10 FAQ About WordPress Themes Answered
Since the demand in using the CMS continues to grow, the number of questions around WordPress continues to grow. So, we've decided to pick 10 of the most frequently asked questions and answer them.
Is WordPress free?
WordPress itself is a free content management system. You do not need to pay a single dollar to download it and install on your site. However, in order to get your blog or website up and running, you need to invest certain cash in the purchase of a hosting plan for a web resource.
Provided that WordPress is used on more than 30% of online projects that you can access on the present-day web, then it's logical to assume that there are plenty of hosting providers offering plans for WordPress-based web projects exclusively. Here are several of the most popular WordPress hosting providers:
- Bluehost - plans starting at $2,75/mo
- HostGator - plans starting at $2,75/mo
- SiteGround - plans starting at $3,95/mo
- DreamHost - plans starting at $2,59/mo
- InMotion - plans starting at $15/mo
One of the best features delivered by all the major hosting providers is the availability of free domain names in their plans. In such a way, you can kill two birds with one stone. Moreover, the hosting plans include WordPress installations, thus delivering a full pack of tools needed for a quick start of your site.
Is It Beginner-Friendly?
Absolutely. You can work with WordPress if you have little to no design or coding skills. The community provides you with a wide choice of tools, plugins, and extensions that allow you to bring a fully personalized presentation to your web projects as you simply work in the visual mode.
Code-free site development is made effortless by means of page builders for WordPress. There are plenty of such innovations available for public access. One of the most popular drag-and-drop page builders for the CMS is Elementor.
Elementor Page Builder is a user-friendly and highly-functional solution for building new sites and customizing ready-made WordPress themes without any programming skills. The page builder is compatible with all the most recent versions of WordPress engines. Once installed in your site's dashboard, it works alongside a standard WordPress editing area. Make a switch to the visual page editing mode with a single click.
Additionally, the page builder boasts a rich collection of topic-specific WordPress themes and templates in the Elementor marketplace. There are WordPress themes suited to be used for a wide choice of purposes and topics. All of them comes loaded with exclusive sets of tools and features that you will need for the launch of any niche-specific web project. Additionally, Elementor-based WordPress themes include premium Elementor plugins and high-resolution images as bonus features.
How to Improve WordPress SEO?
SEO plays a fundamental role in pre-defining the future success of your web resource. If your site isn’t findable in the search engines, then there is no point in supporting such a web project at all. You need to optimize the pages and content of your site in order to make it findable in Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
In order to improve your site’s SEO, your WordPress projects need to be enhanced with SEO WordPress plugins. One of such most popular solutions is Yoast SEO. With its help, you can optimize titles and metadata of your site, social links, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs, and more elements of your site.
How to Boost My Site's Loading Speeds?
The speed at which your site’s content loads is not less important than making your data SEO-friendly. In fact, your site loading speeds have a direct impact on the way your WordPress site will rank in search engines and how well it will be accepted by your target audience. People won’t wait for longer than seconds before your site’s data loads.
If your site is slow, chances are that people will simply leave for your competitor’s page.
In fact, there are lots of ways to speed up your WordPress site. Here are several of the major steps that you can take in order to speed up your WordPress site today:
- Enable WordPress caching plugin on your site (it dynamically saves an HTML version of your site to reduce database requests and speed up your web page);
- Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network stores copies of your website content – images, JavaScript, CSS – and delivers it to your visitors via a network of servers around the world);
- Update your PHP;
- Use only quality images;
- Optimize images that are available on your site’s pages;
- Clean up your plugins;
- Clean up your database.
Will the installation of a range of plugins to your site slow down its performance. That’s not the quantity but size and quality of plugins that you add to your WordPress site. Large plugins typically include functionality for just about everything that can simplify the plugin management process for you. However, it can also slow down your site.
Also, installing a number of different plugins on your web page can result in the plugins conflict. For example, WooCommerce doesn’t work with W3 Total Cache.
What Are the Best Ways to Protect My Data?
WordPress is used on every 4th website that's present on the contemporary web. With the growing popularity of the CMS, it's logical to assume that it can become a target for hackers and scammers. WordPress is well known for its frequent system updates. However, in order to ensure that your data remains always protected, there are several steps that you need to take in order to keep your WordPress site secure.
- Use a strong password on your site.
- Backup your data regularly.
- Use plugins and themes from secure and reliable websites. Don't download extensions from forums or third-party sharing sites.
- Update your WordPress installation, theme, and plugins regularly. If any plugin that's installed o your WordPress site wasn't updated during the last two years, then it's better to consider switching to a new one.
- Keep your WordPress site spam-free. One of the best ways to control spam on your site is through the installation of the Akismet plugin. With its help, you can fitter and prevent the spam by means of built-in features and settings. If a plugin installation is not your top choice, then you can apply stricter rules to leaving comments on your WordPress site. This can be achieved in your WordPress dashboard through Settings > Discussion. While letting only registered or logged-in customers to post comments on your site, you can prevent spam from appearing on your website. It's rather time-consuming to clean up comments on your web page, so it's better to apply stricter rules to posting comments and discourage spanners from posting on your site.
How to Add eCommerce Elements to My WordPress Site?
WordPress is no longer considered to be a blogging-only CMS. It's suited for a wide range of topics and niches. You can use it for online portfolios, business or corporate projects, as well as eCommerce sites. The latter is made possible due to the WooCommerce plugin.
Whenever you decide to add eCommerce features to your site keep in mind that HTTPS is required to encrypt data on your site and provide customers with secure site browsing experience.
One of the quickest ways to add eCommerce elements to your site is through the installation of a WooCommerce theme to your domain. As a rule, such pre-made web solutions are loaded with all tools and features that are needed for a quick start of your eCommerce project. This includes ready-made designs, live demos, advanced filters, online shopping, a product preview, and a range of other options.
How do you create a Contact Form in WordPress?
It's essential to provide your visitors with a selection of opportunities to get in touch with you via your site. This can be achieved with the help of contact form plugins for WordPress. There are both free and premium extensions available at your disposal. If you give preference to freebies, then the Contact Form 7 plugin can be your best choice. if you are looking for a premium and more powerful solutions, then Gravity Forms is worth checking out. With the help of this paid plugin for WordPress, you can capture opt-in email, create donate form for charity organizations, collect payments, and more.
What's the Best Way to Track Performance of My Site?
Google Analytics is the leading tool that lets you analyze the performance of your site in real-time. This is one of the fundamental indicators of users engagement with every page and piece of data that's shared on your site. It reveals user behaviors on your site. It also lets you discover who visits your site, what they do while they are on it, as well as how long people stay on your web page.
How Do I Integrate My WordPress Blog with Social Media Widgets?
There are plenty of ways to integrate your WordPress website with social media widgets. For example, this can be done code-free by means of page builders similar to Elementor. As you work with visual editors, you simply drag the needed widgets and drop them to pages, posts or layout sections of your site.
If you work with WordPress Live Customizer, then you will need to navigate to the Widgets area and find Text Widget over there. Drag and drop it into the sidebar area or footer of your web page.
Additionally, you can integrate your site with social media WordPress plugins that will add social sharing widgets to your web page, let you count the number of your followers, subscribe to your updates, etc. Some of the most popular social media WordPress plugins include Social Count Plus, Social Media Auto Publish, OnePress Social Locker, etc.
How do you include a video in WordPress posts?
There is no doubt in the fact that users enjoy pictures and videos more than written data. The way you integrate your WordPress site with video data may vary depending on the type of theme that you use on your site. The most basic way to do this is to copy and paste the video URL in the content editing area. You can also copy and paste the URL into the add media section and the chosen video will be automatically displayed in your post or a web page. WordPress allows you to adjust the video presentation through simple adjustments of height and width of the pixels to fit the screen.
Over to You
We hope that these questions and answers post provided you with the fundamentals and knowledge base that are needed for a successful launch of our WordPress site. If there are other questions that you want to be highlighted in our future publications, please feel free to comment on this article. We'll be happy to continue this Q&A block with more useful reads.