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How to Add Google Analytics to your WordPress Site

Now that you have your WordPress site up and running, it’s time to start pulling in data that can show you how your visitors interact with your website. In this post we’re going to show you the easiest ways to add the most popular (and free!) website analytics tracking to your website: Google Analytics.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free website tracking service that reports website traffic, conversions, user behavior, and more. It is the most popular website tracking service available.

Google Analytics can show you how much traffic your website receives, where that traffic is coming from, and how visitors interact with your site once they arrive.

You can also export Google Analytics data in various formats or build your own custom “Dashboard” that easily provides and updates the data you want to see.

Why are Website Analytics Important?

What is the primary goal of your website? Maybe your goal is to blog about your passion, launch a small eCommerce business, or just have a space where your friends can come together online.

Whatever your reason for creating a WordPress website, understanding your site’s visitors is crucial. You need to know if people are visiting, where they came from, and what content on your website they enjoy. Without this information, you have no way to measure whether or not the content you’re creating is moving you closer to achieving your goals.

One of the best features of Google Analytics is the fact that it’s free. Even if you are not remotely interested in learning how visitors interact with your website, it’s still easy to implement this tracking and start gathering data quietly in the background, all for free!

Who knows? One day you may look at your analytics data and realize that your visitors frequently visit a page on your site you did not expect them to. That could lead to ideas for new content or copy on your website.

How Does Google Analytics Work?

Implementing Google Analytics involves adding a small snippet of Javascript code to your site that gathers data on how your site is performing, then saves that data to your Google Analytics dashboard. Every time a person lands on your site in their web browser, they are tagged by the tracking code and their “session” on your website begins.

The tracking code (when properly implemented) should be on every page of your website for which you’d like to gather traffic data. This insures that the tracking can follow every website visitor as they move through your site.

Some of the most helpful data provided by this tracking is:

  • Sessions: The number of individual visitors your website receives.
  • Pageviews: The number of individual pages a visitor goes to on your site.
  • Traffic Source: Where your site visitors came from: a Google search, a paid Google ad, another website, directly to your site, a social media network, etc.
  • Bounce Rate: A measure of how many visitors came to one page on your site and then immediately left.
  • Session Duration and Pages per Session: Measurements of how long a person stayed on your site and how many pages they visited during their session.
  • Goals, or “Conversions”: These are a measure of how many people completed an action on your site, as stipulated by you. For example, if you have a contact form, you could measure how many people filled out and submitted that form, where they came from, etc.

Let’s get started by installing Google Analytics on your WordPress website!

How to Install Google Analytics on your Site

Step 1: Create a Google Analytics Account

  1. The first thing you need in order to add Google Analytics to your website is a Google account. If you don’t already have one, you can create an account here.
  2. Once your account is ready, log into: https://analytics.google.com
  3. Finally, you’ll be prompted to sign up for Google Analytics. Follow the remaining few steps to set up your analytics account.

    Google Analytics Signup

Once you’ve created your Google Analytics account, you’re ready to connect your WordPress site!

Step 2: Connect your WordPress Site to Google Analytics

The next step is to add the Google Analytics tracking code to your WordPress site. Google provides a snippet of code you can add to your site, but that involves editing your site’s code, which can be overwhelming and confusing. So instead, we’re going to focus on a much easier method that doesn’t involve touching code!

In this article, we’ll show you how to set up the MonsterInsights Plugin. With over 2 million active installs, MonsterInsights is the #1 most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, and the #14 most popular WordPress plugin of all time!

Here’s how to set up the MonsterInsights plugin and start tracking your traffic immediately:

  1. To get started, first download the MonsterInsights plugin from their website. There are several purchase options from which to choose, and even a stripped-down free version, if you prefer.

    Download MonsterInsights
  2. Next, install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. (Here’s a refresher on how to install WordPress plugins.)
  3. Then, navigate to the “Settings” panel under the new “Insights” menu, and click the button to “Authenticate with your Google account”.

    Authenticate with your Google Account ion MonsterInsights

  4. If you’re not already logged into your Google account, you’ll be prompted to sign in again. Then, you’ll be asked to allow MonsterInsights to connect your Google Analytics account:

    MonsterInsights Permissions

  5. Finally, you’ll be asked to pick a profile with which to connect your site. From the drop-down menu that appears, choose “All Web Site Data” beneath the website that corresponds to the site you’re connecting, then click the button to “Complete Authentication”.

    MonsterInsights Pick a Google Analytics Profile

  6. That’s it! Your site is now successfully tracking your visitor data, and you should begin seeing tracking data appear within the “Reports” section of MonsterInsights within 12-24 hours.

What it Looks Like in Action

When you return to the “Reports” page in MonsterInsights, you’ll find beautiful charts and graphs representing the most useful information about your website traffic. The two primary tabs contain graphs representing your Sessions and Pageviews. And below those charts you’ll find even more detailed information about website traffic… right within your own WordPress dashboard:

MonsterInsights Google Analytics Reports

Click to view a full-length screenshot of MonsterInsights Reports in action.

The menu at the top allows you to navigate between the different data sections, including detailed metrics on the top 50 Google search terms, eCommerce conversions and much more.

Here are a few sections you’ll want to monitor regularly:

  • Sessions: How many unique sessions on your site each day? Can you find weekly or monthly traffic patterns? This can help you learn when to publish new content for maximum visibility.
  • Pageviews: When a person visits your site, how many pages are they viewing per session? If they only view one page per session, you likely have a high bounce rate. What changes can you make to encourage visitors to stick around longer?
  • New vs. Returning Visitors: What percentage of people are visiting your site for the first time, versus repeat visitors?
  • Device Breakdown: Do people visit your site most often from their desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or mobile device? This can help you optimize your site design for the best experience, depending on which device your audience prefers.
  • Referrals: What other websites are linking to your site and sending visitors your way? Can you reach out to them?
  • Search Console Report: Find the top 50 search terms your visitors used to find your site in Google. This can help you optimize your content for better discovery in search engines.

MonsterInsights makes it really easy to view your most recent traffic data at a glance, but you can also click the links at the bottom of any section to visit your Google Analytics dashboard, where you’ll find even more detailed statistics.

Wrapping Up

Google Analytics is by far the most powerful free analytics service available. It can help you learn more about your audience — which country your visitors are from, what they’re most interested in, which device they prefer to use, their age, gender, and a whole lot more.

This data can help you reach your audience more effectively and make better decisions to grow your business. And MonsterInsights makes it a breeze to properly connect your WordPress site with Google Analytics, so you can get the stats that matter… right inside your WordPress dashboard!

Learn More about MonsterInsights

Happy tracking!

What’s New In WordPress 4.5?

WordPress 4.5 was released on April 12, 2016, and contains only a few user-facing improvements to the Customizer and inline linking functionality. Still, these updates make WordPress even stronger from a branding and mobile usage standpoint.

This release is code-named “Coleman” in honor of jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. 277 individuals contributed to this release.

New Features In WordPress 4.5

Here’s a breakdown of the new features that are going to mean the most to you in version 4.5…

New Inline Link Editor

The link functionality in the visual editor has come a long way over the last couple of years. Up until version 4.5 the most exciting addition was search functionality and some linking options.

To create a link in the current version of WordPress you first highlight the text, click the “Insert/Edit Link” button and then the editor pops up.

current wp link editor

The current link editor.

With version 4.5, the link editor has become much simpler. Rather than the link editor menu popping up immediately once you press the “Insert/Edit Link” button, you now have a single field where you can type in a page/post title and add your link. You can even type in a specific URL you want to link to, right in that same field.

How To Use The New Inline Link Editor

WordPress 4.5 Inline LinksHere are the basic steps to for using the new inline link editor in WordPress 4.5:

  1. Highlight the text you want to make the link.
  2. Click the “Insert/Edit Link” button.
  3. Type in the page/post title (or as much as you know of it) you want to link to.
  4. Select the page/post title you want to link to.
  5. Click the blue carriage return button to add the link.

Still need to specify options like “Open in a new tab”? You can now click the gear icon to get the familiar link editor settings to appear.WordPress 4.5 Inline Link Settings

Adding a link to any post or page has now become easier than ever!

Theme Logo Support In The Customizer

The Customizer has continued to grow in WordPress 4.5 with the addition of Theme Logo Support.

This new feature will allow you to easily choose a logo that will appear above your site title and tagline, or replace the site title and tagline if you choose not to have them.

This functionality was actually part of the Jetpack plugin but is now being added to the WordPress core, which means you will be able to have more control over your website logo than ever before.

How To Use The New Theme Logo Support In The Customizer

Using the new theme logo support could not be more easy thanks to the Customizer. Here are the steps to add a site logo to your theme:

1. Go to the Appearance menu and select “Customize”.
customizer

2. Once in the Customizer, select “Site Identity”.

Go to Site Identity in WordPress

3.  You will immediately see the option to add a logo image to your site.

Customizer Theme Logo Support

 

4. Once you’ve uploaded your logo, you will be given options to remove or change it, and you will also see it appear in real-time on your website preview.

Customizer logo options and real time

Keep in mind that, though there are no image size requirements for the logo, you are going to want to make sure your logo image is large enough to remain crisp and not pixelated.

New Responsive View Options In The Customizer

With the number of mobile-only internet users exceeding the number of desktop-only internet users, ensuring your WordPress website is mobile and tablet-friendly should be a top priority.

The new responsive view options feature allows you to see a preview of what your site will look like on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices.

How To Use The Responsive View Options

Using this new feature could not be easier.

1. Once in the Customizer, simply go to “Site Identity”.

Go to Site Identity in WordPress

 

2. Look at the bottom of the left sidebar to find the responsive view options. Then just click on the device type you want to preview. You can choose from…

Desktop View:

responsive desktop

Desktop view.

Tablet View:

responsive tablet

Tablet view.

Mobile View:

Mobile view.

Mobile view.

The new responsive view feature gives you a better sense of what your site and content is going to look like after you change elements using the Customizer. This way, you can determine what logos, colors, or widgets will look best on every device before you hit “Save & Publish”.

Other Changes Under The Hood…

As with every WordPress update, there are other minor improvements, features, and bug fixes that are included in WordPress 4.5. These include:

Additional Editor Shortcuts – Includes a few new shortcuts, like `code` for code, **bold** for bold, or ––– to insert a horizontal rule.

Comment Moderation Improvements – An enhanced experience when moderating comments, including preview with rendered formatting.

Optimization Of Image Generation – Image sizes are generated more efficiently and remove unneeded meta, while still including color profiles in Imagick, for reduced sizes of up to 50% with near identical visual quality.

Selective Refresh – A comprehensive framework for rendering parts of the customizer preview in real time. Theme and plugin authors should test their widgets specifically for compatibility with selective refresh, and note that it may ultimately be opt-in for 4.5.

Backbone And Underscore Updated To Latest Versions – Backbone is upgraded from 1.1.2 to 1.2.3 and Underscore is upgraded from 1.6.0 to 1.8.3. See the this post for important changes.

Embed Templates – Embed templates were split into parts and can now be directly overridden by themes via the template hierarchy.

New WP_Site Class – More object-oriented approach for managing sites in Multisite

Script Loader – Introduces wp_add_inline_script() for including inline JavaScript just like wp_add_inline_style() works for CSS, and better support for script header/footer dependencies.

All WP101 Videos up to Date for WordPress 4.5!

As with every release of WordPress since version 2.7 in 2008, all WP101 videos have been updated in time for the release of WordPress version 4.5 thanks to our development phase access. Now you can be sure you are learning about the most up to date version of WordPress available!

Check Out The New WordPress 4.5 Videos

Hint: Parts 13 and 14 highlight the new features!

Video Overview of What’s New…

Happy Learning!

WPForms: The Easiest Way to Add a Contact Form to Your WordPress Website

One of the most common questions we get asked here at WP101 is how to easily add a simple contact form to a WordPress website. Despite WordPress being one of the easiest ways to build a website, adding a contact form has always proven to be a challenge to beginners and a hassle for WordPress professionals.

Until now. ?

wpforms drag and dropWPForms is a brand new plugin that provides simply the easiest way to add a contact form to your WordPress website.

We took the new WPForms plugin for a spin and now we’re going to show you why, as a WordPress beginner or even a WordPress professional, you need to install it immediately.

Why Create Another Contact Form Plugin?

There are currently over one thousand contact form plugins in the WordPress plugin repository. So, why create yet another contact form plugin in what is apparently such a saturated market?

Syed Balkhi, the creator of the plugin, explains:

My inspiration for WPForms was to create the most beginner-friendly WordPress contact form plugin in the market. A plugin that’s EASY for beginners, marketers, and business owners who are not tech savvy. A plugin that I can recommend to churches, non-profits, and startups who don’t necessarily have a budget to afford a premium plugin. WPForms Lite is 100% free and has all the basic features that you need.”

Syed runs WPBeginner.com, so he comes face to face with the challenges and confusion WordPress beginners experience when it comes to contact forms.

Syed and his development partner, Jared Atchison, decided to focus on this common WordPress user pain point and set out to develop WPForms.

What Sets WPForms Apart From the Other Popular Contact Form Plugins?

Put simply, WPForms has all the functionality you need in a contact form plugin and is easy to use. That is what sets it apart.

Currently the most popular contact form plugins are Contact Form 7, the “Contact Form” tool within the Jetpack plugin, and the Gravity Forms plugin. While each has their benefits, they all lack the flexibility and usability that WPForms offers.

For example, the Contact Form 7 plugin advertises that it is “Simple but flexible”. Yet creating a form using its interface is anything but for a WordPress beginner:

contact form 7 interface

The starting point for a creating a new form in Contact Form 7. If you were new to WordPress, would this look simple?

As for Jetpack, the difficulty with using the plugin is that you have to connect your site to WordPress.com and configure whether you want to use all of Jetpack’s other 25 features or not. Once all of that setup is complete, the Jetpack Contact Form itself is light on features and functionality.

Gravity Forms is the most popular paid contact form plugin on the market and is well known for its flexibility and amazing amount of features. However it is definitely a developer-focused contact form plugin and lacks the intuitiveness and ease-of-use that WPForms offers.

The WPForms Difference

It’s important to note that there are two versions of the WPForms plugin: A paid version and the free “Lite” version.

The following are just some of the features we found available in both the free and paid versions that set WPForms apart from other popular contact form plugins:

  • Pre-Built Form Templates: The plugin comes complete with five pre-made form templates that are ready to use immediately, including a Simple Contact Form, Request A Quote Form, Donation Form, Billing/Order Form, and a Newsletter Signup Form.

wpforms templates

  • Drag & Drop Form Builder: That’s right. Build any kind of form you like without even seeing a line of code. Just click on the field you want to add from the field selection and drag it into your new form.

wpforms-drag-and-drop

  • Edit Fields With Ease: Change field labels and formats to make your form look exactly how you want it to.

wpforms edit fields

  • Simple Settings: It is ridiculously simple to set up where form notifications are sent to, what those notifications will say, and what type of confirmation a user will see once they submit a form.

wpforms settings

  • The Most Simple Form Integration Ever: This is usually the most complicated part of a contact form plugin, but we found that WPForms makes it dead simple:
    • Once you’re done building your form and save it, you are given a unique shortcode for your form.

    wpforms-shortcode

    • Simply copy and paste it into the page or widget of your choice.

    wpforms paste shortcode

    • And your form is now live!

    wpforms contact form

  • Every Field You Need: Radio buttons, dropdown menus, file upload options, address/phone fields, checkboxes, payment fields, etc. Every field you need for your forms is available.
  • Smart Conditional Logic: You can choose to show or hide fields in your forms based on how users answer previous fields.
  • Mobile-Ready, SEO Friendly, and Fast: All forms, whether you create your own or use a template, are 100% responsive, meaning they work on mobile, tablets & desktop. Plus, they conform to SEO best practices and work lightning-fast.

No other contact form plugin provides the same level of features combined with an easy to use interface for building your forms.

Check out the full list of features in the paid version of WPForms on their website below.

WP101 Members Get 20% Off Any Plan With Coupon Code: WP101

Head over to WPForms.com now and enter the code “WP101” for 20% off any paid plan. That’s a savings of up to $68 off a lifetime plan!

Get 20% Off WPForms Now!

How to Use the WordPress 101 Videos to Train Your Clients

Our WordPress 101 videos are simply the best way to learn WordPress, but did you know they can also be used to teach your own clients WordPress?

In this post, we’ll show you how just easy it is to use our growing library of professionally-produced WordPress tutorial videos to provide more value to your clients.

Three Ways to Use the WP101 Videos

WP101.com

  • Perfect for beginners!
  • Watch videos on WP101.com
  • Members-only Q&A Forum
  • Monthly or Annual Subscription

Learn More

WP101 Plugin

  • For WordPress professionals.
  • Install on unlimited client sites.
  • Videos in client’s dashboard.
  • Annual Subscription

Learn More

Embed Our Videos

  • For WordPress support sites.
  • Embed our video files.
  • 31 WordPress 101 videos.
  • White-labeled Videos

Learn More

What Makes WP101 Different?

Effective training videos are easy to understand, and communicate clearly from start to finish, not only explaining HOW to accomplish a task, but WHY the steps are important. The best training videos also show careful attention to detail and add value throughout. Good content is not enough if the audio quality is poor or if the presenter is hard to follow.

WP101 videos have been widely praised as the “gold standard” in WordPress training, and here are some reasons why:

  • Professional audio and video production. Crisp, clear sound and visuals.
  • Meticulously scripted. No awkward pauses, ‘uhs’ or ‘ums’ here.
  • Regularly updated with every major WordPress update since 2008!
  • Closed-captioned to ensure equal access to WordPress training.
  • Additional video training for WooCommerce, Jetpack, Yoast SEO, and more.

The high production quality of WP101 videos means you can provide solid WordPress training to your clients without sacrificing the integrity of your own brand.

Three Options for Providing WP101 Videos to Your Clients

It is easy to make our WordPress training videos available to your clients so they can learn WordPress at their own pace. Below are the three options we offer.

1. Purchase a membership to WP101 and gift it to your client.

This is as simple as it gets. You can easily purchase a membership for your client and then provide them with the login details. This allows them to learn at their leisure. Includes 200+ videos, across our growing course library:

  • WordPress 101 for Gutenberg: Includes our most up-to-date, 35-part video series, plus access to the members-only Q&A Forum.
  • WordPress 101 for Classic Editor: Our original, 20-part video series for the Classic Editor in WordPress 4.9 and older.
  • Beaver Builder Course: A 13-part video course for the popular page builder plugin, by WordPress educator, Carrie Dils.
  • Jetpack Course: A 42-part video course by WordPress educator, Zac Gordon.
  • The Yoast SEO Course: Includes 13 videos that teach your clients how to utilize the Yoast SEO Plugin.
  • WooCommerce 101: Our 35-part complete guide to every feature in WooCommerce.
  • Ninja Forms Course: How to create custom forms for your WordPress site using the popular Ninja Forms form builder plugin.
  • All-Access Pass: A Monthly, Annual, or Lifetime membership includes access to all of our courses for one low price.

If you’d like to purchase subscriptions in bulk for multiple clients, get in touch with us for a bulk discount coupon code.

View Pricing Options

2. The WP101 PluginFeatured-Laptop-960x700

Ask yourself this question: “How much is one hour of your time worth?”

If you spend even one hour each month teaching clients how to use WordPress at a basic level, then the WP101 Plugin will put money back in your pocket. Here are just some of the benefits the plugin offers:

  • Install on an unlimited number of your clients’ sites.
  • Includes video tutorials for WordPress, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Yoast SEO, and more.
  • Videos play right in your client’s WordPress dashboard.
  • White-Labeled: The videos in the WP101 Plugin do not contain our logo, making them the perfect branding tool to add value to your service offering.
  • Videos are streamed from a CDN, making for exceptionally fast load times.
  • Choose which videos you want to show clients and which you do not.
  • Add your own custom videos to demonstrate custom functionality.

Many WordPress developers use the WP101 Plugin to provide training to their clients even before the project is complete. This provides instant value up-front, and enables the client to become familiar with WordPress basics while the project is still underway.

“The WP101 Plugin is a huge benefit to my business. Whenever I start a project, I send the client to a private server that is running the WP101 Plugin so they can watch the videos and become familiar with how WordPress works. Many of my clients have never used WordPress before and aren’t very tech-savvy. Before WP101, I’d often spend hours explaining how to manage menus or upload images to their site.” — Bill Erickson, Web Developer

At just $249/year for installation on unlimited client sites, the WP101 Plugin is an absolute must for any WordPress professional who wants to boost their value to clients.

Visit WP101Plugin.com

3. Embed Our VideosWP101 Videos on Your Site

Our videos. On your site.

With a Pro Plan subscription to the WP101 Plugin, you can also embed our WordPress 101 videos on your membership site! This is the best way to provide our WordPress training videos to your clients while reinforcing your brand. Embed our WordPress training videos on password-protected pages on your own website and provide them to your clients however you like.

Imagine being able to offer your own comprehensive, white-labeled suite of WordPress training videos on your website alongside your development or marketing services!

Here are some additional benefits to licensing our videos on your own website:

  • Create up-sell opportunities by charging for access to the videos on your own site.
  • Perfect for WordPress companies who want to provide WordPress training as part of an ongoing maintenance contract after the sale.
  • Hosted videos! No need to bother with the hassle and additional cost of setting up your own video hosting account. Video hosting is included.
  • Automatically updated videos whenever we re-record them for major WordPress updates.

You can embed all of our WordPress 101 videos for only $499/year, with no logos or branding of any kind.

View the Details

Free your time to do what you do best!

How much time are you wasting teaching your clients WordPress basics? And what happens when they need a refresher a few months from now, having forgotten what you taught them? Why not put the WordPress 101 videos to work for you and you clients?

Giving our WordPress tutorial videos to your clients will expand your current service offerings and reinforce your brand. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about our video training or the WP101 Plugin!

A Beginner’s Guide To Purchasing WordPress Themes

With thousands of commercial and free WordPress themes on the market, how do you decide which is right for your website? In this article, we’ll guide you through the most important things to look for when shopping for a new WordPress theme.

Once you’ve installed WordPress on your server, it’s time to decide on what theme you want to use for your website. For many folks this is the most exciting part about setting up their WordPress site. However the process of selecting the best theme and theme provider comes with its own set of challenges.

In this post, we’ll guide you through what a WordPress theme is, how to select the right WordPress theme provider for you, and recommend some of the top WordPress theme providers.

Please Note: This post is going to focus on premium/commercial WordPress themes that require purchase. Unlike free themes, premium WordPress themes typically include support, regular updates, and other benefits.

The Guide To Purchasing A WordPress Theme

What Is A WordPress Theme?

A WordPress theme is a collection of PHP and CSS files that determine the overall look and layout of a WordPress site, including the colors, layout, typography and other style elements.

Out of the box, WordPress includes one or more default themes. Currently, these default themes include: Twenty-Fourteen, Twenty-Fifteen, and Twenty-Sixteen. These default themes are fine if you just need an extremely simple blog site. But if you are looking for more options, better layouts and styles, and support when you need it, you’ll to want to look at purchasing a theme.

Theme Support: The #1 Priority

You want to purchase your theme from a provider that offers good support and updates after the sale is complete.

It’s one thing to find a theme that has the look, layout, and style you want. It’s another thing to dive in to your theme once it’s installed and find out you can’t easily make it look like what you saw in the theme demo.

Infrequent theme updates can also be problematic as the WordPress core is updated many times throughout the year. If your theme is not regularly updated to keep up with changes in the core software, vulnerabilities and compatibility issues can occur.

This is why a solid support team is needed to answer your questions, fix issues, and help you create the WordPress website you want (and paid for!).

Theme Demos Are Just The Beginning

As you shop around for your theme, you will find that most themes offer a demo site so you can see how the theme will look when it’s live.

The "Customize" option can be found under the "Appearance" menu.

The “Customize” option can be found under the “Appearance” menu.

Many people look at a demo site, decide it isn’t 100% to their liking, and move on. Perhaps the background colors are not what they wanted, the fonts seem flat, or maybe the demo site is not showing a particular sidebar widget you wanted.

This is where the WordPress Customizer can help. The Customizer provides you with options to customize the various elements of your theme. It integrates with almost any WordPress theme, giving you control over elements like:

  • Site Logo
  • Colors
  • Header Image
  • Background Image
  • Menus
  • Widgets

Recommended WordPress Theme Vendors & Marketplaces

The Genesis Framework

genesis theme by studiopress

The Genesis theme was created by StudioPress

We use the Genesis framework to power this site! How’s that for an endorsement?

Genesis itself is not just a WordPress theme, but rather a framework that uses “child themes” to provide a wide variety of layouts and styles. This structure makes Genesis extremely flexible from a development standpoint, and it’s why there is such a strong Genesis support community.

There are hundreds of talented Genesis developers who create custom themes and plugins, and who regularly share tips, code samples, and advice about Genesis. Bill Erickson and Carrie Dils are two such developers who have published dozens of detailed tutorials to help both the expert and novice navigate the Genesis framework and create stunning websites using Genesis.

Best of all, should you ever need to hire a professional to make customizations to your site, you’ll be able to hire from a pool of talented developers and designers who specialize in building Genesis websites.

At just $59.95, Genesis is one of the most powerful WordPress frameworks on the market!

Check Out Genesis

Elegant Themes

elegant themes logoFor just $69, you can have access to 87 amazing themes and plugins by Elegant Themes — by far the best value when it comes to vendors we recommend.

Over the past six years, Nick Roach and his team of developers have created some of the most beautiful, well-crafted WordPress themes and plugins on the market. They are even the creators of one of the most popular WordPress themes ever: Divi.

Apart from the amazing themes, the Elegant Themes support team is one of the best in the business. They want you to be a member for life and are willing to work for it.

Looking for a varied set of themes and plugins backed by great support, all for an astonishingly low price?

Check Out Elegant Themes

ThemeForest

themeforest logoThemeForest is one of the largest theme marketplaces around, and for good reason. They offer quality themes at low prices and their selection is unparalleled.

ThemeForest is great for people who are new to buying WordPress themes, because when it comes to their live theme demos, what you see is what you get. Once you download a theme package and install, it will not look like a completely different theme compared to what you saw in the demo.

The main drawback to ThemeForest is that support and updates can be hit-or-miss. Some theme authors selling via ThemeForest don’t update their themes frequently or at all. Other authors don’t provide the best support for their themes, leaving customers to navigate the forums and try to find answers there.

If massive selection and low prices are more important to you than support…

Check Out ThemeForest

WooThemes

woothemes logoWooThemes has been creating ridiculously versatile frameworks, themes, and plugins since 2008.

They have a wide selection of themes designed for bloggers, e-commerce sites, and other businesses. They are also the creators of WooCommerce, one of the most popular WordPress plugins for e-commerce, which now powers more than 25% of all e-commerce websites!

Recently acquired by Automattic (creators of WordPress.com, Jetpack, and more), WooThemes is focusing even more on e-commerce websites, though they still offer WordPress themes for all types of sites.

What really sets WooThemes apart from many other theme providers is their stellar support and user community. WooThemes consistently garners accolades for their support, and now they are backed by Automattic’s support team.

If you are planning to launch an online shop or e-commerce site and want best-in-class support…

Check Out WooThemes

Array

array logoMike McAllister, creator of Array, is one of the most talented theme designers we know.

Not only are his themes beautiful, they are also well-coded. This means both developers and non-developers alike enjoy working with his themes.

Array themes are particularly well-suited to bloggers, photographers, and creatives, but there are also e-commerce and general business themes available as well. Plus, all themes are backed with Array’s amazing support.

If you are in the creative game and looking for a solid theme to show off your work with unmatched support…

Check Out Array

Additional Tips

  • Read the reviews and comments for each theme, or Google the following: “(theme name) wordpress theme reviews” and take a look at what users are saying.
  • If you are able, look at the support forums for the theme. Is the response time quick and are the responses clear and thorough?
  • Email the theme provider with questions: Is the theme responsive (important for mobile users)? Has the theme been tested in all browsers? Are there any known conflicts with popular plugins? How often do you update themes?

Wrapping Up

Of course, we’ve only scratched the surface here. There are hundreds of reputable theme companies offering both free and commercial themes. You can browse the WordPress Theme Directory here:

View the Theme Directory

Purchasing the right WordPress theme can be a challenge thanks to the many options that are available. We hope this guide will help you find the best WordPress theme for your needs so you can begin creating great WordPress websites sooner rather than later.

Good luck and happy theme hunting!

WP101 Completes Migration to LifterLMS

After months of careful planning and deliberation, we’re thrilled to announce that WP101 is now powered by the powerful LifterLMS learning management plugin for WordPress!

We think you’re going to really going to enjoy learning WordPress with the help of the new features that LifterLMS brings to our site.

We’ll be able to better interact with you as you make your way through our tutorials, providing timely information and helpful resources along the way. You’ll be able to track your progress, earning badges and certificates for completing lessons and courses. And we’ll be able to bring new courses online more quickly!

Why is this change necessary?

First, let me share a little background. This is just the third time we’ve changed platforms since we launched WP101 in 2008. For the past several years, this site has been powered by a highly customized integration with an obscure recurring billing service.

While this system has enabled us to offer simple access to our WordPress tutorial videos as part of a membership, it lacked support for discount coupons and other basic functionality. More importantly, we’ve been unable to provide the type of learning experience we really want to deliver. Until now.

Today, WP101 serves more than 25,000 members, so it’s no small challenge to migrate to a new membership plugin. Thankfully, we benefited from the trusted advice of our good friend and long-time coach, Chris Lema. Together, we spent more than a year carefully evaluating the many options available today.

LifterLMS Learning Management Plugin for WordPressSo we were absolutely thrilled to have finally discovered LifterLMS, a powerful (and free) learning management plugin for WordPress. Not only was it the first plugin that checked all the boxes for our needs, but it also quickly became apparent that the creators truly share our passion for online education.

In particular, we really resonated with their focus on restoring human interaction to online learning, something that is conspicuously absent from most online courses today.

You see, we don’t just want you to watch our videos. We want to acknowledge your progress and interact with you as you make your way through the lessons. We want to answer your questions and help you accomplish your goals for learning WordPress in the first place.

LifterLMS gives us the tools to serve you even better.

Here are some of the new features we think you’ll love…

Track your progress. The all-new “My Courses” page shows you the courses you’ve enrolled in, with a visual indicator of your progress through each one. Return at any time and pick up right where you left off.

WP101 Courses in Progress

The new “My Courses” page in action.


Earn badges and certificates. No more watching videos in a vacuum! Now you’ll earn badges and certificates for completing lessons and courses. Print and share these to verify that you’ve completed our training. Or just enjoy the rewards as an acknowledgment of your progress.
Earn badges for completing courses on WP101.
Timely help when it matters most. LifterLMS enables us to send helpful tips or links to additional resources based on lessons you’ve recently completed. This will help us strike up a conversation as you progress through each course. We’ll be able to answer any questions you might have at that point, or recommend related resources, products and services you might find helpful.

Clearly-defined courses. We’ve reorganized our entire tutorial library into individual courses, making it easier to find the specific training you need.

New courses, finally! Best of all, this model will enable us to bring new courses online more quickly. For example, we’ve partnered with noted WooCommerce expert, Daniel Espinoza, to create an in-depth course for that popular e-commerce plugin. When it’s released, you’ll be able to purchase just that course — or any of our future courses — à la carte, if you like. Better yet, buy a Lifetime Membership and get access to all our future courses for one single payment!

These guys are good!

We really want to thank the stellar team at codeBox — the creators of LifterLMS — for handling the “heavy lifting.” They not only migrated all of our site content and member data, but also provided strategic advice and much-needed encouragement along the way to help us better serve you — our members.

From the first video conference with the entire team in January, it was clear that these guys really love online education. Joshua and Chris even host a podcast where they share their best advice for creating effective online learning experiences.

If you’re interested in building your own online courses, we highly recommend LifterLMS. The plugin is 100% free, but their Boost service is perfect for individuals who don’t have time to set it up or don’t want to mess with the technical side of things.

You’ll not only benefit from the well thought-out features of the LifterLMS plugin itself, but also the wealth of knowledge and experience these guys bring to the table!

Check out LifterLMS

Go ahead. Log in and check out your new profile page!

We’ve already migrated your account to the new system and enrolled you in our current courses. You’ll enjoy access to the same video tutorials you had before this move.

When you’ve finished watching a video lesson, simply mark it as complete. You’ll be automatically redirected to the next lesson in the course. When you’ve finished all the lessons in a course, you’ll earn a badge for your profile, and a gorgeous certificate of completion you can print and share!

Of course, you can still post your questions in the members-only Q&A Forum and get answers from the creator of WP101, Shawn Hesketh, as well as other members of the community.

So log into your new “My Courses” page now and check out our latest WordPress tutorial videos. If it’s been a while, you might be surprised by what you’ll learn this time around!

Go to My Courses

Never stop learning!

How to Backup Your WordPress Site

“Where did my site go?”

Have you experienced this nightmare scenario? You may have updated a plugin, your site’s theme, or WordPress itself, then suddenly your site seems to have disappeared. You might even be staring at a “white screen of death” — a blank screen with no error message, content or anything at all.

You have no idea how it happened. Worse yet, you don’t know how to get your site back.

That’s why it’s critical to have a backup strategy for your WordPress site. In this article, we’re going to show you how to backup a WordPress site and help bring your WordPress site back after a disaster.

What Are WordPress Backups?

Simply put, a backup is a copy of the database and files that make up your entire website. Typically, this backup copy is stored somewhere for safekeeping that is easily accessible. That might be in a location on your web server separate from where your live website files exist, your own computer’s local hard drive, or on an external drive.

Why Should I Backup My WordPress Site?

Many newcomers to WordPress think that once WordPress is installed, their site is secure and nothing can happen to it. This is not the case at all and speaks to the necessity of backups.

Having a backup of both your database and website files means you will always have a copy of the site to revert back to in case something goes wrong.

Some common situations where a recent backup of your website could save the day are:

  • Your WordPress site gets hacked.
  • Your server has an outage and your web host can only retrieve an older version of your site.
  • There is an issue during an update and your site’s content disappears or becomes unusable.
  • You accidentally delete some important pages or posts. Hey, mistakes happen!

Without frequent backups, you run the risk of losing your entire website with no way to recover it.

Okay, So How Do I Backup My WordPress Site?

There are two good ways to start backing up your WordPress website: Have your web hosting provider handle it or use a backup plugin.

1. Use a Managed WordPress Host that Handles This Automatically!

If you use a Managed WordPress hosting company, you don’t have to worry about backups. They automatically back up your site for you! You don’t need to do a thing. Your WordPress files and database are automatically backed up nightly (or even more often) without any intervention on your part. Some Managed WordPress hosts even allow you to specify where you want your backups stored and whether or not to back up certain parts of your site.

Automated backups are one of the primary reasons we recommend Managed WordPress hosting from one of these Managed WordPress hosting companies.

Every one of the companies we recommend include automated WordPress backups as part of every plan, giving you the peace of mind that comes from knowing your site is protected.

Should your site ever become compromised in any way, you can easily restore your site back to the most recent backup, or “snapshot” with just one click.

2. Install a Backup Plugin

If you don’t have Managed WordPress hosting, it’s likely your host does not automatically backup your site. If this is your situation, we recommend using one of these backup plugins to protect your site.

BackupBuddy ($80/year for one site.)

BackupBuddy is a much more powerful backup plugin. It also offers several additional features that make it the most flexible backup and protection software for WordPress:

  • Migration Tool: BackupBuddy includes a site migration tool, making it easy to clone or move your WordPress website to another host. This can save huge amounts of time if you want to change hosting providers, or move your site to a new domain. That’s pretty cool.

backupbuddy migration

  • Real-Time Backups: Referred to as “Stash Live”, BackupBuddy includes the ability to backup your site in real time. As you make changes to posts, pages, media, or add new plugins, Stash Live is constantly watching and backing everything up, just to make sure you don’t lose a thing.

backupbuddy real time migration

  • Remote Destinations: This is really just a fancy way of saying you can send copies of your website backups pretty much anywhere: A Google Drive folder, Dropbox, Amazon Cloud, or even BackupBuddy’s own storage solution. We highly recommend you store a local backup on your own computer or web server and another in a remote destination. Better safe than sorry.

backupbuddy remote destinations

Once you’ve installed the plugin, it’s a quick hop over to “Settings” to configure everything, most of which you can leave as is:

backupbuddy general settings

  1. This is the login for the ImportBuddy feature, which enables you to utilize the awesome Migration Tool we mentioned earlier.
  2. This is where you can enter a custom local destination for your backups to be stored. If you are fine using the default location shown, leave this blank.
  3. Enter an email address to be notified if there are any backup errors.
  4. Enter an email address if you would like a copy of the backup file to be sent to you.

The final step is to schedule your automated backups. Simply go to “Schedules” in the BackupBuddy menu on the left-hand side. Most settings can be left as is, except for the following:

backupbuddy schedules

  1. Give your schedule a name.
  2. Decide how frequently you want to backup your site. We recommend at least weekly, depending on how frequently you change your site or add new content.
  3. If you have a remote destination where you’d like to store backups, enter it here.
  4. Make sure you check the box to enable the schedule.
  5. Be sure to click “Add New Schedule” to start the backup schedule.

That’s it! Your WordPress site is safe and secure, and you can enjoy peace of mind.

Pricing starts at $80/year for one (1) site.

Check Out BackupBuddy

BlogVault ($89/year for one site)

BlogVault is one of the most reliable WordPress backup, staging, and migration plugins, trusted by over 5 million websites. Its most notable features include:

  • Easy Backups: BlogVault is more than just a backup service. It offers complete backups of your entire website, including files and database tables. It even uses incremental backup technology to backup large websites. The backups are stored off-site and off-host which means you won’t lose your backups if your web host or website goes down. You can store multiple encrypted backups on a cloud storage service like Dropbox or Google Drive, or simply downloaded to your computer. There is also an option to create custom schedules for backups at your convenience.

Easy backups with BlogVault

  • Auto Restore: Many WordPress backup plugins do not offer an easy way to restore your site. But BlogVault offers a one-click solution to this. It even offers a Test Restore feature that enables you to restore your desired backup in a Test Environment, rather than on your live site.
  • Staging and Merging: With BlogVault’s straight-forward staging feature, you can safely update your plugins, themes, and WordPress Core in a protected environment before pushing those changes to the live site. It’s worth noting that this is a free feature!

BlogVault supports staging and merging

  • Migration: You might encounter a variety of reasons to backup your website. Besides website recovery, backups can also be used to migrate to a new web host. To make things easier for you, BlogVault comes with an easy migration tool and supports all web hosts so you can easily move your WordPress website from one hast to another.
  • Real-Time Backups for WooCommerce Sites: Real-time backups are important for online stores because you need to take be sure each and every order is backed up. Taking real-time backups will make sure that you don’t lose a single transaction, which will save you from any kind of financial loss.
  • Site Management: BlogVault’s site management feature lets you manage themes, plugins, and even WordPress core from the dashboard itself. There is also an option to add, delete, or change roles of your website’s users. Being able to manage your website from the dashboard helps save time—which you can use to grow your business instead!

Site management in BlogVault
Setting up BlogVault is easy and straightforward. It took me less than 5 minutes to get the plugin up and running on a test website.

After you sign up, you’ll be taken to a dashboard. In the dashboard, click: ‘Add Site’ or the ‘+’ button to enter the URL for your website.
Adding a new site in BlogVault
Enter your website credentials, then install the plugin and you’re good to go!
BlogVault makes it easy to add new WordPress sites to backup
Pricing starts at $89/year for one (1) site.

Check Out BlogVault

VaultPress ($60/year for one site)

VaultPress is the lighter of these two options. It has fewer features than BackupBuddy, but is much easier to get up and running. You will need a free WordPress.com account in order to connect VaultPress to your website once you’ve purchased.

After purchasing and installing the VaultPress plugin, you’ll notice that the settings for VaultPress do not exist within your WordPress administration panel. You’ll only see the current status of the plugin and when your site was last backed up.

When you are ready to connect your site, you need only click on the “VaultPress dashboard” link shown below to be taken to the Settings dashboard on VaultPress.com.

vaultpress dashboard link

Once you’re at the VaultPress dashboard, just click on the bottom “Site URL” button and enter your website domain:

vaultpress site connector

All done! VaultPress is the most simple automated backup and protection option if you are just getting started with WordPress.

Pricing starts at $5/month ($60/year) for one (1) website.

Check Out VaultPress

Wrapping Up

Just as you store important documents or memories in a safe, secure place, so too should you plan for the worst and keep your website secure. No matter how proficient you become with WordPress, things can always go wrong. Frequent WordPress backups are critical to ensuring your website and its precious content are around for the long-haul.

Now, go backup your site!

Closed Captioned WordPress 101 Tutorial Videos

If you’ve been searching for quality closed captioned WordPress video tutorials, we’ve got some great news for you!

WP101 is proud to announce that our WordPress 101 tutorial videos are now closed captioned for the hearing impaired, helping even more people to have equal access to our WordPress training resources.

Ensuring that more people have access to our online learning resources for WordPress is extremely important to us. We’ve had many requests over the years to provide closed captioning for our videos. But until recently it’s been a daunting technological challenge, particularly given our commitment to continually update our videos with each new release of WordPress.

Thankfully, this is one area where technology is rapidly improving, making it possible for us to finally create closed captioned WordPress video tutorials. Our favorite screencast recording tool, ScreenFlow, now supports the creation of closed captions during the recording process.

We’ve also recently partnered with Amara — a leader in the captioning and transcription space — to create transcriptions and caption files for our videos by real, live humans, rather than automated or machine-transcribed files.

These tools make it possible for us to deliver closed captions for our videos within just a few days of releasing new videos on our site.

Will this affect our “always-up-to-date” guarantee?

Since we launched in 2008, we’ve updated and re-recorded our entire video series for every major release of WordPress — a whopping 18 times so far! We’ve always released our newly-updated videos the same day WordPress has shipped new versions.

Currently, the process of adding closed captions to our videos takes 4-8 business days. Our goal remains to release new videos on the same day as future releases of WordPress. We’re working to streamline our production process so we can continue to deliver future videos — with captions — as quickly as possible. But if we miss our deadline by a day or two, we feel that’s an acceptable trade-off to ensure we can continue to provide closed captioned WordPress tutorial videos for even more people in the future.

What about the WP101 Plugin?

We’ve got you covered! If you use our WP101 Plugin to provide our WordPress tutorial videos to your clients in their own dashboard, you’re already covered! Starting today, the videos used in the WP101 Plugin are also closed captioned. So be sure to inform your clients!

What’s next?

We’ve still got some work to do. We’re in the process of updating our tutorial videos for the Yoast SEO plugin. When we release those newly-updated videos, they will also be closed captioned. And some of our oldest videos will also be updated in the coming weeks, so we’ll hold off on closed captioning those videos until they’re updated.

Translations, anyone?
Closed captioning our videos will also enable us to do something we’ve not been able to do until now — translate our videos into other languages via subtitles! So, stay tuned for more on that front in the coming weeks.

We hope this helps to make a huge difference in the lives and education of our members with disabilities. Accessibility is a concern for us and we’ll strive to ensure that as many people as possible can access and enjoy our growing WordPress tutorial library.

Check out an example of one of our closed captioned videos below.

Click the “CC” icon to enable the captions.

Why We Recommend Managed WordPress Hosting

Why do we recommend managed WordPress hosting? Because you want to build your site, not manage a web server.

You need a partner who’s an expert in both hosting and WordPress itself. Someone who will pick up the phone when you call and actually tackle your problem – whether it’s with WordPress itself or on your web server.

You already know you need a WordPress site that loads fast, and handles all the visitors you’ll one day get. A site that stays up under the heaviest of loads, deflects the many daily security attacks WordPress sites see, and provides an excellent foundation for the hard work of creating content and engaging visitors.

By now, you’ve likely determined that WordPress is the right solution for your needs. But you might not know exactly how to make WordPress and the underlying server software stack work for you. It takes serious technical knowledge to get WordPress to stay up and stay fast when your website finally succeeds.

And that’s why at WP101 we only use and recommend managed WordPress hosting.

Skip to our list of the Best Managed WordPress Hosting Companies to see who we recommend.

So Why Choose Managed WordPress Hosting?

As your site grows and more visitors start arriving every day, managed WordPress hosting will solve some of the tough technical problems for you… before they ever ruin your day:

1. Speed

Fast sites convert traffic to revenue more effectively and rank higher in search engines. Speedy sites deliver better experiences to visitors, which in turn, leads to happier, more engaged visitors.

WordPress sites can become slow for any number of technical reasons. Managed WordPress hosts actively monitor these factors, making continual optimization improvements.

Managed hosts create an infrastructure that makes WordPress fast – even under the heaviest of visitor loads.

2. Security

Every minute, silent armies of robots are crawling the web, looking for sites to break into and bend to their own nefarious purposes. They try passwords, look for outdated themes, plugins, and core code, and pore through thousands of sites every hour.

While you might ask yourself “Who would want to break into my site? I’m not the government or a company,” that’s not how hackers think. These bad actors seek to turn your website into a spam-sending, botnet-controlled, malware-distributing machine.

And you might not even know about this until one day someone tells your website has begun to look like a fly-by-night pharmacy. By that time, your whole site is often not just defaced, but left with backdoors for bad actors to return anytime they want.

Managed WordPress hosts work heavily on security, and take care of hardening WordPress and looking for new vulnerabilities on your behalf. And if you do get hacked, some of them (like WP Engine) will fix it for you for free, and restore your site back to its former glory.

3. Scalability

After months of hard work on your site, there will come a time when it all pays off – you finally get featured on that big media site, make the homepage of Reddit, or rank number one for that keyword. Thousands of visitors come to your site in a matter of minutes. Hooray! Fame and fortune are closer than ever before.

But this is exactly when most websites fail – just when your site is its most popular, the crush of visitors overwhelm the server and the site goes down. New visitors are shown an error message or a blank screen.

And after months of hard work, your web host has turned success into failure.

Managed WordPress hosts can scale your site’s traffic automatically to serve hundreds of thousands of simultaneous visitors – so you’ll avoid the dreaded “Error Establishing a Database Connection” error message when you finally hit that front page of Reddit, CNN, or your favorite publication.

4. Support

Many hosts support only their own server hardware – so when your site goes down or shows errors, they simply tell you the server is fine, and throw the responsibility back to you. Unless you want to become a systems administrator, this is confusing, frustrating, and flat out irritating.

Managed WordPress hosts, by contrast, employ experts in not just servers, but also PHP, MySQL, and WordPress itself. Their support lines are staffed by WordPress experts, so their team can help you troubleshoot issues at every level of your website’s software stack.

While every managed host trains their support team differently, my friends at WP Engine make sure each and every one of their support team members goes through months of training, so they can fix minor issues before they become major problems.

5. Automatic Updates and Nightly Backups

One of the most popular questions raised by our members is, “How do I back up my site?”

If your site is hosted by a managed WordPress host, you’re already covered. They handle it for you, automatically backing up your site every night. If anything goes wrong, you can simply restore your site from a backup with just a couple of clicks!

But managed WordPress hosts don’t stop there. They also automatically update your site to the latest version of WordPress whenever a new version is released, ensuring you’re always up to date and secure.

WP Engine even includes a feature called “Automated Upgrade Protection” — which first creates a complete backup of your site. Then they perform the upgrade. As soon as the upgrade is complete, they test the site to make sure your site is loading as expected.

If the site loads without any detected problems, you’ll be notified that you’ve been upgraded. But if something appears to be off, they automatically roll your site back to the previous version, and investigate what might have gone wrong.

All of this happens without any intervention required from you!

Manage Your Site, Not Your Server

Managed WordPress hosts obsess about making your site fast, secure, and available, so you can focus on making your site great and your readers happy.

Check out our list of the Best Managed WordPress Hosting Companies.

Which WordPress Host is Right For Me?

What’s New in WordPress 4.0?

WordPress 4.0 “Benny” was released on September 4th, and included enhancements to the media grid and the visual editor, better language support, and true previews of embedded content.

This release is code-named “Benny” in honor of jazz legend Benny Goodman, and saw a record number of contributors during this cycle — 275 volunteers from all around the world.

New features in WordPress 4.0…
WordPress 4.0 lets you choose a different language during installation!

WordPress now enables you to choose a different language during installation!

Here’s a quick rundown of the new features we think you’ll love in this version…

Better Support for Languages

For years, WordPress has supported localization — running the WordPress dashboard in other languages. But until now, the process has been confusing and beyond the reach of most beginners. Thankfully, that’s now ancient history, because WordPress 4.0 presents you with a choice of languages during the installation process, making it a breeze to start using WordPress in whatever language you prefer!

Support for i18n has been expanded and improved throughout other areas of WordPress as well, making it easier than ever to use WordPress in other languages.

New Media Grid View

The new media grid in WordPress 4.0
The Media Library now includes a gorgeous, endless grid view that allows you to browse your uploaded images more easily than ever. Plus, the new details preview (shown below) makes viewing and editing your media files a snap.

New attachment details panel in WordPress 4.0

Better Plugin Discovery and Search

There are now more than 30,000 plugins in the WordPress plugin directory, and it can be overwhelming to find the right one for your needs. WordPress 4.0 makes this easier with an improved search and browsing experience. Plus, search results will return plugins translated into your language first!

New plugin preview in WordPress 4.0

Post Editor Improvements

The editor has been revamped in WordPress 4.0, and now automatically expands to fit longer content as you write. And if you frequently write longer posts, you’ll love the way the formatting toolbar now “sticks” to the top of the editor while you scroll up and down the page, ensuring your editing tools are always visible!

New sticky editor toolbar in WordPress 4.0

Real Preview of Embedded Video and More!

Finally, you can simply paste a YouTube or Vimeo URL on a new line in your post, and instantly preview it directly in the editor! It even works with Tweet URLs. Say goodbye to the ambiguous grey box; now embedding is a more accurate experience. The functional preview of your embedded content saves you time and enables you to preview precisely what your content will look like before hitting the publish button!

True video previews in WordPress 4.0

Plus more changes under the hood…

As always, there are also dozens of bug fixes and tiny improvements that you may never see, but provide more options and flexibility for plugin and theme developers. These include:

New Customizer Panel API — The new Customizer API now allows plugin and theme developers to add contexts, panels, and more controls to the Customizer.

More oEmbed Providers — Auto-embeds now support more services than ever before. You can now embed videos from CollegeHumor, playlists from YouTube, and TED talks. Check out all of the embeds that WordPress now supports.

Updated External Libraries — TinyMCE 4.1.3, jQuery 1.11.1, and MediaElement 2.15

SSL Improvements — You’ve probably heard that Google is assigning (slightly) higher rank to sites that use secure, encrypted HTTPS connections to transmit pages and other data. WordPress now takes a smarter approach to enforcing SSL.

For a complete list of what’s new, check out the official page on the WordPress Codex.

As always, our WordPress 101 videos are already updated for 4.0!

As we’ve done with every release since WordPress 2.7 in 2008, we began updating our video tutorial series as soon as WordPress 4.0 hit the “Release Candidate” phase of development and testing. This means we’re able to release our updated videos the same day the newest version of WordPress makes its official debut, ensuring you’re already up to date with the latest improvements in WordPress!

Check out the new WordPress 4.0 videos

HINT: Parts 4, 10, 11, and 17 highlight the newest features!

The official release video…

So, what’s your favorite new feature?

If you’ve upgraded your WordPress site already, what’s your favorite feature so far? Feel free to share in the comments below…

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