Category: elegantthemes.com

9 Best Redirect Plugins for WordPress in 2023

Setting up redirects can become a regular task if you run a WordPress website. For example, you may take some of your pages down over time, or you might want to move them from one URL to another. Whenever that happens, configuring a redirect properly ensures that users still arrive where they want to go.

In this article, we’ll talk about what types of redirects you can set up. We’ll also introduce you to the best redirect plugins for WordPress and help you choose the right one for your site.

Let’s get to it!

What Type of Redirect to Use on Your Website

There are several types of redirects that you can use on your WordPress website. Most of the plugins we’ll introduce you to in the following sections enable you to set up any type of redirect you want. With that in mind, it’s essential to understand the difference between each of them.

Redirect Breakdown

Let’s break down the most common types of redirects and when to use them:

301 (permanent redirection).Â This type of redirect tells the visitor that the page they tried to access has moved elsewhere permanently. Then it helpfully sends them to that new address.
302, 303, 307 (temporary redirection).Â These types of redirects tell visitors that the page they’re trying to access is temporarily unavailable.
304 (not modified redirection). This type of redirect sends visitors to a cached version of the page since there haven’t been any new changes to it. We have an excellent overview that explains what the 304 status code means and how to fix it if you are seeing unwanted 304 redirects on your website.
308 (permanent redirection).Â This is an alternative to 301 redirections and accomplishes essentially the same outcome, although the original is still the most popular option.

In theory, there are particular situations when you’ll want to use 302, 303, and 307 redirects, respectively. For example, you can use 303 and 307 redirects to tell browsers not to refresh a confirmation page after users submit a form.

For practical purposes, however, you probably won’t use a lot of 303 or 307 redirects. Form and e-commerce plugins usually handle those situations via built-in functionality. As for 302 redirects, there aren’t a lot of scenarios when it makes sense to move visitors to another page temporarily.

In practice, you’ll most often use 301 redirects. In case you have particular needs, though, we’ll let you know what types of redirects each of the plugins we recommend enable you to use.

Finally, it’s also worth noting that you can implement redirects in WordPress manually by modifying your site’s .htaccessÂ file. However, that’s not an approach that we recommend unless you’re very comfortable editing WordPress core files.

The Best Redirect Plugins for WordPress

We selected the seven plugins below based on their feature sets, ease of use, and positive reviews. However, it’s important to note that implementing redirects on your website can lead to errors and SEO penalties if you don’t do it properly (or if your plugin is poorly coded or out of date). With that in mind, we’re also recommending plugins that are well-established and frequently updated.

1. Rank Math

$Rank Math SEO plugin$

Rank Math is a popular all-in-one WordPress SEO plugin that includes redirection functionality. It’s similar to Yoast in terms of features, and there’s plenty of debate about which is the superior WordPress SEO plugin.

If you use Rank Math on your own site (or are interested in adding it), you’ll be glad to know that it makes configuring redirects easy. This SEO plugin uses a module system that enables you to turn on or off the specific functionalities you want to use. Among those modules, you’ll find options for a 404 error monitor and redirects:

Rank Math example

The 404 error monitor is enabled by default. However, once you turn on the redirection feature, you’ll be able to set up individual redirects:

Add redirections

Rank Math supports multiple types of redirects, and it also enables you to automatically reroute 404 errors to any page of your choosing. Of course, you get access to a lot of useful SEO functionality as well.

Key Features:

Improve your website’s SEO
Monitor your site for 404 errors, and implement automatic redirects for them.
Set up custom redirects for any page you need

Rank Math is for you if…

…you already use this plugin on your site, or you’re in search of an SEO plugin that also includes redirect functionality. In comparison with other SEO plugins, Rank Math offers a more modular approach. That means that you can turn off any features that you don’t need for easier configuration.

Price: Free, with a premium version available starting at $59 per year

Get Rank Math

2. LoginWP

The Peter's Login Redirect plugin

LoginWP (Formerly Peter’s Login Redirect) is unlike any of the other redirect plugins for WordPress we’ve talked about so far. With this plugin, you can set up automatic redirects that trigger when users log in or out of your website.

We’ve talked about how to set up and configure LoginWPÂ in the past. So let’s instead focus on why this type of redirect can be useful. For example, it can enable you to divert users from seeing the WordPress dashboard after they log in.

You can add redirect rules for specific users or roles. The plugin also enables you to set up post-registration redirects, which you can use to send users to a ‘thank you’ page:

Setting up login redirection rules

If you’re running a membership-based website, this type of redirect can be incredibly useful. With this plugin, you can set up as many login and logout redirection rules as you need.

Key Features:

Redirect users after they log in or out of your website
Set up rules for specific users or roles
Create custom post-registration redirects

LoginWP is for you if…

…you run a membership website or any other type of operation that requires users to log in to access key features.

Price: Free, premium version starts at $49

Get LoginWP

3. Redirection

Redirection

Redirection is by far the most popular redirect plugin for WordPress, and it’s easy to see why. This tool enables you to set up many types of redirects, including:

Redirection can do other things as well, such as automatically monitoring your website for permalink changes and setting up redirections for you when it detects updates. It can also keep a log of 404 errors that visitors encounter and share that information with you.

By monitoring 404 errors, you’ll have a full list of potential URLs for which you need to set up redirects. Here’s how the redirection setup process looks when using this plugin:

Set up new redirection

Another benefit of Redirection is that it enables you to determine conditions for each redirect that you set up. For example, you can create redirects that only trigger based on a visitor’s login status, language, or the referrer, among other parameters.

Key Features:

Set up multiple types of redirects in WordPress
Automatically generate redirects when a permalink changes
Keep logs of 404 errors on your website
Set up parameters for your redirect rules

Redirection is for you if…

…you want to be able to set up multiple types of redirects and monitor your website for 404 errors. This plugin is also a fantastic choice if you want to configure redirects with advanced rules and parameters.

Price: Free

Get Redirection

4. Quick Page/Post Redirect

The Quick Page/Post Redirect plugin

This next plugin is all about 301 redirects. Quick Page/Post Redirect enables you to add multiple 301 redirects for your website at once using a simple menu and without tinkering with too many settings:

Adding multiple 301 redirects to WordPress

You can configure redirects to open in a new window or add the nofollowÂ attribute to them. Quick Page/Post Redirect also enables you to add redirect rules directly from the Block Editor when editing individual pages or posts:

Configuring a redirect within the Block Editor

If you opt for this approach, the plugin enables you to choose from a broader range of redirect types, including 301, 302, 307, and “meta redirects.” That last type occurs on the client side. Meta redirects aren’t beneficial from an SEO perspective, however, so we recommend against using them.

Key Features:

Set up multiple 301 redirects at once
Create individual redirect rules from within the Block Editor
Set up global redirects or turn off all existing ones with a click

Quick Page/Post Redirect is for you if…

…you want to set up multiple 301 redirects at once using a simple menu that doesn’t require you to tweak additional settings for any rule.

Price: Free

Get Quick Page/Post Redirect

5. Safe Redirect Manager

The Safe Redirect Manager plugin

Safe Redirect Manager offers a much more streamlined approach than other redirect plugins for WordPress. It saves redirect rules as custom post types and shies away from features such as 404 error logging since it claims this can cause performance issues (which shouldn’t be a problem with proper optimization).

Regardless of the plugin’s philosophy, it does make it easy to set up new redirect rules. It also supports multiple types, including the following options:

Here’s what it looks like when you’re setting up a new 301 redirect using Safe Redirect Manager:

Using the Safe Redirect Manager plugin

Another feature worth mentioning is that Safe Redirect Manager supports “wildcard redirects.” A wildcard redirect will divert any visitors trying to access a subdomain to your website instead. That can be useful if you have subdomains that you’re not currently using.

Key Features:

Set up multiple types of redirects
Create wildcard redirects
Add notes to each redirect rule that you set up
Save redirect rules as custom post types in your database

Safe Redirect Manager is for you if…

…you want to use a plugin that enables you to set up multiple types of redirects without having to tinker with advanced configuration options. It’s also one of the only options that support wildcard redirects.

Price: Free

Get Safe Redirect Manager

6. All 404 Redirect to Homepage

All 404 Redirect to Homepage

In some cases, you might not need to set up advanced redirect rules, and all you want is a way to take care of 404 errors. What All 404 Redirect to Homepage does is set up automatic redirects for any 404 error on your website, so visitors are automatically sent to your homepage. In addition, you can customize what URL the plugin redirects users towards:

Setting up a redirect rule for 404 errors

This plugin also includes a 404 error log, but it doesn’t enable you to set up any other type of redirect rule.

Key Features:

Redirect all 404 errors to your homepage (or any other page that you choose)
Log 404 errors on your website

All 404 Redirect to Homepage is for you if…

…you want a simple way to take care of 404 errors on your website, and you don’t have a need for any other type of redirect.

Price: Free, with a premium version available starting at $29 per year

Get 404 Redirect to Homepage

7. 301 Redirects

The 301 Redirects plugin

The 301 Redirects plugin enables you to log 404 errors and set up multiple types of redirects, including:

The plugin offers a simple menu that makes it easy to create new redirect rules. For example, if you don’t want to enter URLs manually, you can choose whether to redirect an address to a post, page, media file, or product:

Creating a product redirect rule

By using this plugin, you can set up as many redirect rules as you need. Plus, if you’re just starting a new WordPress site, the plugin will let you know if your permalink structure isn’t compatible with redirects.

Key Features:

Set up multiple types of redirects
Redirect visitors to specific pages, posts, media files, or products
Log 404 errors on your website

301 Redirects is for you if…

…you want to use a plugin that includes dropdown menus for choosing which pages, posts, media files, or products to redirect visitors to.

Price: Free, with a premium version available starting at $49

Get 301 Redirects

8. Yoast SEO

The Yoast SEO plugin.

Yoast SEO hardly needs an introduction. It’s the most popular SEO plugin among WordPress users, and with good reason. We’ve talked about how to set up Yoast SEO in the past, and it’s still the tool we use for optimizing the content on our own blog.

If you use the premium version of Yoast SEO, you get access to a lot of extra features that we didn’t have time to cover in the post linked above, including a redirect manager. This tool enables you to set up new redirects or let Yoast SEO do it for you when you delete or move a page:

Using the Yoast SEO redirect manager

Yoast SEO’s redirect manager supports multiple types of redirection, including:

You can also set two HTTP statuses that aren’t commonly used, which are 410 and 451. The 410 code tells search engines that a page is gone for good, and they should de-index it. With the 451 code, you signal that a page is unavailable for legal reasons.

Key Features:

Improve your website’s SEO and readability
Set up multiple types of redirects
Detect when a page is gone or moves to a new URL and set up an automatic redirect to it.

Yoast SEO is for you if…

…you’re already using the free version of Yoast SEO, and it’s baked into your day-to-day WordPress operations. In that scenario, purchasing a premium license can be worth it. Yoast SEO premium includes a broad range of other features beyond redirects, including keyword and internal link suggestions, on-demand support, and more.

Price: Yoast SEO Premium licenses start at $89 per year

Get Yoast SEO

9. 404 to 301

404 to 301 logo

404 to 301 â€“ Redirect, Log, and Notify is a WordPress plugin that helps website owners manage 404 errors on their websites. The plugin automatically redirects the user to a relevant page on the website using a 301 redirect. This ensures that the user is directed to a useful page and that the website’s SEO is not negatively impacted by broken links. The plugin also logs all 404 errors and provides notifications to the website owner so that they can take action to fix broken links.

404 to 301 settings page

In addition to redirecting users and logging errors, 404 to 301 allows users to set up custom redirects for specific URLs. This is useful for website owners who have changed the structure of their website and need to redirect old URLs to new ones.

Key Features:

Automatically redirects users to a relevant page on the website using a 301 redirect
Logs all 404 errors and provides notifications to the website owner
Allows users to set up custom redirects for specific URLs

404 to 301 Errors is for you if…

…you want to improve your website’s user experience and SEO by effectively managing 404 errors and setting up custom redirects for specific URLs.

Price: Free

Get 404 to 301

Which WordPress Redirect Plugin Is The Best?

	Plugin	Price	Free Option
ðŸ¥‡	Rank Math	$59/yr	âœ”ï¸	Learn More
ðŸ¥ˆ	LoginWP	$49/yr	âœ”ï¸	Learn More
ðŸ¥‰	Redirection	Free	âœ”ï¸	Learn More
4	Quick Page/Post Redirect	Free	âœ”ï¸	Learn More
5	Safe Redirect Manager	Free	âœ”ï¸	Learn More
6	All 404 Redirect to Homepage	$29/yr	âœ”ï¸	Learn More
7	301 Redirects	$49/site	âœ”ï¸	Learn More
8	Yoast SEO	$99/yr	âœ”ï¸	Learn More
9	404 to 301	Free	âœ”ï¸	Learn More

As your website grows, you’ll probably need to implement a few redirects to ensure visitors reach the pages they’re looking for. Thanks to redirects, you can even minimize the impact of 404 errors on your website. However, that is only possible with the right redirect plugin for WordPress.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool for managing redirects, Rank Math is your best bet. Rank Math’s redirect management tool allows you to set up and manage 301 and 302 redirects directly from your WordPress dashboard. It also includes a powerful redirection engine that automatically detects and fixes 404 errors on your website.

Do you have any questions about how to implement redirects in WordPress? Then, let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

Featured image illustration via Thomas Knopp / shutterstock.com

The post 9 Best Redirect Plugins for WordPress in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

03.03.2023

9 Best WordPress CRM Plugins in 2023

If you’re running a business on WordPress, you know how important it is to be engaged with your customer base. The best tools help you with reliable customer relationship management. A CRM can help you keep track of your leads, customers, and sales and can make it easier to manage every aspect of your involvement with them.

In this article, we’ll explore some 9 of the best WordPress CRM plugins available to help you decide which one is best for your needs.

What is CRM and Why Its Important?

Customer relationship management (CRM) is software that helps businesses manage their interactions and relationships with leads, prospects, and customers. It allows businesses to store and organize customer data, track customer interactions and communications, and manage sales and marketing efforts. Businesses can use CRM tools to improve their customer service, increase customer retention, and boost sales.

WordPress is a powerful content management system (CMS) that allows businesses complete control and freedom over how they build their websites. But a CMS is different from a CRM. That said, WordPress can still be the engine for your very own CRM. With the installation of a simple plugin, you can transform a basic website into a sprawling management system that is intimately connected to your website and other necessary technology.

Different Types of CRM

CRMs can be built for certain types of businesses or tasks. So, it becomes really important to know what your business needs are and how a CRM can alleviate some pressure from your job (and not add to it). Here are some specialties that CRMs can focus on:

Sales Focused – Made to help sales teams manage communication, deal value, and lead scoring
Marketing Focused – Built-in tools that connect with advertising platforms and email marketing tools and often provide a level of automation for marketing efforts
Project Management/Invoicing – Made for service-based teams that need client management post-sale including managing projects
Niche – Created for particular industries such as Real Estate, SaaS, or Health Care

While all CRMs should have a little of each of these, some do specific tasks particularly well. At this point, you should agree that using one should be a no-brainer! But finding the right CRM plugin can be a bit of a hassle. Don’t worry, we’re here to help you find the best solution.

The 9 Best WordPress CRM Plugins

We have scoured every corner of the internet, looking to find the top WordPress CRM plugins for your needs. Let’s start with a crowd-pleaserâ€”FluentCRMâ€”and move on through a total of 9 killer WordPress options. Note, the last 2 plugins on the list are important if you use a standalone CRM like Hubspot CRM or Zoho CRM.

1. FluentCRM

FluentCRM Plugin Homepage Feb 2023

FluentCRM is a cutting-edge WordPress plugin that offers both self-hosted email marketing automation and CRM solution. It was built to rival other email marketing solutions such as Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Groundhogg (also on this list). What sets FluentCRM apart from its competitors is that it is a self-hosted WordPress plugin, allowing you to access and manage your email campaigns and contacts directly within your WordPress installation.

Key Features for FluentCRM :

Automatically import your contacts from CSV, WordPress users, and WooCommerce customers
Comprehensive data analysis to give you better visibility into your contacts, pulling from integrations with WooCommerce, EDD, LearnDash, and LifterLMS.
Feature-rich email marketing straight from the WordPress dashboard
Contacts’ can store notes, custom fields, and tags, and can be segmented based on triggers
User-friendly interfaces

FluentCRM is a highly flexible plugin that can handle various types of businesses, including eCommerce, membership, and learning management. With user-friendly interfaces and a flexible automation builder and email campaign editor, FluentCRM provides an easy and efficient way to manage and create your marketing campaigns.

FluentCRM Automated Workflow Builder

FluentCRM is for you if you…

Need a CRM + Email Marketing that runs off of WordPress
Want state-of-the-art features like funnel builders and deep campaign analytics
Don’t ever want to look back to subscribers and campaign sends being limited by your provider
Enjoy a tight ecosystem of integrated plugins (they also built FluentForms and FluentSMTP which both have free versions)
Want to pay one price for all the features

FluentCRM Pricing: Free, Premium starting at $129 a year

Get FluentCRM

2. Groundhogg CRM

Groundhogg CRM Plugin Homepage Feb 2023

Groundhogg is an all-in-one CRM and marketing automation plugin that offers advanced features typically found in large SaaS tools but at a much more affordable price. The plugin competes with other popular SaaS tools like Keap and Zoho but it is a 100% native WordPress plugin. We have a much broader review of Groundhogg but here are the highlights. Like FluentCRM, Groundhogg is a marketing automation CRM that is especially useful for eCommerce brands and marketing-heavy industries.

Key Features for Groundhogg CRM:

Total contact management with tagging and segmentation
Marketing automation including email marketing and SMS
Many integrations to save time (some only come with higher priced tiers) including aÂ Divi integration with “Plus tier”

Groundhogg WordPress CRM Plugin Email Sequence

Groundhogg CRM allows business owners to do more with WordPress. You can easily create marketing automation and sales funnels and manage your email campaigns directly within your WordPress installation. Even creating automated sequences is easy enough from the dashboard

Groundhogg CRM is for you if you…

You’re a small business looking for a comprehensive CRM solution
You are interested in getting help with your marketing from the Groundhogg support team
You want to automate your sales and marketing process

Pricing: Free, Paid plans starting at $20 a month

Get Groundhogg CRM

3. Propovoice

Propovoice Invoicing CRM Plugin Homepage Feb 2023

Propovoice is a comprehensive CRM and invoicing plugin for business owners and freelancers. It’ll allow you to manage clients, projects, estimates, invoices, and moreâ€”all in the comfort of your own WordPress installation. If you’re looking to scale up your freelancing or service business, Propovoice is a must-have tool to help you manage your clients and projects more efficiently. It, however, is not a marketing-focused CRM but a sales and project-focused one making it stand out from the first two plugins on our list.

Propovoice Lead to Deal Desk

Key Features for Propovoice:

Sales and lead management
Estimate, invoice, and project management
Project management (with a forthcoming client communication portal)
Templates to make your estimates and invoices look professional

One thing about Propovoice is its simplicity and modern design. Whether working through the deal desk Kanban board or selecting an invoice template, the plugin doesn’t feel dated at all. Being a newer plugin, though, Propovoice has limited integrations. Though, it is in active development and is getting new integrations fairly often.

Propovoice Estimate Creator from Templates

Propovoice is for you if you…

Are a small to medium-sized business looking for a sales-based CRM
Want a modern-looking CRM for WordPress and are tired of dated WP dashboards
Need a sales CRM that costs just a little less than average

Propovoice Pricing: Free, Paid plan starts at $59 a year

Get Propovoice

4. FunnelKit

Funnel Kit CRM Plugin Landing page Feb 2023

FunnelKit is a marketing CRM that is built to power WooCommerce websites to new heights. It brings in tools that are focused exclusively on eCommerce growth. It covers every aspect of lead generation, email marketing, and store conversion rate optimization/automation.

Key Features for FunnelKit:

Funnel builder for WordPress with Analytics, A/B testing, and Lead Generation
Contact management for email marketing and eCommerce account tracking
Visual, drag-and-drop email designer (all inside WordPress)
Workflow builder for email and contact automation tasks (create contacts, add a tag, and track upsell performance)

FunnelKit Automation Workflow Builder

This plugin’s contact management features enable users to store and organize customer information in a central location; combined with its email marketing tools, this is one of the best CRM solutions available.

FunnelKit is for you if you…

Run a WooCommerce store and want to squeeze every last bit of performance from it
Looking for a native WordPress CRM built for WooCommerce
Need eCommerce features such as product-specific funnels and upsells

FunnelKit Pricing: Starting at $99.50 a year

Get FunnelKit

5. WP ERP

WP ERP CRM Business Platform Homepage Feb 2023

WP ERP is a total business management platform that includes CRM as a core function. This base plugin consists of three main modules: HR Management, CRM, and Accounting. There are a total of 23 extensions that add specific functionality to the base plugin. WP ERP aims to be your business’ operating systemâ€”not just for CRM but operations over the span of your business’ footprint.

WP ERP Solutions Modules

Key features for WP ERP:

Lead and contact management with customer segmentation
Extension for Help Desk, email marketing, and advanced accounting
Module pricing structure so you only pay for what you use

The CRM Dashboard for WPERP

One of the standout features of WP ERP is its easy-to-navigate dashboard which can help you schedule meetings and track tasks that are assigned to leads and opportunities.

WP ERP is for you if you…

Need more than just a CRM baked into your WordPress installation
You want to automate your marketing efforts
You need a free tool to help you forecast future sales

WP ERP Pricing: Free, Premium tier starts at $129 a year (extension ranging from $2.49/mo to $9.49/mo)

Get WP ERP

6. WP-CRM

WP-CRM Homepage Feb 2023

WP-CRM is another, long-standing, CRM interface that works inside WordPress. Though some aspects of it look dated, it handles client management and project tracking between users. Like WP ERP, it has premium add-ons available to add extra features, integrations, and functionality.

Key Features for WP-CRM:

CRM and contact management
Handles projects for teams and tasks for individual users
Allows for custom fields to create a CRM that fits your needs

WP-CRM is for you if you…

Want to improve your customer relationships and grow your business
Need a platform that is customizable to fit the operations and strategy of your company
Don’t mind its “traditional” WordPress look

WP-CRM Pricing: Free, Premium Extensions (ranging from $29/yr to $89/yr)

Get WP-CRM

7. Jetpack CRM

Jetpack CRM banner

Jetpack CRM is a plugin for WordPress that offers small businesses a secure and customizable solution for managing their customer relationships. You have probably heard of Jetpack in other contexts (like CDN or advertising) but it also has a CRM module. With Jetpack CRM, you own and host your own data, giving you complete control over access and security. The plugin runs on your server and can be used in conjunction with other security plugins, allowing you to set roles and permissions to determine who can do what within the CRM. We have a detailed Jetpack CRM review but here are the highlights.

Key Features include:

Complete contact management
Deal tracking and reporting
Task and appointment scheduling
Sales and marketing analysis
Email marketing integrations (Aweber, Convertkit, Mailchimp, and more)
Paid Add-ons to integrate CRM with Membermouse, Gravity Forms, and Optinmonster

Jetpack CRM offers a range of features to help businesses manage their customer relationships, including a client portal, contact management, and invoicing. It also provides a customizable dashboard that allows users to keep track of their sales and revenue. The plugin allows users to add or remove modules to create a personalized CRM tool that meets their specific needs.

Jetpack dashboard

Jetpack CRM is for you if you…

Are a business owner looking for a secure and customizable CRM solution
Want to manage your customer relationships in one place
Need to track your sales and revenue

Jetpack CRM Pricing: $129 a year

Get Jetpack CRM

8. Bit Integrations

Bit Integrations Landing Page Feb 2023

Bit Integrations is a WordPress integration suite for connecting different plugins (same-site) to create advanced automation between your installed tools. Many plugins connect your WordPress website with external tools, but this one connects your internal tools together so that they work as one cohesive machineâ€”instead of frustrating silos.

This may seem like a weird plugin to feature in an article about WordPress CRM plugins, but it could prove consequential. If you are already using a standalone CRM (think Hubspot, Zoho, or ActiveCampaign) you might be able to use Bit Integrations to connect even more than you originally thought possible. It may not work for your particular setup, but it (and its competitor, Flowmattic) is perfect for creating a little more automation and integration within your website.

Key Features for Bit Integrations:

They have over 150 WordPress integrations to leverage
Expertly works with their other products (Bit Form, Bit SMTP, and Bit Assist)
Lowly yearly pricing for an automation platform

Bit Integrations ActiveCampaign Example

Take a look at its listed integrations and see what is possible that you previously thought couldn’t be done without custom-coded APIs and webhooks.

Bit Integrations is for you if you…

Want to realize new integrations between your plugins and external apps
Have an external CRM but want to explore even more automation with it

Bit Integrations Pricing: Free, Premium version $19 a year

Get Bit Integrations

9. WP Forms

WP Forms is another plugin that we bet you didn’t expect on this list. CRMs (WordPress or not) are data-eating machines. If they don’t have very much data (or actionable data) consider your investment in a CRM moot. Forms plugins, therefore, are a vital step in your data machine. WP Forms (though there are other great contenders in our best form plugins article) is an excellent choice when it comes to forms with a lot of integrations. Those integrations are the pipes between your website and CRM that are sending over precious data.

Key Features for WP Forms:

Hundreds of templates for every use case
Integrations on top of integrations to send data through
Tons of flexibility with different types of forms (conventional, newsletter email opt-ins, contact, etc.)

Choose from hundreds of categorized templates for fast form-building that powers your business. Everything from donation forms to opt-inâ€”WP Forms has got you covered with time-saving features.

WPForms 500+ Available Templates

WP Forms is for you if you…

Haven’t explored what a premium form builder can do for your data strategy
Know your budget for a form plugin and can find the pricing tier that has the integrations you need
Don’t want to waste time creating forms from scratch

WP Forms Pricing: Free, Premium starts at $49.50 a year

Get WP Forms

What is the Best CRM Plugin for WordPress?

In today’s competitive business landscape, it is more important than ever for companies to have strong relationships with their customers. WordPress-based CRM plugins are significant assets for businesses that are looking to manage and track customer interactions. As we saw, some have specific tools built into them that make them better at certain tasks than other CRMs.

	Plugin	Price	Free Option
ðŸ¥‡	FluentCRM	$129/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥ˆ	Groundhogg	$240/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥‰	Propovoice	$59/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
4	FunnelKit	$99.50/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
5	WP ERP	$129/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
6	WP-CRM	Free	âœ”ï¸	Visit
7	Jetpack CRM	$129/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
8	Bit Integrations	$19/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
9	WP Forms	$49.50/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit

For those who are after the best marketing automation CRM, we suggest you take a look at FluentCRM or FunnelKit. If you are needing more sales and post-sale management, check out Propovoice and see if it covers your needs. For anyone with any CRM setup, Bit Integrations and WP Forms may prove useful as well.

Remember, CRMs are a tall commitment. It takes time to properly set up all the custom fields, automation, and processes that make for a well-oiled machine. But, all that work will be worth it as that data comes in and makes you able to stay on top of your customers’ needs.

Article featured image by GrafvishÂ / shutterstock.com

The post 9 Best WordPress CRM Plugins in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

02.03.2023

7 Best WordPress Real Estate Plugins in 2023

If you’re a realtor, you need a website that can show off your listings in all their glory. On the other hand, if you’re a web developer who works with realtors or agencies, you’ll have to understand how to implement real estate features in websites for your clients. Either scenario is one you can solve using the best WordPress real estate plugins on the market.

Why Do you Need a Real Estate Plugin?

Those in the real estate business have more options than they realize for building a successful real estate site. WordPress actually has some really good options if you’re trying to avoid expensive MLS listing services to showcase your listings. Using a combination of plugins, you can create a fully functional real estate site that features listings complete with floor plans, virtual tours, as well as agents working for you.

The Best WordPress Real Estate Plugins

In this article, we’ll introduce you to the 7 best WordPress real estate plugins available. We’ll focus on a range of solutions that offer different feature sets, but all have excellent reviews and are well-supported.

Let’s get to it!

1. Realtyna WPL

The WPL Real Estate plugin

Realtyna WPL is a powerful real estate WordPress plugin by Realtyna that enables you to set up a property listing system for your website. You can add new properties yourself, or let individual real estate agents do so if you belong to an agency.

Listings can be incredibly detailed, including information about property types, prices, square footage, and other key features:

Adding a new listing using the WPL Real Estate plugin

You can upload photos for each property and set up image galleries, videos, and attachments. Moreover, you can fully customize the fields that will appear within each listing.

WPL Real Estate comes with a robust user management system that enables you to decide what permissions each agent will have on your website. That makes it perfect for agencies with multiple realtors:

Editing realtor permissions

It’s worth noting that WPL Real Estate also includes an option to add meta descriptions and keywords for each new listing, which is fantastic for local Search Engine Optimization (SEO). WPL Real Estate also works well alongside Divi, with an assortment of layout packs to help you with designing your site.

This plugin also offers a broad range of paid extensions. Those add-ons make WPL Real Estate incredibly flexible, but they’re fairly expensive with prices starting at $199 per year.

Key Features for Realtyna WPL:

Add a listing management system to WordPress
Create new listings with dozens of custom fields
Give other realtors permission to create and edit listings
Modify the default fields for each listing

WPL Real Estate is for you if…

…you want to add real estate listing functionality to WordPress via a fully customizable system. This plugin is a fantastic choice for agencies with multiple realtors due to its built-in user permissions system.

Price: Free, with a premium version available for a $199 lifetime payment.

Get WPL Real Estate

2. Easy Property Listings

The Easy Property Listings plugin

Easy Property Listings adds a full-featured listings system to WordPress. You can include dozens of property-specific details in each listing, including options such as available inspection times, which realtor is the listing agent, and more:

Adding listing details using Easy Property Listings

One advantage Easy Property Listings has is that it gives you plenty of display options. You can use shortcodes or widgets to showcase your properties. The plugin even includes some unique widgets, such as a search feature that’s designed specifically for real estate properties. Plus, it uses the Gutenberg blocks, so adding other blocks to your listings is a breeze.

Last but not least, it also offers a broad range of add-ons that can provide useful functionality for your site, some of which are much cheaper than what other real estate tools offer.

Key Features for Easy Property Listings:

Add a real estate listing system to WordPress
Modify the default fields for each listing you publish
Display listings using their own pages, widgets, or shortcodes
Add a search bar that’s dedicated to listings

Easy Property Listings is for you if…

…you want to use a listings plugin that offers multiple choices for displaying the properties on your website. Putting aside those options, Real Estate Listings is evenly matched in terms of features with WPL Real Estate, so you can choose whichever plugin you feel more comfortable using.

Price: Free, with premium add-ons starting at $27 per year.

Get Easy Property Listings

3. WP VR

The WP VR plugin

Virtual real estate tours keep growing in popularity, partly due to beingÂ veryÂ convenient. Scheduling and planning real estate tours can be a lot of work, particularly for popular listings. One alternative is to create virtual tours using a plugin such as WP VR.

Using this tool, you can upload panoramic images to WordPress that users can move around and zoom in on. It also supports videos and includes a gyroscope mode for mobile phones, which makes tours all that more engaging:

Setting up a virtual tour using WP VR

WP VR also enables you to connect multiple panoramic images using a “hotspot” feature. That means you can provide seamless virtual tours of larger areas by having users click on specific spots within an image to load the next one.

Although WP VR has a lot of applications beyond just real estate, it’s a fantastic solution to offer potential customers a closer look at your best listings. You can add virtual tours to your listings using the Block Editor or via shortcodes, depending on which approach you prefer.

Key Features:

Create virtual tours for your listings
Enable users to “navigate” panoramic images
Link multiple images and let users move between them in a single element
Add virtual tours to your listings using blocks or shortcodes

WP VR is for you if…

…you want to provide virtual tours for your properties. This is a key feature that most real estate websites don’t offer, and it’s a fantastic way to draw more attention to your hottest listings. For virtual tours to work, however, you’ll need to get comfortable taking panoramic pictures.

Price: Free, with a premium version available starting at $79.99 per year.

Get WP VR

4. Draw Attention

the Draw Attention plugin

So far, we’ve focused solely on real estate listing plugins. Draw Attention is a unique tool that has incredibly useful applications for real estate websites, but it doesn’t have anything to do with listings.

Instead, Draw Attention enables you to take images and make them interactive. For example, you can display information when a user hovers over a specific section of an image, create interactive maps, and design infographics. You’ll also find that Draw Attention is the perfect tool to publish interactive floor plans:

Creating an interactive floor map

Ideally, we recommend that you use Draw Attention alongside one of the listing plugins we discuss in this list. Each annotated image you create comes with a unique shortcode, so you can show floor plans within listing descriptions or anywhere else on your site.

Key Features for Draw Attention:

Create annotated images and floor plans for your listings
Display interactive media using shortcodes

Draw Attention is for you if…

…you want to give your real estate listings an edge and make them more interactive. In our experience, interactivity leads to more user engagement, and annotated real estate images can help you convey details about your properties more effectively than mere text.

Price: Free, with a premium version starting at $99 per year.

Get Draw Attention

5. Estatik

Estatike real estate plugin

Estatik is a WordPress real estate plugin that’s all about listings. It shares several features with the other tools we’ve talked about so far, including the option for you to add new listings and customize what fields they include.

However, it also brings some new features to the table, such as enabling customers to save searches, create property wishlists, and share publications on social media:

Wishlists on Estate

With Estatik, you get access to over 50 shortcodes you can use to display listings in any way you see fit. The plugin also includes a property slideshow and listing search widgets. Plus, it comes with a free theme designed for real estate websites. The theme itself is rather simple, but it makes listings look appealing (although there are plenty of other real estate themes you can use instead).

One downside of using Estatik is that the plugin’s free version only enables the WordPress administrator to add listings. If you want support for multiple agents, you’ll need to purchase the premium version.

Key Features for Estatik:

Add a real estate listing system to WordPress
Customize each listing’s fields
Use shortcodes to display your listings
Use widgets to display listings and include a search feature
Enable users to save listings and share them on social media

Estatik is for you if…

…you want to enable prospective customers to create property wishlists or share their dream homes on social media. Estatik works best for solo realtors, as it doesn’t include support for multiple agents in its free version.

Price: Free, with a premium version available starting at $89 per year.

Get Estatik

6. Essential Real Estate

The Essential Real Estate plugin

Essential Real Estate is less about publishing your own listings, and more about creating a marketplace where other realtors and agencies can share their properties. The plugin enables you to add listings manually, but it’s clearly optimized for front-end submissions:

Submitting a new property via the front end

With this tool, you can monetize your real estate marketplace by offering subscriptions. Realtors will have to subscribe before they can submit listings, which you then approve before they go live. Essential Real Estate also includes payment processing functionality, and it supports PayPal, Stripe, and wire transfers out of the box, making it function much like a membership plugin.

Along with enabling realtors to register individually, you can also offer subscriptions to entire agencies. On the front end, listings are easy to navigate, and can easily be integrated with themes like Divi because of the use of shortcodes, and clients will be able to save their favorite properties to wishlists.

Key Features for Essential Real Estate:

Create a real estate listing marketplace
Enable realtors and agencies to submit new properties using a front-end form
Approve submissions before they go live
Set up multiple subscription levels within your marketplace
Process payments via PayPal, Stripe, and wire transfers

Essential Real Estate is for you if…

…you want to create a marketplace where other realtors and real estate agencies can publish listings. It’s one of the best WordPress real estate plugins for businesses that want to band together to show a broader listing portfolio, especially in areas where there aren’t any similar portals available.

Price: Free

Get Essential Real Estate

7. dsIDXpress

iDXpress real estate plugin

Last on our list, dsIDXpress is a powerful plugin designed to optimize your MLS listings for SEO. With its user-friendly features, you can effortlessly attract more visitors to your website and convert them into leads. This plugin offers a range of tools, such as customizable widgets, shortcodes, and search tools, to help your users easily search for properties in their desired area. Additionally, the plugin comes equipped with robust lead-capturing tools, making it an effective solution for driving sales and growing your business.

dsIDXpress demo screenshot

By tapping into an extensive MLS database, this plugin provides your users with the latest and most accurate listings of homes for sale, pending, or sold. Additionally, users will benefit from access to valuable information, such as school district data, indexable city and neighborhood pages, and themes that match the styling of your website.

Key Features for Essential Real Estate:

Easy setup and customization
SEO-friendly and responsive layouts
live MLS listing updates
City and neighborhood pages
Advanced search features and filters

dsIDXpress is for you if…

…you want a full-service IDX solution for your real estate site that will feed not only your listings but other listings in your area. Plus, you’ll get a hands-off experience thanks to the dsIDXpress support staff who will make sure your site’s listings are up to date.

Price: Starting at $59 per month.

Get dsIDXpress

Which Real Estate Plugin is the Best?

There are a lot of contenders for the best WordPress real estate plugins. Many of these tools focus on listings and enable you to publish properties on your website in style. Other plugins help make your properties look more attractive, such as through detailed floor plans and even virtual tours. Yet others handle all of the work for you, making sure your listings are always up to date.

	Plugin	Price	Free Option
ðŸ¥‡	Realtyna WPL	$199 lifetime payment	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥ˆ	Easy Property Listings	Free, $27 per year	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥‰	WP VR	Free, $79.99 per year	âœ”ï¸	Visit
4	Draw Attention	Free, $99 per year	âœ”ï¸	Visit
5	Estatik	Free, $89 per year	âœ”ï¸	Visit
6	Essential Real Estate	Free	âœ”ï¸	Visit
7	dsIDXpress	$59 per month	âŒ	Visit

If you’re looking for a good all-around real estate listings plugin, we recommend Realtyna WPL because of its ability to function as a full-service MLS service right inside WordPress. With this plugin, you’ll be able to add listings, and agents, and even add users to help you manage the workload.

Do you have any questions about how to publish real estate listings on your WordPress site? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

Featured Image via elenabsl illustration / shutterstock.com

The post 7 Best WordPress Real Estate Plugins in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

02.03.2023

10 Best WordPress Quiz Plugins in 2023

Driving engagement is key to keeping users on your site and encouraging conversions. Interactive elements can capture your audience’s attention and increase their interest in your brand. Fortunately, there are many WordPress quiz plugins out there that make it easy to add intriguing personality tests or even surveys and polls to your site.

In this post, we’ll share some of the benefits and use cases of quizzes for your WordPress site. Then we’ll round up the best WordPress quiz plugins that you can use to start building quizes today.

Let’s dive in!

Why Use a WordPress Quiz Plugin?

The main goal of adding quizzes to your WordPress website is to boost user growth through engagement. Online personality tests and trivia games are proven to be addictive in nature; in fact, entire industries have been predicated on these quizzes. Websites like Buzzfeed made their mark on the internet with relatable quizzes that sucked their users in and kept them coming back. It can also increase social sharing activity as your users want to share the results of quizzes with their friends.

But that’s not all; you can also use online quizzes to learn more about what your clientele wants more rapidly. Consider websites like Stitch Fix, which offer quizzes to personalize what products are displayed to their users.

Stich Fix quiz example

After the user takes the quiz, the website will generate more specific suggestions for items to purchase that are more likely to appeal to that customer.

Quizzes can also give you insightful data that you can use to improve your services and marketing approach. For example, you can add a quiz to see what aspects of the customer experience your users enjoyed or need improvement and adjust accordingly. You can even gatekeep quizzes to expand your customer email list by having users input their contact information. This can give you opportunities to engage with customers in future marketing efforts and potentially generate sales.

The Best WordPress Quiz Plugins

WordPress developers know the value of online quizzes. As such, there’s a WordPress quiz plugin for every niche, need, and budget. Below, we’ve rounded up ten of the top contenders. All receive regular updates and have high user ratings.

1. Quiz And Survey Master

Quiz and Survey Master Banner

Quiz And Survey Master is the most popular free solution dedicated entirely to helping you create engaging quizzes for your WordPress site. It’s earned this status by providing a wide range of customization options, so you can create the ideal test for your users.

Speaking of quiz creation, this plugin’s editing interface is fairly easy to pick up. First, you can select from one of its pre-built templates, or choose to build your test from scratch:

Then you’ll be taken to a screen where you can simply type in your questions and answers:

The Quiz And Survey Master editor.

You can choose from many different question types, including multiple-choice, short-answer, fill-in-the-blank, or even file uploads. Quiz And Survey Master also supports quiz categories, so you can easily organize your content for users to find. Furthermore, all the text provided by the plugin is customizable, so you can add personalized messages, labels, and more to make your quiz match your branding.

On top of all of that, Quiz and Survey Master provides advanced functionality such as:

Timed quizzes
Score-based results pages
Incorrect/correct, points-based, or unscored grading systems
Results emailed to you
Integration with popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms such as Mailchimp
Social sharing
In-quiz hints
User login requirements

Remarkably, all of these features are free. You can also install the free Leaderboard add-on to incorporate an element of friendly competition between your users. In addition, there are a handful of paid add-ons that can grant you access to more detailed analytics, integrate your quizzes with Google Analytics, and more.

Price: Free with premium add-ons

Get Quiz and Survey Master

2. Formidable Forms

The Formidable Forms plugin.

Another premium form builder you can use to create quizzes is Formidable Forms. Like Forminator, it features a visual drag-and-drop builder that enables you to combine pre-built elements to put together custom forms (including quizzes):

The Formidable Forms editor.

Unfortunately, the free version is relatively limited. Although you could still use the blank form to create multiple-choice or short-answer questions, you can’t access the full power of this WordPress quiz plugin without an expensive add-on.

The Quiz Maker extension includes:

Scoring and custom grading scales
Email integration
Analytics and Reporting
PayPal integration
Advanced styling options

If you’re hoping for high-quality quiz templates to work from, this plugin probably isn’t your best choice. The primary reason to choose Formidable Forms over other solutions on this list is if you’re already using it to create contact forms or other content.

Price:Â Free with a premium upgrade. The Business Plan, which includes the Quiz Maker, is $199.50 per year.

Get Formidable Forms

3. Thrive Quiz Builder

Thrive Quiz Builder

If gathering user data is a strong motivation behind your WordPress quiz plugin search, Thrive Quiz Builder might be the solution for you. It provides an advanced visual editor with branching conditional logic, so you can set up complex quizzes with ease. The built-in troubleshooter will catch errors and notify you of them so you can fix them before making your test live.

In addition to boosting engagement and lowering your bounce rate, Thrive Quiz Builder can help you increase traffic with social media sharing. This is also the best WordPress quiz plugin for data collection. All results are compiled into detailed reports so you can see how many people submitted each answer.

Key features include:

Custom content suggestions based on users’ results
Email list segmentation
A/B testing
Four quiz-type templates
Social sharing badges
A quiz dashboard to track your analytics

Thrive quiz builder settings

Additionally, this is the top WordPress quiz plugin for data gathering. You can check how many people submitted each response by looking at the comprehensive reports that contain all the insights conveniently from your dashboard.

Note that you’ll need an active Thrive Suite license to install the Quiz Builder.

Price: Thrive Suite starts at $19 per month

Get Thrive Suites

4. Quiz Maker

Next up we have Quiz Maker, another budget-friendly WordPress quiz plugin. The free version is perfect for those who want to make simple quizzes fast.

To build your quiz, you first have to add each question to your site separately. This makes it possible to efficiently reuse them between quizzes:

Quiz maker example

Quizzes can be made in a variety of formats. You can select from fields with radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdown menus, numbers, or plain text. Plus, you can add contact forms or other media with the pro version.

Additionally, Quiz Maker provides several quiz themes for you to choose between, as well as color customization and other styling options. Other settings enable you to randomize the order of the questions, score answers by correctness or points, write your own results messages, and more.

Beyond that, this plugin’s features include:

Question images
Timed quizzes
User login status restrictions
A quick quiz generator
Results and data tracking

These options are all available for free. The premium version includes email integration, leaderboard functionality, password-protected quizzes, and more.

Price: Free with premium upgrade starting at $29

Get Quiz Maker

5. Poll, Survey & Quiz by OpinionStage

The Poll, Survey & Quiz plugin by OpinionStage.

By now, you probably know what to expect from a quality WordPress quiz plugin. Poll, Survey & Quiz by OpinionStage provides all of these standard features, plus a few hidden gems.

You’ll need an OpinionStage account to get started. You can then connect it to your website via the plugin, and start building quizzes and other interactive content from your OpinionStage dashboard:

The OpinionStage quiz, poll, and survey templates.

You have the choice of several quiz templates to help get you started. Once you’re done building, you can add your quiz as a popup in your site’s sidebar or at the end of all your blog posts. Statistics on your quiz’s views, responses, and lead generation activity are all visible in your OpinionStage account.

This plugin is best for those who want to include the same quizzes across multiple sites. You can simply build your test once in OpinionStage, and then add it to all your WordPress installations via the plugin. It’s also suitable for professionals, as it includes white-label widgets for the back end.

Other features include:

CSV results exporting
Social sharing
Quiz submission email notifications
Branching logic
Integration with marketing platforms such as Mailchimp
Lead generation forms
Styling customizations

It is possible to use OpinionStage completely free, but only for up to 250 views per month. You’ll then need to upgrade to a paid account.

Price: The Poll, Survey & Quiz plugin is free. OpinionStage pricing starts at $19 per month for 10,000 views

Get Poll, Survey & Quiz

6. Quiz Cat

Quiz Cat logo

Quiz Cat claims to offer a lightweight alternative to other WordPress quiz plugins. Its stripped-down editor is certainly less flashy than some of the other options we’ve looked at in this post, but that helps it minimize its impact on your site’s speed:

Quiz cat settings

If you just want to generate simple multiple-choice quizzes quickly, then Quiz Cat can get the job done. However, you won’t see any of the more intriguing functionality or integrations offered by other solutions â€“ at least, not in the free version.

Upgrading to Quiz Cat premium will get you social sharing buttons and Facebook Pixel integration for data tracking. It also enables you to build personality quizzes and weighted quizzes in addition to the default multiple-choice format.

Other premium features include:

Email marketing integration
Lead generation and segmentation
The ability to redirect users to new page after they finish the quiz
Question order shuffling
Analytics reporting and CSV exporting

Price: Free, with premium upgrades starting at $49 per year

Get Quiz Cat

7. Forminator

Forminator logo

Many form builder plugins, including Forminator, also offer quiz creation features. These tools can help you cut down on the number of plugins your site is running by doing double duty.

Although it might seem like a dedicated plugin would provide better and more advanced options than a multi-purpose solution, that’s not necessarily true in the case of a WordPress quiz plugin. Most of the bestÂ WordPress contact form plugins already provide deep integration with email platforms, which can be beneficial if you want to use quizzes to grow your subscriber list.

This is especially true in the case of Forminator. When creating a new quiz, you’ll first be asked to choose if you want it to be personality or knowledge-based:

Creating a new Forminator quiz.

Then Forminator will ask you want to use your quiz for lead generation. If so, it will automatically set up a corresponding form for you. After that, you’ll gain access to the plugin’s sleek drag-and-drop quiz builder:

The Forminator quiz editor.

Here you can add questions, customize your lead generation form, tweak design elements such as color scheme and font choice, and configure email reports.

Additionally, Forminator includes:

Integration with top CRM platforms
A custom WordPress block for adding forms and quizzes to your pages
Stripe and PayPal integration
Developer API
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance

What’s more, Forminator is surprisingly affordable. All of the features above come free. In fact, the only premium feature is an e-signature field (which you likely won’t need if you’re primarily using it for quizzes).

Price: Free with a premium version available starting at $5 per month

Get Forminator

8. HD Quiz

HDQuix

HD Quiz is a free, user-friendly WordPress quiz plugin that will get you off to a running start. Its simple, straightforward interface makes it clear how to add new quizzes and questions. In the question editor, you can easily choose the type and add up to ten answer choices:

Editing a quiz.

You can also add featured images for each question and customize the tooltip that will appear when users hover over it.

Besides that, HD Quiz packs a lot of punch for a free plugin, with features including:

The ability to reuse questions across multiple forms
Social sharing
Timed quizzes
Image-based multiple-choice answers
CSV question importer
Quiz translator built right into the plugin settings
Randomized question order
Mobile optimization, including touch-friendly answer choices

With that being said, you might have a little more trouble with this solution if you want to use your quizzes for lead generation or to collect user data. However, it’s perfect for driving engagement and spreading brand awareness on social media. Add-ons for advanced styling and saving participant results are available.

Price: Free with premium add-ons available. Patreon members receive add-ons for free.

Get HD Quiz

9. eForm

The eForm plugin.

The eForm plugin is another multipurpose solution you can use to create quizzes for your WordPress site. It comes with several templates and a drag-and-drop editor that enables you to customize your test’s layout.

In addition to quizzes, you can use eForm to make price calculators, login and registration forms, a guest post submission page, and more. It even includes an e-signature feature if you want to build digital contracts.

Some top features of this plugin include:

Conditional logic
Social sharing
Integration with Google Analytics
Scoring and ranking system
Secure file uploader
Data reports in your WordPress dashboard
WooCommerce integration
Payment processing via Stripe and PayPal
Compatibility with third-party platforms such as Mailchimp and AWeber

All in all, this plugin is a decent alternative to more popular form builders like Forminator or Formidable Forms. However, its quiz functionality doesn’t exceed that of some of the free solutions on this list.

Price:Â $39 for lifetime support and updates

Get eForm

10. Watu Quiz

The Watu Quiz plugin.

Finally, we have Watu Quiz. This WordPress quiz plugin is also more basic in design, as you can see by looking at the editor:

The Watu Quiz question editor.

There’s no fancy visual drag-and-drop interface here. However, the results look nice enough on the front end, especially if you prefer a more understated aesthetic:

A quiz made with the Watu quiz plugin.

You can score quizzes by grade or personality type, randomize questions, and enable social sharing on Facebook and Twitter. This plugin also enables you to view a list of all the users who have taken your quiz, along with their results.

Note that connecting this plugin to your email marketing platform may prove tricky. There is a Watu Mailchimp integration plugin, but it has not been updated recently, so we don’t recommend using it.

Price:Â Free, with premium upgrades starting at $47

Get Watu Quiz

Which WordPress Quiz Plugin Is The Best?

	Plugin	Price	Free Option
ðŸ¥‡	Quiz and Survey Master	Free	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥ˆ	Formidable Forms	$199.50/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥‰	Thrive Suites	$19/mo	âŒ	Visit
4	Quiz Maker	$29/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
5	Poll, Survey, & Quiz	$19/mo	âœ”ï¸	Visit
6	Quiz Cat	$49/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
7	Forminator	$5/mo	âœ”ï¸	Visit
8	HD Quiz	Free	âœ”ï¸	Visit
9	eForm	$39/site	âŒ	Visit
10	Watu Quiz	Free	âœ”ï¸	Visit

Considering how inundated internet users are with ads and other branded content, it can be easy for your site to get lost in the shuffle. Driving engagement through the use of quizzes can help make your business more memorable to potential customers.

In this post, we covered several top WordPress quiz plugins. Quiz And Survey Master is a highly rated free option that should give most users the biggest bang for their buck. For those already using a form builder such as Formidable Forms, there’s no need to go looking for an additional solution. Finally, it’s worth checking out Quiz MakerÂ for a user- (and budget-) friendly option.

Do you have any questions about using quizzes on your WordPress site? Leave them for us in the comments section below!

FeaturedÂ Image via Name / shuttestock.com

The post 10 Best WordPress Quiz Plugins in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

02.03.2023

7 Best WordPress Directory Plugins (2023)

If you want to build an online directory website in WordPress, you’ll need the best plugin for the job. Online directories are basically public listings to help visitors find businesses, services, products, and more. But building one from scratch in WordPress is difficult without a plugin. Thankfully, there are some great directory plugins out there to make that process much easier. But finding the right one for your needs can be challenging. In this post, we’ll share our list of the best WordPress directory plugins to help you make the right choice for your business.

How to Choose the Right Directory Plugin for You (What to Look For)

Directory plugins have been around for a long time. Most solutions take into account 90% of what’s needed to create a decent directory. But, the best directory plugins go above and beyond by offering:

Simple directory creation: The best WordPress directory plugins make it easy to create a directory website, even if you don’t have coding skills. For an ideal solution, choose one that doesn’t take a lot of work to set up.
Flexible and customizable: They should allow you to customize everything from the layout of your directory pages to the (custom) fields included on each listing.
Advanced search and filtering: The ability to search and filter listings is vital forÂ a directory website. The best directory plugins offer advanced search options to help visitors find what they’re looking for without any hassle.
Payment support: If you plan to make money off of your directory website, look for a plugin that supports popular payment gateways and eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce. This will allow you to charge for listings, create different subscription plans, and display sitewide ads.
Compatibility with other plugins and WordPress themes: To ensure your directory plugin works seamlessly with your other WordPress plugins and themes, look for a plugin that is compatible and updated often.

If you want the best chance for your directory to gain traction, getting a feature-rich tool will do wonders for you.

The Best WordPress Directory Plugins

If you’re looking to create a directory website using WordPress, you’re in luck! There are a variety of plugins available to help you get started, each with its own strengths and features. Whether you need a simple address book, a classified ads section, or a business directory, there’s a plugin on this list that will fit your needs. First up is a crowd-pleaserâ€”GeoDirectory.

1. GeoDirectory

GeoDirectory Directory Plugin

GeoDirectory is a versatile WordPress plugin that allows you to create a location-based business directory similar to popular sites such as Yelp or YellowPages. For example, users can easily submit for approval, search for businesses and other entities, and have them all nicely displayed on an interactive map. By using GeoDirectory, you can transform any WordPress website into a useful business directory.

Learn how to build a business directory with GeoDirectory

Key Features for GeoDirectory:

Transfer directory data using CSV import and export options
Drag-and-drop interface for building your directory listings
Easy to style directory using available themes.
Location management system.
Customize the look of search results and single listing pages
Search results based on a specific location
Allows users to rate listings
Integrates with Ninja Forms to connect with other CRMs and
Integrates with page builders like Divi
Integrates with popular SEO Plugins like RankMath.
Supports WooCommerce.
Premium Add-ons to monetize your site, set up recurring payments, and allow business owners to claim listings.
Multisite compatible to create a network of directories

BuddyPress integration with GeoDirecory

GeoDirectory handles every aspect of creating a directory site. But, with its smart compatibility with other top plugins, GeoDirectory starts to shine. For instance, its BuddyPress integration can connect BuddyPress to your directory, giving your directory a social edge. This makes your directory more personalâ€”giving your directory more of a chance to stand out in a crowded market.

GeoDirectory is for you if you…

Need to build a high-quality directory site based on location
Want the ability to create a simple or complex online directory
Want an extendable solution with powerful premium add-ons like (recurring payments, enhanced search, and multi-location directories)

GeoDirectory Pricing: Free, Premium $199 a year

Get GeoDirectory

2. Business Directory Plugin

Business Directory Plugin

The Business Directory Plugin is an easy-to-use WordPress plugin that enables you to create and manage a variety of directory types for any kind of directory website. It includes everything you need to get started, regardless of the type of directory you want to create. Plus, it allows visitors to submit listings without needing to code a thing.

Key Features for Business Directory Plugin:

Monetize your directory via Authorize.net, PayPal, or Stripe
Supports WPML for multilingual directories
SEO friendly and integrated with Yoast SEO
Users can filter business listings by location
Enable rating and reviews with proper schema markup
Enable users to be able to upload files and control the file types that they can add to listings

Create pricing plans and plan levels for your users

Easily make money with your directory by creating different pricing plans. You can choose to have a directory with only free plans, or you can attach certain features to different plans and charge a fee. Additionally, you can set plan time limits or create recurring payment plans.

Business Directory Plugin is for you if you…

Need a free and comprehensive directory plugin, with the option to upgrade to more advanced functionality via an extensive add-on directory
Are looking for payment support, with the ability to create listing-based monetization

Pricing: Free, $99 a year

Get Business Directory Plugin

3. AWP Classified

AWP Classified Plugin Homepage Feb 2023

AWP Classifieds is another easy-to-use plugin that allows users or visitors to create classified ad listings on your WordPress website. From the makers of Formidable Forms, this plugin is perfect for anyone looking to add a classified ads section to their site quickly with little fuss.

Key Features for AWP Classified:

Automatic creation of required pages streamlines the setup process
Non-registered users can post ads with simple email verification
Monetization support with customized subscription plans, enabling the creation of a classifieds site to make money easily
Integration with 4 major payment gateways for easy monetization through paid listings and charging for banner ads on classified pages

AWP Classified Example Directory Website with Ads

AWP Classified lets you limit the number of submissions, reviews, or listings a user can make depending on their plan. This allows you to easily create pricing tiers for monetizing your new classified section. You can even display external ads (such as Google Adsense) across your website’s classified sections for additional monetization potential (without having to use an advertising plugin).

AWP Classified is for you if you…

One of the simplest classified plugins on the market (and built by a trusted developer at that)
Have a high focus on monetization

AWP Classified Pricing: Free, $49.50 a year

Get AWP Classified

4. Directorist

Directorist Directory Plugin

Directorist is a freemium WordPress directory plugin that is suitable for a variety of websites, from business directories to property listings, classified ads, and job portals. With a wide range of features, Directorist aims to be the only WordPress directory plugin you will ever need. The same company has built (but doesn’t require) its own classifiedÂ themes that can also be of help to budding directory owners.

Key Features for Directorist:

Easily build your listings pages with Directionist’s custom drag-and-drop form builder
Custom form fields are searchable for exact searchÂ results
Includes search widgets with 10+ different filters
Use Google Maps or OpenStreetMap for geo-based listings
Compatible with WooCommerce’s Multivendor plugin for creating a multi-vendor marketplace

Customize all the fields with Directorist! Its truly powerful (and beautiful) filterable listings make your directory-based website easy to go through. You’ll have the ability to add searchable custom fields or use standard directory fields like price, tags, text, location, and more.

Directorist is for you if you…

Do not want to settle for an ugly directory site
Need a plugin that can easily convert your directory into a mobile app

Pricing: $139 a year

Get Directorist

5. Toolset

Toolset WordPress Professionals Toolkit Toolset is a powerful WordPress plugin with a suite of tools that simplifies the process of creating advanced websites. You can use it for custom eCommerce, real estate, membership, and Directory sites. However, it’s not the easiest thing to learn on this list because it feels like its own ecosystem of related tools. But it can help you create a directory website from scratch.

Key Features for Toolset:

Create custom post types, unlimited custom fields, and taxonomies that you can display on your site frontend
Create custom frontend forms for users to use and interact with your directory
Restrict certain website features and sections for paying customers
Comes with an in-depth course and an onboarding program

Toolset WordPress Directory course

Toolset is not made solely to build directory websites. However, it gives you the tools to build just about anything on WordPress. Toolset even has created special training for how to build a directory website. Plus, it can be used with Divi and other page builders to create more beautiful directories.

Toolset is for you if you…

Are you an advanced WordPress user looking for a suite of tools for managing all sorts of custom post types and how they are shown
Want to create a directory site from scratch without knowing code.

Pricing: From $69 a year (renews at $51)

Get Toolset

6. Connections Business Directory

Connections Business Directory

Looking for a simple, yet powerful business directory plugin? Connections Business Directory has you covered. While not the most appealing plugin on our list, you can create directories of all types and host thousands of worldwide listings. And, the plugin is completely free.

Key Features for Connections Business Directory:

Supports the Block Editor with four directory blocks
Privacy controls for listings and directory entries
Allows you to control the fields shown on your listings
Support for nested categories
Face Detect add-on to properly center the display of profile pictures automatically

Connections Directory Plugin with Face Detect The plugin has an optional free add-on to create directories for displaying people (like Alumni, staff, and volunteer directories). For example, its Face Detect add-on can properly render images (of various sizes) so that a user’s face is always front and center.

Connections Business Directory is for you if you…

Need a free option with solid core features
Want free and affordable add-ons to extend the functionality of your directories

Pricing: Free, with add-ons (Free – $14.99)

Get Connections Business Directory

7. HivePress

HivePress Multipurpose WordPress plugin

HivePress has created a fantastic and free WordPress directory plugin that truly covers all the bases. And, it has more products including beautiful directory themes and extensions that bring even more power to the core plugin.

Key Features for HivePress:

- Can charge users to feature their listing
- You can allow users can rate listings as well as leave reviews on listings
- Users can send private messages to listing owners
- Can allow users to “favorite” listings making them easy to find again in the future
- Users have private, frontend dashboards to manage their listings

Frontend favorite's screen

HivePress comes built-in with a clean and modern user interface that allows users to manage their listings without logging into your WordPress backend. You can easily create a Favorites page for users that have marked listings with a heart. This allows users of your site to save and keep an eye on their favorite listings.

HivePress is for you if you…

Want a free plugin that has plenty of room to grow as you start making money
Crave a beautiful directory with plenty of features included

HivePress Pricing: Free, with paid add-ons (Free – $39)

Get HivePress

What is the Best WordPress Directory Plugin?

The best WordPress directory plugins balance deep feature sets, and multiple plugin integrations, and are easy for users and admins alike. We hope that with the help of this list, you were able to find the right plugin for your next project.

For the best overall directory plugin, we suggest GeoDirectory because it has powerful features and extensions, it is easy to use, and integrates well with other plugins. Business Directory also is a great choice, especially if you are looking to monetize your directory.

Advanced WordPress users should look at using Toolset along with Divi. This powerful combo will provide all the tools you need to create a directory specific to your needs. Whatever you choose, make sure that it balances your business needs with your budgetâ€”that way you’ll be on the right track in building out your directory.

	Plugin	Price	Free Option
ðŸ¥‡	GeoDirectory	$199/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥ˆ	Business Directory Plugin	$99/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
ðŸ¥‰	AWP Classified	$49.50/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
4	Directorist	$139/yr	âœ”ï¸	Visit
5	Toolset	$69	âŒ	Visit
6	Connections Business Directory	Free	âœ”ï¸	Visit
7	HivePress	Free	âœ”ï¸	Visit

Looking for more great plugins? Check out our top free plugins for businesses and our collection of the best plugins for WordPress.

Featured Image vis Andrew Krasovitckii / shutterstock.com

The post 7 Best WordPress Directory Plugins (2023) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

01.03.2023

6 Field Types You Can Add to Diviâ€™s Contact Form Module (And When to Use Them)
Contact forms are an essential part of any website â€” whether you want to capture more leads, keep track of inquiries, build your email marketing list, or simply be able to communicate on-demand with your users. Diviâ€™s contact form module makes it easy to communicate with and gather important data from your websiteâ€™s visitors.

Letâ€™s explore what fields are available in Diviâ€™s contact form module and when to use them. Weâ€™ll be using the contact form from the Wedding Photographer Layout Pack available with your Elegant Themes subscription.

Diviâ€™s Contact Form Module Options

Diviâ€™s robust contact form module consists of the following fields: input, email, textarea, checkboxes, radio buttons, and the select dropdown field. These fields can be used in a number of ways to build your business. Before we address each field and its uses, letâ€™s go over how to select the type of field you want to use in the contact form module.
1. The first step is to give your field a field ID. This helps you understand which field corresponds with the information filled out in the form.
2. Give your field a title.
3. Choose the field to be displayed. Your choices are input, email, textarea, checkboxes, radio buttons, or select dropdown.
Next, letâ€™s go over each field option in the Divi contact form module. Lately, we’ll discuss how each can be configured to suit your specific needs.

1. The Input Field

The input field is one of the most powerful fields you can use in your contact form. You can capture just about any type of text information. Acquiring a potential customerâ€™s name, business name, physical address, phone number, or various other informational text are options. The possibilities are endless.

When crafting your contact form, remember to ask for the most relevant information you are trying to gather. In the past, people thought a shorter form was a better form. In recent years, the thought processes behind form creation have changed. We are now living in the â€œinformation age,â€ so people have become more accustomed to filling out longer forms than ever before and are willing to do so.

While keeping in mind what goals youâ€™d like to achieve through your form, Itâ€™s important to remember to ask the most important questions relevant to your business. The userâ€™s name or business name should be at the top of the list of questions to ask. Names and/or business names are crucial information to acquire, especially in the process of following up with your users. Following the name and business name (if applicable), should be other important contact information such as phone numbers and/or addresses. A few examples of the effective use of the input field are as follows:
- First Name, Last Name, or Full Name
- Address
- City
- State
- Zip Code
- Phone Number
- Business Name
- Subject
- Questions with short answers
How to Configure the Divi Contact Form Module Input Field

Let’s take a look at how you can modify the input field.
1. Select Input as the field type.
2. Decide whether to choose a minimum and maximum length of characters to be allowed.
3. Next, decide whether to allow all symbols, letters only, numbers only, or alphanumeric characters. For example, if your text input field is being used as a phone number field, assign this option to â€œNumbers only.â€ This will disallow any letters from being entered as a phone number, cutting down on user errors.
4. Designate whether this field is optional or required.
5. Enable or disable conditional logic. Conditional logic is useful in a form if youâ€™d like to assign a follow-up question or information to display based on the answer to a certain field. To learn more about conditional logic, read How to Create a Versatile Divi Contact Form with Conditional Logic.
6. Choose whether to assign a link to your field.
7. Choose whether to assign a background color, gradient, or image to your field.
2. The Email Field

In addition to the text field mentioned above, the email field is a crucial piece of information to assist your communication with users. The email field makes it easier to capture leads for your website, add users to a mailing list, and, most importantly, provide an easy way to communicate with your websiteâ€™s users.

In recent years, everyone agrees that social media has become a valuable tool in business communication, but email is still an extremely relevant and essential tool to grow your business. After all, in order to even have a social media account, one must have an established email address. Keeping that in mind, the email field is critical in successfully communicating with your users. Without the email field enabled on your form, you wonâ€™t be able to add that user to a mailing list or reply directly to the form confirmation email received on your website.

Enabling The Email Field

Let’s see how you can enable the email field in Divi’s Contact Form Module.
1. Name your field and give it a field ID.
2. Select â€œEmail Fieldâ€ as your field type.
3. Choose whether to enable or disable â€œRequired Fieldâ€. Note: it is essential to require this as no email information will be captured in your field if your user forgets to fill in their email address.
4. Choose whether or not to enable conditional logic.
5. If desired, choose a link for your field.
6. If desired, choose a background color, gradient, or image for your email field.
3. The Textarea Field

When creating your form with the Divi contact form module, the textarea field is a great tool to use to gather information from your users – whether it be through asking questions, soliciting input or comments, or accepting larger amounts of relevant information.

An example of this is demonstrated in the Wedding Photographer layout pack. Here, the company asks a few specific questions related to their business. â€œDo you have a photography budget?â€, â€œDescribe your vision of your big dayâ€, and â€œAnything else I should know?â€ As in this example, the textarea field is a great way to get to know your users and what services they require from you.

Another example of great use of the textarea field would be utilizing it in an employment application form. You can ask any number of questions with the textarea field such as background information regarding relevant work experience, any personality traits youâ€™d like to be aware of, goals and aspirations of the potential candidate, and much more.

Textarea fields are also useful tools in e-commerce situations. For example, if you have an online shop, youâ€™re probably interested in knowing how your customers feel about their recent purchases. Perhaps youâ€™d like to be able to accept suggestions for future products. With the use of the textarea field, you can easily retrieve that information and use it to your advantage.

Enabling The Text Area Field

Let’s see how you can enable the text area field in Divi’s Contact Form Module.
1. Name your field and give it a field ID.
2. Select â€œTextareaâ€ as your field type.
3. Choose whether to enable or disable â€œRequired Field.â€
4. Choose whether or not to enable conditional logic.
5. If desired, choose a link for your field.
6. If desired, choose a background color, gradient, or image for your email field.
4. The Checkboxes Field

Checkboxes are a great way to showcase options in your form. For example, letâ€™s say you are building a website for your business where you plan to offer several different services to your customers. You can utilize a checkboxes field to ask your customers which of your service offerings they are interested in. Additionally, the checkboxes field is beneficial when you want to ask a follow-up question that will only be displayed when a user selects a specific option in your checkbox field (conditional logic). If youâ€™d like to learn more about conditional logic and how it works, view our post on How to Create a Versatile Divi Contact Form with Conditional Logic.

Checkboxes can be used in forms on your site when you want to gather input from your customers on a specific product or service that you may have in development. You could also use checkboxes in quality assurance survey forms. For example, you could ask your users to let you know how satisfied they are with a product or service that they purchased from you.

Finally, another example of good use of checkboxes in your Divi contact form is to use them to gather information in a questionnaire. Letâ€™s say that you have a website that features recipes. If you want to know more about a personâ€™s likes and dislikes in relation to food, checkboxes would be a great way to ask those questions.

How to Configure the Checkboxes Field

Let’s configure the checkboxes field in Divi’s Contact Form Module.
1. In the field options box, choose â€œcheckboxes.â€
2. Under options, type in your first option. To add more options, click the â€œ+â€ sign underneath your first option.
3. Choose whether or not to have this field be required.
4. Add any conditional logic to your field. Click â€œenable,â€ then toggle â€œrelationâ€ to assign this checkbox option to a related field. This is useful if youâ€™d like to display a follow-up question or field that is ONLY related to this option in your checkbox field.
5. Add a link to your checkbox field (optional).
6. Add a background color, gradient, or image to your checkbox field (optional).
5. The Radio Buttons Field

The radio buttons field in the Divi contact form module is most widely used to give users a choice between options in your form. Since only one button can be selected, itâ€™s a great option when asking yes or no questions. For example, you can use radio buttons to ask your user if they like a specific thing. In this example, the question â€œDo you like cheeseâ€ is posed. Your user clicks the yes or no radio button to record their answer.

Radio buttons are quite beneficial in form building because the user is able to view all answers to the question without having to click a dropdown menu. Radio buttons require fewer clicks to complete, making the radio button field an excellent choice for quick and simple form submissions. You should also consider using radio buttons if you want your fieldâ€™s answers to be emphasized.

Radio options are best used if there are fewer than 5 answers in your field. Using radio buttons for more than five answers should more than likely utilize a select dropdown field, which we will cover in the next section.

Letâ€™s say you have a membership site with three-tier levels and you want your users to easily distinguish between the three. Youâ€™d use radio buttons to differentiate between the plans, showing all options to the user so that they can make a decision based on all options available to them at first glance.

How to Configure the Radio Button Field

Let’s configure the radio button field in Divi’s Contact Form Module.
1. Select the Radio Buttons field.
2. Under options, add as many radio button field options as desired.
3. Choose whether or not to require the field.
4. Add any conditional logic to the field.
5. Choose an optional link for your field.
6. Add a background color, gradient, or background image to your field.
6. The Select Dropdown Field

This brings us to our last field to discuss – the select dropdown field. The select dropdown field is a good option when you have an assortment of options (more than 5) to choose from. For example, if you have an online company that operates in all fifty states, but you want to break down users by state, setting options for all 50 states in an effective way to achieve your desired result.

That being said, overuse of dropdown fields can cause validation errors and stress if you give your users TOO many choices. As a rule of thumb, a select dropdown field should be avoided if there are more than 10 options in a dropdown list. For example, if you do business in multiple countries but not ALL of them, a good practice is to only list the countries you do business in.

Another example of when to use a select dropdown field is where multiple fields will be presented. Letâ€™s say you own a bakery distribution company. You have multiple products and options within a category – cakes, pies, donuts, and tarts. You want the user to tell you which of these products they are interested in carrying in their stores. Youâ€™d set up a select dropdown field for each category. Next, youâ€™d add options to each field. Radio buttons or checkboxes would be cumbersome and take up a ton of space. Select dropdowns are a much better choice to present that information to the user in an organized way.

How to Configure the Select Dropdown Field

Let’s configure the select dropdown field in Divi’s Contact Form Module.
1. Select the Select Dropdown field.
2. Under options, add as many dropdown field options as desired.
3. Choose whether or not to require the field.
4. Add any conditional logic to the field.
5. Choose an optional link for your field.
6. Add a background color, gradient, or background image to your field.
Wrapping Things Up

Diviâ€™s contact form module is chock full of excellent choices when building a form for your online store, blog, or business. It enables you to choose from many different fields (input, email, textarea, checkboxes, radio buttons, or select dropdown fields) that will help you assess who your customer is, what they want, and how you can help them.

Share your thoughts with us on how youâ€™ve used a contact form on your website by adding your comment below.

The post 6 Field Types You Can Add to Divi’s Contact Form Module (And When to Use Them) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
28.02.2023

WordPress vs. Drupal (2023) â€” Which One is Better?

You have a lot of options when it comes to deciding on a website platform. There’s Squarespace and Wix and Weebly and Joomla and WordPress and Drupal and…lots more. While that choice can be overwhelming, two of the main contenders for a content management system (CMS) for a lot of people seem to be WordPress vs Drupal. Both were released pretty concurrently around two decades ago, but WordPress was a blogging platform versus Drupal beginning its life as a CMS. Over time, WordPress has moved into overlapping a great deal with Drupal, and we want to help you choose between the two platforms by comparing them head-to-head.

WordPress vs Drupal: Who are They For?

When it comes to WordPress, the platform is easily accessible to anyone. Between the WordPress.com version where you can get a free site with limited functionality and aÂ yoursite.wordpress.com domain, it takes very little effort to get started. Even the self-hosted WordPress.org that we’re going to be discussing in this article has a quick install from most hosting companies.

Drupal hits this same demographic, only without theÂ .com version. It’s a free, open-source platform like WordPress, and most hosting companies have a quick installer within their site tools. It’s very easy for anyone to get set up. But while WordPress’s interface and messaging help many new users acclimate to their new dashboard, Drupal doesn’t have great messaging.

Both platforms, however, offer a modular experience that grants users the flexibility to create the site they want by extending features and design through plugins and add-ons. WordPress does this in a slightly more user-friendly way, while Drupal tends to be more aimed at users who are experienced in web design in some capacity.

Which Platform is Easier to Use?

Over the past few years, WordPress has come a long way in terms of user-friendly design and experience. Drupal, despite a lack of initial messaging on how to navigate and make use of the platform, has a fairly low learning curve for anyone who has a bit of experience administrating a website backend.

WordPress

Learning WordPress is much easier than it once was. With the plethora of blogs and tutorials out there, users who are confused about any aspect can learn quickly and easily about any topic. This is great because when opening up the dashboard for the very first time might be a tad overwhelming.

In general, the dashboard is easy to navigate and relatively self-explanatory. However, it can take some time to get a feel for where things are and under which heading certain settings and options live. It can be a little frustrating to figure out which settings are under the Settings tab, which functions live underÂ Tools, which options are in the Theme Customizer and which are contained within the theme or plugin settings themselves.

Eventually, those confusions work themselves out as you use the platform. But on initial use, you might occasionally be a little flustered.

Of course, the real question regarding WordPress’s ease of use is dependent on what kind of site you intend to create. Because WordPress can create any kind of site, the theme and plugin suite you choose will drastically affect usability. If you use WooCommerce, lots of extensions, and various forums and user-management plugins to run a membership site, your learning curve and ease of use dramatically increase over a more simplified website focused on simple content creation.

For the most part, though, WordPress has a low-to-moderate learning curve and even those without lots of technical expertise can find user-friendly themes and plugins to walk them through the process of creating and managing their sites.

Drupal

Users just get kind of dropped into Drupal. Luckily, the interface is rather intuitive and well-labeled, though there is no initial messaging on where to go to begin.

wordpress vs drupal dashboard

However, even from the first time you log in, there areÂ Add Content links. And, like WordPress, a menu invites you to Extend via modules and customize with different themes. Users have access to theÂ Structure tab. This solves one of WordPress’s biggest stepping stones for new users. It consolidates the various options and settings for site construction in one place instead of having them spread out and compartmentalized.

The downside to this consolidation is that using any of these settings is a bit more technical than in WordPress. If you’re coming into Drupal with no web experience, both the interface and terminology used can be a little off-putting. However, if you’re used to various web admin back-ends, learning and using Drupal is a big step up from other platforms such as Joomla.


Ease of Use	ðŸ¥‡ Winner WordPress has a low-to-moderate learning curve and even those without lots of technical expertise can good tutorials to help them along the way.	If youâ€™re coming into Drupal with no web experience, both the interface and terminology used can be a little off-putting.
	Choose WordPress	Choose Drupal

Ease of Use

ðŸ¥‡ Winner

WordPress has a low-to-moderate learning curve and even those without lots of technical expertise can good tutorials to help them along the way.

If youâ€™re coming into Drupal with no web experience, both the interface and terminology used can be a little off-putting.

Choose WordPress

Choose Drupal

WordPress Allows for Ultimate Customization

Everyone wants a nice-looking website. That goes without saying. So the customization options for design are something to take into consideration when looking at WordPress vs Drupal. You also have to think about the customization of features, too. And how easily you can create, launch, and then modify the kind of site that you want. Be that publishing, e-commerce, membership, or anything else you might need.

WordPress

WordPress vs Drupal is about customization from the ground up. With plugins being a major part of adding features and design elements, you can create (or download and install) all features your website could ever need. Additionally, the theme-based structure for design gives designers and developers free rein on their creations.

With the whole industry having sprung up around the plugins and themes in WordPress, you can be sure that someone has created the perfect theme and plugin for you. You just have to find it. Some of them are free (or freemium) through the WordPress repository, while others are premium products you can license directly from the developers or through marketplaces like Divi Marketplace.

Either way, there are no limitations in the WordPress world. Users with zero technical experience can create amazingly designed websites using page builder themes/plugins like Divi and add any functionality they can think of through plugins like WooCommerce, Paid Memberships Pro, GiveWP, PublishPress, GamiPress, or literally thousands of others.

Drupal

Like WordPress, Drupal is a modular CMS that relies on external developers to help provide what users need. With that in mind, it’s incredibly easy for users of pretty much any skill level to extend Drupal to fit their needs.

wordpress vs drupal extend

With a large Add New Module button dead center of the page that takes you directly to theÂ Modules tab in the extension library, Drupal makes it easy on you to find what you need.

wordpress vs drupal customize

TheÂ Themes tab is directly beside the one forÂ Modules, and it works in much the same way. The themes that developers have created for Drupal are great, but many of them do require a lot of technical knowledge of CSS, JavaScript, and HTML to get in and make them shine. While page builders and drag-and-drop editors are becoming standard among WordPress sites, Drupal themes generally take a more manual process.

That said, the installation process is the same for both WP and Drupal. You download an archive file, go back to the dashboard, upload it, and activate it. You can’t do this automatically from the repository in Drupal, but if you’re a command line user, each page has an installation command you can paste in using Composer.

It comes down to how comfortable you are with the design and knowing what you need for your site. If you go in with a clear design and functionality plan, Drupal is pretty simple to handle. But if you’re piecing it together as you go, the interfaces and community in WordPress may be better suited for you.


Customizations	ðŸ¥‡ Winner There are no limitations in the WordPress world. Users with zero technical experience can create amazingly designed websites using page builder themes/plugins like Divi.	Drupal requires quite a bit of CSS, JS, and HTML to truly customize it. If youâ€™re piecing it together as you go, the interfaces and community in WordPress may be better suited for you.
	Choose WordPress	Choose Drupal

Customizations

ðŸ¥‡ Winner

There are no limitations in the WordPress world. Users with zero technical experience can create amazingly designed websites using page builder themes/plugins like Divi.

Drupal requires quite a bit of CSS, JS, and HTML to truly customize it. If youâ€™re piecing it together as you go, the interfaces and community in WordPress may be better suited for you.

Choose WordPress

Choose Drupal

WordPress Publishing is Unmatched

You can’t have a website without content. And in some way or another, you’re going to be creating content for your website. Even the most barebones sites have pages and pages of content that has to get there somehow. WordPress always has an advantage in publishing content because of its roots as a blogging platform. However, Drupal isn’t that far behind because of how easy and well-designed the publishing tools are.

WordPress

WordPress vs Drupal is all about publishing. Over the past few years, the buzzwords from Automattic and the WordPress foundation have been “democratizing publishing,” which pretty much sums up their stance. While WP is absolutely a capable and well-crafted CMS that can handle any sort of site, all the functionality used on those sites comes down to being based on posts and pages.

Publishing in WordPress, be it a post or a page, or even a product in your e-commerce store, comes down to using either the Classic Editor or the Block Editor and any number of meta-boxes and custom fields in a custom post type. All of which can be extended with the help of plugins such as Toolset.

Additionally, you can separate and categorize your content in WordPress using parent/child taxonomies and tags. No matter how you want to display your content, you can. Different themes such as Divi, come with the ability to create templates, too, so you can often set your content to look different based on what focus it has. You might have specific templates for posts with audio or video players, for instance.

And the publishing options only expand when you introduce advanced themes and plugins. It’s very hard to get lost in publishing with WordPress because it is very simple. That said, the Block Editor that comes in WordPress by default after version 5.0 is not a WYSIWYG editor with an interface like a word processor. That is a bit of a bump in the publishing workflow until you figure out how it works.

wordpress vs drupal

After that, it’s pretty smooth sailing.

Drupal

Drupal uses a WYSIWYG editor for its content, and it works great. You will find a Content menu item in the main dashboard. The next page is well-messaged. and you know exactly what kinds of content you can make. The same as WordPress: posts and pages.

wordpress vs drupal

The editing pages are clean and concise, and writing content is no problem. We ran into no issues in pasting from Google Docs, either, which can be a pain in WordPress.

drupal 10 page editor wordpress vs drupal

All of your options are available on one screen, and they’re easily navigable. If you need to customize the categories and taxonomies on your site, you can do that under the Structure menu, as we mentioned above.

Drupal’s publishing tools are less-advanced than WordPress. WP makes creating specialized and highly formatted content a cinch. But Drupal gives you a quick, clean, and painless writing and publishing experience. And that means a lot.

WordPress vs Drupal Publishing Comparison


Publishing	ðŸ¥‡ Winner The Block Editor that comes in WordPress by default after version 5.0 is not as simple as the classic editor, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it to be very powerful.	Drupal gives you a quick, clean, and painless writing and publishing experience. However, it’s not nearly as advanced as the block editor in WordPress.
	Choose WordPress	Choose Drupal

Publishing

ðŸ¥‡ Winner

The Block Editor that comes in WordPress by default after version 5.0 is not as simple as the classic editor, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it to be very powerful.

Drupal gives you a quick, clean, and painless writing and publishing experience. However, it’s not nearly as advanced as the block editor in WordPress.

Choose WordPress

Choose Drupal

WordPress and Drupal Alternatives

Before you make your final decision on your website platform…are you curious to see how WordPress stacks up against its other biggest competitors? We did the hard work and compared WordPress vs everything else so that you don’t have to! One of those posts compares WordPress vs Wix, and I think you will be interested to see the results!

So Which Platform is Better?

WordPress vs Drupal is beginner-friendly, with a less steep learning curve and user-friendly tools. It offers many options for customization, with themes like Divi and plugins like Toolset, and is a powerful SEO platform, especially with tools like Rank Math.


Ease of use	ðŸ¥‡ Winner WordPress has a low-to-moderate learning curve and even those without lots of technical expertise can good tutorials to help them along the way.	If youâ€™re coming into Drupal with no web experience, both the interface and terminology used can be a little off-putting.
Customization	ðŸ¥‡ Winner There are no limitations in the WordPress world. Users with zero technical experience can create amazingly designed websites using page builder themes/plugins like Divi.	Drupal requires quite a bit of CSS, JS, and HTML to truly customize it. If youâ€™re piecing it together as you go, the interfaces and community in WordPress may be better suited for you.
Publishing	ðŸ¥‡ Winner The Block Editor that comes in WordPress by default after version 5.0 is not as simple as the classic editor, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll find it to be very powerful.	Drupal gives you a quick, clean, and painless writing and publishing experience. However, it’s not nearly as advanced as the block editor in WordPress.
	Choose WordPress	Choose Drupal

Drupal has a steeper learning curve due to its technical nature, but experienced website managers should find it easy to use. It requires more design and development skills than WordPress but has a powerful platform that can meet your needs with the right expertise.

The post WordPress vs. Drupal (2023) â€” Which One is Better? appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

28.02.2023

Get a Free AI Software Layout Pack for Divi
Hey Divi Nation! Thanks for joining us for the next installment of our weekly Divi Design Initiative; where each week, we give away a brand new Layout Pack for Divi.

This time around, the design team has created a beautiful AI Software Layout Pack thatâ€™ll help you get your next AI Software website up and running in no time!

This layout pack includes:

– 7 Premade page layouts strategically designed for any AI Software website (including a footer design)
– Original, royalty-free photos and graphics + customizable source file (see below)
– Plus, a large collection of pre-designed website elements that are customizable and reusable anywhere.

This layout pack is available right inside Divi for all Divi customers for FREE as the latest addition to our growing Divi library of hundreds of premade layout packs, thousands of page designs, and countless web design elements and resources.

Check Out The Divi AI Software Layout Pack Below

Get it for free today!

Landing Page Design

View The Live Layout Demo

Home Page Design

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Features Page Design

View The Live Layout Demo

Pricing Page Design

View The Live Layout Demo

About Page Design

View The Live Layout Demo

Blog Page Design

View The Live Layout Demo

Contact Page Design

View The Live Layout Demo

Key Features

Are you ready to take your website to the next level and step boldly into the future? Look no further than the AI Software Layout Pack for Divi! With sleek and stunning visuals, captivating colors, and bold text, this layout pack will transform your website into a cutting-edge masterpiece sure to turn heads.

Live Demos

Click the links below to see a live demo for each of the layouts included in the pack.
Access This Layout Right Now

Directly from Your Divi Builder

Since Version 3.0.99 of Divi, you can find and import any of the layouts included in this pack (along with ALL of Divi’s Premade Layout packs) directly from the Divi Builder. They are already waiting for you.

To access your new layout, simply activate the Visual Builder when editing a page and look for the “Load From Library” icon in the page settings bar (it looks like a plus symbol). Click this icon to launch the Load From Library popup. Under the Premade Layouts tab, you can easily find the new layout by scrolling through the list of layout packs. Once you find the AI Software Layout Pack, click on it. You will see all the individual layouts included in the pack. Select the layout you want to use and then click the “Use This Layout” button.

For more, check out this video to learn how you can get this layout pack up and running today.

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Authentication Required

Before you can download Premade Layouts from the Divi Library you must authenticate your Elegant Themes Subscription. You can do this by navigating to Divi > Theme Options > Updates. There you can enter your username and API key and save changes.

You can find your API Key under your members area on the Elegant Themes site. After you enter the Username and API Key, you will gain immediate access to our library of hundreds of free layouts (including this one). If you haven’t done this, when you click to import a layout to your page, you will be prompted to enter your Elegant Themes Membership Username and API Key.

Use Layout Images for FREE with No Licensing Restrictions

The image assets included with these layouts (icons, illustrations, photos, etc.) have no licensing restrictions. This means you can use them in all of your commercial projects without having to worry about paying licensing fees or attributing the photographer. Use them in your commercial websites, sell them within your Divi child themes, include them in your own Divi layout packs or just use them on your blog. We know how challenging it can be to find good photos and how confusing and scary the licensing that governs those photos can be. We want to fix that problem for our users.

Download the Full Res Image Assets

New Layout Pack Every Week!

We hope you enjoy this layout pack. We look forward to hearing your opinions in the comment section below. Make sure you check out next week’s layout pack as well!

The post Get a Free AI Software Layout Pack for Divi appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
27.02.2023

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org (2023) â€” Which One to Pick?

WordPress now makes up well over 1/3 of all internet sites. That’s aÂ lot of websites. However, when we say “WordPress,” that could mean more than one thing. The base WordPress software is the same. But when you decide between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com, you are choosing a very specific set of features over another. While WordPress itself doesn’t change, the day-to-day usage can be pretty different. We want to walk you through both sides of WP so that you can decide which version works best for you and your site.

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What is WordPress?

First off, let’s take a look at WordPress itself. Many see WordPress as a blogging platform, and it is. But over the past couple of decades, it has also become a full content management system (CMS) that can manage every kind of site you could want. Even if you’re not writing and publishing content regularly, you can still easily use WordPress for your website. As a landing page, portfolio, learning management system (LMS), membership site, or even an ecommerce shop.

wordpress.com vs wordpress.org features

In a nutshell (an admittedly big one), WordPress does a lot of things.

WordPress Features, Perks, and Details:

It is open-source software, through the GPL license, and receives consistent and regular updates that add new features and polish and enhance old ones.
Simple-to-use interface, both as an administrator and content creator.
The Gutenberg block editor is intuitive and allows full-site customization immediately on installation.
- Additionally, content can be designed around various structures. Custom post types, possess unique metadata, various taxonomies, and more. These allow for impressive organization.
WordPress is a full CMS:
- Content creation (blogging, podcasting, video, streaming, etc.)
- Static landing pages
- Media management
- User management built into the base software which can be utilized for membership sites or e-commerce shops.
The WordPress themes system gives 100% customization of every aspect of your site.
Themes do more than just alter the design, but also add and adjust functionality.
- Thousands of freeÂ and premium themes (such as Divi) out there for you to choose from, many available and hosted by WordPress itself.
WP can be hosted anywhere. It is near-universally supported by web hosts, with some excellent choices including Pressable and WPEngine.
WordPress domain and URL customization within the dashboard
Built for speed and page-load times
Custom widgets provide page-by-page customization in almost any area such as sidebars, footers, and headers.
WordPress is extensible, meaning that anyone can create a plugin to hook into the CMS and add a feature or change how something works.
Developers can do so much through the WordPress APIs, from the REST API to HTTP requests, URL routing, and MySQL databases, WordPress is ready for translation, user management, data manipulation, and whatever features they can dream up.

Don’t Forget the People!

On top of all the technical things that WordPress can do, the community that surrounds the software is tight-knit and welcoming. You can attend WordCamps to learn about it, go to Meetups in your town, or even just participate in social media groups and forums to meet people who can help you, work with you, and even become your friends.

You get all of these with both versions of WordPress. With all that in mind, both technical and social, let’s look at WordPress.org vs WordPress.com individually to consider their strengths and weaknesses.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org Pricing

WordPress.com offers a variety of plans, ranging from a free plan with basic features to a business plan with advanced features. The free plan allows you to create a website with limited features and includes a WordPress.com subdomain. The paid plans range in price from roughly $4 per month (billed annually) for a personal plan to $45 per month for an e-commerce plan. The more expensive plans offer more advanced features and customization options.

With WordPress.org, the cost of web hosting can vary depending on the provider and the plan you choose. For example, some popular hosting providers like SiteGround and Green Geeks offer starter WordPress plans that start at $2.95 per month, while other premium providers like WPEngine might start at $20 per month.

Additionally, you will need to pay for a domain name, which typically costs around $10 to $15 per year. Providers such as GoDaddy and HostGator offer both domains and hosting plans, but it’s generally recommended that you purchase a domain separately from a provider such as NameCheap.

By purchasing your domain from a separate domain registrar, you can have more control over your domain and avoid potential issues that may arise from having your domain and hosting with the same provider. Additionally, using a separate domain registrar may give you more flexibility to switch web hosting providers in the future, without having to transfer your domain to a new provider.

	WordPress.com	WordPress.org
Hosting	$4-45 per month	$2 – $20 per month for starter plans
Domain	FREE	$10-$15 per year

What is WordPress.org?

WordPress.org is very likely the software you mean when discussing generic “WordPress.” The version put out byÂ .org is the self-hosted, independent, open-source version of the WordPress CMS.

wordpress.com vs wordpress.org

Backed by The WordPress Foundation,Â WordPress.org isÂ free to install and use in whatever way you see fit. Obviously, there are some catches to that, but if you want to use WordPress in its most open and available way possible, head toÂ WordPress.org and download it.

You may also see theÂ .org version of WordPress referred to as “self-hosted WordPress,” meaning that the software itself is free, but as previously mentioned, you must have a web host (such as SiteGround or Flywheel) to install it on. (Technically, you can run WP on your local machine, too, but that’s generally done for development and troubleshooting.)

The Pros for WordPress.org Installations

There are quite a few drawbacks to WordPress.com vs WordPress.org. The biggest and most prominent benefit of usingÂ .org installations of WordPress come with the total freedom to do what you want. Outside of your hosting provider, you are not bound by any terms of service, content limitations, or what kinds of development, themes, or plugins you can use on your site.

You always own your content, too. You do not grant any services or platforms even the slightest consideration for what you write or put up. The absolute freedom of building and content production is the hallmark of WordPress and was one of the reasons it was created and released as open-source software.

As we mentioned, you can use any theme, and any plugin, and do any kind of development that you want on your site. With WordPress.com (which we will get to below), you are limited to using approved plugins and themes, meaning that the freedom to haveÂ exactly the site that you want is impossible. YouÂ can get the exact site you want with .com, but you have to pay for the ability piecemeal. That isn’t the case with .org installations.

Additionally, you can run any ads you want on your site, use any sort of monetization you want, paywall anything you desire, and sell any kind of products in your WooCommerce store. Only the terms of use for the ad networks and services you choose to use will limit what you can and can’t do.

The Cons for WordPress.org Installations

As with anything, there are downsides to WordPress.org installations, too. The most prominent of which is that same freedom that is its primary draw. By being fully in control of your site, you are also fully in control of maintenance, purchase of themes and plugins, additional development, and any hosting issues that might come up.

Additionally, you have to sort through web hosts, making sure that the one you choose offers everything you need. (For instance, Pressable is a fantastic host for WordPress, but they don’t offer email service.)

PROS	CONS
FREE to use	Must maintain on your own
Self-hosted	Premium themes and plugins cost extra $$$
Freedom to choose plugins, themes, and hosting provider	Sift through choices of hosting provider
Owning your content	May have to pay for domain
Paywall content
Host ads, sell unlimited products

Who is WordPress.org For?

WordPress.org is for anyone who wants a website. Really. If you want a website of any sort, WordPress.org can create it for you. With full freedom and ownership of your site, design, and content, there is no reason not to give it a shot. With having responsibility for your site one of the only real drawbacks to using WordPress.org, it is a fantastic option for anyone who wants a website.

What is WordPress.com?

wordpress.com vs wordpress.org

To start with, WordPress.org vs WordPress.com is comparing software to a service/platform. WordPress.com is a free website service, not a free website software like .org. You don’t have to download anything or install it. You sign up for an account and create a site that is hosted by WordPress.com vs WordPress.org, where self-hosting is required. To do so is free. You will be given a choice of templates and suggested plugins and a yoursite.wordpress.com URL.

Essentially, everything is handled for you from the moment you sign up. Which, like .org‘s freedom, is .com‘s primary benefit and detriment.

The Pros of a WordPress.com vs WordPress.org Website

If you’re looking for a free, no-frills, no-hassle website, WordPress.com vs WordPress.org can give you that. From the moment you sign up, you’re walked through the process of setting up the site. Pick a name and URL and theme. Then you’re free to start publishing content immediately.

You don’t have to find a host because WordPress.comÂ is your host. They give you a decent, albeit limited, amount of space per site (3 GB) before requiring you to pay for a plan. If you are looking for a 100% free site where you can get started from nothing in essentially moments, you can do that here. No hosting costs, and no domain registration, just sign up and go.

They also handle backups and maintenance and upgrades for you. Meaning that you won’t have to worry about your site getting security holes in it from not having X, Y, or Z plugin at its newest version.

The hosting is the same that powers Pressable, and it’s top-notch. You won’t have to worry about your site’s stability when using WordPress.com.

The Cons of a WordPress.com vs WordPress.org Website

The limitations that come with a WordPress.com vs WordPress.org site tend to be the main things that drive people away from the platform. BecauseÂ .com is aÂ platform and not just software, the company that runs it (Automattic) is out to make a profit. So like any free service on the internet, you only get the most basic elements for free.

If you want a custom URL (mysite.com instead ofÂ mysite.wordpress.com), you have to pay extra. To use any theme you want (from their approved list), you have to pay extra. Same for plugins. Want a run an e-commerce site? Yup, upgrade your plan. Do you see the pattern here?

WordPress.com also shows ads on your site and doesn’t pay you for them. At least, if you’re a free member. The saying “if you’re not paying for a product, youÂ are the product” holds very true here. Automattic definitely profits off your use of their service, whether you pay or not. (And in this case, at the expense of your users’ experiences.)

You cannot use external services such as Google Analytics or Google AdSense, but you can apply for their proprietary ad system and use Jetpack stats. Unless, of course, you upgrade to a higher plan.

And finally, you are bound by the WordPress.com EULA and ToS. Which means that they have the right to do with your site what they want. While you own the content there, they may choose to use it in advertising. And if they decide your content violates their terms, they can take your site offline without your consent (or knowledge, sometimes).

Who is WordPress.com For?

In its free version, WordPress.com websites are for people who want a no-frills publishing experience that doesn’t require any upkeep. Using theÂ .com version of WordPress means that you can get your work out to the world with zero upfront cost and very little effort and almost no maintenance.

If you need a temporary site or a demo or just a place to blog as a diary/journal, .com can certainly be what you want.

Also, WordPress.com is an option for people who run high-revenue businesses and high-traffic sites who also want a hassle-free experience. The WordPress.com VIP packages (starting at $2,000 per month) are about as hands-off as any website can get that’s WordPress-based, but it’s priced out of nearly everyone’s reach. The VIP portion of WordPress.com is targeting Fortune 500-level companies, not every other person who needs a free website for a bit.

PROS	CONS
FREE to use	Only basic elements are free
Easy set up	Certain plugins are prohibited
Hosting is provided	Ads are shown that you don’t get paid for
Free domain	Custom domain costs extra
JetPack provided	No Google Analytics integration
Security is provided	You don’t own your content

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org Alternatives

If you are interested in checking out alternatives to WordPress.com or WordPress.org, check out our comparison of WordPress vs HighLevel, WordPress vs Wix, and WordPress vs Weebly. They are all somewhat similar to WordPress and can give you insiintot on comparable platforms for your consideration.

The Verdict: WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

Overall, our verdict is that WordPress.org is by far the superior product. While you do have a little more to handle on your end as a site owner and user, the freedom you get (for free) is just too much of an incentive. Not being upsold to use whatever plugins or themes you want (even if you’ve purchased them) alone is worth using .org.

	WordPress.com	WordPress.org
Pricing	Free – $45 per month	Free + hosting fee
Domain	Free	$10 – $15 per year
Monetization allowed	Selling products, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts and ads visible on site	Unlimited
Allows plugins	With business or eCommerce plans	Yes
Own your own content	No	Yes
Google Analytics	With premium plan and above	Yes
Backup and storage	Yes	With plugin
eCommerce	Must purchase premium plan	With plugin
	WordPress.com	WordPress.org

WordPress.com is an absolutely solid platform. If you decide to host your website through their service, it will be stable, easy to use, and it will have very little trouble. But if you want anything else, it will cost you. If you have the budget for it and don’t want the responsibility, consider a .com site. However, even though you have to pay separately for .org hosting, the cost is generally lower and you can run more sites than just one on that hosting service.

In the end, whether you go with WordPress.com vs WordPress.org, you still get to use WordPress. And that’s a win, no matter which side you’re on.

What are your thoughts on WordPress.com vs WordPress.org? Let us know in the comments!

The post WordPress.com vs WordPress.org (2023) â€” Which One to Pick? appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

27.02.2023

WordPress vs Tumblr (2023) â€” Which One is The Best?

On the surface, the blogging platform landscape looks the same as it did 10 years ago. The same big names still dominate it: Blogger, Tumblr, and WordPress. Beneath the surface, however, almost everything has changed. All three platforms have grown up and transformed into something unique.

WordPress has outgrown its blogging roots and has become the dominant content management system and website-building software on the web. It’s largely considered the platform for “serious” bloggers and website owners. Blogger (a free Google add-on service) has remained focused strictly on facilitating the act of blogging. It continues to target a general audience who wants a free and extremely easy way to publish blog posts. One that requires the bare minimum of technical know-how. As a result, it remains popular with that audience. Tumblr, on the other hand, has had a more interesting journey.

Tumblr’s Content and Monetization Woes

When it launched in 2007, Tumblr was more than a blogging platform. It was a blogging platform designed for a specific type of blogging called tumblelogging or microblogging. Much like Twitter with “tweets”, the unique formatting of Tumblr posts and feeds is essential to the experience.Â Tumblr was both hosted and free, which meant monetization was tied to how people behaved once on the platform. This is instead of charging users for access to it or features/content on it.

Naturally, advertising was meant to make all this possible. And at first, it did. Unfortunately, liability around adult content forced a tug-of-war between advertisers, Tumblr, and Tumblr users that would nearly destroy the platform.

The content policy demand made it impossible for some of Tumblr’s most active users to keep content on the platform. This triggered a mass exit of users. Tumblr’s value plummeted, and it changed hands from Yahoo!, which had purchased it in 2013, to Verizon Communications in 2017, when they acquired Yahoo! After a few lackluster years as part of Verizon, Tumblr was sold again in 2019. This time to none other than Automattic, the company behind their direct competitor, WordPress.com.

The Repercussions of Tumblr’s Acquisition by Automattic

In a very real sense, the acquisition of Tumblr by Automattic meant the end of Tumblr as an active competitor in the blogging arena. However, it also seems to have meant the salvation of a type of blogging experience that only Tumblr provides. Up to a point at least.

Right now, there is no plan to roll back the “no adult content” policy originally implemented under Yahoo!. However, there are other changes ahead that may cure the platform’s monetization woes and allow it to become more valuable for its remaining users.

The long-term plan for Tumblr seems to be for Automattic to convert the backend of Tumblr to WordPress while maintaining the unique user experience Tumblr has already established. While this may seem like a change designed to make things easier on the parent company, what this actually means is that all of the ways WordPress.com has been able to monetize over the years will be available to the Tumblr platform. It is unlikely to result in Tumblr becoming a market share competitor of WordPress in terms of blogs or websites, but it will make the long-term viability of tumblelogging a reality for users and content consumers who prefer that experience.

WordPress vs. Tumblr: as Blogging Platforms

In this article, we’ll be comparing WordPress and Tumblr in a slightly different light than we might normally compare competing companies. Since they’re both owned by Automattic, they’re no longer competitors but rather complimentary products that offer different user experiences. We’ll do our best to highlight those differences so you can choose the best platform for your blog.

WordPress vs. Tumblr: Ease of Use

When looking for blogging software that you will be using regularly, making sure that you like (or at least don’t mind) how it feels is pretty important. Both Tumblr and WordPress have drastically different user experiences (UX), but outside of their individual quirks and unique features, neither platform has a terribly high learning curve.

WordPress

Learning WordPress can be intimidating. While the world’s #1 CMS is decently user-friendly, the learning curve is somewhere in the middle. The user interface (UI) is functional but not always intuitive. And the number of features at your disposal from the beginning can be overwhelming (especially with onboarding messaging being pretty sparse).

However, after some trial, error, and various Google searches, you will be flying through the WordPress admin dashboard like a pro.

The post editor for WordPress has changed over the years, but the most recent version is the Gutenberg Block Editor. It gives you full control of your content, with each element being its own block that you can manipulate individually.

wordpress vs tumblr

You can also adjust theÂ Post Format in the right sidebar, which will alter the composition and design of your post to adequately match whether it is primarily an audio post, video, gallery, and so on.

wordpress vs tumblr post format

Keep in mind, however, that because of the ultra-customizable nature of WordPress, these post formats will differ based on the theme you have chosen. Some themes may use the video in place of the featured image or use a pre-styled audio player. Some themes may not even make use of this feature, meaning every post uses the same template regardless.

All of this to say, once you learn how to use WordPress to create the content that you want and find the right theme for your style of content, the creation is a breeze. You get tons of control, and as many options as your theme and plugin setup allow for. But it comes at the price of a slightly cumbersome dashboard that takes a bit of time to get used to.

Tumblr

Tumblr, on the other hand, is the epitome of intuitive. From the moment you log into your dashboard, the options for publishing are all right there. While the editor and platform may be a bit less powerful overall than WordPress, the ease of use and learning curve are certainly better.

wordpress vs tumblr dashboard

Because Tumblr is as much a social network as it is blogging software, the top nav bar contains notifications and messaging links. As well as a New Post button. And just below that, a series of icons gives you immediate access to each kind of post that you can make. It doesn’t get a lot easier than that, really.

For a head-to-head comparison, the text-post editor in Tumblr is much simpler than the one in WordPress. It can’t do quite everything the WP editor can, though.

tumblr post editor

That said, youÂ can do a lot with a simple Tumblr post. In the image below, you can see each paragraph is separate, images are put in-line, and then each new line break has the full media insertion list of icons, where you can also include audio, video, links, etc. in the post.

wordpress vs tumblr editor

This is the traditional blog post creation. Notice at the bottom where it saysÂ #add tags. This is where you would choose the tags that allow the post to show up in other people’s feeds. Maybe the steepest learning curve on Tumblr is figuring out the right tags to meet the right people. And how to reblog and become a part of the community. But the actual act of doing so is easy to do.


Ease of Use	WordPress can take some time to learn, plus the seemingly endless features might be overwhelming at first.	ðŸ¥‡ Winner Tumblr is ultra intuitive, anyone with experience with social media will be able to pick it up instantly.
	Choose WordPress	Choose Tumblr

WordPress vs. Tumblr: Customization

WordPress has made its name by being customizable. Tumblr, on the other hand, doesn’t really come to mind when you think of custom websites. And for good reason, the customization options on WordPress vs. Tumblr are night-and-day different. However limited they are, Tumblr gives you many more options as, say, Medium. To be fair to the platform, however, very few services offer as much customization and control over your site as WordPress.

WordPress

There really isn’t any doubt that WordPress is the victor in a head-to-head comparison of customization options. Between the WordPress.org theme and plugin repositories, the open-source code itself, and the thriving third-party extension industry, if you want something on your WordPress site, you can get it.

Or maybe, more importantly, you can do it. Users can implement any changes they want on their site. You can dig into the code and alter anything you want (given you have the experience and skill to do so). You can choose what theme you use and how it works. Any feature can be added through plugins, of which you have thousands of choices.

The main challenge in learning WordPress is discovering the ideal themes and plugins. Thankfully, we can help you with that. We have an exhaustive library of posts to help you choose the best form plugins, some great options for social media integration, popular SEO plugins, as well as WooCommerce and blogging themes to help get you started.

Depending on the theme you use, however, the ease of customization differs. The default way to adjust themes is in what’s called the Theme Customizer. The options contained there differ from theme to theme, but in general, you get basic color and typography settings, as well as a space for custom CSS.

wordpress theme customizer

Themes such as Divi and other popular page builders give even more granular control over customizations. Rather than digging into PHP files to create templates or write them in HTML, visual builders give real-time adjustments and settings and feature drag-and-drop placement of elements.

divi theme builder

Divi and some other builders also give you the option to fully customize each and every aspect of your site, even allowing for individual templates for specific categories, post types, search results, and anything else. All of this is built into the WordPress core. But you need requires JavaScript and PHP knowledge to take advantage of that.

But because of the healthy development industry around WordPress, customizing your site can be limitless. You just have to find the theme and plugin combination that suits you the best.

Tumblr

Tumblr, on the other hand, is a far more limited platform for customization. And that’s okay. As a platform, Tumblr isn’t designed for customization. Nor would having major site customization increase usability. Unsurprisingly, you can find an Edit Appearance entry on the main menu, and it looks not dissimilar to the WordPress theme customizer.

tumblr customization options

You can change header images, show avatars, update the title and description, and add/remove features such as endless scrolling, visible navigation, sliding header, and so on. You can also add a new page to the site from here, which can be useful if you need an About Me page or something similar. Your primary URL is going to be a feed of your posts, but Tumblr blogs do have nav menus built in.

If you want a different look, you can always head to the Tumblr theme repository, which is very useful. It isn’t nearly as robust as the WordPress one, but again, it’s not meant to be. If, however, you want your Tumblr blog to appear more traditionally (such as with a feed and sidebar, and author bio), these themes are the best way to do it.

Finally, you can also adjust how the user dashboard appears, too. In the dropdown for your account settings in the header bar, aÂ Change Palette link will cycle between 12 different color schemes for your dashboard.

color palette changes

From a Matrix-style green-black computer theme called “Cybernetic” to the pictured “Goth Rave”, you’ll be able to find some combination that works for you.


Customization	ðŸ¥‡ Winner WordPress is the clear winner in customization due its vast library of plugins and themes.	You can make some minor customization changes easily, but Tumblr just doesn’t compare to WordPress.
	Choose WordPress	Choose Tumblr

WordPress vs. Tumblr: Social

We would be remiss if we didn’t touch on the social aspect of these platforms. Whether it’s integration with social media and community building or maintaining a close network of contacts and readers, both WordPress and Tumblr have big social aspects. They’re just very, very different.

WordPress

As we mentioned in the above section on Customization, you can find a plugin or theme that integrates any feature you can think of. In terms of social experiences, some of the standouts in the WordPress ecosystem are membership sites and forums using plugins such as MemberPress, bbPress, or BuddyPress. You can even build community by gamifying your content and bringing people together through bite-sized dopamine hits.

You can also use the Jetpack plugin to tie into WordPress.com accounts which will allow users to Follow and Like your blog posts. Though, to be honest, this is a very underutilized feature by most people. It’s a pale competitor to the blogging/reblogging system on Tumblr. But the “Following” option is great for those who want a built-in contact/email list.

wordpress follows

Additionally, the block editor will use any connection you’ve made to social networks and automate sharing whenever you make a new post.

wordpress social

By default, you can make this a final check to customize before scheduling or publishing. And none of this includes the typical WordPress comment system, where people can simply leave messages on your content. And even that can be customized with other, more social systems such as Disqus.

Tumblr

Within a short time of your beginning to use Tumblr, you will definitely see the social aspects baked into the platform. As we’ve said, Tumblr is as much a social network as it is a blogging platform. On each and every post, four icons appear.

tumblr icons

They’re relatively universal in what they do, making using Tumblr’s social tools very easy.

Message
Comment
Reblog
Like

On top of that ease, each post within a feed or on a page has this same collection of icons to make sharing and reblogging incredibly easy.

tumblr icons in the feed

Reblogging is simply putting someone else’s content on your page, sometimes with a comment and sometimes not. It’s the precursor to Twitter’s Retweeting and Quote Tweeting. When reblogging content, it’s important to note that your content, as well as the original content, will show up in any tag feeds included. So you can add your own, which will increase the viral spread of the content.

social network sharing

If you just want to share your content or anyone else’s, the Message arrow also includes the most popular social networks. All of this combine to make Tumblr an incredibly social platform that’s built on the premise of sharing content freely among a community. You can absolutely do a traditional blog using Tumblr, but if you do, keep in mind that the social aspect is still important. Your audience will come primarily from the community of other Tumblr users.


Social	WordPress can be made into an effective social media platform with a few plugins or setting changes.	ðŸ¥‡ Winner Tumblr is designed to be a social platform as much as a blogging platform.
	Choose WordPress	Choose Tumblr

Wrapping Up WordPress vs. Tumblr

WordPress and Tumblr are two very different products in the end. WordPress is an amazing content management system and blogging platform. It is best used by those who want complete control over their sites. Tumblr works more like a traditional social platform but can’t function as a CMS. Both are suited for long-form content as well as short.


Ease of Use	WordPress can take some time to learn, plus the seemingly endless features might be overwhelming at first.	ðŸ¥‡ Winner Tumblr is ultra intuitive, anyone with experience with social media will be able to pick it up instantly.
Customization	ðŸ¥‡ Winner WordPress is the clear winner in customization due its vast library of plugins and themes.	You can make some minor customization changes easily, but Tumblr just doesn’t compare to WordPress.
Social	WordPress can be made into an effective social media platform with a few plugins or setting changes.	ðŸ¥‡ Winner Tumblr is designed to be a social platform as much as a blogging platform.
	Choose WordPress	Choose Tumblr

However, in the end, the choice between the two platforms comes down to audience and intent. If you’re about social sharing and being part of a community, Tumblr is the way to go. If you’re more traditional in use and need e-commerce or massive search traffic, it’s WordPress.

WordPress Deep Dive

One more thing. Before you make your final decision on your website platform…are you curious to see how WordPress stacks up against its other biggest competitors? We did the hard work and compared WordPress vs. everything else so that you don’t have to! We, for instance, compare WordPress vs. Google Sites, and I think you will be interested to see the results.

If you’re looking for a way to integrate social media with WordPress, we recommend spotlight or 10Web to help you get started.

What do you think about WordPress vs. Tumblr? What have been your experiences?

The post WordPress vs Tumblr (2023) â€” Which One is The Best? appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.

27.02.2023