a Child Theme which is more malleable than a Parent Theme and can be changed easily. Custom CSS that you add to a Child Theme will override the styles set down by the parent. 

Here’s how to add custom CSS to a Child Theme:

  • Use an FTP client like FileZilla to connect to the site. 
  • Locate the root folder. Usually, it’s called “www” or features your site’s name
  • Once there, navigate to the wp-content/themes directory where you’ll find folders for all of your themes. Select the Child Theme you set up. 
  • Right-click on the file and select View/Edit. The file will open with your text editor. 
  • Add your WordPress custom CSS directly to the theme. 
  • Save the changes and close the editor.

Adding CSS to WordPress With a Plugin

There are a number of plugins that you can use to add additional CSS to your WordPress site or defer unused CSS from WordPress. 

The Top 5 CSS Plugins for WordPress

  1. Yellow Pencil
  2. SiteOrigin CSS
  3. Simple CSS
  4. Theme Junkie Custom CSS
  5. Custom CSS Pro

Using any of these options, you’ll be able to gain access to the backend of your site and add your custom CSS WordPress code. Other plugins are able to complete advanced functions like optimize CSS delivery on WordPress using style.css files. 

In Conclusion

This walk-through to CSS for WordPress provides a simple guide for beginners much like early WordPress CSS classes would. 

With CSS, there’s always more to learn and more exciting ways you can use it. Our recommendation is to start small. For instance, make a simple change to your WordPress theme which defines the color of your footer’s background. If you find your WordPress CSS not updating, go back and re-read these sections to get a better handle on what went wrong. 

If you have any questions along the way, feel free to reach out to our CSS experts!

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WordCamps Are Going Virtual – Here’s What Happened at WordCamp Denver

If you’ve never been to a WordCamp before you’re missing the best part of the WordPress world. While the software is great – it’s the size and giving nature of the community that makes it special.

I sat down with my friend Nathan Ingram – who has been to 50-60 WordCamps – to discuss what virtual WordCamps are like, some of the advantages of WordCamps going virtual, some of the things to watch out for, and our best advice to get the most out of attending a WordCamp.

Maximize Your Screen Size

Virtual WordCamps are great but there’s a few things you might not expect. One of the first is what they actually look like. For WordCamp Denver, we tried to show the speaker, their title, and their slides. 

{{Droplr Link}}

All of this is great as long as you have a big enough screen to make sure their slides are legible.

Tip: make sure you watch virtual WordCamps on a laptop or desktop.

Attend the “Soft” Sessions

For WordCamp Denver we added a few “soft” sessions like yoga on Friday and How to Brew the Perfect Cup of Coffee Saturday morning.

While these aren’t strictly WordPress related, they’re a great way to connect with your community. The chat was very active during both sessions and people happily shared non-WordPress things with each other.

Tip: You’ll always have another email to answer. Instead, take the opportunity to connect with your community both before, after, and during the event.

Bookmark Your Favorite Sessions

For WordCamp Denver we had three tracks going on both days. There is always a ton of great content and you won’t be able to watch it all.

I’ll admit it – I’m lazy and if I don’t have to prepare for an event I won’t. But if you can spend even 10 minutes reviewing the schedule & speakers ahead of time, you should be able to find the sessions most relevant to you.

And since this is a virtual event you don’t have to go all day. You can conserve your energy and pop in for the sessions most relevant for you and then go back to regular work or life.

Tip: Bookmark your favorite sessions and schedule your day around them.

Ask Your Questions As They Come Up

One thing you might not realize is that there’s a 20-30 second delay between the speaker talking and you seeing the video on your end. That means it can be really hard to come up with good questions when the speaker asks.

Instead you can ask questions throughout the talk by dropping them in the chat. A moderator will collect them, prioritize them, and ask them at the end. This makes asking questions really efficient and you won’t forget a great question if you drop it in the chat immediately.

As a side benefit sometimes the attendees will answer your questions or help you elaborate. 

Tip: Ask questions as soon as they come up. It helps the dialogue in the chat & will make sure those questions won’t be forgotten.

Feel Free to Check Different Tracks

One thing that’s hard to do at a physical event is to switch tracks. I don’t want to step over someone, open doors, or maybe even step in front of the camera.

I kept three tabs open almost all day and had all three live streams running and I flipped back and forth muting & unmuting the different tracks. It let me hear a little bit from each speaker and then join the session that made the most sense for me.

Tip: You’re allowed to watch all of the tracks and pick your favorite. You won’t hurt any speakers’ feelings by switching tracks and you won’t disturb anyone – so do it!

Focus on One Or Two Changes

There’s a lot of really good sessions at a WordCamp and I think Nathan sums it up perfectly:

“WordCamps are like a firehose…”

People often leave WordCamps with notebooks full of ideas. But those exciting ideas can easily turn into procrastination because you don’t know where to start.

Tip: After you’ve finished watching a WordCamp, focus on implementing just 1 or 2 things. If you focus on 1 or 2 things you’ll be able to get them done.

Getting The Most out of a Virtual WordCamp

Virtual WordCamps are still sorting themselves out and the format will likely change as we move forward. While some things aren’t as easy to do as they were before – there are also a ton of benefits for virtual events.

With these tips we hope you can get the most out of the WordCamp near you!

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How Your WordPress Blog Can Benefit From Custom Taxonomies

When you think about blogging, it’s easy to pick a theme and immediately focus on creating content. Unfortunately, because the newest content is typically displayed first, as a blog post gets older, it slowly disappears into the archives—and very few people think about their blog archives.

Here’s the problem: Most of those older blog posts still have value! They are evergreen content that visitors would find helpful, it’s just hard to find them.

Lucky for us, WordPress has default taxonomies—categories and tags—that are used to classify and organize blog posts with relevant terms. Each category and tag creates an archive of all content assigned to it. This is how many websites organize their blog posts.

What is a taxonomy?

“Taxonomy” is just a fancy way of describing whichever system you use to organize and classify information. 

While categories and tags work great for most sites, if you’re a content creator, chances are, you can do better. You can create custom taxonomies in WordPress that use terms relevant to what your blog is about. For example, if you have a podcast, instead of using categories and tags to sort episodes, you might want to use taxonomies like guest, topic, industry, or type.

How does it work?

Clear taxonomies sort your content, create high-value archives, and improve site search results, especially when paired with solutions like Search WP or ElasticPress.

Here are a few examples to show you how it works:

Example 1: Recipe Blogs And Food Blogs

Food bloggers are a perfect use case for custom taxonomies, as they write about and share recipes for specific meal types, diet types, and ingredients. With custom taxonomies, instead of generic categories and tags, you can use classifications relevant to food-related content.

Three sample custom taxonomies for food bloggers would be:

  • Meals: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, dessert, drinks
  • Diets: vegetarian, vegan, pescatarian, dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, egg-free, keto, Whole30
  • Ingredients: eggs, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, sausage, cheddar cheese

Example 2: Travel Blogs

Travel sites can also benefit from custom taxonomies by using them to classify content with travel-specific terms. From city, state, county, and country, to types of trips like road trips or resort vacations, there are a plethora of classifications to choose from.

Three sample custom taxonomies for travel bloggers would be:

  • Activities: hiking, biking, camping, fishing, rock climbing, dining, beach combing
  • Places: restaurant, museum, national park, state park, beach, hotel, amusement park
  • Type: road trip, day trip, resort vacation, weekend getaway, week-long vacation

Example 3: Fashion Blogs

Like food blogs and travel blogs, another type of blog that should be using custom taxonomies are fashion blogs. From brands and retail stores, to pieces of clothing and accessories, fashion bloggers are already classifying their content. Custom taxonomies just make it even easier.

Four sample custom taxonomies for fashion bloggers would be:

  • Clothing: pants, blouse, tank top, maxi skirt, shorts, skirt, cocktail dress, sundress
  • Accessories: necklace, earrings, bracelet, handbag, hat, sunglasses
  • Brands: Prada, Old Navy, Forever 21, H&M, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Gucci, Express
  • Occasion: business, casual, cocktail, formal, on the town, athleisure, workout

Custom Taxonomies Classify Content With Relevant Terms

As you can see, categories and tags are perfectly fine general form of content classification, but when you leverage custom taxonomies, you can sort and organize your blog content with relevant tags that are specific to the content you are creating, which will in turn, improve your visitors’ on site experience and help them find the content they are looking for quickly.

If you publish new blog posts regularly and you have a good amount of traffic, you know that site speed and performance are critical to your long-term success and search engine rankings. With Hostdedi Managed WordPress hosting, your blog will run lightning fast so users & search robots can access your content quickly.

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What is WordCamp? – Hostdedi Blog

If you’ve never heard of  WordCamp before you might think it involves playing lots of Scrabble in tents in the woods. But WordCamps actually have nothing to do with camping & nothing specific to do with words or spelling.

A WordCamp is (in non-pandemic times) an in-person gathering of WordPress fans in a specific geographic region with the goal to learn more about WordPress.

Who is WordCamp For?

WordCamps are for anyone who wants to learn more about WordPress. You could be a blogger looking for the best ways to edit, schedule, and update your posts. Or you could be a plugin or theme developer seeking information on security, performance, and best practices. Or you could be interested in starting a business on WordPress – like someone who wants to start their own WooCommerce store.

In short: if you want to use WordPress, you can go to a WordCamp. There’s no secret handshake and no entry test. Just come to a WordCamp and mingle with fellow WordPress fans!

What Topics are Covered at WordCamps?

WordCamps truly cover anything and everything related to WordPress. If you want to browse some of the content yourself, you can check out WordPress.tv where most WordCamps upload their videos. But to give you just a taste, here are talks you might see at your local WordCamp:

Beginner Topics

Blogging / Writing / Content Marketing

Business

Development

Design

WordCamps are Locally Organized

Every WordCamp is a little different and can have a different focus. That’s because they’re locally organized by volunteers. Each local community will have a different focus. So your local WordCamp will focus on issues that matter in that community.

Meet Your Local Community

WordCamps also feature speakers from your local community. You won’t be learning from a plugin developer from New York City or San Francisco. You’ll be learning from someone who lives down the street.

That way, it’s much easier to reach out to them, partner with them, or even hire them. To share a personal story, I met Brian Richards at WordCamp Chicago in 2013. We kept in touch for years, shared advice back and forth, and in 2018 when the stars aligned, we launched a collaborative project called WooSesh which we’re still running today.

How Much Does It Cost To Attend WordCamp?

If you’ve been to other tech conferences you know they can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Tech conferences are great but incredibly expensive.

Something that sets WordCamps apart from other events is that it’s organized by volunteers and there’s no corporation trying to make a ton of money. That means they’re incredibly cheap for attendees. WordCamps are limited to $25 per day, so if you have a three day WordCamp the maximum it costs is $75.

One of my first technology conferences was three days and it cost $2,000! Clearly, you get incredible value from a WordCamp.

WordCamps in a Pandemic

Up until this point I’ve focused on what WordCamps are like in typical times, but we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, so WordCamps have become virtual.

Obviously, an online conference feels different. You don’t have those hallway chats like you do at an in-person event. But they’re also more flexible. You can view the schedule, and jump in for just a session or two if you like. 

And of course you don’t have to drive or reserve a hotel room. This means they’re a lot cheaper. And virtual WordCamps are entirely free.

That’s right – a big fat zero dollars.

Find Your Local WordCamp

Are you ready to try a WordCamp? You can find a schedule of WordCamps on the WordCamp Central website.

You can also try WordCamp Denver which is virtual (and free) June 26-27.

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Choosing the Best Free WordPress Popup Plugin for Your Site

WordPress popup plugins are a must for savvy website owners who want to catch visitors’ attention quickly. Fortunately, popup plugins are also cheap or even free for users to install on their sites. 

With the large selection of free WordPress popup plugins has to offer us, it can be hard to make the right choice. We’re here to spare you the frustration of testing every free WordPress plugin out there — use our list to simplify your research. 

What Is a WordPress Popup Plugin? 

A plugin adds functionality to your WordPress website. Popup plugins allow you to customize, deploy and manage plugins to help with your marketing. 

Many different software publishers have created their own popup plugins and made them available for direct download and installation to your site. 

How Can I Find the Best WordPress Popup Plugin Maker? 

To find the right popup plugin for you, think about how you’ll be using popups. Refer to the list below to learn more about some of the free popup plugins available for WordPress and decide on one to try out yourself. 

Sumo

Sumo

Grow your email list with the free Sumo popup plugin. Create timed plugins and view metrics for your popup’s performance from inside Sumo to see how well your marketing is doing and make adjustments. 

Sumo has a free version offering most of the tools you’ll need including access to all of the apps inside the platform (as long as your site has less than one million visits per month). If you’re interested in premium support, you’ll need to pay $20 or more a month for access, depending on your website traffic. Traffic beyond one million visits per month requires an enterprise account. 

For site owners who don’t necessarily want premium support and who still want advanced apps and analytics, the free Sumo plugin is tough to beat. 

Popup Maker

Popup Maker

Although it’s free, Popup Maker offers unlimited popups and includes user targeting via cookies and trigger conditions. This plugin provides startups with many of the same tools and tricks that many people would expect only large enterprise websites to have. For your business, it may give you a helpful edge against your competition. 

The $16 per month Extensions Bundle and $15 a month Individual Extensions accounts offer extras such as use on unlimited websites, advanced integrations with other helpful apps, and more. 

Mailchimp Popups

There are many different types of Mailchimp popup options, so we’ll review a few of the more common choices here. 

Mailchimp’s Own Popups

Mailchimp

From within the Mailchimp platform, you can create a popup form and have Mailchimp automatically install to your page or you can generate HTML code that you can paste into your WordPress page. Which option you choose may depend on whether or not you want to do this part yourself. 

MC4WP

MC4WP

MC4WP allows you to design your own forms and popups or link to existing forms on your site. This plugin gives you a variety of different options for how you use Mailchimp and WordPress together, giving sites more flexibility. You can create an unlimited number of forms and direct visitors anywhere on your site after they respond to your popup. 

MailChimp Forms by Optin Cat

MailChimp Forms by Optin Cat

Optin Cat has a free plugin that lets you create and use Mailchimp popups. You can use analytics with the free version, but the premium version allows you to unlock more design choices so you can customize your popup to your site. 

Icegram

Icegram

Icegram gives users a lot for free — unlimited campaigns, unlimited popups, and zero branding. This plugin does a lot more than create and manage popups. It has helpful templates and analytics tools to enable you to get the most from your popup marketing. 

From there, Icegram also offers you the tools to collect leads, essentially giving your site a light version of a CRM. For $97 a year, you can upgrade to the Pro version and get additional analytical tools and themes. 

GetSiteControl

GetSiteControl

A variety of different popup and widget styles are available with GetSiteControl, making it easy to find a format that will fit your website. 

To unlock the full features of GetSiteControl beyond a free trial, you’ll pay $9 and up per month, depending on your website traffic. Many features are available with all of the GetSiteControl plans — in contrast with other popular popup plugins which typically don’t include things like exit-intent popups and unlimited users. 

Optin Forms

Optin Forms

Create, customize, and design popups that integrate with popular email software such as Mailchimp, GetResponse and iContact. When you’re ready to post, create a shortcode or have the plugin post your popup form for you. 

The Optin Forms plugin is a good choice if you’re creating a popup to help you build your email subscriber list. It’s also completely free. 

Hustle

Hustle Plugin

Hustle is a versatile popup plugin that lets you collect leads, build your email list, and target popups to user intent. Even if your visitors are using ad-blocking software, Hustle has popups that can reach your customers.  

The Hustle plugin works without a hosting membership from Hustle’s developer, WPMU DEV, but a $49 a month membership unlocks full Hustle features and other apps and bonuses you may use with your website. 

Yeloni Exit Popup

Yeloni Exit Popup

Make widgets and exit popups while still keeping the user experience positive for your visitors. Yeloni has a lot of advanced features (with a low price tag) which let you use unlimited contacts and even receive support from the Yeloni team with the free version. 

Upgraded plans cost $10 a month and up, depending on the version you use and whether you need a license for a large number of sites. 

Layered Popups

Layered Popups

Layered Popups for WordPress lets you create animated, multi-layered popups. If you want to create exquisitely-designed animated popups or craft layered popups that are more a part of your site’s content than the usual ad or slider, Layered Popups may be for you. 

A standard license for the Layered Popups plugin is $21 and gets you access to design, popup creation, management, and analytics features. 

How to Use WordPress Popups in Your Marketing 

Popups in WordPress can have different uses, and with advanced user targeting, new uses for popups are developed by site owners all the time. Many websites use a popup to collect email addresses to build subscriber lists for newsletters and special offers, although use for email marketing is by no means the only way you can put popups to work. 

How to Build a WordPress Popup 

If you want to know how to add a simple WordPress popup to your website, then the tutorial or walkthrough for your plugin will likely have the answer for you. 

Generally, all you have to do for a simple popup is designate which inputs you need from users (such as name and email address) and which design choices fit your needs (like popup text, size, color, shading, graphics). These popup plugins are generally straightforward to use without advanced technical skills, making them ideal for WordPress beginners. 

Here are a few ideas for how to use your popup plugin more effectively. 

Contact Forms

Create contact forms for your website that allow visitors to quickly get in touch with you. These popups forward user information directly to your email so you have a stream of new leads when you’re ready for them. 

They work best if you give people an incentive to get in touch — a newsletter, free offer, digital download, discount code, or another carrot to encourage them to hand over their information and request contact from you.

Email Lists

As you build your business, you’ll probably also be putting your email newsletter or email list together. Including a popup on your site for this purpose makes it easier to start collecting opt-in subscribers to your list. 

You could connect this popup to user tracking and exit intent rules, allowing your site to present this popup at precisely the right time. 

A/B Testing 

As you develop your marketing strategy with popups, you can use a/b testing to compare the results of different popup designs and copy combinations. Many popup plugins include the ability to test two different popups with the same target demographic. This helps you make a clear decision and have an obvious winner. 

For instance, let’s say your two popups say “Contact Us Today” and “Let Us Help You.” Which one gets a better response? Run them both and find out. Then, pick the best one and run it full time. Keep testing new designs this way and you’ll learn more about your website visitors and what really makes them tick. Change up design, rewrite copy, use different offers, etc. until you get the results you want. 

Is Your WordPress Popup Working? 

With analytics, you’ll know very soon. Be sure to keep your WordPress popup plugin working properly by updating it whenever the developer releases a new version. Review the built-in analytics with your software to determine if your popups are resonating with your audience. 

Compare data with traffic and other website analytics, and you’ll be ready to start troubleshooting trends or fine-tuning your popups to get better results. The important thing is to see this as a continuous improvement project. Test, refine, and keep going.

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The Basics of WordPress Automation Marketing

Have you ever felt stressed about the amount of time that tedious, repetitive marketing tasks require every single day? Trust me, you’re not alone. 

Today, we want to give you the gift of two magical words: marketing automation. Whether you run a basic WordPress site or a full-fledged online brand, marketing automation will help streamline your marketing efforts and free up your time for other important tasks. 

And once you know how it works, you may actually believe it’s magic!

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation executes marketing campaigns across numerous sales channels with no action needed by a marketer. In practice, it accomplishes two things.

  • It lets you unload repetitive tasks that usually fall under your marketing purview.
  • It lets you maximize your marketing efficiency.

What Is Marketing Automation Primarily Used For?

Marketing automation has three main uses: sales, workflow optimization, and marketing intelligence.

Sales

Sales is the most important use for marketing automation. With an automated campaign, you can engage (or re-engage) leads passively. Meanwhile, you’re capturing sales that might otherwise have fallen through the cracks. So marketing automation is a tool to boost sales as well as your return on marketing investment.

Workflow Automation

Marketing takes a lot of your time and energy. But with marketing automation, you can streamline your marketing efforts so that things like budgeting, digital asset management, and other marketing tasks can run independently. Then you can put the time you’ve saved into other aspects of your business.

Marketing Intelligence

Automated campaigns often rely on customer ID numbers and URL tracking codes to monitor a customer’s conversion journey. Additionally, most automated campaigns are trigger-based, meaning your marketing materials are delivered after a customer meets a certain behavioral trigger. When combined with A/B testing, automated marketing campaigns can tell you a lot about how customers and leads are engaging with your brand and inform new marketing campaigns. 

What Is an Automated Campaign?

An automated campaign is a trigger-based marketing campaign built with a marketing automation tool. An example would be an automated email campaign that sends an email to a subscriber when new content similar to content they’ve already read or shown interest in is published.

There are several different automated campaigns with common ones being email, social media, and live chat.

What Do Marketing Automation Tools Do?

Marketing automation tools are meant to offload some of the more repetitive and tedious aspects of marketing. Every tool has its own function, or set of functions, depending on what the tool was designed to do. For instance, Mailchimp and Drip are marketing automation tools for email, allowing you to set up automated email marketing campaigns. Similarly, Buffer is an automated marketing tool for social media, giving you the ability to schedule social posts and monitor their engagement data.

What Is the Best Marketing Automation Tool?

The best marketing automation tool is the one that addresses your most critical marketing challenges. So let’s go over some of the most useful tools for the key aspects of marketing automation.

WordPress Marketing Automation Tools for Email

Marketing automation can be particularly useful when you have a mailing list, subscriber list, or if you frequently send emails to your customers. With email marketing automation, you can more effectively generate and warm leads for your website or business.

Drip Marketing Automation Plugin

Drip Marketing Automation Plugin

Offering a highly popular plugin, Drip was conceived as a comprehensive eCommerce customer relationship management platform. However, the Drip Marketing Automation Plugin is focused primarily on automating your email marketing campaigns. The plugin can be used for free with up to 100 subscribers, after which you’ll need a Drip subscription starting at $49 per month for unlimited emails and up to 2,500 subscribers. The platform for notable for the in-depth customer data it collects and analyzes.

MailChimp for WordPress

Mailchimp for WordPress

Mailchimp can help you build your audience and automate marketing without needing a plugin. But with a third-party plugin like MC4WP, you can more easily take advantage of Mailchimp’s more diverse features and integrations. For instance, with the MC4WP plugin, you can integrate Mailchimp with such tools as Ninja Forms, BuddyPress, and WooCommerce. Mailchimp itself is free to use, although some features (email templates, A/B testing, etc.) require a subscription starting at $9 per month.

Groundhogg

Groundhogg

As an all-in-one WordPress and eCommerce marketing automation platform, Groundhogg lets you craft compelling emails without leaving your WordPress dashboard. It also lets you build automated customer journeys just as you would with an expensive analytics tool. Using custom combinations of 18 different Groundhogg actions, you can convert leads more efficiently. With plenty of add-ons and integrations, Groundhogg’s core features are free although a Groundhogg subscription starting at $7 per year, is necessary for certain integrations.

WPMktgEngine

WPMktgEngine

WPMktgEngine is half email marketing automation tool and half customer relationship management platform. It excels at both, and offers tons of configuration options for your automated email triggers. Meanwhile, the plugin continuously collects customer data to provide you with an in-depth understanding of what’s driving conversion. It even lets you craft engaging emails from your WordPress dashboard. WPMktgEngine requires a subscription that starts at $44 per month (paid annually) for up to 2,500 leads.

WordPress Marketing Automation Tools for Live Chat

Traditionally, live chat tools require someone to be actively monitoring incoming messages. But a live chat marketing automation can help mitigate those shortcomings while directly your audience in real time.

HelpCrunch

Helpcrunch

Though billed as a comprehensive sales and customer support platform, HelpCrunch’s standout feature is its live chat widget. You add the chat widget to your site, and then HelpCrunch routes messages from customers to the corresponding messaging app so you can respond anytime, anywhere. A feature called AutoPilot ensures that when you’re unavailable, a bot will respond to your leads, collecting their contact info for a follow-up. To use the live chat feature, you need a HelpCrunch subscription which starts at $15 per month per team member.

Jumplead Marketing Software

Jumplead Marketing Software

Jumplead is a live chat service with a WordPress plugin that is well suited to WordPress marketing automation. It shows you who is on your site so you can engage them directly. The plugin also collects contact information so that those you chat with can be integrated with your mailing list and other marketing efforts. After a 14-day free trial, a Jumplead subscription starts at $49 per month for up to 3,000 monthly visitors and up to 2,000 contacts.

Marketing Automation Tools for Social Media

Building an audience on social media requires a large investment of time and energy. Social media marketing automation is a way for you to get the most out of that investment by automating social shares, re-shares, and other related capabilities.

Buffer

Buffer

The purpose of Buffer is to reduce time spent sharing content on social media. Automatically add new posts to your Buffer queue using the Buffer-recommended third-party WordPress plugin, or by using Zapier to connect the two platforms directly. With a free Buffer account, you can automate up to 10 posts between up to three social accounts per month. If you need more social accounts and posts, Buffer subscriptions start at $15 per month for eight social accounts and up to 100 posts.

IFTTT

IFTTT

Even though it doesn’t connect to WordPress, IFTTT provides a ton of useful applets with which you can set up triggerable events between different platforms. It even offers a collection of applets for marketing. With IFTTT, you can make sure the profile photo for each of your social media accounts is the same across, document all your Instagram posts in a Google Sheets spreadsheet, and track tweets using a specific hashtag. It’s a lot of power in a tool that’s completely free to use.

Revive Old Post

Revive Old Post

Revive Social offers two great plugins for lead generation, one of which is Revive Old Post. The purpose of the plugin is to periodically re-share existing content on social media so that it continues to drive traffic to your site. Besides periodically re-sharing existing content, you can also set it to share your content immediately after publishing on up to 50 different social accounts. Revive Old Post requires an annual subscription that starts at $75 for a single site.

Is Marketing Automation Right for Your Site?

Whether we’re talking about the investment of your own time or a paid employee’s time, marketing can quickly become quite expensive. Especially when you’re looking to grow or scale your business. As the saying goes, time is money. 

With marketing automation, you gain back some of the expense of marketing while maximizing your return on investment.

Make Hostdedi Your Partner for WordPress Marketing Automation

Hostdedi can help you build a fast, efficient, successful website with our Managed WordPress hosting & Managed WooCommerce hosting.

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