Spam on WordPress websites is an enduring part of the internet. It makes up nearly half of all email communications alone and, at one point, comprised around 70 percent of all emails. However, email isn’t the only area where you’ll need to deal with spam
The post “How to Use a WordPress CAPTCHA to Eliminate Website Spam” first appeared on WP Mayor.
Danny van Kooten, creator of the Mailchimp for WordPress plugin, has indicated that he is interested in selling his plugin for somewhere in the ballpark of €1.6M. It is the most popular Mailchimp solution for WordPress, although it is “unofficial” in that it is not developed by or affiliated with Mailchimp in any way. It has more than 2 million active installs and has been downloaded more than 42 million times.
In a comment on a popular Hacker News post that asks, “What is the best income stream you have created till date?” van Kooten dropped the hint that he is willing to sell the nearly ten-year-old plugin:
It’s definitely not my passion but in 2013 I built a WordPress plugin around the API of a popular newsletter service and it’s been paying my bills ever since.
Still going strong at €36K per month excluding VAT.
There was (and still is) a huge market where non-technical people are looking for a GUI around something a programmer would find very simple (and usually too boring to work on). More so if the tech surrounding it is not particularly sexy, as is the case for WordPress and PHP.
Ps. In case anyone is reading this, I am open to selling. I spent about 4 hours a week on it and the rest is handled by 2 freelance people costing about €1K / month each. Contact me for details if interested and willing to pay in the ballpark of €1.6M.
van Kooten developed Mailchimp for WordPress when he was hospitalized in Vietnam due to acute appendicitis with extra time on his hands during his recovery. He identifies himself as an “accidental entrepreneur” in his Hacker News bio. In 2021, he was featured in Wired for his efforts in reducing his carbon output as a plugin developer. He refactored the plugin to send 20kb less data, and, due to its large user base, he estimates these changes reduced the world’s monthly CO2Â output by 59,000 kilograms, which Wired estimated is “roughly the equivalent to flying from New York to Amsterdam and back 85 times.”
Mailchimp for WordPress has commercial upgrades ranging from $59 – $149 per year, and 1% of the plugin’s revenue goes towards environmental projects.
Although Mailchimp recommends WordPress.com’s “Mailchimp block” as the official WordPress integration (also available in Jetpack 7.1+), van Kooten’s plugin is far more flexible. Mailchimp for WordPress integrates with other popular plugins like WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms 3, BuddyPress, MemberPress, and Events Manager, allowing visitors to subscribe via the checkout or comments form.
Several commenters on van Kooten’s Hacker News response indicated interest in his offer for sale. His comment offers a a rare, transparent look into a popular plugin’s revenue and potential sale price, as most companies that acquire WordPress plugins are almost never willing to reveal how much they paid for them. As Substack moves to add compatibility for Ghost themes and other third-parties, and newsletters become even more critical with people leaving Twitter, it will be interesting to see more movement in the newsletter support space. van Kooten may be setting out at just the right time to find a buyer for Mailchimp for WordPress.
Jetpack has introduced a major update to its Form block in the latest version 11.6 release. Users can now interact with the various form templates as patterns.
A new quick start placeholder appears anytime users invoke a new form block. It displays a selection of the most commonly used form types as icons. Clicking on any one of the form templates will instantly add it to the block. From there, users can further customize the form fields and labels. It also displays a link to documentation on customizing forms and a link to view and export form responses.
Version 11.6 also introduces a patterns explorer, similar to the one found in the block inserter. Here users can see all available patterns fully expanded to better inform their decisions during the form creation process.
After testing, I found the pattern explorer to be a somewhat clunky way to view available form templates. In the default view they appear one at a time and expand to fit the explorer’s viewport. They are also difficult to scroll. Clicking on the grid style view, the patterns are easier to see but the design could be improved to better differentiate each pattern, as they all seem to run right into the next with faint borders around each.
Although I’m eager to see Jetpack iterate on the execution of these new ways to build forms, the placeholder and pattern explorer undoubtedly help users get started faster than trying to build a form from scratch in the block editor.
Other notable updates in this release include SEO improvements that allow users to have more granular control over how their content is presented (or not presented) to search engines. In the Jetpack SEO panel, users can now exclude that specific post or page from being indexed, while allowing the content to remain publicly accessible. Users can also now set a custom SEO title for posts and pages that will show in the search snippet and browser tab.
One of the biggest problems that store owners face is cart abandonment. Even if the right customers are viewing your products, they could add items to their carts and leave your site without making a purchase.
Fortunately, you can use abandoned cart recovery plugins to remind customers that they left products in their carts. These tools can help you boost sales and prevent users from turning to your competitors.
In this post, we’ll explain the benefits of using an abandoned cart recovery plugin. Then, we’ll recommend some of the best options on the market. Let’s get started!
Even if visitors place your products in their shopping carts, there’s no guarantee that they’ll purchase them. In fact, eCommerce stores have an abandoned cart rate of about 70 percent.
There are several reasons why customers abandon their carts. These include surprise costs like expensive shipping options or extra fees. Unexpected charges can cause customers to leave your store and do their shopping elsewhere.
Another possible cause of a high cart abandonment rate is an inefficient checkout page. If you don’t make it easy for customers to purchase a product, they likely won’t complete their orders. Therefore, you’ll want to provide a smooth checkout experience.
However, even after taking the necessary measures, you may notice that your online store still has a lot of abandoned carts. In this case, you can use an abandoned cart recovery plugin to encourage second visits.
If customers were initially window-shopping, a reminder email can prompt them to purchase the items they wanted. The right tool can help you track your customers’ carts and send messages about abandoned items. By following up with customers, you can help decrease your abandoned cart rate.
Once you decide to start targeting customers who have incomplete purchases, you’ll need to find the right tool for the job. Fortunately, many WordPress plugins are designed specifically for abandoned cart recovery. Let’s look at some of the best options on the market.
If you’re having trouble tracking your customers and their abandoned carts, Metorik can be a useful tool. This plugin provides extensive reports for your revenue, orders, customer retention, and much more. Plus, you’ll be able to view your most-abandoned products and which customers were interested in them.
Once a visitor places an item in a cart, Metorik starts tracking it. If the cart is abandoned, you can send automatic email reminders with discounts to increase completed purchases. Then, the Metorik dashboard will display your new recovery rates and conversion stats.
Key features:
Pricing: Metorik is a free WordPress plugin. However, you’ll need to connect it with a Metorik account. Registration starts at $50 per month, but you can also sign up for a 30-day trial.
During the abandoned cart recovery process, you’ll send emails to customers to encourage them to revisit your store. Retainful enables you to automate these email campaigns.
This plugin offers an easy way to contact customers, thanks to its pre-designed email templates and a drag-and-drop editor. It also enables you to show pop-up windows to visitors who are about to abandon the checkout page. By including one-time coupon codes, you can grab a customer’s attention and incentivize them to complete their purchase.
Key features:
Pricing: Retainful has a free plan that supports abandoned cart recovery, 500 emails per month, and up to 300 contacts. If you need to extend these features, the premium version starts at $19 monthly.
Abandoned Cart for WooCommerce is another plugin that sends messages to customers after incomplete purchases. After a user clicks on the add-to-cart button, they can enter their email, phone number, or Facebook account details. If they abandon their items, they’ll automatically receive reminder messages.
To quickly create a workflow, you can choose one of the pre-designed abandoned cart email templates. Alternatively, the rich text editor enables you to create new templates by copying and pasting HTML. Then, you can use merge tags to personalize the emails with details about the customer and product.
Key features:
Pricing: Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce is free to download. The premium version starts at $149 per year and includes abandoned cart email templates, coupon codes, and pre-built workflows.
It won’t matter if you bring customers back to their carts if your site is bogged down with cart fragments. Though necessary for performance, cart fragments can slow down your site, especially during high-traffic events such as the holidays.
Because they constantly have to be running to power parts of your cart, namely “add to cart” or live inventory numbers, the rest of your pages like “About Us” or “Contact” can become slower.
In favor of site speed, many developers opt to disable them altogether, but WP Engine customers have access to a better solution, Live Cart.
Live Cart makes sure those fragments are only running when needed. Simultaneously optimizing your cart and site speed. It comes built into all WP Engine eCommerce plans.
Even with the right advertising methods, customers could still leave your products in their carts. With the right tools, you can target these visitors and contact them with discounted offers. By simply reminding customers about their abandoned carts, you can increase your number of completed orders.
To review, here are some of the best abandoned cart recovery plugins for WooCommerce stores:
Do you have any questions about the abandoned cart recovery plugins featured in this post? Let us know in the comments section below!
The post 3 Best Abandoned Cart Recovery Plugins for WooCommerce appeared first on Torque.
ChatGPT passed 1 million users today and Twitter is brimming with a steady stream of creative questions and applications for the AI-powered chatbot. The language model, created by OpenAI, is powered by GPT-3.5, a series of models trained on text and code from before Q4 2021. The model features a dialogue format that gives ChatGPT the ability to “answer followup questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests.”
While some are busy predicting the end of search engines and sounding the death knell for human-generated writing, others are fascinated by the potential of AI systems to fundamentally reshape the process of creation. WordPress developer Johnathon Williams brought this close to home when he asked ChatGPT to spin up a WordPress plugin.
Ordinarily, plugin creation is a task that requires a certain level of technical proficiency. Williams demonstrated that, with a little bit of expert guidance, ChatGPT can drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to extend WordPress.
Williams installed the plugin and found that it worked on the first try. Although he didn’t save the prompt for this first try, he published a gist on GitHub of the generated code.
On a second attempt of creating a different plugin, he used the following prompt:
Create a custom WordPress plugin called “Big Daddy Media” that deletes images older than one year from the media library. OOP. Custom admin screen. one button delete. log the full URL of all deleted media files.
He published a screen recording of ChatGPT at work creating the plugin:
Williams said that although he’s had mixed results with his prompts, he has gotten the best results from asking ChatGPI to generate entire functions versus specific filters or actions.
Theoretically, with additional training on plugin best practices and common architecture, ChatGPT could be used by people of all skill levels to extend WordPress in creative ways.
“Very soon, describing the WordPress plugin you need to ChatGPT will generate a new one faster than searching for an existing one in the plugin directory,” Williams said. “This won’t be true for all types of plugins, of course. But for relatively simple plugins performing established tricks … well *very soon* should probably read ‘right now.’”
WordPress Core Committer Jb Audras, CTO of the France-based Whodunit agency, has released two new accessibility plugins in cooperation with Guillaume Turpin, another developer on the Whodunit team. These are small “micro” plugins developed to fill gaps in the block editor’s accessible content creation experience.
The first plugin is called Lang Attribute for the Block Editor and is important for content that is written in multiple languages. It allows content creators to indicate language changes using the lang attribute so that those using assistive technologies will get the correct presentation and pronunciation rules for the specified language. This plugin helps WordPress sites meet the requirements of the WCAG Success Criterion 3.1.2 “Language of Parts.”
With the plugin installed, content creators can highlight text and then find the language attribute in the block toolbar to edit it.
“It’s worth noting that indicating language changes in content is mandatory for WCAG compliance, and there is currently no way to do that in the Block Editor (except by editing the code manually),” Audras said when introducing the plugin on Twitter. “I think this feature should be implemented natively into Gutenberg.”
The second micro plugin is called Abbreviation Button for the Block Editor, which allows content authors to include definitions for abbreviations using the <abbr> HTML element. This enables site visitors to access the expanded form of abbreviations, as outlined by WCAG success criterion 3.1.4 “Abbreviations.”
The WCAG identify a few types of visitors who may be helped by the Abbreviations, including those who have difficulty decoding words, those who rely on screen magnifiers, have a limited memory, and those who have difficulty using context to aid understanding.
The abbreviation tag can also be found in the block toolbar, so users can highlight any text for which they want to provide the expanded form of the abbreviation.
Both the Abbreviation Button and the Language Attribute plugins are available for free in the WordPress plugins directory. The plugins’ creators hope that some of this functionality can eventually be added to the block editor, but in the meantime users can install the plugins to create more accessible content that meets accessibility guidelines.
10up has released version 4.4.0 of ElasticPress, its enhanced search plugin that speeds up searching while reducing the load on WordPress sites. The plugin is based on Elasticsearch and is used by customers of the ElasticPress.io service (a SaaS solution), as well as those who are hosting their own Elasticsearch instance.
This update adds a new “Status Report” page in the dashboard with information that can be helpful for troubleshooting ElasticPress and synced content. The UI uses Gutenberg components for the collapsible sections. Version 4.4.0 introduces a new query logger functionality that stores failed queries (up to 5 in the last 24 hours) and displays an admin notice if failed queries are detected. The failed queries are displayed on the new Status Report page.
Another highlight of this release is the ability to customize the template for Instant Results. It gives developers a JavaScript hook for replacing the component used to render search results in Instant Results. The Instant Results feature was introduced in March with limited customization capabilities. It added a new search modal over the page content that inherits the site’s styles. Developers could adjust the appearance and expose facets, but this new update gives them control over the whole template.
Another small but useful update in this release is the ability to exclude a specific post from Search. This helps site owners further customize the search experience to deliver only the intended results.
Developers who are using the plugin should take note of the announcement included in this release regarding the migration of the Users feature to the ElasticPress Labs plugin, which houses more experimental features:
Note that starting from the ElasticPress 5.0.0 release theÂ
Users feature will be moved to the ElasticPress Labs plugin. TheÂTerms andÂComments features will remain in ElasticPress but will be available only if enabled via code.
Check out the full list of updates and bug fixes on GitHub in the changelog for 4.4.0.
Having a multilingual WordPress site is crucial for many businesses. We compare the three best WordPress multilingual plugins: TranslatePress vs WPML vs Weglot.
The post “Best WordPress Multilingual Plugins” first appeared on WP Mayor.
Imagine if you could automatically add a customer to your mailing list. Or what if you could have WordPress create a new user when someone books an appointment with you? How about sending a frequent blog commenter a loyalty reward as soon as they comment?
These things are all possible with a plugin from Thrive Themes called Thrive Automator.
The post “Achieve WordPress Automation with Thrive Automator” first appeared on WP Mayor.
Divi, the popular commercial WordPress theme and page builder created by Elegant Themes, has announced major changes coming in version 5.0 that constitute a complete rewrite of Divi’s core technologies. The update, which is expected to be released in beta next year, will focus on performance, stability, scalability, and extendability, but it will not introduce any new features.
“We are recreating Divi’s backend framework, cleaning up years of technical debt, changing Divi’s storage format and improving its rendering mechanism,” Elegant Themes CEO Nick Roach said. “This new version of Divi will be able to processes design settings much more quickly.”
One of the most notable changes coming in 5.0 is that Divi will be migrating away from shortcodes.
“This change will bring Divi into alignment with the future of WordPress, which is evolving in a new direction,” Roach said.
Divi will migrate to a new JSON format that is similar to the way Gutenberg stores data. The legacy shortcodes will continue to work and for a time Divi will lazy load in the old framework as necessary.
“If you are using Divi shortcodes outside of your post content, it will be highly recommended to replace these shortcodes with our new json-based elements,” Roach said. “Otherwise, you are going to take a performance hit.”
As part of the 5.0 update, Divi’s developers plan to include a button to perform the migration away from shortcodes, which will automatically change posts to use the new system.
Divi 5.0 will also introduce a new Builder API, which Roach said “may also open up opportunities for Divi/Gutenberg cross-compatibility:”
Developers familiar with creating blocks for WordPress will find a lot of similarities in the Divi 5.0 module API. WordPress blocks will be more easily adapted to Divi and WordPress developers will be able to jump head first into building things for our community. We are building this new version of Divi to work in harmony with WordPress.
News of the coming update was well-received by Divi users who posted additional questions and concerns in the comments. A few users were skeptical about the new direction but willing to see how it pans out.
Peter R, a current user who said he appreciates Divi’s “nicer and smoother UX,” along with the collections of design settings, indicated that Divi seems to be falling behind what the block editor offers for building pages with dynamic data:
As nice as Divi 5.0 sounds, it’s just sooo far away… especially since it won’t have the features I’m looking for at launch which will then take even longer if those features appear at all. I was really hoping Divi 5.0 would move more towards the Gutenberg block builder (other than back-end data storage etc).
There seems to be a real arms race going on with block builders right now. Many are adding features that Divi simply can’t compete with now and will probably take years to match if at all. Far more flexible layouts especially when it comes to making your own post loops etc, more powerful features for displaying dynamic data or for collecting and storing data, and the ability to mix-and-match blocks from different creators so you don’t depend on a single provider like Divi.
More than 2,425,411 live websites are currently using Divi and an an additional 1,486,812 sites that used the product historically, according to BuiltWith. The nearly 10-year-old product has grown steadily for years but seems to have plateaued beginning in 2020.
Embracing the way WordPress is going will be important for the page builder’s continued success, and Elegant Themes seems to be acknowledging this with the planned update.
“On the block theme front, as a part of Divi 5.0, we are also transitioning into a Block Based theme, and since Divi 5.0 is actually internally built using the same ‘packages’ that Gutenberg itself is composed of, Divi 5.0 has a lot of compatibility built in from the core,” Elegant Themes developer Josh Ronk said.
“We are working diligently to push Divi 5.0 for maximum Gutenberg block compatibility, with the goal being that you would be able to use Gutenberg blocks inside of your Divi built pages, and then apply all of the Divi design options you love to the otherwise plain Gutenberg blocks you have installed. This means you won’t have to choose between Divi or Gutenberg, and rather you get Divi AND Gutenberg.”
Divi’s developers plan to ensure the old Divi modules built with the current Divi API are backwards-compatible, working on the front end but with a more limited capacity in the Visual Builder. They will be encouraging developers to move to the new API to take advantage of the performance benefits.
Divi 5.0 will not introduce new features or changes to Divi’s design, but the underlying architecture will be moving closer to Gutenberg compatibility.
“Divi 5.0 will use React and it will leverage more of the native Gutenberg packages,” Roach said. “At some point we hope that Divi and Gutenberg will work in harmony. We don’t want to fight against the direction that WordPress is heading.”