How to add web push notifications to your WordPress website

Hello friends,

Do you want to increase your visitors engagement? More clicks and bigger open rate (especially on mobile devices)? You may be surprised to find out that popular websites such as Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and others have discovered a way to achieve this by using one specific technology. It is proven to be extremely engaging. It even beats SMS notifications, all of the various email marketing strategies and even social media itself!

This technology is no longer a secret! It is called web push notifications and in this post I will reveal to you several ways of adding it to your WordPress website!

But first things first! You may be wondering what web push notifications are and how do they work. So let’s explain this, shall we?

Web push notifications are messages that may appear on your visitors’ desktop and mobile devices. In order this to happen your website should be configured to use this technology. The next step is to instruct the web push notification system of your choice to work with specific browsers. Finally your visitors should be convinced to accept web push notifications for your website. When this is done the real magic is going to happen! Each new post will result in a small message that notifies the users for it. These notifications will appear even if the browser is not running! The end result will be an extremely high chance of intriguing the users to click on the notification and visit your website.

In SEO’s point of view this means several achievements – more returning visitors, more page views, high chance of increasing the time spent on specific pages and overall visit time, more sessions, higher CTR and lower bounce rate. All of these factors are extremely important for better ranking and web push notifications can help you improve them.

Now to the main point of this post – how to add web push notifications to your WordPress website?

Option#1 One Signal – the free way of integrating web push notifications for any website

OneSignal Free Web Push Notifications for WordPress

Free! Startups, smaller business, non-profits and even bloggers will love this. One Signal will work flawlessly with just a couple of clicks and configurations, delivering web push notifications for your visitors in a flash.

How to achieve this with your WordPress website? Begin by installing its WordPress plugin. Then activate it and start configuring it. What you will need to possess are several API keys and application ID’s – Google Keys, One Signal keys, Apple Safari Web ID. Of course you will need a free Open Signal account as well. You can find a detailed guide on configuring this WordPress plugin here.

What else you will get from One Signal, besides the fact that it is free?

Support for unlimited number of devices and notifications. Localization, unlimited list segmentation, real time analytics, A/B Split Tests and more. You are just going to love it! One Signal also offers premium support if needed.

When One Signal is configured for your WordPress website there will be a button displayed inviting users to subscribe for notifications.

Speaking of this – TheCMSPlace is using One Signal and you are more than welcome to subscribe for our web push notifications.

Option#2 – PushCrew

PushCrew - quality web push notifications for WordPress websites

Here you also need to download and install the respective WordPress plugin. Then you have to also activate it. You will need a PushCrew Account ID for the plugin’s settings. This means that an account is needed as well. You can create one on the official website of PushCrew.

Bear in mind that here you are presented with several pricing plans:

The free option is suitable for start. All of the other plans offer very useful features that might be suitable when your WordPress site grows bigger and popular. So you can consider upgrading when needed.

When your account ID is provided into PushCrew’s WordPress plugin then your website will invite visitors to subscribe for your web push notifications. Detailed explanation on this plugin can be found here.

Option#3 – PushEngage

PushEngage - Web Push Notifications for WordPress

Not quite popular as the two ones above (when speaking of WordPress installations) however its free plan might just surprise you! Up to 2500 active subsribers, unlimited notifications, various browser support, detailed analytics and more features. This is definitely a service that you need to bear in mind. Again you are presented with a WordPress plugin that you can download from here. And if needed a special PushEngage plan with more features then you can consider purchasing some of the paid pricing plans that are provided on the official website of PushEngage.

Option#4 – PushAssist

PushAssist - WordPress Plugin

This may be the easiest to set-up web push notification service of all. Its free plan supports up-to 3000 subscribers and offer great features as well. There are two other pricing plans that might be suitable for bigger websites – Premium and Enterprise.

PushAssist also comes with a WordPress plugin. You can get it from here. More information about this service can be found on its website.

This concludes our list, friends. What do you think? Will you use any of these web push notification services? Share your thoughts and questions about them in the comment section below. Also don’t forget to spread the word about this post in social media as well.

See you soon, friends!

7 ways to improve your WordPress On-Page SEO

Hello friends,

One very important aspect of SEO is the On-Page SEO. I even dare to say that it is the most important aspect. Some fellow digital marketeers would disagree by placing their faith on the Off-Page SEO which aims mainly on link-building. However as much as the latter is needed for better ranking, the lack of great and optimized content will reduce the value of your website in the visitors eyes. Let’s not forget that link-building is a double-edged sword. Why? Because in some cases it might ruin your SEO strategy due to a penalty by the search engines. And I believe that none of you wants this, right?

That is why in this post I will share with you 7 ways to improve your WordPress On-Page SEO. Let’s begin!

#1 – Choose a hosting provider that can guarantee you speed and high-quality backups

WordPress is great – we all know this. However some WordPress websites can grow into memory and CPU eating monsters. It happens quite a lot – especially if you are using low-quality plugins or plugins that are not working correctly with one-another (a.k.a. incompatible plugins). And while plugin management is your responsibility it is also important to rely on a high-quality hosting provider. This will ensure that your website will simply work. So the first thing to do is to check if your hosting provider gives you the quality you deserve and if not, it’s a good idea to migrate your website to another one. It’s also very important to have backups performed by your hosting provider. Additionally you might want to check some WordPress backup plugins like the ones that we have reviewed on TheCMSPlace. Check them out from here.

#2 – Create useful content with suitable selection of keywords and phrases

Without a proper keyword research your content will have little chance reaching a wider audience . This means that your SEO campaign is vital for your business. That is why you need to research all suitable keywords and phrases and use them wisely in your content. This will ensure that your target visitors will find your website in the search results. You should consider using tools like Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs for keyword research.

But having a bunch of suitable words and phrases is not the only thing that will make your content great. Let’s not forget that over-optimization with keywords is very bad for On-Page SEO. You have to use these words moderately in your content. In order to make it great, it has to be also useful and specific. This means that you have to write about topics that are strictly related to the main idea behind your website.

Great content can provide additional value to your visitors. For example a “how-to article” in which you describe the usage of a product will be extremely valuable. Also you have to make it user-friendly by writing in a style that is best accepted by your target group of visitors. Therefore it is imperative to know your audience and their needs and desires.

Last but not least – watch your grammar and punctuation and never forget that content is (and always will be) king!

#3 – Use SEO plugins

These WordPress plugins will make it extremely easy for you to manage your On-Page SEO. They will help you add all the important meta elements to your posts and pages and also to place suitable keywords and phrases in all applicable places so that your website will be crawled and indexed better. Also such plugins will allow you to optimize your content for social media as well. One of the best solutions that is suitable even for beginners is YoastSEO.

#4 – Optimize your images and multimedia

There is nothing worse than a bunch of large, unoptimized images and other multimedia content that make your website slow as a turtle. And this is something that you simply don’t want! Lucky for you we have an awesome collection of extremely easy-to-use tips for optimizing your images. Check it out from this link.

#5 – Improve your website internal and navigation links

WordPress is the king of creating internal links out-of-the-box! This is achieved with the awesome tag and category systems. By using them wisely you will get many internal links between related content. And having more of them is essential for On-Page SEO as it improves the crawling process of your website. Consider using plugins for related posts. They will automatically create even more internal links between posts with similar content.

Here are some great suggestions:

Now let’s focus on navigation. WordPress is equipped with a powerful menu system that allows you to create flawless navigation that will allow the visitors to reach the needed content quite easily. What you might want to do is to create a strategy for improving your WordPress navigation by:

To do this you have to make an audit of your pages and posts. You can use tools like SiteLiner or Screaming Frog. Choose posts and pages that contain great content and allow your visitors to reach them by using the navigation system of your website. Also consider using plugins like WP-PageNavi in order to achieve even better results.

Lastly – always check for broken links and if needed apply 301 redirects.

#6 Use the nofollow and noindex meta elements wisely

These two meta elements are very important for SEO. The first one is used when you want to tell the search engine bots not to follow a link that you have created. The second one tells them not to index the current post or page. In most cases you’d like to add a nofollow attribute to each external link (except the ones that you are sure that you want to share link juice with) while trying to keep the all internal ones “dofollow”. However there are cases in which you’d want to add nofollow attribute to some internal links as well. Based on the results from the content audit from the previous step, you should apply this to all links that point to pages/posts with little or low-quality content. Also you can set some pages to “noindex”. By doing this you can ensure that the PageRank flow will be distributed only between the most important parts of your WordPress website.

#7 Use caching plugins

W3 Total Cache, WP SuperCache or some other high-quality solution like ZenCache will boost the speed of your website. This means that the visitors will get to view your pages faster and also your hosting server won’t get overburdened. Also make sure that you have taken care of your .htaccess file by optimizing it additionally. This will ensure even better On-Page SEO results.

These are my 7 ways to improve your WordPress On-Page SEO. What do you think about them? Share any questions or feedback in the comment section below and share this post is social media as well.

See you soon, friends!

*Image source – Pixabay

WP Maintenance Mode [Review]

Hello friends,

Any user who starts using WordPress will eventually discover its built-in maintenance mode. It is activated for a short periods of time when an update for the system is being installed. This may happen with plugins, themes and especially with WordPress’s core installation. During this maintenance mode the website is not available for the visitors and if the updates are successful it will self-deactivate. And this is basically its whole functionality – to prevent access to a website that may not be working correctly due to incomplete updates and/or configurations.

In this post I will present to you one plugin that will allow you to achieve the same effect but this time under your full control. This means that you can decide when to enable the maintenance mode or to disable it, who to access your website, how it will look like and so on.

This plugin is called WP Maintenance Mode.

Why do I need an additional plugin when WordPress has already a built-in functionality?

You may need WP Maintenance Mode for two reasons. First the default maintenance mode might disable access to the website even for you (if you are its admin) in case the updates are a failure. There is a trick to fix this but I will leave it for another post. The main idea is that this mode will be available only if you are updating your website and not a single second more. Also it looks awful! But since it is on for a couple of seconds (or minutes depending on the speed of the website) this flaw can be ignored.

But it leads us to the second reason why you may need to install and activate WP Maintenance Mode – the control to decide when your website has to be unavailable, for how long and most importantly – how it will look like during this mode.

OK – in what cases I might need to enable a custom maintenance mode?

The most common situation is when you are building (or most likely re-building) your WordPress website directly on your production server. This process may include a complete theme re-design, deactivation of old and no longer needed plugins, installation and configuration of new ones, removal of content or its complete update or redirection and so on. In other words your website may look awful. Things might be misplaced during your tests and configurations. And you don’t want the users to see this mess, right? Also you don’t want to get your site indexed wrong during this period. That is why a custom maintenance mode is the best scenario.

How will WP Maintenance Mode help me in this case?

The most important functionality of this plugin is that it will prevent access to the real content of your website but in the mean time it may keep it live for any visitor or search engine bot. The visitors may learn useful information from the content you provide for your maintenance mode. For example you may add a countdown timer to notify them when the website will be fully accessible. You may also provide them with a details of the update process.

But what is most valuable about using WP Maintenance Mode is that you can grow your e-mail lists with subscribers who may want to be notified when the website is up and running. The plugin allows you to add an e-mail form for this purpose and the gathered email addresses can be exported into a CSV file.

What is also valuable about WP Maintenance Mode is that it will help you popularize your social media profiles during the maintenance period. You can add links to them and encourage visitors to visit them and follow you.

Another extremely important point regarding the functionality of the plugin is that it makes the looks of your website 100% customizable. You can set background image, background colors, texts, etc.

Last but not least – SEO! You can prevent search engine bots to index the real content of the website, while keeping positive SEO ratings since it will still be accessible by them. Also you can still track the visits on your website using Google Analytics.

During the maintenance mode any admin user will be able to access the full content of the website. You can also set specific roles that will be able to access the backend (WordPress dashboard) and frontent of the website. Also you may set redirections to another URL addresses if you don’t want the visitors to land on your homepage during the maintenance mode. You can also exclude URL’s.

How to achieve all of this with WP Maintenance Mode?

Begin by downloading, installing and activating the plugin. Then head to Settings -> WP Maintenance Mode. There you will see 3 tabs.

The General tab allows you to activate or deactivate the plugin’s functionality. There you can also set the instructions for the search engine bots and delegate access rights to specific user roles. There are also the redirection and exclusion settings as well a some other minor options.

The second tab is called Design and there you can add your content and background.

The third tab is called Modules and here you can choose what will be shown on the maintenance page of your website – timer, email form, social media networks, etc. From here you can also export your gathered email addresses and add your Google Analytics tracking code.

Make sure to click Save settings when you are done and don’t forget to deactivate the maintenance mode when the website is ready.

A point of importance regarding the gathering of email addresses. A good idea is to send a confirmation message to the subscribers in order to get their permission to send them further emails. This is also 100% required by the applicable law in specific countries, so make sure that you have this in mind.

And that’s it, friends!

What do you think of WP Maintenance Mode? Will you use it? Any concerns or questions? Feel free to use the comment form below and don’t forget to share this post in social media as well.

See you soon!

Facebook Save Button for WordPress – how-to

Hello friends,

Are you familiar with the functionality of Facebook that allows you to save your favourite content for later reading? This is already integrated not only in the desktop version of the social network but also in its mobile applications for different devices.

In this post I will show you how you can add the famous “Save to Facebook” button to your WordPress website so that you can gain all the benefits of having it.

But before we begin, let’s explain why the content saving functionality is useful and what alternatives do you have.

There are different ways to store any link that you find interesting so that you can access it later. You may want to do this if you don’t have the time to read it now or you want to re-read it again. In the past the most popular solution was the bookmarking functionality of any web browser. At one point this was great but it was only suitable for one browser and one device. This meant that if you wanted to go to another PC or mobile phone you had to search for the content once again in order to access it.

Nowadays almost any modern browser allows you to sync your data including bookmarks to any device if you have a profile and you are logged in. Also there are awesome solutions like Pocket that will allow you to store your favourite content so that you can access it once again at a later point.

But all of this needs another account and another login and so on and so on. This may frustrate some users. That is why storing your content in Facebook is not only easier but also useful. First of all you can save any content right from your feed – no need of an additional software or logins. Second you can access it anywhere. Third – you get reminded about your saved and unread content on a regular basis.

OK, I understand the usefulness of the saving functionality. Why would I integrate an additional button on my website when any user can save my content from the Facebook feed almost instantly?

This is a great question! Many website owners and admins may consider any additional code a burden that may slow down the entire project. I must agree that there is some truth to these concerns. Also each Facebook user can indeed save your content almost instantly when they see it in their respective news feed.

The tricky part is “when they see it”. As you know Facebook only shows your posts on a limited amount of your audience if you are not paying for ads. So some of them surely won’t be able to see your content unless they visit your Facebook page. And this happens quite rarely, especially on a social media like Facebook where each user is basically “drowned” in the ocean of information in their news feed.

So one way to ensure that your great content will be saved on Facebook is to have the “Save to Facebook” button on your WordPress website so that any organic visitor may use it. Also this means that you will be getting additional traffic from Facebook later when the user re-visits your website from the saved content. And this will happen as Facebook will remind the user about it eventually.

Also this is another great way to popularize your brand on Facebook and respectively your Facebook page.

OK, I am convinced that I need to integrate the Facebook Save Button on my WordPress website. How can I do this?

First of all you have to choose the plugin solution or the non-plugin one. In case of the latter you need to have some advanced WordPress skills and you also need to visit this page and get familiar with the setup process. After you are done your button will be available on your website on the areas where you decided to place it.

The plugin way is much more easier and it is suitable for beginners. That is why I am going to focus on it.

Begin by installing and activating the “FB Save Button For WP” plugin. You may download it from WordPress.org or use the plugin installer on your website to get it running.

Once you are done, please head to your WordPress dashboard and go to “Settings -> FB Save Button”. There you need to adjust a few settings:

Once you are done you have to save all changes and then you can start using your Facebook Save Button. You may like to test it so that you are sure that it works as intended. Any saved content should be marked as such.

So all you have to do now is to tell your audience of the new functionality and invite them to start using it.

That’s it friends! If you have any questions, please use the comment form below. Share this post in social media as well so that it can help other users like you.

See you soon!

Instagram Feed for WordPress – review

Hello friends,

Do you want to know how to add your Instagram feeds on WordPress? This post will help you achieve this!

All you need is the plugin Instagram Feed.

Before we begin discussing its functionalities, let’s have a quick look at Instagram itself.

This social media has become extremely popular. It is used for photo and video sharing as well as social networking. Such a project attracts a great amount of users and sooner or later the attention of marketeers. There are plenty of guides available online that can help you create a powerful social media marketing strategy for Instagram so that you can start promoting your brand, products and services in this social media as well.

A suitable way to gain a bigger audience for your company’s Instagram profile is to popularize it as much as possible. One option is to integrate your feed in your website so that your new organic visitors may have a look at your photos/videos and then decide to follow you on that social media network. This is the very option that we are going to discuss in this post.

OK, I am intrigued! How can I use the plugin Instagram Feed?

Begin by installing and activating the plugin itself. You can do this in several ways. The most convenient one is to use the WordPress plugin installer system. However you can always upload the plugin manually and then install it. In this case you have to download it from its official WordPress.org page.

After this you have to activate it and then navigate to the settings page “Instagram Feed” in order to configure the plugin. This page is accessible through the WordPress dashboard. You will need your Instagram Access Token and Instagram User ID in order to connect the plugin with your Instagram account.

In the plugin settings you have to determine whether or not you want to keep the plugin settings in case you decide to remove it at a later point. This can be useful if you change your mind and choose to install it once again.

All of these settings are just the first tab in thie Instagram Feed settings menu. It is called “Configure”. Make sure that you click on the “Save Changes” button before you move on to the next tab.

It is called “Customize” and here you can make the magic work by choosing how will the feed look like on your WordPress website.

The options here are related to:

Again – remember to save your changes before proceeding to the next tab which is called “Display Your Feed”.

In it you are presented with a default shortcode that you are free to paste anywhere you want in your WordPress website. For example you may use a post or a page. Most likely you will select a text widget which will be placed on a suitable widget area on your theme.

There are also different shortcode combinations so that you can display multiple feeds or make any other customizations.

The last tab is related to the license of the plugin Instagram Feed.

This review covers all of the free features. However you may choose to add more power by purchasing the PRO version of the plugin. Here is a short video that presents its features to you:

What is next? Give this plugin a try! If you want further tips on how to set it up and running then you can follow the official guide from this link.

Also you can share any opinions on Instagram Feed in the comment section below. See you soon and don’t forget to share this post in social media as well.

Custom Twitter Feeds – review

Hello friends,

I am sure that you are familiar with the social media power of Twitter. This network is proven to be extremely effective when it comes to using it for marketing purposes.

In this post I will present to you one solution that will allow you to show your Twitter feeds on your WordPress website in order to attract more followers in this social media.

The solution is called Custom Twitter Feeds.

First a quick explanation on how Twitter works for those users who are yet to begin using it.

Twitter allows you to create a micro-blog message that is limited to 140 characters. In it you can add text, images or video files. Usually Twitter also counts the URL characters as part of the main message that is why using a URL shortener is a good idea in this case. In this social media you can also create polls and add location to your tweets (the name of the micro-blog messages that you create).

Twitter relies on the @ sign to mention a user or a brand in a tweet. For example if you wish to mention The CMS Place on Twitter you can use @TheCMSPlace in your updates.

This social media also relies on the hash-tag technology. These are specific topics that may go viral if more than one person uses them in their tweets. They are created of characters without spaces and with the # symbol in front of them. For example: #WordPress. You can either use existing hash-tags that are already viral or you can create your own one and popularize it.

In Twitter you can also have conversations when users and brands are mentioning each other and then replying on the respective tweets and so on.

Now on the main topic – why should I use Custom Twitter Feeds on WordPress.

This plugin will allow you to display the feed of your personal or business profile on your website. The key moment here is that you will be able to completely customize this feed. You can add user timeline, home timeline of even the hashtag that you have created for your brand and want to be popularized.

How to use Custom Twitter Feeds?

Begin by following the already familiar procedure of installing (automatically using WordPress or by downloading from WordPress.org) and activating the plugin.

Then you have to go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the Twitter Feeds menu in order to configure the plugin.

Once you do this, you will be presented with five tabs:

The settings options for Custom Twitter Feeds

What should I do next with Custom Twitter Feeds?

Start filling your Twitter profile with useful tweets and display them on your website. Remember that great content in any form is a sure method to attract new followers for your brand. A good idea here will be to find additional information about using Twitter for social media marketing purposes so that you can be sure that you are doing it right.

That’s all friends! If you find this plugin useful, please give it a try. Bear in mind that this review was for the options supported in the free version of Custom Twitter Feeds. If you want more power for your custom feeds you can purchase the PRO version of the plugin and unlock all of the additional options in the tabs.

Please share this post on social media in order to help other users find out about this great plugin and don’t forget to write any questions or feedback in the comment section below.

See you soon, friends!

Social Login for WordPress

Hello friends,

In this post I will present to you one of the most popular solutions for WordPress login. It utilizes social media and allows your users to log in to your website with just a single click on a button.

This plugin is called Social Login.

Why would I want to add a plugin like Social Login to my WordPress website?

Because this is one of the most sure ways to keep your visitors returning to it on a regular basis. Let’s assume that you want to create a website that provides a user profile for each visitor. This profile is needed to interact with the website’s content in some ways – commenting, uploading files, sharing data, creating content, etc.

The classic way to do this is to allow each visitor to create a profile by adding username, email and password. Then each time this new user wants to log in to your website they have to enter these details over and over again. Now imagine that they forget them. The most common situation is to keep trying to log in with different combinations until they give up or your WordPress has a protection that blocks them from further attempts. Then the users that will truly want to log in will have to reset their password by entering a valid email then add new password and so on.

Most of the users will not do this as it is time-consuming. This means that your website has to be extremely valuable for your users in order to make them try to log in in case of a forgotten password. In most cases they will just skip this step and leave.

But even if they do not forget the password/user name they have to re-enter it every time the cookie expires or they are using a different browser. This is also burdening and most users will not be happy.

The social login functionality skips all of these steps and allows the instant creation of new profiles and logins with just a click of a button that represents the social media profile of the user. This will urge the visitors to create profiles and interact with your content and also it will make them coming back regularly.

OK. What social media networks are supported in Social Login?

More than 30! Here is a list of some of them:

As you can see the list is quite good. Having so many options is ideal if you are intending to target audiences from different parts of the world.

How to use Social Login?

Install the plugin and activate it. Then visit Settings -> Social Login to configure it. From there you can choose which social networks you want to be available on your website for login purposes. Doing this is extremely easy as you have to click on the checkbox to select or remove each of them.

There are some other settings that you need to configure and you are basically done. Now each time you visit the WordPress login form it may look like this:

Or you may prefer larger buttons like these:

Additionally you may choose to place the social login options to your comment form for commenting purposes. You can also add a widget in your widget areas in order to allow the visitors to login or create profiles while they are browsing.

This is it friends! Now you know how to increase engagement to your WordPress website by allowing extremely easy registrations and logins using different social media.

If you like this plugin, please give it a try and don’t forget to share your experience with the rest of TheCMSPlace’s community. You can use the comment form below for this purpose and we will be happy to hear from you. Also you can share any other thoughts and questions that you might have regarding the Social Login plugin.

Don’t forget to share this post on social media as well. Be social!

See you soon friends!

MailChimp for WordPress – review

Hello friends,

Email marketing is an extremely important channel to attract visitors and customers to your website. There are many solutions that will allow you to gain subscribers for your email lists. However one tool seems to stand out from the crowd as it has proven its functionality to a great amount of WordPress users.

This plugin is called MailChimp for WordPress and in this post I will make a review on its free version.

MailChimp for WordPress

What is MailChimp?

If you are a beginner you may have never heard of MailChimp and that is OK. However all digital marketing veterans are quite familiar with what it does. MailChimp is an online solution that will allow you to achieve several actions.

First of all it will allow you to attract email subscribers. You will be able to organize them in lists and you will even be able to add an already created lists so that they can be used with MailChimp.

Second – you will be able to create stylish email newsletters. This is not only easy, but also extremely fun! All you have to do is drag&drop the components, adjust their settings a little and then save the newsletter.

Third – you will be able to send your newsletters to your email subscribers with just one click. But that’s not all, friends! You will also get statistics what has happened with the emails that you have sent.

MailChimp comes in several pricing plans, but there is also a free plan that is recommended for smaller audiences (below 2000 subscribers).

What is MailChimp for WordPress?

The name just says it all – this is the plugin that connects your WordPress website with your MailChimp account so that you can subscribe your visitors into your email marketing lists with ease and confidence.

With this plugin you can add various sign-up methods and gain more and more subscribers. MailChimp for WordPress allows you to add great looking opt-in forms to your website. What is more important is that you will be able to use this plugin with many other form solutions for WordPress. The integration with them is seamless. Currently MailChimp for WordPress supports:

Big list, right? These are the most commonly used plugins and tools (of this type) for WordPress and that is why this plugin supports them.

MailChimp for WordPress also supports various add-ons that will increase its power. For example you may add the premium version that will add multiple forms with AJAX, ecomerce360 integration support, email notifications, styling options for your forms, improved and detailed reports and statistics regarding your newsletter campaigns and many other features.

Another add-on for MailChimp for WordPress is the MailChimp top bar that adds an opt-in form in the top bar of your WordPress website. If you want to see the activity on your lists then you should install the MailChimp activity add-on. There is also an user sync solution, a captcha solution, box pop-up add-on and the third party tool WPBruiser which is a powerful anti-spam protection system.

MailChimp for WordPress comes with detailed documentation. The knowledge base of the plugin is updated daily so that you can find the answer to any question.

How to use MailChimp for WordPress?

First of all you need to install and activate the plugin. You can get it from the WordPress installer or download it from its WordPress.org page. Then you need to setup the checkbox settings for the plugin by selecting where to place it – i.e. whether or not to integrate it with the described above forms solutions. Then you have to define the label text for this checkbox. You should think of something catchy so that users will be willing to click on it. Then you have to choose whether or not you want it to be checked by default. This might be great for attracting new subscribers but it is also risky as some of the visitors might not detect the checkbox and might feel misleaded. I’d personally leave it unchecked but it’s up to you.

Also you can choose to load some default CSS or not.

MailChimp for WordPress

You need to add your MailChimp API key as well in order to make the connection between your plugin and this service.

You can also add additional fields using the plugin’s form builder:

MailChimp for WordPress

Then all you have to do is enjoy the increase of subscribers for your newsletter lists.

You can find out more about this plugin by watching the following video:

And that’s it friends. Would you give this plugin a try? Share your opinion on the matter in our comment form below. Also don’t forget to spread the word about this review in social media.

Thank you and see you soon!

*The images are embedded from the WordPress.org page of the plugin

Why you should use Jetpack for WordPress

Hello friends,

In this post I will present to you one extremely popular solution for WordPress. It is called Jetpack and here you will find out several reasons why you should give it a try for your website.

What is Jetpack?

The short answer is a WordPress plugin. However it is not just any regular plugin – it is a complete booster for any self-hosted website (downloaded from WordPress.org).

It provides you with many modules that are absolutely free for use. You can activate all of them or just choose the ones that you really need. And there are some of them that are absolutely necessary for any WordPress website.

Jetpack is 100% free and all you have to do is just download it, install it, activate it and login with your WordPress.com account. And if the modules and their functionalities are not enough for you, you can always consider a premium upgrade that will provide you with even more power.

That’s great, but what is this WordPress.com account for Jetpack? I thought that it was a solution for the WordPress.org websites?

And that is correct! It is a solution for the self-hosted variant of our beloved WordPress, however it provides it with all the great features from the WordPress.com solution for free. That’s why you need an account for it. You can create one for free. It is not needed to create a blog there – just an account. Then after you have installed Jetpack you will be able to connect your website with that account and start using the powerful features of the plugin.

OK – which Jetpack modules do I really need?

I will answer this question with a question – How much power do you want for your website? If the answer is “as more as possible” then you should activate as much modules as possible.

However having too much power isn’t always the optimal solution. So my advice is to check out all modules and then select the ones that will provide you with the features that your website is lacking.

While you are considering what to choose, I will help you with a hint – there are 7 modules that are very needed so you might want to start with them.

Module 1 – WordPress Stats

This an absolute must-have. This is an analytics solution that will provide you with information on the activity of all non-logged-in users. All you have to do is to be logged in your administrator account and then view your stats. This solution will provide additional information so it is absolutely OK to have it running alongside with your Google Analytics account. The more data you have – the better.

Module 2 – Publicize

This module will automatically ping your social services (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and will post the new content on your behalf.

Module 3 – Sharing

This is an absolute must-have for your WordPress website. I have already reviewed it in details in this post, so go ahead and find out why you need it.

Module 4 – Contact forms

Every modern website needs contact forms. And here you have a complete functionality absolutely for free. So why don’t you give it a try?

Module 5 – Jetpack comments

This is another must-have. It improves the default WordPress comment system and allows your visitors to either comment with their accounts on your website, or to log in using social media and then comment. Of course you can allow them to write their e-mail and name and comment without registration or a social media profile as well.

In my opinion this module also helps reduce spam comments. However if you want even better protection the premium upgrades of Jetpack are there for you.

Module 6 – The Jetpack mobile theme

I used to love one non-responsive theme. It looks great, however Google did not liked it while it was not mobile-friendly. So I had to change it. But while struggling to choose a new theme and decide on its design I had to stay with the old non-responsive one. And what saved my ranks and provided my visitors with mobile visits was the Jetpack’s mobile theme. It is absolutely simple to activate and use. And if you like keeping things simple you may find the combination of any non-responsive theme and Jetpack’s module to be absolutely great and efficient. It basically transfers any mobile-unfriendly website to a mobile-friendly one.

Module 7 – Photon

Speed is another very important SEO factor. And to improve it you have to start by optimizing your images. Now, you will find some articles here that I have written about image optimization. But no matter what you do, you will find out that having a CDN is probably the most favorable solution. And Jetpack provides you with such option in the form of its free Photon module. It will make your website faster, so you can consider giving it a try.

And these are the 7 modules that you should start with. You may also consider the following ones as well:

So, dear friends, that is why you should use Jetpack for WordPress. What do you think? Please share any questions or feedback in the comments below.

See you soon!