Do you want to know the difference between padding and margin in WordPress?
In WordPress, padding is the space between the content and the border within a block, while margin is the space between two separate blocks.
In this article, we will show you the difference between padding and margin and how to use them in WordPress.
What Is Padding in WordPress?
The padding feature on your WordPress website is used to create space inside a block.
For example, you can add space inside a Text block to make its layout more visually appealing and prevent text from appearing too close to the borders of the block.
You can also use padding to control how the content flows on your WordPress blog. For instance, if you add padding to the top and bottom of a Text block, you can make it easier for visitors to read the content.
What Is Margin in WordPress?
Margin is the space around the border of a WordPress block and its surrounding elements.
This can help you add space between two different blocks, creating a more spacious and clean layout for your site.
For example, you can add margins to the top and bottom of a Text block so that it remains visible even when the screen is resized.
Plus, you can also use margins to add space between Image and Text blocks to make your website visually appealing and more accessible for users.
What Is the Difference Between Padding and Margin in WordPress?
Here is a quick list of the differences between padding and margin in WordPress:
Padding
Margin
Padding means adding space between the content and the border of the block.
The margin feature adds space outside the border of the block.
Using padding does not affect the other blocks on your website.
Using a margin affects other blocks on your website.
Margins can create space between two different blocks.
How to Use Padding in WordPress
By default, the WordPress full site editor (FSE) comes with the padding feature.
However, keep in mind that if you are not using a block-based theme, then you won’t be able to add padding to your WordPress site unless you use custom CSS.
First, you need to visit the Appearance » Editor page from the WordPress admin sidebar to launch the full site editor.
Once you are there, just choose the page template where you want to add padding to your blocks from the ‘Templates’ sidebar on the left. This sidebar will display all the templates for different pages on your website.
After you have done that, the template that you chose will open up on the screen.
From here, click the ‘Edit’ button to start customizing your page template in the full site editor.
Next, choose the block where you want to add padding. Remember this means that you will be creating space between the content and the border of the block.
This will open the block’s settings in the block panel on the right side of the screen.
From here, you need to scroll down to the ‘Dimensions’ section and click on the three-dotted menu. This will open a prompt where you must select the ‘Padding’ option.
Next, simply use the slider to add padding to your block.
Keep in mind that this feature will add padding to all the sides of the block.
However, if you only want to add padding to the top or bottom of the block, then you can also do that by clicking the ‘Unlink Sides’ icon next to the ‘Padding’ option.
Then, you can use different sliders to add padding to the right, left, bottom, or top of the block.
Once you are done, just click the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.
How to Use Margin in WordPress
Just like padding, the margin feature comes built-in in the WordPress full site editor. However, this feature won’t be available if you are not using a block theme.
First, head over to the Appearance » Editor page from the WordPress dashboard.
Once you are there, choose the page template where you want to add margins from the column on the left.
This will open the page template that you chose on the screen.
From here, just select the ‘Edit’ button to start customizing your template in the full site editor.
Next, choose the block that you want to edit and scroll down to the ‘Dimensions’ section in the block panel on the right.
From here, simply use the sliders to set different margins for the top, bottom, left, and right corners of the block. Using this feature will create space around the block that you chose.
However, if you want to use a single slider to add equal margins around the block, then click the ‘Link Sides’ icon next to the ‘Margin’ option.
The block panel will now display a single ‘Margin Mixed’ slider on the screen that you can use to create equal margins around the block.
Once you are done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button at the top to store your settings.
More Tips for Full Site Editing in WordPress
Other than adding padding and margins to your blocks, you can also use the full site editor to customize your entire WordPress theme.
For example, you can design all your page templates, add your own custom logo, choose brand colors, change the layout, adjust the font size, add background images, and more.
You can also add patterns and different blocks to your website to further customize it. For details, you may want to see our beginner’s guide on how to customize your WordPress theme.
Additionally, you can also use Global Styles to ensure consistency across your site. For more detailed instructions, you may want to see our guide on how to customize colors on your WordPress website.
However, if you don’t like using the full site editor and would prefer more control over your website’s appearance, then you can use SeedProd to build pages and even your entire theme.
It is the best landing page builder on the market that comes with a drag-and-drop builder that makes it super easy to create an amazing theme for your website.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to learn about WordPress site settings that are most critical for SEO success?
Many different plugins can improve your search engine rankings and drive more people to your website. However, it is vital that you get your site’s foundations right by fine-tuning the WordPress site settings.
In this article, we will look at all the WordPress site settings that are critical for SEO success.
Why Are WordPress Site Settings Critical for SEO Success?
Search engines are a major source of traffic for most websites, so it’s important to optimize your site for SEO.
There are countless tips, tricks, plugins, and best practices that can boost your search engine rankings. However, the wrong site settings can completely undermine all your SEO efforts, and may even stop your WordPress blog from showing up in search results.
If you ignore some basic WordPress site settings, then you’re almost certainly missing out on easy ways to fine-tune your SEO and get more visitors to your WordPress website. Plus, these settings are built-in so you don’t need to worry about installing any extra plugins, making them an easy win even if you’re just getting started with SEO.
With that being said, let’s look at all the WordPress site settings that are critical for SEO success. Simply use the quick links to jump straight to the setting you want to learn about.
Before you start changing any WordPress site settings, it’s important to check that search engines can see your content. This is particularly important if you’ve just created a website, or previously made your WordPress blog private.
To do this, go to Settings » Reading in the WordPress dashboard. Then, find the following checkbox: ‘Discourage search engines from indexing this site.’
If the box is checked, then uncheck it. Then, click on ‘Save Changes’ to store your settings.
Now, search engines such as Google should have no problems finding your website, and showing it to people who are searching for content just like yours.
2. Set WordPress Plugins and Themes to Auto-Update
WordPress themes and plugins are a big reason why WordPress is so popular and has such a huge CMS market share. However, if you don’t keep this software up to date, then it can damage your website’s search engine rankings.
When a security vulnerability is discovered in a theme or plugin, the developer will usually release an update that fixes the issue and keeps users safe.
With that in mind, outdated themes and plugins can put your site at risk. In fact, hackers often target websites that are running older versions of themes and WordPress plugins.
If your website gets hacked, then it can have a big impact on your rankings and traffic. Search engines such as Google may even remove a hacked website from its index, so your content stops appearing in relevant search results.
Google Chrome and other browsers will even block visitors from accessing your site if they believe it has been compromised, even if it hasn’t been hit with an SEO penalty yet.
Outdated software also has a higher chance of causing crashes, conflicts, and many other common WordPress errors. It may even affect your website’s speed and performance. All of this can hurt your site’s SEO.
Categories and tags don’t directly affect your site’s SEO, but they can boost your rankings by improving the user experience and giving you internal linking possibilities. By helping visitors find relevant and interesting content, you can often increase pageviews and reduce bounce rate in WordPress.
This is a strong sign that visitors are enjoying your content. When ranking pages and posts, search engines such as Google try to show the best content first. In this way, anything that improves the user experience and keeps people on your site can indirectly boost your SEO.
Once you’ve added relevant and helpful tags to your WordPress posts, you may want to fine-tune how this information appears in the search results.
The easiest way to do this is by using AIOSEO. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and gives you complete control over your WordPress tags and categories.
AIOSEO stop can also search engines from indexing your WordPress website’s category and tag archive listings.
In this way, you can avoid duplicate content, which confuses search engines and forces them to choose which duplicate page should rank higher than the other. This is a waste of crawl budget, since the search engines will spend time analyzing and indexing identical content while ignoring your site’s unique content.
Whenever you create a category, you have the option to add a description. This will appear on the category archive page, and can introduce the content to visitors.
It can also help the search engines understand the category’s content, and show it to people who are looking for content just like yours.
You can now type in the category name, create a slug, and add an optional parent category.
To add a description, simply type into the ‘Description’ field.
When you’re happy with the information you’ve entered, click on ‘Add New Category.’
Do you want to add a description to a category that already exists? Then simply click on the ‘Edit’ link next to that category.
You can then go ahead and type in a description.
Finally, click on ‘Update’ to save your changes.
5. Optimize Your WordPress Permalink Structure
When analyzing your pages, search engines don’t just look at the page content. Instead, they use many different factors to rank and display your content including permalink structure.
By optimizing your URLs, you can help search engines understand what the page is about, so they can show it to the right people at the right time.
Note: If your site is over 6 months old, then changing the permalink structure will most likely damage your SEO. If you do decide to change the permalinks on an established website, then it’s important to setup proper redirects.
By default, WordPress uses the post name in its URL. For example, a post with the title ‘How to Install WordPress’ will usually have a URL like this:
www.wpbeginner.com/how-to-install-wordpress
This is a great start, but it’s still worth reviewing your website’s permalink structure to make sure it’s working well for your content. To do this, head over to Settings » Permalinks in the WordPress dashboard.
Here, you’ll see all the different permalink structures that you can use:
Plain (https://www.wpbeginner.com/?p=123). Sometimes also called the Ugly Permalink, this uses the post’s unique ID in the WordPress database. This ID doesn’t give search engines any information about the post’s content, so we don’t recommend using this permalink structure.
Day and name (https://www.wpbeginner.com/2016/01/22/sample-post/). This adds the month and year to the URL. This may be a good option if you post time-sensitive content, such as articles on a news website. However, this structure can create very long URLs and your content will start to look outdated very quickly. With that in mind, we don’t recommend using the day and time structure, especially if you’re trying to create evergreen content.
Numeric (https://www.wpbeginner.com/archives/123). This option uses the post ID from the row in your database’s wp_posts table. Similar to the Plain structure, this information doesn’t mean anything to the search engines, so this isn’t an SEO-friendly permalink structure.
Post name (https://www.wpbeginner.com/sample-post/). This uses the title of the page or post. Post name is a good choice for most websites, especially if you’re using a headline analyzer to improve your titles.
Custom (https://www.wpbeginner.com/%category%/%author%/%postname%/). The final option is a custom structure that uses various different tags. This is a particularly good option if you have lots of different content organized into categories. By adding the category name to the permalink structure, you can help search engines understand your content and organize it correctly in the search engine index. Adding the author to the permalink structure can help boost your site’s expertise and authority score with Google, too.
6. Install an SSL Certificate on Your WordPress Website
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. It’s an internet protocol that helps you securely transfer data between a user’s browser and your website.
An SSL certificate is essential if you collect sensitive visitor data, for example if you accept credit card payments in WordPress. However, it can also improve your SEO.
With an SSL certificate in place, visitors will see a padlock next to your website’s address in their web browser. They can click on the padlock to see information about your SSL certificate, plus a confirmation that the connection is secure.
By making them feel safe, an SSL certificate can keep visitors on your site for longer, which sends positive signals to the search engines. There is also evidence that search engines such as Google use SSL certificates as a ranking factor.
If you’re just getting started and have a limited budget, then you can get a free SSL certificate for your WordPress website.
However, many of the top WordPress hosting providers offer an SSL certificate as part of their packages. For example, SiteGround, Hostinger, and Bluehost all offer free SSL certificates to their customers.
When uploading an image, it’s a good idea to add alt text. Also known as alternative text, this is an HTML attribute that WordPress adds to the image’s ‘img’ tag.
Accessibility tools such as screen readers use alt text to help visually-impaired users understand a site’s images.
Even though it’s an important accessibility feature, search engines also use alt text to understand an image’s contents. With that being said, it’s smart to use descriptive alt text and include relevant keywords wherever possible.
Google also includes the alt text in its image search, so helpful and interesting alternative text may increase your blog traffic.
Usually, alt text won’t be visible on your WordPress website, but it may appear if the image is broken or can’t be found.
In this way, alt text can help visitors understand the image’s contents, even when they can’t see the image due to an error or a poor internet connection.
When uploading an image to the WordPress media library, simply type your alternative text into the ‘Alt text’ field.
WordPress will now use this alternative text every single time you add that image to a WordPress page or post.
If you’ve already added an image to the WordPress content editor, then simply click to select the Image block.
Then, type into the ‘Alt Text’ field in the right-hand menu. Just note that adding alt text to an image through the block editor will not add it to the media library.
The longer people stay on your website, the more likely you are to rank highly in search engine results. With that in mind, it’s important to create helpful, eye-catching, and logical navigation menus.
These menus will help visitors find interesting content, which will keep them on your WordPress website for longer. It can also improve important metrics, such as the average number of pages visited.
The exact location of your menu will vary depending on your WordPress theme, but most themes have several options. This means you can create different menus and then show them in different places.
For example, most WordPress themes come with a primary menu that appears on the top of the screen. Some themes may include a secondary menu, a footer menu, or a mobile navigation menu as well.
To create a navigation menu, simply go to the Appearance » Menus page in your WordPress admin dashboard.
Here, you can create multiple menus, and add pages, posts, and even custom links to those navigation menus.
If you have lots of content, then the default navigation menu can quickly become confusing and overwhelming for visitors. If your menu is starting to look cluttered, then you can easily turn the default menu into a dropdown menu.
9. Protect Against Comment Spam
A lively comment section can keep people on your website for longer, and encourage them to pay repeat visits, which can indirectly improve your SEO. Even better, if commenters use relevant keywords then their conversations can directly boost your SEO, too.
This is all good news for your search engine rankings, but there’s still a big problem every website owner should know about: comment spam.
Spammers and spambots may try to post off-topic, low-quality comments and malicious links on your website. If you publish these comments, then it can hurt your search engine rankings. In the worst-case scenario, your site may even get blacklisted by Google.
With that being said, it’s important to moderate your comments using the WordPress site settings. To get started, go to Settings » Discussion.
Here, you’ll find lots of WordPress settings that give you more control over comments. For example, you can help combat spam by making it mandatory for comment authors to provide a name and email address.
Another option is to disable comments completely. This will make it more difficult for visitors to engage with your content, but it’s also a guaranteed way to block all spam comments.
If you do decide to disable comments, then uncheck the option that says ‘Allow people to submit comments on new articles.’
In this case, it’s important to control the actions that users can take on your site, and the information they can access.
If people have unlimited access to your WordPress dashboard, then they might make changes that affect your SEO. For example, they may change the settings in an important SEO plugin, publish a blog that’s not properly optimized for SEO, or approve spammy comments.
Thankfully, WordPress comes with built-in site settings that allow you to control what a user can and can’t do. By default, there are 5 roles to choose from: admin, editor, author, contributor, and subscriber.
To change a user’s role, simply go to Users » All Users. Here, hover over the account that you want to change, and click on the ‘Edit’ link when it appears.
With that done, scroll to the ‘Role’ section and open the dropdown menu.
You can now choose a new user role from the list.
When you’re happy with these changes you’ve made, click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.
A sitemap is a file that lists all your site’s content in a machine-readable format. This acts as a roadmap that helps search engines discover all your pages, and index them properly.
A sitemap also tells search engines which links are more important, and how frequently they get updated. In this way, you can encourage search engines to prioritize indexing your site’s best or highest-value content, so it appears in search results more quickly.
The good news is that WordPress creates a sitemap automatically. To see your sitemap in action, simply type in your domain name and then add /sitemap.xml to the end. For example, www.example.com/sitemap.xml.
The default sitemap may be a good fit for some small business websites, or sites that only have a small amount of content. However, there’s no way to customize the default sitemap, which can be a problem for many website owners.
The best way to create a powerful, fully customizable sitemap is by using AIOSEO. You can use this plugin to add or remove post types, categories and tags from your sitemap. You can also enable XML sitemaps for date-based archives and author archives.
AIOSEO even allows you to add external pages to the WordPress sitemap.
This is perfect if you have stand-alone pages like a contact form, a landing page, or Shopify store pages. With a custom sitemap, you can tell search engines to crawl this content, even if they’re not part of your WordPress website.
12. Test the Mobile Version of Your WordPress Website
More than 50% of visitors will access your site using a smartphone or tablet, so your WordPress website must be mobile-friendly. In fact, Google will most likely index your site’s mobile version rather than its desktop version.
Even if you’re using a responsive WordPress theme, it’s still important to check how your site looks on mobile.
You can preview the mobile version of your WordPress site using the WordPress theme customizer. In the dashboard, head over to Appearance » Customize.
At the bottom of the screen, simply click the mobile icon.
WordPress will now show a preview of how your site looks on mobile devices. You can use this view to locate any mobile-site issues that might cause Google or other search engines to penalize your website.
For example, if your content is unreadable or doesn’t display at all, Google will note that and potentially deem your site’s UX to be bad for visitors and move you down in search results.
In this guide, we showed you how to improve your SEO using the built-in WordPress site settings. This is a great start, but there are lots more ways to fine-tune your content for the search engines, improve your rankings, and get more visitors to your WordPress website.
If you want to take your SEO to the next level, then we recommend installing AIOSEO. AIOSEO adds a new area to the WordPress content editor where you can type in the exact post title and meta description that should appear in the search engine results.
You can also type in the focus keyphrase that you want to rank for.
AIOSEO will then scan your content and show a list of actions you can take to improve your ranking for that focus keyword.
The key to SEO success is to monitor your site’s performance, and then constantly make changes to improve that performance.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Each product added to your WooCommerce store has a unique identity number assigned to it. Sometimes, you may need this ID to locate a product, display it in a sale campaign, and more.
In this beginner’s guide, we’ll show you how to find a product ID in WooCommerce quickly.
What is Product ID in WooCommerce?
WooCommerce saves all your product data in the WordPress database system.
To make each record unique, it automatically assigns an ID number to each product you add to your WooCommerce store.
This allows WooCommerce to display a product when requested, process orders, and do many cool things behind the scenes.
However, sometimes you may need to find a product’s ID to perform certain tasks.
For instance, you may be building a WooCommerce product page, and you need a product ID to display a specific product.
Similarly, you may use a WooCommerce plugin that needs product IDs to show related products or offer upsells.
Let’s look at how you can quickly locate a WooCommerce product’s ID.
How to Locate a Product ID in WooCommerce
WooCommerce makes it very easy to find a product ID.
Simply go to the Products » All Products page. You will see a list of the most recent products added to your WooCommerce store.
Take the mouse over to a product title, and a line of commands appears below the product title. This line also includes product ID displayed as ID: followed by the ID number.
For instance, the demo product ID is 81 in the above screenshot.
If your store has only a handful of products, then you can scroll down the products page to locate a product and see its ID.
You can also use the search on the top right corner of the products table to quickly look for a product by name.
This will help you narrow down the list of products displayed.
You can then locate a specific product and take your mouse over to its title to view the product ID.
You can also find a product ID by clicking on the Edit link.
This will open the Edit Product page now if you look at your browser’s address bar, you’ll find the product ID in the URL.
Finding Product ID For a Variation Product in WooCommerce
If the product you are looking for doesn’t have variations, then you can use the above method to find a product ID.
However, if the product you are looking for has variations, each variation is assigned its unique product ID.
For instance, if you sell a T-shirt in three colors like Red, Blue, and Green, then you will add different colors as a product variation.
If you only need a product ID for a specific variation, here is how you’ll find it.
Simply locate the product by visiting the Products » All Products page. After that, click on the Edit Product link below the product title.
On the product edit screen, scroll down to the Product Data section.
From here, click Variations, and it will show you all product variations with their IDs.
What is The Difference Between Product SKU and ID?
SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit. It is a unique identifier a store owner assigns to a product to keep track of their inventory or stock.
Retailers, wholesalers, and other store owners also use SKUs in product barcodes.
However, Unlike product IDs, SKU identifiers are not automatically generated by WooCommerce. A store owner will have to manually add it to WooCommerce products.
If you don’t track inventory in WooCommerce, your products may not have SKUs or need them.
For instance, if you sell digital downloads or virtual products, you may not need to keep track of your stock or inventory.
On the other hand, each product in your online store has a unique product ID, which is automatically generated by WooCommerce. Even if you never put in an SKU, each product in your store will have a product ID.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to learn how to sell your photos online?
No matter whether you are a professional photographer or an enthusiastic hobbyist, you can make money by selling your photography. You can sell your work to businesses that need beautiful stock photos for their projects or even to individuals who are simply looking for a nice photo.
In this article, we will show you how to start selling your photos online using WordPress.
Why Sell Your Photos Online?
Stock photography websites are very popular with businesses, organizations, and even individuals who need professional images for their projects. If you are looking for an online side business, then selling photos online is a great way to make money.
By selling your photos as downloadable files, you can make money without having to pay for shipping or professional printing. You can also sell the same file countless times. You will just need to create your website, upload your files, and make extra income without a lot of day-to-day effort.
If you are a professional photographer, then selling your work online can also introduce your brand to a wider audience. As a result, people who like your work may book you for professional photoshoots and events.
With that in mind, let’s see how you can sell photos online.
Which Platform Should You Use to Sell Photos Online?
First, you will need to choose an eCommerce platform that you will use to upload your photos and then sell them.
While you can change your eCommerce platform later, it will often take a lot of time and effort and will almost certainly disrupt your business. So, it’s important to choose your eCommerce platform carefully.
Since you want to sell photos online, it’s a good idea to use a platform that’s designed specifically to sell digital downloads.
WordPress is the best website builder in the world. According to our CMS market share report, WordPress powers over 43% of all websites on the internet, including millions of websites that sell digital downloads. WordPress gives you full control over your digital store, so you can design a beautiful website that shows off your photography.
Meanwhile, Easy Digital Downloads is the best WordPress eCommerce plugin to sell digital products. In fact, we use the plugin ourselves to sell many of our premium WordPress plugins.
With WordPress and Easy Digital Downloads, you can sell as many photos as you want to a worldwide audience without paying high transaction fees. This gives WordPress and Easy Digital Downloads a big advantage over other platforms like Sellfy, Gumroad, WooCommerce, and Sendowl.
Let’s see how you can quickly and easily start selling photos online using WordPress and Easy Digital Downloads. You can use the quick links below to jump to different parts of the tutorial:
Before you start building your WordPress website, it’s important to know that there are two types of WordPress software: WordPress.org and WordPress.com.
For your online store, you will need WordPress.org. Also known as self-hosted WordPress, it has more features and flexibility. You can also install any WordPress plugin, including Easy Digital Downloads, which is designed for selling products online.
To start selling digital photos with WordPress, you will need a domain name. This is the address that people will type into their browser when they want to visit your store, like shutterstock.com or stockphotos.com.
You’ll also need web hosting, which is where your website’s files are stored online, and an SSL certificate so that you can securely accept credit card payments.
A domain name typically costs $14.99/year, and hosting costs start from $7.99/month. The price of an SSL certificate differs depending on where you buy the certificate, but you can expect to pay anywhere between $50-200/year.
As you can see, the costs can really start to add up, especially if you are just getting started.
Thankfully, SiteGround is offering a huge 73% discount on their managed hosting for Easy Digital Downloads. Their plan comes with a free SSL certificate, Easy Digital Downloads pre-installed, and all the optimization features you need to make a successful business website.
This means you can start selling your photos for less than $4 per month.
Let’s go ahead and show you how to easily buy a domain name, web hosting, and an SSL certificate.
To get started, you need to go to the SiteGround website and click on ‘Get Plan.’
After that, SiteGround will ask you to enter a domain name for your online store and will also show some optional extras you can buy. You can add these extras at any point, so we recommend skipping this step.
Then, simply enter your payment information to finish the purchase. After a few moments, you will get an email with details on how to log in to your SiteGround account.
Once you log in, select the ‘Websites’ tab. Here, you will see two buttons: Site Tools and WordPress Admin.
Site Tools is SiteGround’s hosting dashboard, where you can manage everything related to your site, such as setting up your emails.
To log in to your new website, go ahead and click on the ‘WordPress Admin’ button.
This will take you to a screen where you can log in to your WordPress dashboard.
Here, simply type in the username and password you created, and then click on ‘Log In.’
Now, you are ready to start building a store to sell your digital photos online.
Upon activation, you need to go to Downloads » Settings in your WordPress dashboard and enter your license key into the ‘License Key’ field.
You can find this information in your account on the Easy Digital Downloads website. With that done, just click on the ‘Activate License’ button.
First, you need to set your store’s location.
You may be selling your photos online, but Easy Digital Downloads will still use your location to auto-fill some fields when a visitor makes a purchase. It may also use your location to calculate sales tax.
To add your location, simply open the ‘Business Country’ dropdown menu. You can then choose where your business is based.
Next, find the ‘Business Region’ field.
Here, you can open the dropdown and choose the area where your store operates from.
When you are happy with the information you have entered, simply click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
Step 3: Adding a Payment Gateway to WordPress
When selling photos online, you will need a way to accept credit payments in WordPress. By default, Easy Digital Downloads supports popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and Amazon Payments.
Pro Tip: Want to use a different payment gateway instead? You can add extra payment options using the Easy Digital Download extensions.
To add payment gateways to your website, simply click on the ‘Payments’ tab.
You can then follow the onscreen instructions to set up Stripe or PayPal for your website.
When done, go ahead and click on the ‘General’ link.
In the Active Gateways section, check the box for each of the gateways that you want to add to your digital product marketplace.
If you check more than one payment method, then you will need to open the ‘Default Gateway’ dropdown and choose the payment method that will be selected by default.
You can use any gateway you want, but Stripe can accept credit cards as well as Google Pay and Apple Pay. With that being said, you may want to use Stripe as your site’s default payment gateway.
After selecting one or more payment gateways, just click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.
By default, Easy Digital Downloads shows all your prices in US dollars. Once you have set up your payment gateway, you may want to change the currency that’s used on your website.
To show your prices in any currency other than US dollars, select the ‘General’ tab, followed by the ‘Currency’ link.
Next, open the ‘Currency’ dropdown and choose the currency you want to use.
Just be aware that some payment gateways may not accept every currency. If you are not sure, then you can always check your chosen payment gateway’s website. Most have a list of currencies that they support.
When you are happy with how the plugin is set up, click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
Step 4: Turning Individual Photos Into Downloadable Products
Once you have set up at least one payment gateway, you are ready to create your first digital product. This can be any photo or digital file that you want to sell online.
To create a digital product, simply go to Downloads and then select the ‘Add New’ button.
You can now type a name for the product into the ‘Enter download name here’ field.
This will be shown on the product’s page, so you will want to use something that catches the visitor’s attention and accurately describes your photo.
Next, type out the description that will appear on the product page. You will want to give visitors all the information they need to decide whether they want to buy this photo.
For example, you might include the image’s dimensions and resolution or your camera’s technical specifications. You could also talk about the product’s licensing and how the customer can use the photo after buying it.
Many online stores use product categories and tags to help shoppers find what they are looking for. These categories and tags can also encourage visitors to explore related photos, which can get you more sales.
Next, you will want to set a price by scrolling to the Download Prices section.
Here, type in how much visitors will need to pay to download this photo.
Easy Digital Downloads also supports variable pricing. For example, you might sell the same photo in multiple resolutions or sizes.
If you want to offer variable pricing, then just select the ‘Enable variable pricing’ checkbox. This adds a new section where you can type in a name for each digital download and set the price.
To create more pricing variations, simply click on the ‘Add New Price’ button.
You can then type in a title and price for each variable.
After adding all the options, you will need to set the default option. This will be selected automatically when the shopper arrives at the product page.
Simply find the option you want to use, and click its ‘Default’ button.
You are now ready to upload the image file that you want to sell. When it comes to images, WordPress supports gif, heic, jpeg, png, and webp formats.
To get started, click on the ‘Upload a File’ icon.
You can now choose any image from the WordPress media library or upload a new file from your computer.
Easy Digital Downloads will generate a file name automatically. However, you can change the file name by typing into the ‘File Name’ field.
If you have enabled variable pricing, then you need to open the ‘Price Assignment’ dropdown.
Then, choose a price from the list.
After that, just click on the ‘Add New File’ button.
This adds a section where you can upload a file, add a title, and choose a price assignment.
Simply repeat these steps for each pricing variation you want to offer.
Once you have uploaded your photo files, the next step is adding a product image.
When you are selling photos online, you don’t want people to steal your work without paying. For this reason, we do not recommend using the original photos as your product image.
Instead, you can use a lower-resolution version of the original photo or add a watermark.
If you create a watermark using web design software, then make sure you show this watermark in a location that isn’t easy to crop out. Many photographers place their watermark in the center of the image, or they use the watermark in a repeating pattern that covers the entire photo.
To add a product image, simply scroll to the Download Image section and then click on ‘Set Download Image’.
This launches the WordPress media library, where you can choose an image or upload a new file from your computer.
When you are happy with your digital download, simply click on the ‘Publish’ button to make it live. You can now repeat these steps to add more digital downloads to your WordPress website.
Once you have uploaded all your individual photos, you may want to create bundled photo packs that shoppers can buy.
For example, you could add all your foodie-themed photos to a pack that people can use on their restaurant websites or create packs showing a particular workplace or location.
This can save your customers time since they don’t have to search through your entire catalog and buy each photo they want to use.
You may also want to offer these photo bundles at a discount compared to buying each photo individually. In this way, you can get more conversions and increase the average order value.
To add multiple photos to the same bundle, simply create a new digital product following the same process described above. Just like before, you can add a title, description, categories and tags, a price, and more.
Next, under ‘Download Files’, you will need to open the ‘Product Type Options’ dropdown and choose ‘Bundle’.
This adds a new ‘Bundled Downloads’ section.
You can now open the dropdown that shows ‘Choose a Download’ by default.
In the dropdown, start typing in the name of the first photo you want to add to the bundle. When the photo name appears, just click to select it.
With that done, you need to click on ‘Add New File’.
You can now add a second photo to the bundle.
Simply repeat these steps to add all the photos you want to offer as part of this bundle.
When you are happy with how the bundle is set up, click on ‘Publish’ to make it live. You can now repeat these steps to create as many photo bundles as you want.
Step 6: Customizing Your Digital Download Emails
Every time someone buys a photo from your website, Easy Digital Downloads will send them an email with a link to download their product.
While this default email has everything the customer needs to download their file, we still recommend customizing it with your own logo, branding, and messaging.
To customize the default email, simply go to Downloads » Settings. Then click on the ‘Emails’ tab.
You may want to start by adding your own logo.
This branding appears at the top of your purchase receipt emails, so customers can clearly see who the email is from.
To add a logo, click on the ‘Attach File’ button.
You can now either choose an image from the WordPress media library or upload a file from your computer.
You can also add a ‘From Name’.
This name will appear in the customer’s inbox, so you will want to use something that the customer will recognize, like the name of your website, business, or photography studio.
You will also need to add a ‘From Email’, which will act as the ‘from’ and ‘reply-to’ address.
Some customers may reply to the purchase receipt email. For example, if they are having problems downloading the file, then they might reach out by clicking ‘Reply’. With that in mind, you will want to use a professional email address that you check frequently.
After making these changes, just click on the ‘Purchase Receipts’ tab.
On this screen, you can type in an email subject, add a heading, and also change the email’s body text.
You could simply type in the text that you want to send to every customer. However, you can create more helpful and personalized emails by using the Conditional Emails feature.
Conditional Emails use ‘template tags’ to personalize your content. Every time it sends an email, Easy Digital Downloads will replace these tags with real values, such as the customer’s name and how much they paid for the digital download.
To see all the available tags, simply scroll to the bottom of the ‘Purchase Receipts’ screen.
When you have finished making changes, you may want to send a test email to see how the message will look to your customers.
To do this, simply click on the ‘Send Test Email’ button, and Easy Digital Downloads will send an email to your WordPress admin email address.
Have you clicked on the ‘Send Test Email’ button but didn’t get a test email? Your WordPress website may not be sending emails properly, which can be a big problem. If customers don’t get purchase confirmation emails, they won’t be able to download your photos.
When you are happy with the purchase receipt email, go ahead and click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.
Step 7: Testing Your Digital Download
Once you have created your first Easy Digital Downloads product and customized the purchase emails, it’s a good idea to check that visitors can buy your photos without any issues.
To test your download, you will need to put your site into test mode. This allows you to test the purchasing process without typing in your credit or debit card information.
To put your store into test mode, go to Downloads » Settings and then click on the ‘Payments’ tab.
Under ‘Active Gateways’, you must check the box next to ‘Store Gateway’.
After that, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on ‘Save Changes’.
Now that you are in test mode, go to Downloads » All Downloads and hover over the product that you want to test. When it appears, click on the ‘View’ link.
This opens the product page where shoppers can buy the photo or photo pack.
To make a test purchase, simply click on the ‘Purchase’ button.
Easy Digital Downloads will now add this item to your cart.
After that, it’s time to click on the ‘Checkout’ button.
You can now type in your email address and name and then click on ‘Purchase’.
Since you are in test mode, you don’t need to enter any payment information.
After a few moments, you will get a purchase confirmation email containing a link to download the individual photo or all the files in a stock photo pack.
Once you have completed the test, you are ready to take your store out of test mode and start accepting payments from visitors.
To do this, head over to Downloads » Settings » Payments. You can then uncheck the ‘Store Gateway’ box.
Step 8: Selecting and Customizing Your WordPress Theme
Themes control how your WordPress website looks, including the colors, layout, fonts, and widget-ready areas. The right WordPress theme will make a good first impression on visitors and make them want to explore more of your site.
With that in mind, you will want to choose a design that looks great and has exactly the features you need.
To help you make the right choice, we have put together a list of the most popular WordPress themes. Our top pick is the Astra Theme since it’s fully compatible with Easy Digital Downloads, free, and completely customizable.
Another option is to create your own custom page designs with SeedProd. It’s the best drag-and-drop WordPress theme builder on the market and comes with more than 180 ready-made, professionally designed templates.
You can use SeedProd to design landing pages and sales pages where you promote your photographs and photo packs.
This can get you more conversions and boost your profits.
If you want complete control over your store, then you can even use SeedProd to design your own theme without writing a single line of code. Simply find the blocks you want to use, and then drag them onto your page designs in the SeedProd editor.
Another option is writing great blog posts about industry topics. You can then include links to a few relevant products that readers may want to buy.
You can also build an email list and then send your subscribers updates about new photos you have just added to your site, your latest blog posts, or other interesting content that will make them want to visit your store.
No matter how you promote a product, you will need to know its URL.
To find this link, simply go to Downloads » Downloads. You can then find the product you want to link to and click on its ‘Edit’ link.
You will find the URL in the right-hand menu.
You can now link to this product page from any area of your website using its URL. To learn more, see our step-by-step guide on how to add a link in WordPress.
Easy Digital Downloads also creates a unique ‘Purchase’ button for each photo. You can add this button to any page, post, or widget-ready area.
Visitors can simply click this button to add the photo to their shopping cart. In this way, you can start the purchasing process from any page on your website, including landing pages, sales pages, and any ads you show on your WordPress blog.
You can add this button to any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode that Easy Digital Downloads creates automatically.
To get a product’s shortcode, simply scroll to its Download Settings section. You can then copy the text in the ‘Purchase Shortcode’ field.
MonsterInsights is the best analytics solution for WordPress. It helps you see where your visitors are coming from and the actions they take on your online store. This allows you to fine-tune your site and marketing activities to get more sales based on real data.
OptinMonster is the best conversion optimization software on the market. You can use it to create optin forms to grow your email list and convert visitors into paying customers. It can also help reduce your shopping cart abandonment rates.
PushEngage is the best push notification software for WordPress. It allows you to send personalized web push notifications to visitors and customers. For example, you might notify them about a flash sale or a new photo pack that you just added to your website.
FAQs About Selling Photos Online
In this guide, we showed you how to sell photos online using WordPress. If you still have questions, then here are our FAQs about running an online photography business.
Where Can I Sell My Photos Online?
There are lots of platforms, stores, and digital marketplaces where you can upload your photos and sell them to an existing audience.
Some popular choices among photographers include Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, and Alamy. These popular platforms already have lots of users, so you can reach a large audience and introduce your photography to people who may not know about your brand.
However, many of these stock photography marketplaces and websites take a percentage of every sale you make, and some even charge upfront fees.
To build a successful photography business, we recommend creating your own website instead. This gives you complete control over your brand, and you get to keep all the profits from every sale.
How Much Does It Cost to Sell Photos Online?
We always recommend a business model where you start small. That way, you can spend more money as you build your audience and start selling more products.
The good news is that selling photos online is already a low-cost and easy online business. To further reduce your startup costs, we recommend taking advantage of SiteGround EDD Hosting and using free WordPress themes and plugins.
By using Easy Digital Downloads to sell your photos directly to customers, you can avoid many of the upfront costs and middleman fees of selling via third-party marketplaces like iStock and Getty Images.
The easiest way to make money from your photos is by selling them online. You can either sell your photographs for a one-time fee or sell licenses that control how customers can use those photos.
Another option is to create a membership website and sell subscriptions. For example, you might allow members to download and use as many photos as they want or create membership tiers where your most popular photos are reserved for the highest-paying members. Another option is selling group memberships for corporate teams.
Can I Also Sell Physical Products Using Easy Digital Downloads?
At some point, you may want to sell physical products. For example, you might create merchandise featuring your most popular photos or sell your photographs as framed prints.
Despite the name, you can also use Easy Digital Downloads to sell physical products. There’s even a Simple Shipping addon that adds shipping features to the Easy Digital Downloads plugin. In this way, you can ship your branded merchandise, framed prints, or other physical products to customers using the tools you’re already familiar with.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Trying to decide between WordPress vs Blogger to make a blog in 2023 or beyond? That’s the question we’re going to answer in depth in this post. But first, a spoiler alert – in 2023, WordPress is almost always a better choice to start a blog or website. But to understand why we say that and how each platform works,…. Continue Reading
Are you looking for the right way to add images to your WordPress website or blog?
By adding images in WordPress correctly, you can improve the visual appeal, accessibility, and SEO of your website. You can even allow users to upload their own images and use them on your site or in your competitions.
In this article, we will show you how to properly add images in WordPress.
The Importance of Correctly Uploading Images in WordPress
Sometimes, users directly copy an image from the source and paste it into their website content. Unfortunately, this can cause problems like slow pages, poor user experience, and poor SEO.
When you add images to your WordPress website, it’s important to do it properly. This means using the right file format, file name, and alt text.
We recommend naming your images with descriptive words separated by dashes. For example, you might use the file name ‘bali-vacation-photo.jpg’ for an image on your travel blog.
Properly adding images also means resizing your images so that they load quickly and look good on all devices. For example, some image formats like JPEG, are more compressed than others, which means that these images will take up less space on your server and will take less time to load.
By using these formats, along with an image compression plugin for the images on your WordPress blog, you can improve the user experience of your website.
Similarly, by using the Image block in WordPress and properly optimizing your images for SEO and alt text, you can make it easier for search engines to index your images.
That being said, let’s see how to properly add images in WordPress. We will cover several methods, and you can use the quick links below to jump to the different sections of our tutorial:
First, you need to open the existing or new page/post where you want to add an image.
Once you are there, click the ‘+’ button in the top left corner of the screen to open the block menu. From here, you must find and add the Image block to the post or page.
Once you have done that, click the ‘Media Library’ button to launch the ‘Select or Upload Media’ prompt on the screen.
From here, you can switch to the ‘Upload Files’ tab if you want to upload an image from your computer.
However, if you want to add an image from the media library, then you can also do that by switching to the ‘Media Library’ tab.
Upon adding an image, you will need to add alt text for it in the left column. This alt text is crucial for image SEO as it helps search engines understand the context of the image. It also allows people with screen readers to see this information about your images.
You can also add a title and caption describing the image in the right column. Captions are the visible text descriptions of your images, while the title will appear when a user hovers their mouse over the image.
First, you need to visit the page or post where you want to add the image from the WordPress dashboard. Once you are there, just click the ‘Add Media’ button to launch the media library.
After that, you can switch to the ‘Upload Files’ tab to upload an image from your computer.
Alternatively, for adding an image from the media library, just switch to the ‘Media Library’ tab.
Upon adding an image, you will need to add alt text and a title for it. You can also add a description and caption if you wish.
You can simply describe the image for all these options. This will help search engine index your image and increase your website’s visibility.
Next, go ahead and click the ‘Insert into Post’ button.
Now, the image will be added to your WordPress post or page.
From here, you can change its alignment by using the alignment icons above the image. You can also further edit an image by clicking on the pencil icon.
This will open the ‘Image details’ prompt on your screen, where you can change the size and add image title attributes, CSS classes, alignment, and more.
Once you are done, just click the ‘Update’ button to save the changes you made.
After that, simply click the ‘Publish’ or Update’ button to save your post.
How to Add Images in the Media Library
If you want, you can also directly add an image to the media library. Keep in mind that after adding an image to the media library, you will still need to open a post or page and insert the Image block.
To add an image from the media library, you must visit the Media » Add New page from the WordPress admin area.
Once you are there, click the ‘Select Files’ button to upload an image from your computer. Then, click the ‘Edit’ link next to the image.
This will take you to the ‘Edit Media’ page, where you can start by changing the title for the image. After that, you can add alt text, a caption, and a description by scrolling down.
Once you have done that, you can also click on the ‘Edit Image’ button.
This will direct you to another page, where you can crop, scale, rotate, or flip the image according to your liking. For detailed instructions, please see our beginner’s guide on how to do basic image editing in WordPress.
Once you are satisfied, just click the ‘Update’ button to save your changes.
This will take you back to the ‘Edit Media’ page, where you have to click on the ‘Update’ button again to store your settings.
You have now successfully added an image to the media library.
Next, visit the post where you want to add this image from the WordPress admin sidebar. Once you are there, click the ‘+’ button to add an Image block to the post.
Next, you need to select the ‘Media Library’ button.
This will launch the ‘Select or Upload Media’ prompt on your screen, where you will notice the image that you uploaded in the media library at the top.
On selecting the image, you will see that its title, alt text, caption, and description have already been added to it from the media library page.
Now, simply click the ‘Select’ button to upload the image to the block editor.
Finally, click the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button to store your settings.
How to Optimize an Image for WordPress SEO
Once you have added an image to a post/page, it is also crucial to optimize it for search engines. Unfortunately, WordPress does not offer any built-in advanced SEO features for images.
Next, head over to the All in One SEO » Search Appearance page from the WordPress admin sidebar and switch to the ‘Image SEO’ tab.
After that, scroll down and click the ‘Activate Image SEO’ button to unlock the feature.
You will now be able to see the Image SEO settings. Here, you will notice different tabs for the title, alt text, caption, description, and filename.
Configure Automatic Image Titles
Once you switch to the ‘Title’ tab on the Image SEO page, you can start by creating a title format for your images using smart tags.
These smart tags will then automatically generate title attributes for your images. This is what a visitor will see when they hover their mouse over your images.
For example, if you want each image title attribute to use the image title and the site title, then you can add these smart tags in the ‘Title Format’ field.
After that, you can also enable the Strip Punctuation option if you want AIOSEO to automatically remove some characters when creating an image title from the filename.
For example, if you use dashes when saving an image file like ‘an-example-image’, then you can choose the ‘Dashes (-)’ option in the ‘Characters to Convert to Spaces’ section.
Once you do that, AIOSEO will automatically remove these dashes and turn them into spaces, making the image title ‘an example image’.
After that, scroll down to the ‘Casing’ section.
From here, you can choose a casing option for your title. We recommend picking sentence case or title case to make your titles more readable.
Configure Automatic Alt Tags
After configuring title settings, switch to the ‘Alt Tag’ tab from the top.
From here, you can use the smart tags next to the ‘Alt Tag Format’ option to automatically generate alt text for all your images.
After that, you can also enable the Strip Punctuation setting if you want characters like dashes (-) or underscores (_) to be converted into spaces.
Similarly, if there are characters like numbers or plus signs (+) that you don’t want AIOSEO to strip when creating the alt text, then you can check the boxes for these options in the ‘Characters to Exclude from Being Stripped’ section.
You can also select a casing for your alt text.
Configure Automatic Captions and Descriptions
To generate automatic captions for your images, switch to the ‘Captions’ tab.
From here, make sure that the ‘Autogenerate Caption on Upload’ option is enabled. You can then select the smart tags that will be used to generate captions for your images.
Next, you can also use the Strip Punctuation feature to exclude or include characters in the captions and choose a casing for them.
Once you are done, you need to switch to the ‘Description’ tab from the top.
From here, make sure that the ‘Autogenerate Description on Upload’ option is enabled. You must also select the smart tags you want to use for generating automatic image descriptions.
Next, you can also use the Strip Punctuation feature to include/exclude characters like underscores, apostrophes, or numbers in the description.
After that, simply select a casing for your image descriptions.
Configure Automatic Filenames
As we mentioned earlier, we recommend giving your image files SEO-friendly file names. You can do this before uploading your images, or AIOSEO can do it for you automatically.
Once you switch to the ‘Filename’ tab from the top, you will notice that AIOSEO has already configured the Strip Punctuation setting for you.
However, if there are any more characters that you want AIOSEO to delete from your image filenames when creating titles or alt text, then you can type those characters into the ‘Words to Strip’ box.
After that, you can also select a casing for your filenames.
Once you are done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
You have now successfully optimized your images for SEO, and AIOSEO will automatically generate titles, alt text, captions, and descriptions for all your images.
You may also want to allow your users to upload their own images to your WordPress website. This can come in handy if you are hosting a contest or running a photography website that accepts user-generated images.
For this, you can use WPForms, which is the best contact form plugin on the market. It comes with a drag-and-drop builder that makes it super easy to create any kind of form you want, including an image submission form.
Upon activation, head over to the WPForms » Add New screen from the WordPress dashboard to launch the form builder.
From here, you need to type a name for your form and then click the ‘Use Snippet’ button under the ‘Simple Contact Form’ template.
This will load the form template in the form builder, where you will notice its preview on the right and the available fields in the left column.
From here, go ahead and drag and drop the File Upload field onto the form and click on it to further customize its settings.
From here, you can change the label and description of the field and even specify the extensions that are allowed.
For example, if you want to allow JPEG and PNG files only, then you must type these options into the ‘Allowed File Extensions’ field. Keep in mind to separate each extension with a comma.
After that, you can also configure the maximum image file size and number of uploads in the left column.
Once you are done, just click the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.
Next, open the page/post where you want to add the image upload form. Once there, click the ‘+’ button in the top left corner of the screen to open the block menu
From here, you need to add the WPForms block to the page/post.
Just choose the image file upload form that you created from the dropdown menu.
Finally, click the ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ button to store your settings. Now, you can visit your WordPress site to view the form in action, and visitors will be able to submit their images using the form.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you wondering what is HTTP/2 and how you can use it in WordPress?
HTTP/2 is the major revision of the HTTP technology used by all websites.
In this article, we’ll explain HTTP/2 and how to enable it on your WordPress site.
What is HTTP/2?
HTTP/2 is the revised version of the original HTTP protocol. It was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and is based on an experimental SPDY protocol developed by Google.
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is like a language that allows computers to talk to each other on the internet. It’s how information gets sent back and forth when you use websites or apps.
When you visit a WordPress website, your web browser sends a message called a request to the server that stores the website. The request asks for specific information, like the page’s text, images, or videos.
The server receives the user’s request and sends back a response. This response is like a package containing the information you asked for. It includes things like the text you see, the pictures you look at, or even the videos you watch on the website.
HTTP 0.9 was first launched in 1991. A significant revision to that, HTTP 1.1, was published in 1999 and most websites ran on that until 2015, when the HTTP/2 protocol launched.
HTTP/2 is supported by all modern web server software and browsers, though many websites still run on HTTP 1.1 if they do not have an SSL certificate installed.
The IETF currently proposes the upcoming version of HTTP/3. It will use QUIC (Quick UDP Internet Connections) instead of TCP and is expected to be much faster than HTTP/2.
What is the Difference Between HTTP2 and HTTP?
The HTTP 1.1 protocol sent data requests without prioritization. This means if a website has a reference to a JavaScript file in the head, it will load before any other content.
This makes a website appear slower to the users who could not see the content they were expecting to see.
HTTP/2 protocol uses a binary single stream to send and receive requests with prioritization support. This means developers can tell the server which data to send first.
The HTTP/2 protocol also uses compression for HTTP headers and multiplexing. Both of them further improve the page load performance.
The newer protocol also comes with HTTP/2 Server Push support. This allows developers to push data to the users’ browsers without them requesting it.
To summarize, HTTP/2 is faster than HTTP 1.1 and significantly improves your WordPress speed and performance.
What Do You Need to Use HTTP/2 in WordPress?
First, you need a hosting company offering the latest server software with HTTP/2 support. You’ll also need to install an SSL certificate on your WordPress website.
Most of the top WordPress hosting companies already use cutting-edge web server software.
We recommend using Bluehost, which uses the latest Apache web server software with HTTP/2 support enabled by default.
Luckily, the folks at Bluehost are offering WPBeginner users an exclusive discount with a free domain name and SSL certificate.
Other hosting companies we recommend include SiteGround,Hostinger, and WP Engine. They all offer free SSL certificates and the latest server software with HTTP/2 support.
How to Enable HTTP/2 in WordPress?
The only requirement to enable HTTP/2 support in WordPress is installing an SSL certificate.
It is not an official requirement. However, major browsers like Google Chrome don’t support HTTP/2 on non-secure URLs.
If your website uses SSL, your URLs will have the https:// prefix like this:
https://wpbeginner.com
Visiting your website will also show a padlock icon in the browser’s address bar.
If your website does not use an SSL certificate, you can ask your WordPress hosting provider to install it for you.
Once you have enabled SSL, your WordPress website will almost certainly be served via HTTP/2 protocol.
Testing HTTP/2 Support for Your Website
If you want to see if your WordPress website is serving pages via HTTP/2, then there are two ways you can test it.
First, you can visit HTTP2.Pro and enter your website’s URL. This free online tool will then tell you whether your website supports HTTP/2.
Another more effective way to check if your website serves pages on HTTP/2 is using the Chrome developer tools.
Simply open a new browser window in Google Chrome and visit your website. After that, open a new browser tab and enter the chrome://net-export URL in the address bar.
Chrome will then ask you to save a JSON file to your computer.
After saving the file, visit the netlog viewer app and click on the ‘Choose File’ button.
Select the netlog file you downloaded earlier to continue.
The app will then present the file in a readable format. Click on the HTTP/2 tab in the left column, and it will show you all the websites you visited that were using the HTTP/2 protocol as h2.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Do you want to know what is an email blast and how to do it “the right way”?
An email blast or broadcast sends a single email message to many subscribers in your mailing list. This can be highly effective strategy to get more sales, and bloggers use these blasts to get more website traffic.
In this article, we will explain how to do an email blast the proper way and share some examples.
What Is an Email Blast?
An email blast is a single email message that is sent to an entire email list, a large segment of that list, or many email lists at the same time.
These emails target most or all contacts in your mailing list, making an email blast a broad reach-out campaign.
Email blasts are also known as broadcast emails, mass emails, bulk emails, e-blasts, and email campaigns. Most people use the term ’email campaigns’ to avoid the aggressive feeling associated with the term ’email blast’.
Email blasts are mainly used for sending promotional content and newsletters. At WPBeginner, we use email blasts to promote our premium WordPress plugins and share our helpful tutorials.
If you want to let all your subscribers know about special offers, then email blasts are the most reliable and efficient form of communication.
Are Email Blasts Outdated?
Although email blasts are great for delivering any message to a large number of people, some consider them an outdated communication method.
That’s because email blasts are bulk emails sent to everyone regardless of their choice, priorities, and needs. At times, blast emails can feel irrelevant and useless to the recipients.
Due to this, the email recipients may ignore the message, mark the email as spam, or even unsubscribe from your email list.
Here are the top reasons why users don’t like email blasts:
1. Unsegmented: Email blasts often use the entire mailing list without segmentation. Your email subscribers are usually very different, and they may be interested in different products or services.
2. Untargeted: The email blasts send the same message to everyone without considering their interests, past interactions, or needs. Users often unsubscribe from your mailing list after receiving these unwanted emails.
3. Not personalized: We all love reading a message that addresses us personally. Email blasts that don’t personalize the emails are often marked as spam.
4. Unexpected: Broadcast emails are usually unexpected, so there can be a natural feeling of resistance from the recipients.
Unlike 10 or 15 years ago, many new marketing methods are available, like social media, pay-per-click advertising, and more. However, none are as effective as email.
So, you might be wondering: is email blast dead? The answer is NO.
Email is still the most reliable form of communication in the world. With new technology, there are better ways to do an email blast to get higher results.
We will explain how to do an email blast the RIGHT way in the following section.
How to Do an Email Blast “the Right Way” – Step by Step
Marketers from big and small companies alike are still using email blasts to promote their product launches, discount offers, and more.
And the results are brilliant. That’s because they are using email blasts the right way.
If you are not a professional marketer, you can follow the steps below to run an email blast successfully:
First, you need a robust email marketing service to create an email blast. An email marketing service lets you create a mailing list, segment that list, and send bulk emails.
There are dozens of email marketing services in the market. Among them, Constant Contact, Brevo, Drip, and ConvertKit are the most popular companies.
We have tried and tested all of the above email marketing services, and we believe they are great at what they offer. However, we recommend Constant Contact because they provide the best deal.
Constant Contact is the most beginner-friendly email blast software. It has dozens of pre-made email templates to help you quickly get started. You can choose a template and easily customize that using their drag and drop editor.
It has simple options for collecting emails, automation features to send/trigger emails based on user actions, and more. Plus, it lets you segment your subscribers and send targeted email campaigns.
You can quickly create a Constant Contact account as they offer a free trial account (no credit card required).
Once done, you will see your Constant Contact dashboard, where you can manage your email lists, see subscribers, and send email blasts.
Alternatively, you can also use Brevo, which offers a free email marketing plan.
Step 2. Create Your Email List
An email list is simply a list of email addresses you can send messages to. It is like your contact book containing the email addresses of your subscribers and prospective customers.
To create an email list in Constant Contact, just go to the ‘Contacts’ menu at the top and click on the ‘Create List’ button.
An email list is where you store all your email contacts.
Clicking on the button will bring up a popup where you need to enter a name for your email list and click the ‘Save’ button.
To create segments in Constant Contact, you need to go to the ‘Contacts’ menu and click on the ‘Segments’ tab. After that, click on the ‘Create Segment’ button.
Constant Contact offers a bunch of criteria you can choose from.
In the next screen, you can create a segment by choosing the criteria you want.
You can create a segment by contact activity like emails sent, opened, clicked, or did not open. You can also include email subscribers by contact details, including job title, city, country, etc.
Once you are finished, simply click on the ‘Save and Preview’ button.
Then, you can repeat the process if you need to create more segments.
Step 4: Create a Targeted Email Campaign
After creating segments, the next task is to create a targeted email campaign or an email blast.
You can create an email campaign in different ways depending on the email marketing software you use.
To design an email campaign in Constant Contact, you must go to the ‘Campaigns’ menu and then click the ‘Create’ button.
This will bring up a popup showing a bunch of campaigns you can make with Constant Contact.
You need to choose the Email option to continue.
After that, you will see dozens of pre-made email templates ready for use.
You can preview the templates individually or simply type keywords to search for a template.
Simply click to choose a template as a starting point.
After that, the email campaign builder page will open. First, you need to name your campaign.
Next, click the ‘Email Settings’ link to edit the email subject line, sender name, and more.
Then, you need to click on the ‘Personalize’ option.
Here, you can choose the first name or any other contact details to insert in your subject line.
You can also enter a generic name like Customer, User, or Friend to address users whose names are unavailable. Once done, simply click on the ‘Insert’ button.
You will see some text with large brackets added in your subject line.
For example, you can see [[FIRSTNAME OR “customer”]] in the screenshot below.
After that, you can edit your email preheader From Name (company or organization name) and From Address.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your changes.
The next step is to customize the email body.
You can simply point and click on any element in the email to edit or delete it.
You can also drag and drop elements and layouts from the left sidebar.
Once your email design is complete, you can preview your email. If it looks good, just click on the ‘Continue’ button in the top right corner.
Next, you will see email send (blasting) options on the screen.
From here, you can select recipients from email lists or segments. For example, we will choose the segment that we created earlier.
In the right sidebar, you will see options to send your email campaign now or schedule it for later.
Step 5: Measure Results and Improve Email Deliverability
Sending an email campaign doesn’t mean that your work is done. After posting your email blast, you will need to measure your results and see how the recipients interact with your messages.
Top email marketing services like Constant Contact have built-in email stats features.
To view your email campaign stats, just click on the ‘Reporting’ menu item at the top.
You can also see the performance of your email campaigns individually by clicking on them.
You will see the email open rate, the total sent emails, bounces, and successful deliveries. The reports will also reveal click rate, did not open, unsubscribes, and marked spam stats.
The biggest challenge of email blasting is email deliverability. A lot of the time, your emails don’t get delivered at all or are sent to the spam box directly.
Here are some proven techniques to improve email deliverability:
Update your email list occasionally to remove fake email addresses, deleted emails, and more.
Maintain the frequency of your emails (no spikes).
Avoid misleading subject lines.
Make your emails useful with valuable and engaging content.
Best Email Blast Examples
There are two main types of emails used for marketing: Broadcast Emails (Email blasts) and Triggered Emails.
Triggered emails are automated emails that are sent to your users following their actions. For example, you can send a welcome email after a user subscribes to your list.
Email blasts are different because you will manually create campaigns and send them to a large segment at once. Email blasting is done with the belief that the single message will be helpful to every subscriber in a list or segment.
You can’t broadcast a welcome email to your entire email list, which may also include old customers. So, email blasts can be used only for specific purposes.
Here are the best email blast examples:
1. Flash Sale
If you are offering a flash sale, you can send mass emails in bulk to inform all of your subscribers.
Here are a couple of subject line examples for a flash sale email blast:
[FLASH SALE] Fashion Shoes 40%-60% off!
[LAST CHANCE] 40%-60% off sale ends today!
2. Event Information like Webinars
You can send mass emails if you run online courses and webinars for your users.
Here are a couple of email subject lines for an event information email blast:
LIVE Training: 10 steps to create a winning email campaign
Join us LIVE tomorrow at 5 PM for a FREE marketing class
3. New Products
You can send an email blast when you launch a new product. It’s best to segment your list into already purchased customers and new subscribers so that you can send different campaigns to them.
4. Newsletters
Newsletters are the most common type of broadcast email. News, magazine websites, blogs, as well as business or non-profit organizations send newsletters to inform their subscribers about the latest news.
You can see our tutorial on starting an email newsletter to learn more about best practices to make it more successful.
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Do you want to add a screenshot to your blog post but are not sure of the best way to do it?
Screenshots allow you to share an image snapshot of your desktop or mobile screen in your blog posts. This makes it easier for your audience to follow the steps in a tutorial and better understand your content.
In this article, we will show you how to take a screenshot for your WordPress blog posts.
The Benefits of Taking Screenshots for Your Blog Posts
Adding screenshots to your WordPress blog can make your content more engaging. These are screen captures or snapshots of whatever is on your mobile or desktop screen.
You can use screenshots for a tutorial and guide users step by step. This way, people will know exactly where to click and what to enter when setting up software or plugins.
Similarly, you can use screenshots for a roundup or list post. For example, let’s say you are writing about the top 10 best email marketing tools. You can take screenshots of each tool’s homepage and show them in your content.
Since there are so many different ways to take a screenshot, we have created a step-by-step guide on how to take a screenshot on different devices and apps.
To make it easy for you, we have also created a table of contents below, so you can quickly find the method that’s applicable to you.
Droplr is a popular screen capture app. It allows you to easily take a screenshot on your computer and share it.
Droplr automatically saves the screenshot and screen recordings to the cloud and provides a link to share with others. Plus, you can manage all your screenshots from a dashboard and share them on any platform, including WordPress.
It works great with Mac, Windows, and Chromebook devices to quickly capture a selected area or entire screen. There is also a Chrome extension, so you can quickly take screenshots from your browser.
To take a screenshot using Droplr, you will first need to install the app for your preferred device. After that, you can click the Droplr icon in the Mac menu bar or the Windows Taskbar.
From here, simply click the ‘Screenshot’ option.
If you are a Mac user, then you can also press ‘Option + Shift + 4’ to capture the screenshots. You can press ‘Alt + Shift + 4’ on Windows to take a screenshot with Droplr.
Next, you need to select the area you’d like to take a screenshot of.
Droplr will open the screenshot in a browser window as soon as you are done. Here, you can download the image or share the link with others.
If you click the ‘Markup’ button at the top, then you will find options to edit the screenshot.
For instance, you can add arrows to point at a button or an important feature. You can also draw shapes, add emojis, blur different parts of the image, add text, and more.
Once you are done, simply save the image or download it.
Taking Screenshots Using Droplr Chrome Extension
You can also use the Droplr Chrome extension to take screenshots and screen recordings. The extension works just like the desktop app, and you can easily access it from the Chrome extension toolbar.
First, you will need to install the Droplr extension by visiting the Chrome web store.
Then, click on ‘Add to Chrome’.
Once the extension is added, you can click on the Droplr icon from the toolbar at the top of your browser.
Next, you can screenshot a selected area, application window, full screen, or entire page.
After taking a screenshot, Droplr will open the image in a new tab with a link that you can share.
Droplr also allows you to create a video screencast to create quick tutorials with audio. Simply click the Droplr icon in your browser’s menu bar and select the TV icon to record your screen.
If you choose the ‘Full desktop’ option, then you will need to select which window to record. On the other hand, you can use the ‘Current tab’ option and screencast your browser tab.
How to Take a Screenshot on Mac
If you are using a Mac device and want to take a screenshot, then there are several options.
On Mac devices, you can capture the entire screen, a selected portion of your screen, a specific window, and more.
To take a screenshot of the entire screen on a Mac device, simply press ‘Shift + Command + 3’, and it will capture your screen.
If you want to capture a selected portion, then press ‘Shift + Command + 4’. Next, click and drag the crosshair (pointer) to take a screenshot of the selected area.
If you want to take a screenshot of a specific window, then press ‘Shift + Command + 4’ and also press the ‘Space bar’ on your keyboard.
You will see that the pointer will change into a camera icon. Simply drag the camera icon on a window to highlight and capture it.
Note: Not all apps will allow you to take a screenshot of their window. In that case, you can take a screenshot of the selected portion and crop it.
By default, all the screenshots will be saved on your desktop with the capturing time/date as the filename and .png as the file extension.
How to Take a Screenshot on Windows
To take a screenshot on Windows devices, you will need to press the ‘PrtSc’ keys. This will capture the entire screen.
Next, you can open this screenshot in an image editing software like Adobe Photoshop or Affinity Photo to crop the required area and save it on your computer.
Another way of taking screenshots is by using the Snipping tool. The tool lets you capture a specific part of your screen and automatically save it to a clipboard.
Another way to take screenshots in Windows is by pressing the ‘Windows + Shift + S’ keys to start taking screenshots with the Snipping tool.
Next, click and drag the pointer to select an area on your screen. It will capture the screenshot automatically when you release the right click.
Since the screenshot is saved to a clipboard, you can paste it into any image editing software like Adobe Photoshop for further changes and then save it on your computer.
How to Take a Screenshot on Chromebook
In Chromebook, you can simply click the Screenshot key with a camera icon. This will take a screenshot of your entire screen or a selected area.
Besides that, you can click the Quick Settings option in the right corner and then select the ‘Screen Capture’ option.
After that, you need to choose whether you’d like to capture the entire screen or a selected area.
Once you have taken a screenshot, it will be automatically copied to the Clipboard.
If you are using Chrome OS 64.0.3282.134 or later, then you can simply press the ‘Power + Volume Down’ buttons to capture your entire screen.
To take a screenshot of a selected area, you need to press the ‘Ctrl + Shift + Switch Window’ keys. Then, click and drag the crosshair (pointer) to select the area that you want to capture.
Upon releasing the click, you will see a notification in the bottom right corner of your screen that shows your screenshot is saved in the ‘Downloads’ folder.
If you are using a Chromebox with an external (general) keyboard attached to it, then press ‘Ctrl + F5’ to take a screenshot. The F5 key will function the same as the ‘Switch Window’ key on a Chromebook.
How to Take a Screenshot on iPhone
Taking a screenshot on iPhones and other smartphones is actually quite simple.
If you are using an iPhone X or higher, then you need to open your blog post or the app on the screen. After that, simply press the ‘Side’ button on the right side and the ‘Volume Up’ button on the left side of your phone.
Make sure that you press both buttons at the same time. This will take a screenshot of the screen and save it to the ‘Screenshots’ folder on your phone.
If you are using an iPhone 8 or earlier model, then open the screen that you want to capture. Then, simply press the ‘Power + Home’ buttons at the same time to take a screenshot.
How to Take a Screenshot on Android Phone
There are many different phone manufacturers that sell smartphones with Android OS (such as Samsung Galaxy, Motorola, Google Pixel, etc). However, most new devices follow the same universal process to take a screenshot.
On your Android phone, you need to open the screen that you want to capture. Next, press the ‘Power + Volume Down’ buttons together.
This will take the screenshot and save it in your photo gallery.
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Have you ever encountered a 414 request URI too long error on your WordPress website?
The error is usually caused when there is a critical error between your web browser and a server. You’ll see this error when clicking on a link or any action performed by a WordPress plugin.
In this article, we will show you what is the ‘414 request URI too long’ error and how to fix it.
What is 414 Request URI Too Long Error?
A 414 request URI too long error occurs when a URL or an action you’re requesting is too long for the server to handle.
Do note that there is a difference between URI and URL. A URI or Uniform Resource Identifier can be a resource’s name, location, or both. On the other hand, a URL or Uniform Resource Locator can only be the location of a resource.
Both terms are usually used interchangeably because URL is part of URI. However, the 414 error can be triggered by both components, so let’s look at the causes.
What Causes 414 Request URI Too Long Error?
You might see the 414 error when you click on the link, and the server is unable to process it because it’s too long.
One situation where a link might to very long is using UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters. If you’re using UTM codes to track conversions on your WordPress website and there are a lot of parameters in the URL, then it can cause this error.
Another situation that can cause a 414 error is a redirect loop. This is when a misconfiguration or a setting in a WordPress plugin causes a lot of redirect requests.
As a result, you get incredibly long URLs and 414 requests URI too long error.
Similarly, some plugins can also generate lengthy URIs as part of their functionality. You’re most likely to encounter this error if you have all-in-one WordPress security plugins installed on your site.
In a rare event, a developer-side issue can also trigger a 414 error when a POST request converts into a GET request with query information being too long. Lastly, cyber attacks on your website server can also result in 414 URI too long issues.
That said, let’s see how you can fix the 414 error on your WordPress website.
Fixing 414 Request URI Too Long Error
A quick way to fix this issue is by increasing the size of the URI your website server can process.
Before we move forward, we recommend creating a WordPress backup. That’s because fixing the 414 error involves editing the website configuration files. In case anything goes wrong, you’ll have a backup copy of your site ready to restore.
Determine if Your Website is Using Apache or Nginx
First, you’ll need to find out the type of server your WordPress website is using. There are 2 main types of servers, which includes Apache and Nginx.
A simple way to do that is by opening your site in a browser. After that, you can right-click on the homepage and select the ‘Inspect’ option.
Next, you’ll need to switch to the ‘Network’ tab at the top.
From here, you can select any element under the Name column. After that, you will need to scroll down to the ‘Response Headers’ section and see the ‘Server’ details.
This will show you whether your site is using Nginx or Apache.
If you’re still unsure which server type to use, then you can reach out to your WordPress hosting provider to get more details.
Once you’ve determined the server type, let’s look at how to fix the 414 request URI too long error for Apache and Nginx.
Fixing 414 Request URI Too Long Error in Nginx
First, you’ll need an FTP or file transfer protocol client to access website configuration files.
There are many FTP clients you can use. For this tutorial, we will use Filezilla. If you need help setting up FTP and accessing website files, then please see our guide on how to use FTP to upload files to WordPress.
Once you’re logged in, you’ll need to download the ‘nginx.conf’ file. You can access this by following this path: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
After locating the file, go ahead and download it on your computer and then open it in a notepad software.
From here, you can search for large_client_header_buffers 4 8K settings. If it’s not there, then simply add it to the end of the file.
You will see 2 sets of values, which relate to a number and size. Simply edit the size from 8K to 128K. This will increase the URI size and allow the site server to process long URLs.
Once you’re done, simply save the text file and reupload it to your website using the FTP client.
If you’re using the Apache server type, then the process is similar to that of Nginx. First, you’ll need an FTP client to access website files.
Once you’re logged in, you’ll need to locate the ‘apache2.conf’ file. Simply head to the following path using the FTP client: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
Next, you’ll need to download the file and open it in notepad software.
After that, you can look for LimitRequestLine 128000 settings. If you don’t see one, then simply add it to the end of the file.
Usually, LimitRequestLine is set to 128000. However, you can increase this to 256000 or higher to remove the 414 error. Just make sure that the value you set is a multiple of 2.
Once you’re done, simply upload the file back to the website using the FTP client. This should help resolve the 414 error on your WordPress website.
We hope this article helped you learn about what is 414 request URI too long error and how to fix it. You may also want to see our guide on WordPress security and the most common WordPress errors.
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