Why WordPress Stand Apart From Other Content Managements Systems ?

You must have built a lot of websites in the past using different platforms, right? But, like millions of people out there do you also believe that WordPress is the best content management system? Well, if you ask me I will definitely say a yes. According to the recently conducted studies, WordPress has taken the crown from Joomla and Drupal and has emerged as the number 1 Content Management System (CMS).

WordPress was initially started as a blogging tool, however in less than a decade it has emerged as one of the largest self-hosted CMS platform used on millions of sites and viewed by tens of millions of people each day. A content management system is the one that allows the website owner to store all the documents, video, images or other online content in an organized manner and edit, delete or make changes easily.

This post lists out various benefits that will help you to understand why WordPress stand apart from other CMS like Joomla and Drupal. So if you are also interested to know more about WordPress, continue reading..

Ease Of Use

When compared to Drupal and Joomla, WordPress is the simplest CMS to use. A person is not required to have technical or programming skills to use it and thus its popularity is increasing quickly. Anyone can set up a WordPress blog easily and it can be up and running in a few hours. It is easy enough that a person can even get ready with his own website in a week's time.

WordPress have been specially designed to serve non-technical people's requirements who want to have their own website. While you may feel a little lost when working with Joomla but WordPress interface is minimal which makes it easy even for the novice.

It Is Free

Another great benefit that WordPress comes with is that it is free of cost. While choosing a CMS, you would not like to get stuck up with a management system that has a limited number of free plugins and theme. Here too WordPress emerge as a winner as only a limited number of themes and plugins are available for free at Joomla or Drupal.

According to the official data, more than 2176 themes and 28593 plugins are available on the WordPress official site and this is really a big number. When building a WordPress website, all you need to do is to buy a domain and hosting and then you can easily customize your website with the help of free themes and plugins.

Customization

Before you decide on between the 3 most popular CMS, make sure that you know that the WordPress also comes with the ease of customization and upgradation. WordPress alert the users whenever a new update is released. Moreover, it also comes with the online file editing feature which makes it easy to customize the theme by editing the files in the application itself.

The theme controls the look and feel of the website and by opting for WordPress, you have access to a large number of themes. You can easily change the look of your website to customize it according to your preferences. Moreover, the plugins can be used to solve a problem that you might be facing while designing the website.

Growing Community

WordPress is backed by an ever-growing community of developers who constantly work to bring something new for the users. According to the recent stats, only WordPress have shown a rapid growth as it is used by a large number of companies and thousands of people around the world. In other words, it can also be said that a significant development will go into WordPress as compared to the other two popular content management system.

Installation Time And Complexity

The first thing that is required to be kept in mind before using a CMS is the installation process. So now let's make a comparison between the installation time and complexity of the 3 popular CMS.

Drupal and Joomla requires the user to provide a database name during the installation process. Both these content management systems have evolved a lot and the installation process has become comparatively easier. While installing Drupal, the user has to download the file, unzip it and keep it in the root folder. Next he is required to access the root folder from the browser and then the software will do the rest of the job.

WordPress is the easiest of these 3 CMS tools. WordPress requires the same information, but this is hidden behind two stages of installation. You need to create the config.php file and then there is just one click for the installation of this CMS. In case you have the config.php file there is no need to create it again as the installer will automatically search for it.

Easy To Optimize

It is important that your content must be optimized to make it easy for the search engine to crawl it. The good news is that WordPress comes with different plugins that will increase the chances of your website to rank high. You can get your hands on the free version of the plugins to get the job done, however, you can even buy the premium versions.

The two most popularly used plugins are:

• WordPress SEO By Yoast
• All In One SEO

These plugins make it easy to optimize individual pages according to Google requirements as you will be focusing on the right keywords.

Adding Content Made Simpler

If you are opting for custom WP development services, you must hire a reliable service provider. But if you are using WordPress, you can even add, delete or edit the content yourself. This is an important reason why a majority of people plan to go in with WordPress. If you know how to use MS Word, you can easily write and post a blog on your website.

To post content, you need to put the title of the blog in the space marked as “Put your title here”. Next put in the text body, add images or videos and hit the publish button. That's all, your post has been published. You can include different keywords to make the post easily searchable.

Mobile Ready

With the increasing use of mobile phones, people are browsing the internet through their smartphones. According to a study, it was found that over 40% of the searches are done through mobile phones. A website designed with the help of WordPress can be easily viewed on different screens as it is responsive to various screen size.

These were just some of the reasons why WordPress is fast emerging as the number 1 CMS that is used by small businesses, entrepreneurs and well established ventures to power their business websites. If you are planning to start up a blog or want to set up an online store, make sure to contact the best WordPress development company as the professionals will help you to design a website according to your requirements.

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How To Make A Custom WordPress Theme For Your Blog ?

You are planning to set up a blog but do not want to design it with the run-of-the-mill themes? How about designing your own theme? Well, designing a theme may look like a daunting task, but with a little help from a custom wp theme developers, you will have your own unique theme. Wait, did you just said that you want to design the theme on your own? If so, this post will help you to put it all together with the help of free blogging software and WordPress. Are you excited to design the theme? Let's get started!!

While starting with the customization process, you have two options. You can either start building a theme from scratch or customize a pre-designed theme. For both the options, it is not important that you possess all the technical knowledge about coding. We will be taking up static HTML and CSS pages and would customize them further to design a unique theme. But before we start the customization process, let's first known more about the files we would be working on.

• header.php

This is the file that will contain everything that according to you should appear at the top of your site.

• index.php

Looking for the homepage? Index.php is the file that loads the theme and act as the website's homepage.

• sidebar.php

The primary and the secondary areas for the sidebar widget are contained in this file.

• footer.php

This file is required to be edited to include different elements that you want to show in the footer.

• archive.php

This is the template file that is used when you want to view different categories, author, posts, and dates.

• single.php

Want to view a single post? This is the file that displays a single post and it is available with and without comments.

• comments.php

Use this file to enable or disable the comment section. This is the file used to show the comment form.

• page.php

This file is similar to single.php but is used to display a single WordPress page. It does not include posts, instead individual static pages are included.

• search.php

When a user request for a search, this file shows the request through search widget present on your WordPress website.

• 404.php

Have you ever seen the 404 not found error on a website? This is the file that is responsible for displaying the error.

• style.css

All the styling and the changes that you want to make in your theme will be done in this file. So today we will talk about how to edit it to design an amazing theme for your WordPress blog.

• functions.php

Unless or until, you have good knowledge of PHP, you should not try to edit this file. You can use this file to edit the WordPress core without making changes in the core files.

While this list may look a little intimidating, we are not required to make changes in all of the files. We need to edit the style.css and footer.php files to make the required changes in the theme. Now that you know about different files and their function, let's install a blank theme in WordPress and style it in a unique way.

Login To The Admin Area

After installing the WordPress theme, go to the file editor. This is where all the changes will be done.

• Custom File Editor

A file editor is available in the WordPress admin panel and it allows you to make changes in the custom.css file without an FTP program or external text editor. Most of the changes that will help you to customize the theme will be done to custom.css.

• Appearance – Editor

In this editor, you will see a list of files along with the codes. In most of the cases, this editor is used to customize the PHP code, however, default CSS style can also be customized.

Styling The Theme

With everything in place, now we can easily edit the style.css file. Without further ado, let's cover different items that will help you to add some style to the theme.

• Page Layout

The page layout section contains 2 code blocks – one for div#content and other for div#container. In both the conditions, DIV tags are targeted. The container tag contains everything that is present on the page and the default margin can also be changed or adjusted according to a person's requirement. However, the content tag includes the blog roll, posts, and static page.

• Header

Header plays an important role in changing the styling of your page. You can add different elements in the header or decide how the menu will look. As we all know that menus are the main attraction of your blog page, you can easily customize it by making some changes in the header.php file.

• Post And Pages

When you are picking up a theme for a WordPress blog, it is imperative that you choose to customize the entries also so that it appears attractive. You can use different styles to align the text right or left or even use the .entry-title to relate different page headers.

• Comments

Although styling the comment section may seem like an easy task, it is one of the most complex jobs. When a person comment on your blog, you reply to that comment and finally you end up with a nestle of comments. So while styling the comment section, you end up making a lot of changes.

Additional Style

If you have hired a WordPress development company for the job, styling the theme for your blog will be an easy task. They will move ahead of the basic changes and include some additional changes in your WordPress theme to make it look beautiful and interesting.

If you have not designed a WordPress theme before, these tips will make it easier for you to customize a theme. However, if you do not have the time to spare, you can always hire WordPress development Company to get the theme customized by the professionals at competitive rates.

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How To Increase The Performance Of WordPress Website ?

WordPress is a great platform that help entrepreneurs to set up a website or a blog easily. However, your WordPress website can at times become very slow, which can have a negative impact on your conversions. While slow and steady definitely wins the race, this is not the case with your website. A slow website can turn off your visitors in turn making you lose your potential clients. So if you feel that your WordPress business website is also becoming slow, it is always better to take the right precautions.

Importance Of The Website Loading Speed

First impression matters a lot and when it comes to making a favorable impression on your prospective customers, loading speed of the website plays an important role. When an online user visits your website, the first thing that he will notice is the speed of the website.

Generally a visitor stays on a page for about 3 to 4 seconds before moving on to some other website. If your website is not able to load properly during that time, the visitors will definitely move on. Even if you have a well-designed website equipped with attractive content, it will fail to attract visitors' attention. Moreover, if your website loads slowly, it will be ranked lower in the Google search result.

This post lists put different ways to increase the performance of your WordPress website. So make sure to include these tips while carrying out WordPress optimization to increase the performance of your business website.

Start From The Basics

If you want to increase the performance of the site, the most important thing would be to start with the basics. Starting with the basic would include:

• Plugins

Remember to keep the number of plugins low. A website that is equipped with a large number of plugins has high loading speed and this is something that you do not want. So make a careful choice of the plugins and make sure that you use only those plugins that are most essential.

• Spam Comments

Another factor that can decrease the speed of your website is the presence of spam comment in your database. So make sure that you regularly delete the spam comments to optimize your WordPress website.

• Post Revisions

Copies of old revisions can also make the database heavy further having a negative effect on the speed of your website. To delete all the old revisions, you can install a WordPress plugin and increase the speed of your website.

Choose A Good Host

While you may think that investing in a shared hosting provider is a good choice, think again. It may seem to be the best bargain deal, however, choosing a shared host come with its share of downsides. A site hosted on shared host have incredible slow speed and cannot handle heavy traffic flow.

So if you have started your website on a shared host, try to upgrade it as soon as possible. You can choose the WP Engine managed WordPress hosting to avoid your website from having downtime. By upgrading your web host, you will be glad that you did.

Carefully Choose A Theme

Now that you have worked with the web host and plugins, the next important step is to choose a theme wisely. Instead of choosing a theme, start with a solid framework for added benefits to your website.

After selecting a framework, see how frequently it is updated, what are the security measures and what kind of designs will you get. To increase the performance of your website, you must be able to add a custom meta description to the articles or blogs.

Optimize The Database

The database is the place where everything about the WordPress site is saved, however, it differs from the plugins, themes, physical files or uploads on the server. The database is used by WordPress to store comments, posts, pages, plugin information, and settings.

Every time the web page is loaded, it gets the information from the database and if it is stuffed with unnecessary information, the website will take a long time to load. Therefore, if you have a large website, it is important to optimize the database regularly.

Optimize The Images

Do you know what type of images can be used on the website and where will they fit appropriately? Optimizing the images is also important to increase the performance of your website. Use the images in a proper format and make sure that they are not heavy. Optimized images will increase your websites speed and make it load fast.

You can also add lazyload to the images to give an interesting look to the website. This process will decrease the loading speed of the website and save the bandwidth also. To do this automatically, jQuery Image Lazy Load plugin should be installed.

Replace PHP with static HTML

Whenever possible, you can replace PHP with static HTML to cut down your loading time. By removing unnecessary PHP executions, CPU processing time and database queries can be saved. So replace the original PHP code with the processed codes and you are good to go.

Split Comments Into Different Pages

Every website has a set of articles or blogs that have gone viral. These are the articles that were able to generate tons of comments from the users and thus they consume a lot of server resources.

If your blog is popular and you are getting great reviews and people have started a discussion about it, it is advices that you paginate the comments to save on server resources and to make your website load faster.

Stay Updated

The first and foremost step of WordPress customization is to remain updated. Staying updated with the latest version of WordPress is important to maximize the performance of your website. If you do not stay in sync with the recent updates released by WordPress, you are potentially putting your business website in security risks.

These were some of the tricks that will help you to increase the performance of your WordPress website, convert the visitors into potential customers and to amplify the business profits. So the next time you feel that your website has a low loading speed or is not working perfectly, use these tricks to increase its performance.