As promised I am holding a vote each month to decide on 2 new sites to be added to the feed – I received the following submissions :

• WP Force
• Pippins Plugins
• Chris Lema
• Winning WP
• Bob WP
• WP Teach
• Matt Report
• WP Daily Themes

Take a look at the sites that have been submitted and then cast your vote below to see who you would like to be added. Voting will last till friday and the top 2 sites will be added to the master feed.

Thanks to everyone who took time to submit their sites, if you’d like to see yours added to the next vote then get in touch.

The post A Better Planet: Vote for New Member Websites #1 appeared first on WPLift.

Who doesnt like free domain names? Maybe you could think up a fun WordPress side-project to work on ?

Visit Namecheap »

Namecheap in their own words

Namecheap are a leading ICANN accredited domain registrar and web host, priding themselves on their unparalleled levels of support and competitive pricing. With packages catering to all budgets they are a great choice for a new blog, with the ability to upgrade as your site grows. One click install of over 100 apps, including WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal.

How to Enter

To enter, use the widget below – you can gain entries by leaving a comment, liking our facebook pages, following us on Twitter, tweeting and liking this post.

The competition will run for 7 days, end date Monday 24th June.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The post Namecheap Competition: Win 1 of 5 Free Domain Names appeared first on WPLift.

Last week my friend AJ from WPExplorer launched a new theme company called Authentic themes, I don’t know how he has the time to create so many great looking themes – very impressive! Anyway, take a look at the site as he is offering a load of good themes for a yearly price of just $40.

If you need an ad-management plugin for WordPress I created a special offer for my own WPAdCenter plugin, you can get 50% off for the next 24 hours only by using the code: JUNESPECIAL50

This is our (sort of ) weekly WordPress news roundup post, you can view previous news roundups on this tag. I also post frequent WordPress links on Twitter all week, follow WPLIft here if you are on Twitter. Our facebook page is growing nicely with over 2500 members now so please “Like” us on Facebook. Finally, I’m also on Pinterest so you can add me there as well.

WordPress News and Articles

• Custom vs Pre-made WordPress Themes – A Look at the Pros & Cons – One of the first things you’ll need to decide is if your needs can be met by a pre-made theme with some customizations or if you need a fully custom theme developed just for you
• Functions.php vs Plugin, Who Wins? – When it comes to introducing custom functionality into a WordPress project, the debate between functions.php vs. plugin usage is nothing new
• WordPress News Sites: Are They Worth Paying For? – There’s no money in starting a WordPress-centric news website, according to Jeff Chandler, who has one piece of advice for anyone thinking about giving it a go: don’t bother
• On WordPress news sites – There has been a bit of talk about WordPress news sites recently
• When Commercial Themes Bundle Commercial Plugins, Users Lose – Coen Jacobs developer for WooThemes has used his personal site to vent about commercial themes bundling commercial plugins
• Tom Willmot Interview - Tom Willmot (@tomwillmot) is co-founder & managing director of Human Made Limited, a WordPress development company specializing in high-end WordPress sites
• Interview With Brand New Theme Club – TeslaThemes – TeslaThemes is a brand new theme club with the goal of producing one theme per month.
• WordPress Hosting: It’s Tough, For Good Reason – I woke this morning to more news that yet another known player in our relatively-large ecosystem and space may actually be getting into the WordPress Managed Hosting space

Tutorials and How-Tos

• How To: Migrate Your Site to WordPress from HTML, Joomla and Drupal – These tips covering migrating to WordPress from another platform aim to help make the transition as painless as possible
• How To: Automatically Backup Your WordPress Website to the Cloud for Free – BackWPUp enables you to backup your WordPress database and base directory to cloud storage sites
• How to Create Super Cool WordPress Category Pages – How important are the category pages on your site? Are they just an afterthought? Are they drab and lackluster?
• Integrating Multiple Choice Quizzes in WordPress – Creating the Backend – Creating a multiple choice quiz in WordPress can be a very exciting and profitable task
• Turn WordPress Into a Social Network with WP Symposium – Plugins such as WP Symposium enable you to use WordPress to power your very own social network with a forum, activity wall, member directory, and a whole lot more
• The WordPress Coding Standards: Indentation, Space Usage, and Trailing Spaces – The entire purpose of this series to help expose the WordPress Coding Standards, why they matter, and how to write quality WordPress code
• Core Caching Concepts in WordPress – The purpose of this article is to provide a framework for thinking about caching. It discusses core caching concepts that can be difficult to grasp when first working with caching in web development projects

Resources & Freebies

• More Free WordPress Business & Corporate Themes for 2013 – This post is an effort collect a sampling of the best free business and corporate themes from 2013 all in one place
• 40 Premium Business & Corporate Themes Part 7 – More people than ever before are using WordPress and themes like the one’s I’ve rounded up below to grow their businesses online
• 30 WordPress Themes for Parties, Weddings & Entertainment Events- For today’s roundup I’ve collected 30 fantastic WordPress themes for events and entertainment sites
• How To: Improve the WordPress Search – 7 Completely Free Tools & Plugins – For years now it’s been said the web over that the default search feature for WordPress is…well, pretty awful. Not only does it sort by date instead of relevancy but it also ignores categories, tags, custom post types and comments when returning results
• WordPress Video Training & Online Courses: Options & Recommendations – Learning how to use WordPress and increasing your existing WP skillset has never been easier, thanks to the large number of training options available today
• 20 Tutorials to Develop WordPress Plugin – I have compiled 20 tutorials for developers to know how to develop wordpress plugins

The post The Weekly WordPress News, Tutorials & Resources Roundup No.32 appeared first on WPLift.

Soundstage

Making a good first impression online is huge in how bands are perceived. The Soundstage theme for bands will wow everyone who visits in seconds with it’s impressive slider and slick home page layout. It offers a complete website including MP3 streaming with online store, discography, photos, videos, tour dates, and blogs.

• Full Details | Price: $69

Faded

The Faded theme is an incredible all-in-one WordPress Theme for bands who want to have great design and tons of options.

It includes a built-in HTML5 audio player widget, Facebook comments, videos, and photo albums. This theme has almost everything a band would need out-of-the-box.

• Full Details | Price: $79

Slipmat

The Slipmat theme is one of the first WordPress themes created specifically for DJs. It’s packed with music-related features, so you can get a great website up and running out-of-the-box. We’ve meticulously gone over what a DJ would need in a website and have made sure it is simple to set up.

DJ’s and music artists always have a high need for displaying media content. The Slipmat theme includes solutions for everything including streaming MP3′s, videos, and photos. It has a music player at the header of every page, so your audience can always listen to the music no matter where they end up on your site.

You’ll have the ability to post videos, photo albums, and discography with ease. The Slipmat theme takes care of organizing and displaying it all in the most user-friendly way possible.

• Full Details | Price: $79

Music Theme

The ultimate WordPress theme for bands and musicians! Play your music. Sell your music. Sell your merchandise. List tour dates. Create a discography. And much more.

The Music Theme features everything a musician needs to promote their talent. With a fully responsive design, the theme molds beautifully to mobile devices. It features an abundance of customization options — allowing for colors, textures and images to be changed with ease. Several page templates are included for multiple layout options, displaying slideshows, an album discography, tour dates and more.

In the past, musicians have had to seek out multiple solutions for their website needs — with separate sites for selling merchandise, listing tour dates and playing audio merged into a “Frankenstein” solution. Not any more! With the Music Theme, all these features are available under one roof. Music is a passion of ours, and we wanted to create a solution perfect for the music industry.

• Full Details | Price: $69

Vibration

Vibration is a responsive premium music & event’s theme. It’s not only unique but Vibration is the first music theme to feature a page builder and loads of options to help create your perfect music or event’s website. Vibration also comes with 2 premium sliders Revolution Slider, LayerSlider and a Event’s countdown.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Wedding

Wedding is a Powerful Single Page Responsive WordPress Theme. With this theme, you can easily create a wedding related website, but you can also use it for other purposes too, everything is flexible and easy to customize.

• Full Details | Price: $35

Wedding Invite

Check out this awesome, modern and easy to customize one page wedding invitation website. It is designed for young couples who are looking for something different then standard online invitation cards. It’s modern, it’s playful, it’s extraordinary, it’s perfect for both of you!

• Full Details | Price: $40

Nite Pop

NitePop is a wordpress theme specially designed for Bands and music websites. This template is easy to modify and ready to be up and running out of the box.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Rock4Life

Rock4Life is a WordPress theme for bands and musicians.

• Full Details | Price: $40

Getting Married

Simple, beautiful and responsive WordPress wedding theme. Very suitable for marriage websites, marriage agencies, or wedding related shops.

• Full Details | Price: $40

Moreno

Moreno is a Wedding Event WordPress Theme. It’s super simple. It has a responsive design meaning your content will be displayed beautifully on all mobile devices.

• Full Details | Price: $35

SoundAnimal

SOUNDANIMAL is complete entertainment wordpress theme. It comes with a lot of features. It can be used for any site. It is perfect for any entertainment websites.

• Full Details | Price: $40

Unique Wedding

Unique Wedding is a clean, fully responsive, light, fast, professional, flexible, modern & easy WordPress Template. Intuitive and ready with the most modern Technologies. Built with HTML5 & CSS3, based on Twitter Bootstrap & SEO Ready, we included all features you need to create your Wedding web site. Beautiful design & super easy to use. – & we are Always Improving – Layer Slider included (15$ value). Perfect for: WEDDINGS, BABY & BRIDE SHOWERS, EVENTS, HOTELS… and much more.

• Full Details | Price: $40

Muse

Muse is the badass WordPress theme for all who love music, such as music bands, musicians, DJs, producers, labels or organizers of events and festivals. Theme has amazing modern and fresh design that will never get tired of you and your fans. Design you can freely adjust according to your fancy, there are millions of ways to do this. This very strong theme that offers perfect organization of all necessary data such as Events, Albums, Galleries and Videos. The theme also serves as a great blogging tool. Theme can be displayed on all devices from mobile phones to desktop computers (smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops), is amazingly fluid and responsive. Just try to resize your browser window and you’ll see. Source code of theme is highly semantic and well structured, which is also very good for all search engines – SEO optimalized.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Soul

The Soul theme features an elegant,clean and minimal look to give your wedding site an outstanding look. Setup your wedding site now using our Soul Responsive WordPress Wedding theme.

• Full Details | Price: $40

Musico

Musico is a fully customizable theme specifically tailored to the needs of musicians. It allows you to manage all your albums and display them in an awesome full screen and sidebar audio player. Musico supports buy links so users can go to buy your music with one click. Upcoming events/performances management is built right in so your fans will know where and when you are on stage.

• Full Details | Price: $40

Wedding Day

Wedding Day is a HTML5/CSS3 optimized, Bootstrap powered responsive theme perfect for wedding invitation, personal and business websites. The theme also comes with RSVP support so you can use any plug-in with this theme.

• Full Details | Price: $35

GeekLove

GeekLove is a beautiful, clean, minimal and responsive WordPress theme for wedding. It’s even more beautiful on retina displays. With an elegant design and rich features GeekLove allows you to create a website for your wedding in minutes!

• Full Details | Price: $40

Game Over

Thank you for choosing CosmoThemes and purchasing one of our Premium WordPress Themes – your choice is greatly appreciated!

Game Over is an elegant and romantic wedding event theme with a powerful drag-and-drop layout builder intended for couples that are looking for engagement or wedding planning theme or an online invitation card.

• Full Details | Price: $35

The Big Day

Welcome to The Big Day! : A feature-rich, easy-to-use responsive WordPress theme built on the popular Super Skeleton theme system (with a community of over 10,000 users). It’s designed for users, not geeks – all by a couple brothers in Southern California who just loves making rockin’ WP themes for other folks. WP 3.5 Ready!

• Full Details | Price: $40

K-Boom

K-BOOM is one of the powerful Music & Events WordPress Theme, it is meant to serve for Music Projects, Events, Portfolio or just for Blogging. It is a theme with ultra responsive layout adapting perfectly and allowing you to visit it from any devices you want. Being created with user experience in mind our customers will be more happy and with few click’s your theme is installed.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Clinto

Clinto is a responsive HTML5 wordpress theme designed for event (festivals, fiers, exhibitions, concerts) websites. It combines emotional parts with functional parts.

Huge Slideshow, quotes and background images should affects the user’s attention as long as news, calendar events, and information pages should provide all the informations the user need to know about the event.

• Full Details | Price: $40

Rock Palace

Rock Palace is a responsive music, portfolio WordPress Theme that can be used to create a versatile WordPress-powered website with many layout options and unlimited color variations. Rock Palace has a convenient Administration panel which provides tons of options to manage and modify any aspect of the theme – it is well suited for both beginners with no coding knowledge and developers.

• Full Details | Price: $40

Premiere

Premiere is a powerful video-based theme that is custom post driven, separating your video posts from your blog content. With a custom single video page template with great social sharing links, the option for your site visitors to recommend videos and a featured home page slider this theme helps videographers, and movie fans alike – with great custom-ability.

• Full Details | Price: $55

Hitched

Hitched is a responsive, retina-ready WordPress theme designed for couples who want a beautiful website to celebrate their wedding day, or any website that needs a romantic touch.
Hitched is a 2-for-1 deal, with two gorgeous colour schemes: A darker version featuring complementary tones of charcoal and peach; and a light version combining shades of chocolate, pink and peach. Both colour schemes also have three separate background textures, so you can choose the combination that works perfectly for you.

• Full Details | Price: $35

The post 30 WordPress Themes for Parties, Weddings & Entertainment Events appeared first on WPLift.

Depending on the current format of your site, whether it is a flat HTML website or is using another CMS like Joomla or Drupal, the process for migration will be different. However, by following these WordPress migration tips you can do your best to ensure it goes off without a hitch, while taking the opportunity to improve your site.

Things to Do First

There are a number of things you can do before starting the migration process that will make it run more smoothly and help improve the end product.

Functionality of your Existing Site

Evaluating your existing site can help you decide which features you will need to use in WordPress, and which plugins you will need to install, in order to have access to the same features and functionalities on your new WP site. These could include:

• Contact, email subscription and registration forms
• Media management
• Multi-language support
• Multiple authors
• Membership areas

As you might need to use plugins to have access to the same features in WordPress, now is a good time to start finding the right ones that will allow you to offer the same functionality on your site.

Evaluate the Navigation

The menu system in WordPress, along with the many sidebar widgets available should cover most navigation and menu configurations your existing site might have. However, the migration process is a great time to refine and improve your current navigation system which while it may have been fit for purpose initially, might have been outgrown by your site overtime.

How Good is your Content

A migration is also a good time to take a look at the content of your site and see if it still relevant and necessary. Cutting out the deadwood can help streamline and optimise your site making it more useful to your visitors and easier to navigate.

Get Familiar with WordPress

If you are new to WordPress then it is a good idea to get familiar with the platform before planning too much of your migration strategy. Now is a good time to decide how you want to categorise and tag your content when importing it into WordPress and which features you will be using. Understanding how WordPress works and the different themes and plugins that are available can help you fully plan your migration project reducing much of the guesswork and surprises that can occur along the way.

Moving from a Flat HTML Site to WordPress

If your site currently takes the form of a flat or static HTML website and you’d like to move to the WordPress platform, your best option might be to manually copy and paste the HTML code into a new WordPress install. If your site is relatively small, this shouldn’t be too much of an undertaking.

You can paste the existing HTML directly into the WordPress HTML editor without too much trouble. Providing you can add any custom styles to the CSS files of your chosen themes, the appearance of the content should migrate easily enough.

However, if your site is large or the number of HTML pages you wish to import is vast, then using an HTML to WordPress plugin could speed things up considerably. Some of the free plugins available allow you to the import just the content part of the pages, ignoring the headers, footers and sidebars of the pages which you wouldn’t want added to your WordPress posts or pages as the platform comes with its own non-content page areas.

HTML Import 2 is a well-regarded free plugin that can help you migrate from an HTML site to WordPress.  While a plugin like this is good at importing the content and keeping the formatting styles that have been used, it isn’t going to be much help when it comes to migrating the design and appearance of the site.

If your existing HTML site has a basic design and layout, then modifying an existing clean WordPress theme like Twenty Twelve to meet your needs could be a fun project. If the prospect if designing your own child theme doesn’t sound appealing, a service like Theme Matcher might be able to help you convert your existing design into a theme. However, migrating to WordPress is also the perfect opportunity to update the design of your site, taking advantage of one of the many great WP themes available.

Migrating from Joomla

Joomla is a popular CMS and if you have made the decision to migrate your site to WordPress, the good news is that the task can be completed relatively easily. However, there are a few caveats to highlight first:

• The design such as the templates and themes will have to be recreated once the content has been imported
• Functionality from modules or plugins will also have to be recreated using corresponding WordPress plugins

Follow these steps to complete the switch from Joomla to WordPress:

• Install WordPress on your new domain (if using an existing site you may need to delete all content)
• Install the free FG Joomla to WordPress plugin on your new WP site
• Go to the Joomla importer screen in your WP site at Tools > Import and select the Import Joomla tool
• Enter the requested details for your Joomla site and click the ‘import content’ button
• The time taken will depend on the size of your site
• Once the automated import is finished you will be reminded to modify internal links so click on the ‘modify internal links’ button to begin
• If any errors occurred during the process, check the FAQ for this plugin.

Using the free version of this plugin allows you to migrate Joomla sections as WP categories, migrate categories from Joomla as WP sub-categories, import posts as either WP posts or pages and migrate images in a number of ways to match your WP settings amongst other things. With a positive rating from users, this process is a headache-free way of moving from Joomla to WordPress.

See the testing migration section at the end of this article to check all went well.

Migrating from Drupal

When it comes to migrating from Drupal to WordPress, there isn’t a selection of plugins to choose from for simplifying this task. The whole process requires a lot more work on your part than when migrating from other popular platforms but it can be done if you are able to work though the steps.

If your Drupal site is small, then you might find it easier to manually copy and paste the content into WP. Before starting, make a note of the URLs of each page and keep track of any internal links using a spreadsheet.

As the process for migrating from Drupal 6 to WordPress 3 is quite detailed, I will simply link to a few useful resources and services that can help you achieve your goal:

• Migrating Drupal 6 to WordPress 3
• Migrate to WP
• CMS to CMS

If you do decide to go it alone and migrate from Drupal to WP ensure you do a thorough backup of your site before beginning and check the post-migration testing section at the bottom of this article.

Migrating from Other Platforms

There are many other WordPress migration tools that can help you get the job done as easily and quickly as possible. The article on wordpress.org covering importing content provides resources for migrating from some of the most popular platforms.

Testing the Migration

Once you feel that the migration process has been finished, it’s time to do some testing to ensure it all went ahead as planned. With smaller sites, that is simply a case of visiting each page and checking that they are displaying their content as intended and that the functionality is in good working order. For larger sites, using a plugin like the free Broken Link Checker is a good option.

Here are some of the main steps involved in testing whether the migration to WordPress was a success or not:

Check the content for correct assignment to categories and the use of tags. If migrating from another CMS check any user comments that have been migrated to ensure they are displayed in the correct order including replies.

Check for malfunctioning links on your new WordPress site by testing the navigation elements as well as looking for any images that have not been linked to correctly and are now no longer being displayed. While some links may not be broken, they may be linking to the wrong location so bear that in mind when performing this check.

Check for incorrect styling on the new pages, looking for images that are no longer being displaying correctly such as incorrect alignment as well text formatting that has gone awry. Compare the source code from the original site with the new WordPress site for any discrepancies or if in doubt, use the WordPress visual editor to quickly recreate a similar effect.

Look for unwanted WordPress extras such as default sidebar widgets being displayed or any unwanted functionality that has been added to the site by installed plugins. If any are discovered, check the settings of any plugins and edit them to remove any unwanted addons.

Good Luck

Hopefully this guide will have given you enough information to plan your migration effectively and get the job done without too much pain. While it can be a lot of work in some cases, migration also provides a number of benefits beyond moving to WordPress, such as updating your site, clearing out old content and adding new features.

The post How To: Migrate Your Site to WordPress from HTML, Joomla and Drupal appeared first on WPLift.

With so many WordPress training options available, finding the gold amongst all the rubble can be difficult. This list of the best WordPress training options will help point you in the right direction and ensure you find the training content that best meets your needs.

YouTube WordPress Channels

YouTube can be a good source to turn to when it comes to learning pretty much anything. However, the quality of the videos and their content can be questionable at times, making trial and error a large part of finding a suitable video tutorial to follow.

While this option is free, it can be time consuming to find a video that is produced well enough to be easily followed as well as covering the exact topic you were hoping. Due to the problems associated with finding high quality video tutorials on YouTube, there are still a healthy number of premium online video tutorial services in operation.

Here are some good WordPress YouTube channels to get you started on your journey:

• wpmudev
• Learn WordPress 3
• Learning WordPress WP Queen
• Bluehost WordPress tutorials

Premium Online Training Courses

One effective way to learn WordPress is to sign up for a premium online training course. These can usually either be paid for with a one-off fee, or by becoming a member and paying on an on-going basis. With many course providers, membership with a recurring fee tends to include access to multiple courses and can be a very cost effective way to follow many courses. Here are some of the top online WordPress training course offerings:

Lynda WordPress Courses

Lynda.com is a well-known source of online training videos covering many computer software packages and related subjects. Amongst their vast library of offerings are currently 29 WordPress training courses. The WordPress courses at Lynda.com are aimed at users with a wide range of abilities and include a good selection of topics including:

• Installing and running WordPress locally
• Creating and editing custom themes
• Building responsive themes
• Creating custom widgets and plugins with PHP

The video courses are in general very good and teach you exactly what they claim to. With nearly 30 WordPress courses available, this is a good place to turn to in order to quickly build up your knowledge of the platform.

The basic membership package at Lynda.com gives you access to all of the courses for $25 per month, you can also try before you buy with their seven day free trial.

Tuts+ Premium

Tuts+ Premium, part of the Envato network, is one of the biggest services offering premium online training courses and tutorials covering technology-related topics. You can sign up for a low-cost monthly membership or pay yearly, which gets you access to a range of courses on WordPress, as well as many other topics.

When it comes to learning WordPress online, the Tuts+ Premium selection includes advanced plugin development, building themes from scratch, and how to be a WordPress web designer, amongst their list of WordPress-related tutorials.

Also part of the Envato network is Wptuts+ which has a large number of free WordPress tutorials to sink your teeth into, covering everything from developing plugins and themes to building a business around the platform.

WP101 Online Video Courses

WP101 is an online video tutorial repository catering solely to WordPress users. The videos, so far at least, cover the more basic functions and features of WordPress, but are sufficient enough to give those new to self-hosted WordPress sites a good grounding in the platform.

Thoughtfully the courses are listed in chronological order, allowing you to work your way through them, increasing your WordPress knowledge from scratch to fairly accomplished, without inadvertently watching the tutorials out of sync and getting in a muddle.

Topics covered include: creating a new post, how to embed video, building custom menus and understanding the configuration settings.  With three subscriptions packages starting from $19, using WP101 is an affordable way to start learning WordPress. The courses are now available in Spanish too.

Learnable.com

Another service delivering online WordPress training courses is learnable.com, who is currently offering 10 courses and books covering WordPress. The courses range from web design with WordPress, to building your own themes and plugins, through to a course on WordPress development which is aimed at developers with a solid knowledge of PHP.

Classroom Based WordPress Training

If you prefer to learn in a classroom environment, with desks and chairs and a teacher, then looking for a WordPress training course in your area could be the right fit for you. However, depending on where you are based will play a huge role in what is available to you.

Here are some examples of WordPress classroom based courses which can give you an idea of how they work and what can be covered and taught:

• WordPress Weekend Course, Central Saint Martins, London: this is a two day course offered by the prestigious University of the Arts London and covers how to setup and begin promoting your blog.
• WordPress Course, Noble Desktop, New York: delivered over two days, this course covers everything form installing WordPress through to creating templates and modifying themes. They also offer certificate programs, which the WordPress.org module is part of.
• WordPress Workshop, learn WP, Toronto: this WordPress workshop covers everything you need to know in order to create your own website in two days.

The Best WordPress Training Option

The best WordPress training option is going to be the one which most effectively meets your needs in terms of what it is you want to learn and how the course is delivered.

Before signing up for any membership sites or paying for a course, it is a good idea to determine exactly what your learning goals are, and what you want to be able to achieve by the end of the programme; whether it is being able to install and manage your own WordPress installation, learning how to offer WordPress-based web design services or advance your WordPress theme and plugin development skills.

By doing this, you can increase your chances of success and finding the right WordPress training option for you.

The post WordPress Video Training & Online Courses: Options & Recommendations appeared first on WPLift.

Its WordPress! Its free. Not just free, its do-whatever-you-want-with it free. Now that’s something.

Let me introduce you to this wonderful WordPress backup plugin called BackWPUp. Honestly speaking, whenever I think of BackWPUp, I get a “faith in humanity restored” kinda feeling. The sheer number of free features available in this plugin speaks volumes about it. Frankly, I think this is one plugin every WordPress site should have.

Features:

BackWPUp enables you to backup your WordPress database and base directory to cloud storage sites. The base directory contains every single file in your WordPress site since it was created.

The option to schedule your backup, on a daily, weekly or monthly basis makes this plugin so versatile. Apart from this, you can compress your backups to tar and zip archives and upload them to your personal FTP server, or keep in the host server or even email them. Once a backup job is completed, BackWPUp will email you an error/status/confirmation log.

Configuring a job is pretty simple, thanks to the plugin’s easy to use instructions. Here are a couple of additional features:

1. Automated backup to cloud storage sites including:

• Amazon S3
• Dropbox
• Microsoft Azure
• RackSpaceCloud
• SugarSync

2. Repair, optimize and backup the WordPress database prior to backup.

3. Multisite is also supported, provided you’re the network administrator.

4. Optional folders also included, so you can reduce the size of daily backups.

Installation

Since this plugin is free, you can simple search for it under Plugins > Add New > Search and type “backwpup”. Then install it. This process is faster. Alternatively you can download the plugin, extract it and upload the contents of the archive via FTP to the plugins folder available under wp_includes.

How to add a job

• To add a job navigate to BackWPUp > Add New Job
• Enter the job name – try to avoid special characters
• Under tasks, check the ones you need according to the frequency of the job. If you’re looking for a daily backup, then a you wouldn’t need a database check/optimization.
• Choose the backup destination – its always safer to use a secure cloud storage service like Dropbox – anything but the local server
• If you’re using Dropbox, then you would need to authenticate it. Run a full Dropbox re-authentication.
• Enter a valid email address – individual job logs will be sent here.
• Under the Files tab, you should again choose which folders to backup according to the nature of the job’s frequency. You don’t add/change themes daily. Therefore there’s no need to include the themes and plugins folder in a daily backup. However, in a weekly or monthly, backup, its a good idea to include everything.

Scheduling a job

Here are a couple of tips when it comes to scheduling a job:

• First off, if you do not have over 20 people from different time-zones working around the clock, then there’s no need for an hourly backup. They put tremendous pressure on the server, and you don’t want to waste resources.
• Using WP-CLI is a good idea, but it requites a quite a bit of technical knowledge, so I wouldn’t recommend it.
• The best option is to use cron jobs to schedule a backup. For example, the settings displayed in the picture below, runs the backup job every Monday at 3:30 PM or 1530 hours.
• If you’re maintaining a portfolio site which is subject to minimal change, then you might want to consider the manual option. Simply run the job as you see fit.

Couple of notes:

• If you’re on a shared hosting server, then there’s a chance that they’ve disabled cURL. In that case, uploading to cloud storage services won’t work.
• If cURL isn’t supported, you could try FTP instead.
• Remember, any backup job consumes a considerable amount of resources -right from indexing files to compressing, then upload and finally emailing the logs. So if you’re on a shared hosting server or a shared VPS, you should schedule your backup jobs judiciously. Any abuse of server resources – intentional or otherwise – might end up in getting your hosting account cancelled. Hosting providers have a very strict policy against this.

Conclusion

With over 750,000+ downloads in the WordPress plugins directory, BackWPUp has started to offer a premium version with additional features. Nonetheless, the free version has all the features that a regular WordPress user might require. You should give this plugin a try.

What are your thoughts on this plugin? Do you employ a free or a paid solution for your backup needs? Let us know in the comments section below!

Download BackWPUp Check out the Pro Version

The post How To: Automatically Backup Your WordPress Website to the Cloud for Free appeared first on WPLift.

More people than ever before are using WordPress and themes like the one’s I’ve rounded up below to grow their businesses online. As a result, theme authors and WordPress shops are creating more business themes than ever, which is good for everyone. More options for business owners and more purchases for theme authors. I’ve done my best to put only the most attractive, newest, and highest quality themes in my installments of this series. So hopefully, this post will help you find what you’re looking for. Enjoy!

Oh, and if you’d like to check out even more premium WordPress business and corporate themes after this post, feel free to visit our past installments: part one, part two, part three, part four, part five and part 6.

Revenant

Revenant is the most highly premium and most advanced WordPress Theme we have ever created. It is very flexible, with a clean & crisp design and is suitable for any kind of business. It features a premium Page Builder which will make your life a lot easier when creating new Pages for your Site.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Jasper

Jasper is a multi-purpose WordPress Theme. As the design and functions focus on education, it is perfect for Education organization, Events websites. WooCommerce is also integrated that makes Jasper suitable for any purposes.

• Full Details | Price: $50

Increase

Increase WordPress theme’s main feature – is an ability to change color easily precisely for any element. Great customization possibilities are offered by the new version of cmsmasters’ custom wordpress admin panel. The 1.2.1 admin version features all the functionality of 1.2 version, but also includes more customization options. In fact, your wordpress website can be easily turned into a completely custom-designed website, and there is no need to deal with any code for this. All the customization is playfully easy, reminds more of a game rather than website setup.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Circles

Circles is a very professional yet super-easy to use theme.

• Full Details | Price: $55

Olympus

Olympus is a responsive WordPress Theme (try resizing your browser), suited for business websites and users who want to showcase their work on a neat portfolio site. The Theme is built with KODDE Framework V2 with a lot of new options and Page Builder V2 with drag and drop and resizable blocks.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Emperor

Emperor is a super-duper customizable, responsive, multi-purpose WordPress Theme that everybody wants. This All-In-One package includes the awesome Revolution Slider – 15$. Theme is powered by the SMOF Options Panel, which provides tons of options to manage and modify any aspect of the theme – it is well suited for both beginners with no coding knowledge and developers.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Quentin

Quentin is the Premium Multipurpose WordPress Theme. It covers any type of usage: Personal, SmallBiz and Corporate.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Maxon

Maxon is a responsive Multipurpose WordPress Theme, it is Retina Ready that means it will automatically fits your screen size and looks just as great on the iPhone as it does on the desktop. The Theme comes with two main layout! Wide and Boxed and four different skin, Light , Dark , Light Transparent and Dark Transparent! Easily customizable via the WordPress Admin Interface, upload your own logo, change the background or the color of the theme in one click. You can customize each page to make each of them unique! Built-in swipe support for your portfolio, images and video. Maxon can be used for Business or Creative site.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Webbie

Designed with a dash of simplicity, a pinch of minimalism, and a healthy helping of elegance, Webbie is theme that lets you write, present & sell your ebook on wordpress with ease.

Its a responsive, opinionated premium theme built around making the writing, reading & selling of both ebooks and web books a breeze!

• Full Details | Price: $45

Blandit

Blandit is the theme for businesses, creatives and professionals. Packed with some cool and useful functions and effects it’s the perfect solution for the creative ones among us.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Dixit

Dixit is our absolutely new retina ready and ultra glance wordpres theme. This theme is provided in a simple clean design manner without any complicated effects which is exactly what you need for your business. This theme comes with tons of features and most important are powerful GT3 Page Builder, Premium Layerslider, Multi Language plugin support (WPML) and much more…

• Full Details | Price: $45

Inceptio

Inceptio is a multi-purpose WordPress theme with very flexible customization possibilities that can be successfully used for business, portfolio and personal websites.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Expression

Expression is a multi-purpose wordpress theme designed with business in mind. It includes 29 beautiful color styles, the ability to create any custom color style, a powerful page builder for every page, and many more great features.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Cleanium

We are Professional WordPress Development Team and focusing to help our customers and growing with together. Every support and every themes are from our heart and we will reply as fast as we can.

• Full Details | Price: $45

Avando

Avando is a clean & responsive corporate theme which is suitable for a wide range of businesses with just the right amount of options such as Staff and Portfolio post types but not bloated with millions of things you will never use.

• Full Details | Price: $49 (Developer Club: $99)

Pressco

Pressco is a very clean and tidy portfolio style theme for businesses or freelancers to show off their work.

• Full Details | Price: $49 (Developer Club: $99)

Elesoft

Elesoft is a big and bold business showcase theme with a full width slider and a bunch of great features!

• Full Details | Price: $49 (Developer Club: $99)

ThemeSoft

ThemeSoft is a clean & responsive portfolio theme for creatives, businesses and freelancers.

• Full Details | Price: $49 (Developer Club: $99)

Whiteside

Whiteside is our first responsive theme, it has a clean business feel, responsive slider and portfolio section.

• Full Details | Price: $49 (Developer Club: $99)

Busine

Busine is a clean theme for your business website – with a neat homepage you can customize by adding text widgets with your own icons and a large tagline box where you can tell your customers what you do. The homepage also displays your latest portfolio pieces if required and your latest news / blog posts.

• Full Details | Price: $49 (Developer Club: $99)

WP-Media

WP-Media is a responsive WordPress Theme which can be used for any business due to its clear design. The theme layout adjusts to small screens of any mobile devices. The template setting allows to configure lots of parameters like fonts, backgrounds, layouts colors and more. The Theme is using a responsive Grid Framework with “Mobile Ready” Layout.

• Full Details | Price: $39

Wultim

Wultim is a simple yet powerful WordPress theme with a lot of customization possibilities. The main advantage of this theme is Live Customization option which allows to tweak styles and settings, and preview those changes in real time!

• Full Details | Price: $49

Revonge

Revonge is a powerful responsive business/corporate/portfolio & blog premium WordPress theme. Revonge has been coded in HTML5 & CSS3, jQuery. Revonge will fit your large desktop screen, all the way down to your iPhone – and of course any Tablet or iPad. The clean, modern design can be used for any type of website; business, corporate, portfolio, products, etc, and with the unique layout options it provides, your possibilities are endless.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Finixe Corporate

A unique premium WordPress designed for the corporate world. It has outstanding features such as 7 color options, 64 background choices, 5 page templates and so on.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Quantum

Quantum is a very clean and minimal wordpress theme aside from its clean look it is also powerful theme with a very flexible layout you can design it for your self or use one of the layout templates that we created for you. it also has enough features and functionality to create your ideal website.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Megnor

Megnor is clean, highly customizable and fully responsive wordpress theme. Using TEMPLATEMELA FRAMEWORK, this theme has endless possibilities.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Procreativity

Procreativity is the professional Powerful and unique responsive design build with HTML5/CSS3. Procreativity is a clean and slick design that is suitable for a wide variety of websites. Procreativity clean, modern design can be used for any type of website; business, corporate, portfolio, blog, products, etc. Procreativity has a ton of awesome features its Cross Browser compatible and has very clean code.

• Full Details | Price: $49

UpToDate

UpToDate is an advanced, unique and powerful premium WordPress theme suited for both beginners or advanced web developers. It’s flexible, clean, Search Engine Optimized and comes with an advanced framework in order to make your life easier and build your site very quickly.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Kinetic

Kinetic is a clean, responsive and simply stunning WordPress theme with a fantastic array of features including full screen video and slider backgrounds. It uses HTML5, CSS3, jQuery and Bootstrap to create a fantastic interface for users. Kinetic also has a great range of customization options all pulled together in a powerful and intuitive options framework.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Finch

Finch is a brand new Responsive WordPress theme. It’s fresh & modern look with friendly features will make your website a standout. Mix up content on the homepage with widgets and shortcodes, choose your background color or set one of the 45+ custom patterns or upload you favorite background image. Build your own skin with special function who can change color each element on this theme or use one of 16 predefined skins right out from your WordPress Admin Panel. A theme so versatile that you can customize it to suit your business by simply changing a few settings. Great SEO(Search Engine Optimization) Finch is perfectly prepared to get a high ranking on search engines. This Theme is built with web standards and SEO best-practices in mind.

• Full Details | Price: $49

App Pro

App Pro Theme is a web masterpiece designed for app and software developers or can be used as a creative portfolio. It is perfect to promote your app or software product. It has a unique creatively designed horizontal interface. A very wall designed theme with blog, portfolio, product landing pages and unlimited colors. It is multilingual and supports WPML.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Reversi

Reversi is a responsive Multipurpose WordPress Theme, it is Retina Ready that means it will automatically fits your screen size and looks just as great on the iPhone as it does on the desktop. The Theme comes with two main layout! Wide and Boxed! Easily customizable via the WordPress Admin Interface, upload your own logo, change color of the theme in one click, change the background of the theme, header and footer, you can also change the typography using the Google fonts. You can customize each page to make each of them unique! Built-in swipe support for your portfolio, images and video. Reversi can be used for Business or Creative site.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Blocked

A Clean and Fresh HTML template, suitable for company or portfolio website, Blocked HTML template is easy to use and highly customizable. it is responsive template which has 20 Custom pages, 2 types of slider, 6 Color schemes, and so much more.

• Full Details | Price: $39

Sunland

Sunland is a awesome wordpress theme which brings many useful and most popular functions here. It’s very flexible , powered by our Wope Framework which has advance admin options to make your site very flexible,fully customizable.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Argo

The Argo is a complete e-Commerce WordPress theme, super flexible and has a fully responsive design (try resizing your browser). Built with HTML5 and CSS3 for business/corporate, photography and portfolio website. It comes with many cool features ex. Fullscreen Slideshow, Kenburns Slideshow, Unique Image Photo Draggabel Wall Gallery, Skin manager, Fullscreen Contact Map, Fullscreen Youtube and Vimeo Video, Customizable elements’s color, font and background image. There are also 50+ advanced shortcodes with Shortcode Generator support. You can also use 70+ custom fonts from Google Web Fonts. The clean, modern design can be used for any type of website; business, corporate, portfolio, products, etc.

• Full Details | Price: $59

Ayush

Ayush is a beautiful and clean business theme.

• Full Details | Price: $59

Zenith

Zenith – Ultimate Portfolio Theme is a ultra responsive theme for WordPress that you can do absolutely anything you want.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Evident

Evident is an Elegant and Minimal WordPress Theme suitable for any kind of creative and business use. With Evident Theme you could customize background colors, page layouts, fonts, sizes, areas, and much more. Every added option was thought with the main idea of personalize the website in an easy way, providing a unique design to every customer.

• Full Details | Price: $49

The Delicate

The Delicate is premium responsive multi-purpose WordPress theme. Designed by putting a lot of attention to the detail and clean design minded, it is suitable for any purposes such as corporate website, blog, portfolio or even personal. The Delicate is built for either website developers or non-technical guys. We provide a very user friendly and intuitive theme setting, theme customizer and page builder for you to create a unique website. The theme also features the amazing Revolution Slider Plugin with $15 value.

• Full Details | Price: $49

Concepto

Concepto is Responsive Clean WordPress Theme that you can use for creating business, cooperation, work project or marketing website. In addition, This theme can be customized with shortcode, options panel and more.

• Full Details | Price: $49

The post 40 Premium Business & Corporate Themes Part 7 appeared first on WPLift.

The Pros of a Custom WordPress Theme

There are two big pros to custom WordPress themes. The first is that you will be the only person and/or company online sporting that theme. With millions upon millions of blogs running WordPress, any pre-made theme is bound to be used by not just a few others – but many. So right out of the gate you have a big advantage in terms of setting yourself apart from the competition.

The second big advantage of a custom WordPress theme is custom functionality. WordPress and the plugins that run on it are notorious for keeping certain powerful elements (such as custom post type templates) just out of reach for the average user to fully leverage. But with a custom theme you can have your developer(s) come up with all of the custom elements you’ll need to succeed in your specific niche.

The Pros of a Pre-made WordPress Theme

There are also two very big pros to pre-made WordPress themes. The first is affordability. While some themes may be more expensive than others, they typically stay under $100. There is no custom option available for those kinds of prices. So if you can find a pre-made theme that meets all of your needs, you stand to save a lot of money.

The second big pro for pre-made WordPress themes is future-proofing. Granted, not every pre-made WordPress theme is made equal. Not by a long shot. But the best ones all come with regular updates, good support and a large/active community that can help with customizations, troubleshooting, etc. If you have someone create a custom theme for you, it’s very likely you’ll be on your own after it’s delivered.

The Cons of a Custom WordPress Theme

Obviously, the biggest con for someone considering a custom WordPress theme is cost. It’s not going to cost you hundreds of dollars (or Pounds, Euros, etc.), but thousands. So depending on your size and budget this could be an immediate deal breaker for many. That said though, it’s important to invest in your online presence. These days it can make or break you. So anything you spend on making your website an attractive and effective part of your business is a good investment.

The only other thing I would make sure to look into before deciding on a custom theme is whether or not future updates, bugs, etc. are going to be addressed by the developer. If they are not then you’ll have to find another developer or online WordPress Maintenance Service that can jump in where they leave off.

The Cons of a Pre-made WordPress Theme

To a large extent, the downsides of choosing a pre-made theme depend on who you buy from. Is their code clean? Do they follow the recommended WordPress development best practices? Such as separating out core functionality from theme design. What’s their support like? Do they have an active community forum for everyday troubleshooting? How often do they update? And so on.

The answers to these questions will be crucial to picking the right author or shop to buy your pre-made WordPress theme from. Only after these questions are answered correctly will you be able to look at the basics like price point, theme design and features.

Assuming you get all of that right, the one con that will always follow you no matter which pre-made theme you choose is limited customizability. Especially if you’re buying a theme because you’re unable to get what you want out of a theme you can create or customize on your own. For the most part, you’ll have to stay within the boundaries set up by that theme author and customize only the basics like theme colors, fonts and images.

Final Thoughts

I always like to close posts like this with an assurance that there is no right answer that covers all cases. As I mentioned during the post, your website is extremely important and a good deal of thought should go into how it is created and what purposes it will serve. So whatever you decide (pre-made or custom) you’ll want to take as many factors into account as possible before making your final choice.

My personal preference and what I recommend to my friends and clients, is to find a WordPress theme framework capable of doing what you want. If there is an existing child theme for that framework that suits your needs then you’re set. If not (and you’d like some other custom elements) then hire a developer that specializes in working with that framework.

Ideally you’ll get the best of both worlds: a solid framework from a reputable WordPress development shop that has great support, updatability, community, etc. and you’ll also get the custom elements you’re after too. In this way it might be possible to keep costs down to a minimum while still getting the custom look and functionality you’re after.

What are your thoughts on custom vs pre-made WordPress themes? Tell us all about it in the comments below!

The post Custom vs Pre-made WordPress Themes – A Look at the Pros & Cons appeared first on WPLift.

A common experience for a person searching for content on your WordPress website would be a (sometimes severe) lack of search results returned followed by “digging” through whatever does show up from the newest content to the oldest content before arriving at what might be the most relevant post to your query.

Like I said, pretty awful.

Thankfully there are several tools and services available to help remedy this problem. In today’s post I’ll be providing a brief description/overview of each option and making a recommendation at the end as to which tool(s) provide the optimum solution.

Relevanssi

As its name would suggest the Relevanssi plugin puts priority on relevancy when returning search results. It’s also highly configurable with a lot of nice features and options targeted at providing better search results and search experience.

It’s key features are:

• Search results sorted in the order of relevance, not by date.
• Fuzzy matching: match partial words, if complete words don’t match.
• Find documents matching either just one search term (OR query) or require all words to appear (AND query).
• Search for phrases with quotes, for example “search phrase”.
• Create custom excerpts that show where the hit was made, with the search terms highlighted.
• Highlight search terms in the documents when user clicks through search results.
• Search comments, tags, categories and custom fields.

Full Details & Free Relevanssi Download

Dave’s WordPress Live Search

Dave’s WordPress Live Search adds “live search” functionality to your WordPress site. As visitors type words into your WordPress site’s search box, the plugin continually queries WordPress, looking for search results that match what the user has typed so far.

The live search technique means that most people will find the results they are looking for before they finish typing their query, and it saves them the step of having to click a submit button to get their search results.

This functionality requires Javascript, but the search box still works normally if Javascript is not available.

Full Details & Free Download of Dave’s WordPress Live Search

Search Everything

Search Everything boasts that it also increases WordPress’ default search functionality but instead of being highly configurable it only takes three steps: Activate > Select Basic Options > Enjoy.

Here’s What Search Everything Does:

• Search Highlighting
• Search Every Page
• Search Every Tag
• Search Custom Taxonomies (new)
• Search Every Category
• Search non-password protected pages only
• Search Every Comment
• Search only approved comments
• Search Every Draft
• Search Every Excerpt
• Search Every Attachment (post type)
• Search Every Custom Field (metadata)
• Exclude Posts from search
• Exclude Categories from search

Full Details & Free Download of Search Everything

Better Search

Better Search replaces the default WordPress search engine with a more powerful search engine that gives search results relevant to the title and content of the post. This means that visitors to your blog will find will find what they are looking for quicker than if you didn’t have Better Search installed.

Better Search Features:

• Automatic: Once activated, Better Search will automatic replace your default WordPress search with more relevant search results.
• Relevance: Search results sorted by relevance automatically sorted by relevance. You can also turn off relevancy based searching, in which results are sorted by date.
• Control the results: Fine tune results by changing the weighting of post title and post content. Turn on BOOLEAN search to override the default NATURAL LANGUAGE search of mySQL.
• Popular searches: Find out what visitors are searching for on your blog. Display a list of popular search terms (daily and overall) on your blog in the form of a heatmap. Widget support for easy integration in your theme.
• Customisation: Support for a template file for perfect integration into your blog template. Alternatively, just input your own CSS styles in the Custom Styles tab in the Settings Page. Check the FAQ for more information.
• Supports cache plugins: Works with caching plugins like WP-Super-Cache and W3 Total Cache.

Full Details & Free Download of Better Search

Lift: Search for WordPress + Amazon CloudSearch

Lift: Search for WordPress is a free plugin that leverages the power of Amazon CloudSearch to improve your WordPress-powered site’s search experience. It does this by focusing on relevancy over dates, taking metadata into account, searching custom post types and much more. Obviously this route does require that you have an Amazon CloudSearch account.

Full Details & Free Download of Lift: Search for WordPress

Ref: helpful tutorial on getting started with Lift

WP Custom Google Search

There’s actually not a lot to tell you about this plugin. It’s Google Search made easy for your WordPress website. I’m sure everyone is familiar with Google.

There are a few drawbacks though. The main one being that unless you spring for a premium package with Google then your search results will have ads in them. If you don’t mind that though then this is a viable option. And of course you can always sign up for a paid plan with Google for ads free results.

Full Details & Free Download of WP Custom Google Search

Swiftype

The Swiftype Search plugin replaces the standard WordPress search with a better, more relevant search engine. It also gives you detailed insight into what your users are searching for, so you know which keywords to target when customizing your search engine results.

The base ranking algorithm is based on industry best-practices and provides more relevant results by default, but it also allows for any result set to be fully customized via the drag-and-drop interface for result reordering. To make customizations you simply create a Swiftype account and install the Swiftype Search plugin. You can then login to your Swiftype dashboard to customize results and read through detailed search analytics.

Swiftype Features & Customization Options:

• earch runs on our powerful servers – it doesn’t bog down your site, even if you have hundreds of thousands of posts.
• Works with your theme’s search.php template – drop in Swiftype and it just works.
• Fast typeahead autocomplete based on titles, tags, and author names.
• Search results automatically update when you save or delete content.
• Re-order search results with drag-and-drop from your Swiftype Dashboard.
• Impactful search analytics help you understand your users.
• Modify what types of posts, categories are searched by adding a hook.
• Change the autocomplete behavior with JavaScript.

Full Details & Free Download of Swiftype

Conclusion

Ok, so those are the options available. Which service should you use?

For most cases I would recommend a combination of Relevanssi and Dave’s WordPress Live Search. Relevanssi provides more powerful search features and more control over how you use them than any of the other free options listed. Combined with Dave’s WordPress Live Search you get the most relevant search and best search experience possible using free plugins.

On the other hand Google Search is always a solid option. If you’d like to avoid installing another plugin and it doesn’t bother you that there are ads in the results then it is hard to go wrong. They are after all the best search company in the world.

Then there’s Swiftype, which may be the best plugin listed here at the intersection of quality and simplicity. There’s very little to configure and the experience they deliver to both you and your site visitors is quite nice. The main drawback here of course is that the free account is rather ambiguous as to how much traffic it can handle and what exactly it’s limitations are in comparison to its premium offerings. It would be a shame to receive a traffic spike and have your search go down. The best way to make sure you’re getting the most out of this plugin is going to be paying for a plan that fits your site. Which can get pricy fast; but if you can afford it I’d say go for it.

What do you think? Have you used these plugins? If so, what was your experience? Tell us all about it in the comments below.

The post How To: Improve the WordPress Search – 7 Completely Free Tools & Plugins appeared first on WPLift.

Enjoy!

Customizr

A fully responsive theme, easy to customize and built with HTML5 & CSS3 upon the Twitter Bootstrap framework.The clean design can be used for any type of website : corporate, portfolio, business, blog, etc. Choose a skin, upload your logo, set up your social network profiles and you are done! It also includes a handy responsive slider generator (with call to action text and button) that can be embedded in any pages or posts. The theme supports five widgetized areas (two in the sidebars, three in the footer), up to three columns, nine post formats with special styles. It also comes with seven elegant skins and three handy featured page blocks for the front page.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Alexandria

Responsive WordPress Business theme with business style home page layout with welcome section, 3 product/services blocks and a client quote/testimonial section. 2 logo section layout options. 2 premade (Blue, Red) ready to use color schemes/skins. 3 widget areas in footer, 1 widget area in sidebar. 2 page layouts including a full width page template. Social media icons in footer.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Quark

Quark is your basic building block for creating beautiful, responsive custom themes. It’s a simple and elegant starter theme built on HTML5 & CSS3.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

SmartAdapt

Responsive HTML5 and CSS3, clean and customizable theme based on Zurb Foundation front end framework. This theme allows you to easily change various aspects of the design: background, logo or header image, etc. Powerful but simple theme with social share button support (facebook like, twitter share, google +1, Pin it).

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Pinzolo

Minimal WordPress theme designed by Dean Oakley @ Thrive Web Design

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Impulse

A very neat and clean blue, black and white business theme. The theme supports widgets. And features theme-options, threaded-comments and multi-level dropdown menu. A simple and neat typography.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Orbit

Orbit Theme adapts your website to mobile devices and the desktop. Theme Options with Color Schemes, Front Page for Business, Fonts Options (include Google Fonts), Social Networking, Slider in Front Page, Search Engine Friendly, 6 Widget Areas (3 in Front Page and 3 for Footer), 2 Menu Positions, 2 page templates with its sidebar and W3C Markup Validated. Support in English and Spanish. FREE Support: http://bitado.com/

• Full Details | Demo | Download

tdSimple

tdSimple is super clean, very simple and elegant WordPress theme. It is a responsive theme that looks good on any device. Get free support on http://tasko.us/support/

• Full Details | Demo | Download

FirmaSite

Free responsive WordPress theme with Buddypress and bbPress supports. Have 4 different layout: content-sidebar,sidebar-content, full content (long), full content(short). 13 different theme styles, Google Fonts, logo upload abilities. Unique 2 feature builtin: Promotion Bar and ShowCase. All options are using WordPress Theme Customizer feature so you can watch changes live! Designers: This theme built on Twitter Bootstrap, have 0 custom css code and using template_part system so you can easily use it as parent theme! You can find detailed information, showcase, live demo, tips and tricks about theme in: http://theme.firmasite.com/

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Cazuela

Cazuela WordPress theme, developed by ThematoSoup

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Ilisa

ilisa is a clean and minimal WordPress Theme that can be easily used as a personal portfolio or a business website. A responsive layout optimizes the theme for mobile devices. To customize the theme you can choose your own link-color, logo and favicon.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Sensitive

Fully Responsive Theme using Twitter Bootstrap with Metro Styled Accent. This theme is will make your website adaptable with mobile devices. Theme Features: Custom Homepage Settings, 3 Page Templates, Custom Background Support, Search Engine Friendly.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Contago

Contango is an elegant, simple and clean design, emphasis on content. This theme is powered with custom menu, custom background, custom header, sidebar widget, featured image, theme options, nice typography and built-in pagination features. Contango Theme is suitable for any business or personal website. The Theme can work for various different niches. Contango is translation-ready and so much more.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Attitude

Attitude is a Simple, Clean and Responsive Retina Ready WordPress Theme which adapts automatically to your tablets and mobile devices. Along with the elegant design the theme is easily customizable with numerous theme options. Some of the highlighted options are two site layout (Narrow and Wide), 5 layouts for every post/page, 5 Page Templates, 5 widget areas, 4 custom widgets, featured slider to highlight your post/page, 11 social icons, webmaster tools, custom background, custom Header, custom menu, custom favicon, custom CSS, custom webclip icon, custom logo and many more. Also supports some of the popular plugins like Breadcrumb NavXT, WP-PageNavi and Contact Form 7. It is also translation ready. Get free support on http://themehorse.com/support-forum/

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Catch Everest

Catch Everest is Simple, Clean and Responsive WordPress Theme which automatically adapts to the screen’s size, ensuring that your content is always displayed beautifully no matter what device visitors are using. It is based in HTML5, CSS3 and very own Catch Themes easy to use Theme Options panel which makes this theme highly customizable and flexible. Make your beautiful yet professional website in no time. Multilingual Ready (WPML) and also currently translated in Polish, Chinese, and Spanish. Active community at http://catchthemes.com/support-forum/

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Opus Primus

A WordPress Framework Theme … the first work. It works first. Designed and developed to be extensible and easily modified, based in the principles of decisions not options. Opus Primus supports all of the current Post-Formats as well as automagically converting between one, two, and three column layouts. You have access to custom backgrounds as well as a flexible custom header, too. Feel free to visit the Opus Primus website for more details and information about the theme and how it is built. Also, in the near future, you will be able to find tutorials on how to modify and work with Opus Primus Child-Themes.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Pyramid

Pyramid is a simple and clean WordPress theme by ThemeLeopard.com that includes post thumbnails, custom menus and much more. The options panel is easy to understand with a minimal set of options. You would absolutely love to built your site using Pyramid theme.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Silver Blue

The Silver Blue theme for WordPress is a fully responsive and elegant theme that looks great with a touch of silver and blue styling. Customizable menu, header image, and background.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Spine

Theme based on Hybrid Core and Zurb Foundation front end framework.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

WP StrapSlider Lite

WP StrapSlider Lite is A Responsive WordPress Theme Based on Twitters Bootstrap with the full header width carousel on the home page. Clean and uniform look alround, includes options to set slider to fade or slide plus option to hide slider altogether. Theme revised to use “featured” category for slider with option to set number of slides, default is 5 slides. WP StrapSlider in now translation ready! See the readme.txt before updating!

• Full Details | Demo | Download

InfoWay

InfoWay is a Clean, Simple & Elegant Responsive WordPress Theme built by InkThemes.com. You can use Infoway Theme to build beautiful website for your business site and your blog. The core of Infoway Theme is its simplicity to Install and use, you can customize and use your own logo, texts and images easily using the in-built Themes Options Panel. InfoWay Theme support widgets in sidebar and footer, which gives you infinite ways to customize your site. The Theme comes with elegant color scheme which looks good for different types of website. You would definitely love to create your website using InfoWay.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

AlbinoMouse

AlbinoMouse is a responsive, mobile-friendly WordPress Theme. It was designed in a minimalistic style. The typography and white space promise comfortable reading pleasure. AlbinoMouse includes the Awesome Icon-Font as well as some lovely fonts from the Google Web Fonts library.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Columbus

It goes without saying that the goal of a real estate website is to drive more leads. But what’s the best way to do this? Is it better to dazzle visitors with digital velvet and mahoghany? Or should you ditch the expensive decor and let your inventory speak for itself? With Columbus, you don’t have to choose. Columbus’ borderless look will give your website an understated elegance, while its green and blue accents will make your listing details jump off the page. Perfect for both individual agents and single-office agencies, Columbus is ideal for displaying multiple property listings, with a two-column layout and top-level page navigation. It’s also fully customizable, so you can make it your own, which means you’ll get even more compliments on your feng shui. In order to enable full real estate capabilities of the theme, use with Placester’s Real Estate Builder plugin.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Celestial – Lite

Celestial Lite is a Bootstrap responsive theme incorporating a flexible grid system, crisp lines, Unlimited colours, post formats of: Aside, image, status, and quotes, plus you get a much better WP gallery style, HTML5, CSS3, Translation readiness, social networking, more than 12 widget positions, page templates, styled form elements, and more. Of course, if you want even more, there is also a Professional version of Celestial for a true business website, but the free version should still give you an awesome website as well. Check out the full live demo from the theme url. For support, please refer to the readme.html file in your download. Also, whenever you update something, always make a backup 1st before doing an update.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Voyage

Voyage Theme is a flexible and responsive framework that combines a modified version of 960.gs and Twitter Bootstrap. It allows users changing layout and style using flexible and simple options: 1-, 2- or 3-column blog layout; fixed, fluid or responsive; grid width, color schemes, fonts (including Google Fonts) and many more. Voyage features 15 widget areas, 4 menu positions, 5 color schemes and 10 page templates including Featured Home, Landing Page, Full-Screen, Portfolio, Image Slider with template options. Voyage Theme includes 3 highly customizable widgets (Recent Post, Navigation Tab and Social), Colorbox and Font Awesome. It has build-in support to popular plugins such as Jetpack Sharing, WooCommerce, Jigoshop, Breadcrumb NavXT, bbPress and BuddyPress. Free and professional support at http://www.voyagebc.com/support/

• Full Details | Demo | Download

WP Eden

WP Eden is a Easy to use, CSS only and fast loading theme.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Poloray

Poloray is a flexible mobile friendly WordPress Theme. Poloray comes with a beautifully designed Homepage and Blog Template. The Theme had Widget Area in Sidebar and Footer. Poloray Theme is translation enabled and comes with a easy to use Themes Options Panel. Homepage can be setup quickly through setting details in the Options Panel. Theme also had a place for your Social Network Links and is very easy to setup and customize. Poloray Theme also allows you to insert your own Custom CSS to tweak the design easily according to your requirements. Theme is highly Search Engine Optimized and you will definitely enjoy using it.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Local Business

The Local Business Theme for WordPress allows you to build a great website for your Business. It is simple and beautiful with lots of customization options that can tweaked by Theme Options Panel like logos, intro texts and background. Local Business Theme supports five widgetized areas (two in the sidebar, three in the footer) and featured images. It includes stylesheets for print and the admin Visual Editor, special blog styles for posts. The Theme is very simple to setup and install using the builtin Options Panel.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

Small Business

Small Business is a theme for Business. Customizable Background and other options will give the WordPress Driven Site an attractive look. Small Business is super elegant and Professional Theme which will create the business widely expressed. The Slider will show the featured images and contents of posts automatically. Front Page, Right and Footer Sidebar will be usable for showing the widgets and PlugIns items. Full Wide page can be used for showing showcase or other pages. Small Business Pro has come with exciting Post Options, Theme Options and Extra Functionalities. D5 Creation’s Support will be with you, Always!

• Full Details | Demo | Download

WP-Creativix

Elegant, clean and modern Business & Portfolio Theme which offers a mighty Options Set to customize WP-Creativix to your own needs. It has custom Blog, Portfolio and No-Sidebar Templates blowing your customers mind. Furthermore WP-Creativix lets you choose a Highlight and a Background-Color. Upload your own Logo and Socialize WP-Creativix with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. A Multi-Level-Dropdown Menu and a flexible Slider featuring Posts, Pages and Portfolio will turn your WP Installation into an eye-catching Business & Portfolio Website. Please see the DEMO for further Details.

• Full Details | Demo | Download

The post More Free WordPress Business & Corporate Themes for 2013 appeared first on WPLift.

I have reformatted the news this week so its more compact and hopefully easier to scan and jump into the links you would like to read.

This is our (sort of ) weekly WordPress news roundup post, you can view previous news roundups on this tag. I also post frequent WordPress links on Twitter all week, follow WPLIft here if you are on Twitter. Our facebook page is growing nicely with over 2500 members now so please “Like” us on Facebook. Finally, I’m also on Pinterest so you can add me there as well.

WordPress News and Articles

• The Next 10 Starts Now – All around the globe today, people are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the first WordPress release, affectionately known as #wp10.
• Post Formats UI is exiting core, will live as a plugin – This is a hard decision. I’ve been talking to a lot of WordPress core developers and contributors, and the overwhelming consensus is that Post Formats UI is not ready for WordPress core
• Building a WordPress-powered web app – The good folks at WordPress.com invited me to give a brief talk during the VIP Developer Workshop earlier this month in Napa.
• Noel Tock Interview – Meet WordPressario and happytables creator Noel Tock, and learn why giving users fewer options can actually result in a better online experience.
• Who’s Who of WordPress: 99 Twitter Accounts You Should Be Following – I’ve created a list of the top 99 English-language Twitter accounts I recommend following for all the latest news and views about WordPress and the people in every time zone working with our favorite 10-year-old.
• Is Automattic Worth More Than Tumblr? – With the recent news of Tumblr being purchased by Yahoo! for $1.1 billion dollars there have been a ton of comparisons between that purchase and many other blogging services. Naturally, WordPress has been among those comparisons.
• How to create and sell your own WordPress theme – So you want to make a theme, and maybe even sell it? There’s no reason you shouldn’t, but if you are going to take the dive there’s several things you need to know.
• Redesigning the WordPress Template Hierarchy – As a person with a passion for infographics and simplifying the display of data, I am always looking for ways to make information more clear.
• When should you NOT release premium WordPress plugins? – If you’ve spent a lot of time on my site, you know I like to write about new product development and WordPress. I also write about pricing.

Tutorials and How-Tos

• How To Customize The BuddyPress Activity Loop – The BuddyPress activity loop shows every kind of BuddyPress activity by default. However, the activity loop wasn’t meant to be a one-size-fits-all arrangement.
• Test Your Plugins with RTL – By default, WordPress runs in Left-To-Right mode, but there are thousands and thousands of WordPress users that read RTL.
• Master .htaccess WordPress Controls – In today’s post I’m going to start of with some of the basics but then show you a whole world of things that you can do with this little text file.
• Using CSS Preprocessors With WordPress – LESS Structures - In this part of the series I will be covering how to logically structure your .less files. I will also cover how to connect all of them using imports, and lastly quickly cover magnification.
• How To Install Historical Versions Of WordPress – We thought it’d be fun to take a tour through the past versions of WordPress during Seattle’s wp10 party, so we came up with a convenient way for ourselves and others to do that.
• Notify Users When They Haven’t Completed a Form – So I wanted to notify them if they hadn’t completed this particular form. The idea was to have a big red box at the top of the Members Area with a warning.
• How to Add Read it Later Buttons to Your WordPress Posts – We will be a using an online bookmarking tool called Pocket to add the read it later buttons in WordPress.
• Tips And Tricks For Testing WordPress Themes – Whether you offer free or premium themes, testing should be a major part of your development process.

Resources & Freebies

• The Very Best Quality Free WordPress Themes from May 2013 – Here is our monthly free theme roundup
• WordPress Theme Trends 2013: A Detailed Look at Creative Portfolio Themes – Today I’ll be analyzing creative portfolio themes.
• Manage Multiple WordPress Sites from one Location – Which Service is Best? – Thankfully there are a few third party services out there that allow you manage multiple WP installations from one central location.
• 10 Must-Have Free WordPress Plugins to Improve Your Workflow – A good variety of different plugins to manage your workflow and make the process of editing and managing quickly and easy.
• The Quickest Way to Create Custom WordPress Queries - The WordPress Query Generator is a new web application, created by the folks at Spruce Interactive. It’s a very useful tool for quickly spitting out customized queries to use in your templates.

The post The Weekly WordPress News, Tutorials & Resources Roundup No.31 appeared first on WPLift.

You can see last months free themes here or you can check out all of our past free WordPress themes on this tag.

Fizz

Simple, responsive theme, suitable for personal or corporate blog.

Features » Demo » Download »

Customizr

A  free responsive WordPress theme, easy to customize , built with HTML5 & CSS3 upon the Twitter Bootstrap framework. The clean design can be used for any type of website : corporate, portfolio, business, blog, etc. Choose a skin, upload your logo, set up your social network profiles and you are done.

Features » Demo » Download »

Alexandria

Responsive WordPress Business theme with business style home page layout with welcome section, 3 product/services blocks and a client quote/testimonial section. 2 logo section layout options. 2 premade (Blue, Red) ready to use color schemes/skins. 3 widget areas in footer, 1 widget area in sidebar. 2 page layouts including a full width page template. Social media icons in footer.

Features » Demo » Download »

Expressions

Expressions is a full featured responsive theme that looks great on full size screens, ipad and mobile devices. Users have the flexibility to create the website that suits your style, with extensive theme options, post metabox options, and page metabox options.

Features » Demo » Download »

Mog

A simple, clean and minimalist 1 column WordPress theme.

Features » Demo » Download »

Ever After

A wedding blog-centric theme decorated with subtle but gorgeous textures and ornaments. The wide one-column layout is great for photos and videos of your wedding or your wedding plan that you want to share with family, friends, or the world.

Features » Demo » Download »

Quark

Quark is your basic building block for creating beautiful, responsive custom themes. It’s a simple and elegant starter theme built on HTML5 & CSS3.

Features » Demo » Download »

SmartAdapt

Responsive HTML5 and CSS3, clean and customizable theme based on Zurb Foundation front end framework. This theme allows you to easily change various aspects of the design: background, logo or header image, etc. Powerful but simple theme with social share button support (facebook like, twitter share, google +1, Pin it) .

Features » Demo » Download »

Discover

A very neat and clean orange and white business theme. The theme supports widgets. And features theme-options, threaded-comments and multi-level dropdown menu. A simple and neat typography.

Features » Demo » Download »

Pinzolo

Minimal WordPress theme designed by Dean Oakley @ Thrive Web Design

Features » Demo » Download »

Venom

Responsive Business WordPress Theme with slider, Welcome headline and text, 3 column and 4 column section for your products or services, section for client testimonials. Footer has 3 widget areas for your menu’s etc.

Features » Demo » Download »

Ryu

Ryu is a clutter-free theme for personal bloggers. It has a great readability with a large font size, and the one-column layout is perfect for displaying large images. Optional widgets are located at the top panel with social media links and a search field. Background color for an image post will automatically match the uploaded image in the post.

Features » Demo » Download »

AR Zine

AR Zine is a theme designed like magazine.

Features » Demo » Download »

Thea

Child theme of Destro which is a Responsive WordPress magazine theme with 3 home page layouts, 300×250 ads, 125×125 ads, 8 premade (Black, Blue, Red, brown, pink, white and Green) ready to use color schemes/skins, 2 page layouts including a full width page template, featured posts, social icons, twitter updates, threaded comments and widget support.

Features » Demo » Download »

The post The Very Best Quality Free WordPress Themes from May 2013 appeared first on WPLift.

Large Sliders

There’s no denying that large image sliders filled with great art looks both flashy and impressive. That’s why when you’re picking out your creative portfolio theme you are bound to come across approximately one billion WordPress themes with this feature. It is also often paired with a three or four button/icon list to promote freelance or creative agency services.

I’m not entirely sure how long this trend will last. There’s nothing inherently wrong with large sliders and service icons for creative portfolios, it’s just been going strong as a trend for a few years now and I’m personally pretty tired of it. In my opinion both customers and theme designers are going to start looking for something new and fresh so that their websites don’t come across as boring or typical. But that might just be me.

Intro Theme

Portfolio Theme

Creative Skeleton

Pressco

Bold Home/Landing Pages

A big (usually bright) image or background with just one or a at least very limited home page options is pretty popular right now. Not only does it convert well on the call to action you’ve displayed but it’s memorable and impressive when done right. I like to think of this as a great first line in a story. It visually grabs your attention and begins telling you about the artist and their work in an awe inspiring way.

Nimble

Epical

Argo

Zifa

Cluster

Detroit

Unique

Standard & Masonic Grids

Since most of the web is designed on various grid layouts, it should come as no surprise that many theme designers “let the grid shine through”. For image and/or video based websites like a portfolio site I think this is fine. If the art is good then it’s hard to make something this visually varied appear boring or stagnant. But I would be surprised to see it around for too much longer as such a prominent trend if for no other reason than I think people are getting tired of it.

One Plus

Moments

Blocco

Codangy

Diablo

Clean & Minimal

To me a clean and minimal site design is as close to timeless as it gets on the web. I’ve seen the minimal black and white look on portfolio sites all the way back to 2008 and earlier and it still looks good. Granted, some of the ways in which this look is accomplished has changed – as have the motivations for it.

Oliver made a great point in the first installment of this post series that many theme designers are trying to keep their main page elements centered with lots of whitespace to either side because it makes creating responsive designs easier. Regardless, minimalism seems to be here to stay.

CleanBold

Hati

Doppio

Stand

Conclusion

So those were the current WordPress theme design trends I’m seeing for creative portfolio themes in 2013. Most popular themes in this category have one or two very strong trend elements working in their favor and many others choose to mix and match these trends throughout to great success. But that doesn’t mean it can’t begin to look jumbled, so be careful.

One trend that I expect to become dominant in 2014 is a combination between a simplified version of the current bold landing pages above and one page “smart sites” that tell a concise story via the down scrolling action rather than big flashy sliders.

What is your pick for the next big trend in WordPress theme design for creative portfolios?

The post WordPress Theme Trends 2013: A Detailed Look at Creative Portfolio Themes appeared first on WPLift.

While using WordPress Multisite is one way to manage a network of WordPress installations, it isn’t the best solution for everyone. Thankfully there are a few third party services out there that allow you manage multiple WP installations from one central location.

Some of the common features of these WP management services include the ability to:

• Publish new content to the managed sites from one dashboard.
• Install plugins and themes to one, some or all of the sites simultaneously in the network from one dashboard.
• Update the WordPress core, themes and plugins for multiple sites with one-click.
• Create and restore backups of sites as well as transfer them via FTP to a server or to a cloud storage service.
• Clone sites and migrate them to other sites on the network.
• Manage users and roles on the managed sites.

As you can see these features could save you a lot of time and make your life a lot easier when it comes to looking after multiple WordPress sites. Here is some of the best tools available, ranging from free tools offering a basic service to those with multi-tiered pricing structures ideal for large networks and demanding users.

WP Remote

While some of these services carry substantial price tags depending on how many sites you want to manage, as well as which feature you want to use, WP Remote is 100% free. While it lacks some of the more advanced features of the other WordPress management services on the market, it does let you do the following:

• See what versions of WordPress, themes and plugins are installed on your sites and display a notification when updates are available.
• Update WordPress core, plugins and themes when newer versions are available, directly from the dashboard.
• Create backups by downloading a zip file archive of the site’s files and database.
• Notify you from the dashboard if one of your sites is unreachable or down.
• Group sites together for easier management.
• Responsive design makes it easy to use on a smartphone.

What you can’t do with WP Remote:

• Post directly to sites from the WP Remote dashboard.
• Migrate and deploy new WordPress installations and sites.
• Install themes and plugins to your sites from the WP Remote dashboard

Previously backups of your sites were stored online for free, but this service is now no longer available, however you can still download them and store them locally.

How Easy is it to Setup WP Remote?

Signing up with, and setting up WP Remote is very simple. After entering a name and an email address you are directed to the dashboard where you can add your sites. To get started simply:

• Enter your site name and URL to the WP Remote dashboard
• Install the free WP Remote worker plugin on the site you want to manage
• Enter the supplied API key in the site you want to manage and you’re done

If you have more than one WordPress site to look after and would like to reduce the amount of time you spend keeping the plugins and themes up-to-date, as well the WordPress core, this free service is just what you need. For those with more demanding requirements such as cloning, copying and publishing to multiple sites from one location some of the other services will be more suitable.

Visit WP Remote »

Manage WP

Manage WP is a much more feature-packed service than WP Remote and is one that will appeal to site managers who want more centralised access to and control over their sites. While it is free to sign up with Manage WP and add up to five sites to the service and get access to the basic features , those with more sites, or who want access to the Standard, Professional or Business features will have to pay a monthly fee which varies depending on the number of sites you want to manage.

Although the setup of Manage WP and WP Remote is fairly similar, with an account being created with the service and then a plugin installed on each of the sites you wish to manage, the fair comparisons between the two services end there. Manage WP is simply a much bigger, feature-packed service than WP Remote and while the latter is great at what it does, the Manage WP does a whole lot more.

Upon logging into Manage WP, the dashboard is displayed which lists the most popular widgets by default. From here you can view many pieces of information about your sites including:

• Updates that are available for the WordPress core, themes and plugins installed on your sites.
• Page view statistics for the sites you are managing with this service, although they did look a little inflated compared to some of the other analytics tools I was using on these sites.
• Recent comments showing approved and pending comments which can be approved edited or deleted all from within Manage WP. This is handy if you have a lot of spam comments to manage across your sites.

Free Features of Manage WP:

Other tasks you can carry out from within the free version of Manage WP include:

• Install themes and plugins directly to sites from the dashboard.
• Access the sites dashboards and admin areas from within Manage WP.
• Restore backups.
• Mobile access to Manage WP via iPhone and Android smartphones.

Premium Features of Manage WP

If you want access to the more advanced, and arguably more useful features you will have to pay for them. The packages consist of: Standard, which is for individual bloggers; Professional, for small business and web developers; and Business, for large businesses and SEO & web marketing companies.

For the standard features for use on five sites, the monthly fee starts from just $4 per month going up to $24 per month for five sites with access to the business plan. Discounts are given for the more sites you are managing which can push the price per site down considerably.

Here are some of the standout features of the premium packages that will appeal to anyone managing multiple WordPress sites:

• Bulk add new posts and pages (all packages).
• Manage and add users and define their roles as you would from inside your sites own WordPress dashboards (Professional and Business).
• Google Analytics Widget to view your site stats according to Google (Professional and Business).
• Search Engine Rank Tracker to see where your sites are ranked in the search engines (Business).
• Traffic change alerts to notify you spikes in visitor number (Professional and Business).
• Create backups including delivery to S3, Dropbox or Google Drive (all packages).
• Scheduled online backups (Professional and Business).
• Clone or migrate your sites to other locations on your list of managed sites (Professional and Business).

As you can see there are some fantastic features here that will make managing a growing number of WordPress sites a breeze. With all these powerful features at your fingertips, the amount of time saved and effort reduced that traditionally goes into keeping up-to-date with all your sites will be very noticeable.

How Easy is it to Setup Manage WP?

Setting up Manage WP is pretty straightforward. Sign up for an account on the home page and then enter the list of sites you want to manage and then install the free plugin on these sites and you will have added them to your dashboard. It doesn’t really get much easier than that. From then on, you can manage your sites by simply logging into your dashboard at the Manage WP website.

Overall, Manage WP is a great service for those want more control over their sites, plus the unquestionable time saving benefits of being able to install and clone existing site or templates as well as mass install, update and manage themes and plugins, not to mention bulk publishing and scheduled backups. With tiered pricing and a monthly pay per site model, the Manage WP pricing structure is great for those with growing networks who would prefer not pay up front for access to the service.

Visit Manage WP »

Infinite WP

Infinite WP is more of a rival to Manage WP than WP Remote is to either of these WordPress management services. This is due to the large number of features this service has. While you will have to pay to access some of them, there is a free version, much like Manage WP, in the sense that it gives you access to a basic set of features.

With Infinite WP you can view and manage most functions of your WordPress sites through the dashboard. You can login to the admin dashboard of individual sites with just one click rather than typing in the URL, entering your login credentials, saving you considerable time and effort.

As with Manage WP, you can also update all the plugins and themes you have installed on the sites you are managing in one go, or you can tend to them individually. You can also hide or exclude plugins from being upgraded if for whatever reason you want to stay with the current version.

Installing themes and plugins can all be done centrally from the Infinite WP dashboard, preventing you from having to log into the sites individually and repeatedly uploading plugins and theme files. While some of these features are only available as premium addons, there are a number of useful free ones that will be of benefit to anyone with more than one WordPress site to look after.

Free features of Infinite WP include:

• Login to your individual sites with one-click from the Infinite WP dashboard.
• One-click updates for WordPress core, plugins and themes on all your sites (or just a selection) or on a plugin-by-plugin basis.
• Manage themes and plugins by installing, deleting, activating and deactivating them on multiple sites simultaneously.

Infinite WP Pricing Options

While Manage WP charges users depending on the level of features they choose and the number of sites they intended to manage, charged on a recurring basis. Infinite WP charges a one-off fee for each individual feature you want to use. This is great for people who only want to use one or two of the premium features.

However, could get quite expensive for someone wanting access to the whole package, at least in terms of an initial payment. Thankfully these premium features have been grouped together into bundles, with discounted prices and if you choose to buy all the addons there is, at the time of writing, a 30% discount.

Premium Addons Include:

• Install and clone WordPress to speed up the new site creation process by being able to clone and install your site templates at the touch of a button.
• Uptime monitor enables you to receive emails should one of your sites go offline.
• Google Analytics addon allows you to view and compare the stats for all your sites from one location.
• Publish from the dashboard posts, pages and links to one or all of your sites.
• Schedule backups and backup to repositories allow you to automate the backup process and then transfer them to cloud services such as Amazon S3 or Dropbox, or FTP them to a server.

While you do have to pay for these premium addons, the price is a one-off and they can be used on all the sites you manage.

How Easy is it to Setup Infinite WP?

When it comes to setting up Infinite WP, the process isn’t quite as simple as the other options covered here. You are required to upload some files to your server using an FTP client, which gives you access to your own self-hosted dashboard for managing your sites.

Then you have to create a new database with your web hosting service. If you want to receive email notification you will also need to setup a cron job. While these terms might sound alien to some, there are detailed instructions on this page.

Once that is setup and running correctly, simply install the free plugin on the sites you want to manage.

It’s not a difficult task and although you do get a self-hosted solution, it is lacking the simplicity of some of the installations of the other WordPress management services.  If all that does sound too much for you, you can opt to pay and have the service installed on for you by one of their support staff.

Overall Infinite WP has all the features a good a premium WordPress management service needs. The fact that you can pay a one-off fee for the addons, and can opt to purchase only the ones you need, might make the pricing structure more appealing than the monthly plan offered by Manage WP.

Visit Infinite WP »

iControl WP

iControl WP is another WordPress management service that allows you to work with a number of sites from one central location. This isn’t a self-hosted service like Infinite WP so getting started is simply a case of registering with the iControl WP and then installing the free plugin on the sites you want to manage.

While this isn’t a free service, there is a free 30 day trial so you can give it a try and see if it matches your needs. After that pricing is based on how many sites you wish to manage (minimum of five) using this service. There is no tiered pricing so you get access to all the features once you’ve signed up.

Features of iControl WP:

• Administrate all your sites from one dashboard.
• Clone tool for quick and easy replication of sties on your network.
• One-click updates for WordPress core, themes and plugins through the iControl WP dashboard.
• Create, manage and restore backups using the WorpDrive service.

How Easy is it to Setup iControl WP?

As this service isn’t self-hosted, setup is very simple. Signing up with the service takes a few minutes at most and then it’s just a case of installing the plugins on the sites you wish to manage from the free WordPress plugin directory.

Overall iControl WP has some great features but whether it can compete with Manage WP and Infinite WP remains to be seen. The quick WordPress installation is a nice option for those who want to simplify and speed up the installation process for new sites.

Visit iControl WP »

Sick Network

Sick Network is the new kid on the block when it comes to WordPress management services. In fact, it’s so new that at the time of writing the product was still in beta. Due to this it is available at a discounted price that includes access to all the features and use on unlimited sites.

How Easy is it to Setup Sick Network WP?

Like Infinite WP this is a self-hosted option but the setup procedure is a little less complicated. To get started, you must install the main plugin to the site you wish to use as the main dashboard through which you manage your other sites. Here this is known as the parent site.

For the other sites that will be managed, simply install the child plugin and you are ready to go. The self-hosted aspect of this service is designed to appeal to those with privacy concerns and would rather not have the service they are using being able to view all the sites in their network. You will need to decide if this is an issue for you but either way, it is not the only selling point of Sick Network.

Current Pricing Plan for Sick Network

The onetime price for unlimited sites will be a major selling point for many people and while the product is still in beta, the price is very affordable. Unlike the other services covered here though, there is no free trial or free version with limited functionality for you to use to evaluate the service.

You will have to take a leap of faith with this new product, although there is a 30 day money back guarantee.  You can do all the major tasks that you can with the other premium tools of this type and at the moment they all come under the one-off price.

Features of Sick Network:

Sick Network has been designed to compete with the more established WP management services out there and the list of features available reflects this. These are some of the more impressive of the features that come with this product:

• One-click auto login to any site in your network.
• Install and manage multiple themes and plugins.
• Publish pages, posts and links in bulk.
• Uptime monitor to report on your sites downtimes.
• Manage and schedule backups to Amazon S3 and Dropbox.
• Clone and migrate sites for extra efficiency and working from templates.
• Google Analytics in the dashboard.

As you can see Sick Network has a lot of the premium features, if not all, of the other services covered here. While it might not be as polished in terms of looks and design as some of the other offerings, it definitely makes up for it in features and value for money. Although it is worth remembering it is still in beta and is still a work in progress.

You can find out more about what the developers and doing and what the user experience is currently like by visiting the Sick Network forum where such issues are being discussed.

Overall it looks like Sick Network could be a strong contender to challenge for the title of best WordPress management service. However, this all depends on what the finished product is actually like and how much they decide to charge for it. It certainly has all the features that are needed to adequately manage a network of WordPress sites and the one-time payment for all features will be attractive to many.

Visit Sick Network »

Which is the Best WordPress Management Service

As these services are all different from each other in terms of either their features or their pricing plans it is hard to highlight one service as the best. If you just want the basic features, being able to update plugins, themes and the WordPress core as well as create backups to be stored locally, all from one central dashboard and don’t want to pay for the privilege, WP Remote is probably the right option for you.

However, if you only have five sites or less, the free version of Manage WP might be a better choice as you would have a few more features at your disposal, with the option to upgrade to more should the need arise. Infinite WP also offers a free version of their service with limited features but the installation process is a lot more tricky than with Manage WP, however you do get the benefits (and drawbacks) of having a self-hosting service.

Best Premium Service

When it comes to the premium service, Infinite WP wins points for offering the ability to select certain premium features you would like to use and paying for them, rather than paying for access to a range of features you might not use.

Manage WP offers a monthly payment plan, whereas Infinite WP requires one upfront payment for each addon, or bundle of additional features required. Your preference for paying for things will likely sway your decision and there isn’t much to separate the two services in terms of features and performance.

While Sick Network could be a serious competitor to the other services in the future, it is not ready for full commercial release so cannot be recommended as a professional solution for managing a raft of WordPress sites, however, if you want to get in early and secure a good deal and don’t require the reliability of a fully developed service, it could be a good option.

Hopefully you now have enough information to make a decision on which features would be useful to you and are now able to make a decision that best fits your needs and budget.

The post Manage Multiple WordPress Sites from one Location – Which Service is Best? appeared first on WPLift.

And we have a great solution! A well-chosen kit of plugins should solve specific problems and provide important functions. In our quickly developing Internet World exist hundreds of useful software components, but we’ll focus only on those that help users in:

• 1. Quick Drag and Drop editing
• 2. Effective Traffic tracking;
• 3. Successful Post Promotion.

If these three important aspects are in order your website like a boat will achieve the desired shore of success.

Drag and Drop editing

We’ll gladly share the set of useful drag and drop plugins that enable your website to stand out among others. Let’s take a closer look at them:

MotoPress

MotoPress is your fast and successful way to edit the appearance of your website, blog or online store based on WordPress. This easy to use plugin allows you to create, move and change page templates quickly and easily.

By using MotoPress WordPress plugin you are able to:

• easily create, change and duplicate website’s pages;
• remove template pages with ease;
• fully change the layout’s structure;
• display and hide website’s blocks on different devices;
• quickly manage content right on your WordPress site;
• change, move and add content blocks only with few clicks;
• edit blocks with website’s data and view the changes at once;
• manage media with ease;
• edit new widgets, posts and pages;
• make your website responsive and adaptive;

The gold of MotoPress is the opportunity to edit and arrange the content of your website in hereafter. Without any particular technical knowledge you will be able to add new content blocks, manage media and arrange data right in the editor and view all changes in real time.

Download MotoPress »

WYSIWYG Visual HTML Editor & Drag And Drop Web Page Editor

This plugin is useful for anyone that has a WordPress site or stand alone plugin for any site (Read bottom for non WordPress sites.), it’s a simple to use WYSIWYG drag and drop visual HTML editor with advanced options. Brand new section for building HTML web pages outside your wordpress template.

Download WYSIWYG Editor »

Drag and Drop featured image

Drag and Drop featured image plugin does one thing but does it really good. It replaces the default ‘Set featured image’ metabox with a new one containing a Plupload drop and compresses all sizes just as a common upload method.

Download Drag and Drop Featured Image »

Plugin organizer

Plugin Organizer is your helper to make an order in your WordPress.  By using it you are able to change the sequence of your current plugins, disable plugins by any post type and easily adds grouping to the admin panel.

Download Plugin Organizer »

Traffic Ranking

The next valuable and no less important component of WP site is traffic. We are sure, you don’t expect to see Google analytics in our list and you are right :) It gives you very useful and valuable data, but mostly general one. To understand what people do on your website, what touches them and what leaves absolutely indifferent you need to try the Crazyegg WordPress plugin.

CrazyEgg

Crazyegg is a heatmap, which displays what is hot on your blog, what links are in the right place and what of them should be better replaced. These beneficial tricks can quickly increase conversion and bring you more visitors. The best thing about this helpful eye tracking technology is that you’ll see the first results within a few hours.

Don’t be afraid of its price you can always try absolutely for free. Take up a 30 day trial and ensure by yourselves how cool it is. We’ll gladly read for your honest feedback in the comments section.

Download Crazy Egg »

WordPress Seo plugin by Yoast

WordPress Seo plugin by Yoast will improve all the technical optimization of your website. By focusing on right keywords it helps you to write better content and understand your target audience. Powerful plugin identifies whether your title is too long or too short and enables to understand rankings and increase the click through for organic search results.

Download SEO by Yoast »

WassUp

WassUp is a WordPress plugin which provides a quick access to page views stats. It enables to track the visitors of your website in real time, view what your guests do when they surf the website. Moreover WassUp gives the detailed data about each single user session in chronological order.

Download WassUp »

Promotion Plugins

When you’ve finished with your website’s appearance and statistics it’s time to make your blog popular There are countless plugins that help to spread a word about your site.

Sharebar

Sharebar is built out of one or more social buttons. It adds a vertical box with the networks signs that contains links to popular websites. It’s by far the great way to bring traffic to your blog or even e-shop based on WordPress. The gold of Sharebar functionality is that it simply turns into horizontal position if the viewing area is small, which is perfect to responsive themes. This essential WP plugin will make your road to triumph much easier and allow you to focus on content and less on promotion.

Download Sharebar »

ShareThis

ShareThis is an innovative sharing platform for Web. It will quickly help you to increase social activity on your website. Very easy to install, just look at an intuitive settings page and go ahead!

Download Share This »

MailChimp

Mailchimp WP Tool gathers emails for those who would like to sign up to your weekly newsletter or get news about free stuff. It lets to design email letters. It’s really handy for newbies, share them on social networks and track the conversion.

Download Mailchimp »

It goes without saying, that we haven’t mention all useful plugins in one article, but hope that listed above will help you to broad the common possibilities of a classic WordPress website. If we missed your favorite plugin or didn’t mention really helpful one, we would love to hear from you! Share your beloved plugins in the comments below!

Emily Williams is a passionate blogger and curious researcher, now working with MotoPress Team. You can follow her on Twitter or join on Facebook.

The post 10 Must-Have Free WordPress Plugins to Improve Your Workflow appeared first on WPLift.

I added a new section to the news for competitions – the WP community love these so I thought they deserved special coverage also.

This is our (sort of ) weekly WordPress news roundup post, you can view previous news roundups on this tag. I also post frequent WordPress links on Twitter all week, follow WPLIft here if you are on Twitter. Our facebook page is growing nicely with over 2500 members now so please “Like” us on Facebook. Finally, I’m also on Pinterest so you can add me there as well.

WordPress News and Articles

A Better Planet: Website Live & Plugin in the Repository

A Better Planet is a feed of fresh and interesting WordPress news, tutorials and resources. Updated every 30 minutes it brings you the latest about our favourite CMS.

http://wplift.com/a-better-planet-live

The Tavern Wizard Revealed: It’s Matt Mullenweg

I asked the question publicly: Who really is the man behind the curtain over at WP Tavern? It’s been revealed: Matt Mullenweg is the one who bought, and now owns, WP Tavern. It was also revealed that he’s also who’s financed the future of WeblogToolsCollection as well as Mark Ghosh took his leave.

http://wpdaily.co/tavern-wizard/

Secrets Revealed: WLTC and WPTavern

There has been a lot of speculation on the “shady mystery buyer” of Weblogs Tools Collection and WPTavern (here), which has been funny to watch. It’s me.

http://www.wptavern.com/secrets-revealed-wltc-and-wptavern

WordPress Nostalgia

As we inch closer towards the 10 year anniversary of WordPress, I’ve been browsing through a few different time capsule posts.

http://www.wptavern.com/wordpress-nostalgia

Everyone Has a Price, Everyone.

There’s a lot of talk around the recent acquisition of Tumblr via Yahoo! and the varying perspectives are as varied as you might imagine, from those that have foretold the death of the tumblogging service to those that say this is the best thing that could happen to David Karp and his team.

http://wpdaily.co/everyone-price/

Should a WordPress Plugin Change Post Content?

Yesterday, I released Markdown Code For WordPress – an extremely simple plugin that makes it easy to replace Markdown backticks (`) with inline code comments. As mentioned in the post, it scratches an itch of my own that I’ve opted to share just in case anyone else shares the same, y’know, itch.

http://tommcfarlin.com/wordpress-plugin-change-post-content/

Rob La Gatta Interview

Meet Rob La Gatta, who leads the Quality team at Modern Tribe, where he is responsible for support and the quality assurance process. He has been earning a living using WordPress since 2010 and currently resides in Oakland, California.

http://build.codepoet.com/2013/05/23/rob-la-gatta-interview/

Google Wants Your WordPress Site

The biggest web company in the world has finally announced its support for the most widely used programming language. At its I/O developer event last week, Google announced PHP is now supported in its platform-as-a-service offering, Google App Engine.

http://wpmu.org/google-wants-your-wordpress-site/

WordPress Plugin Prices Are Too Low

I’m the one arguing for higher prices and the folks behind some amazing plugins, themes, and services have under-priced. But they’re not under-pricing for the normal reasons like insecurity and lack of self-worth.

http://chrislema.com/wordpress-plugin-prices/

Storytelling With WordPress: 3 Unique and Innovative Ideas

So buckle up because this post is going to be all about exploring the unknown potential of WordPress as a unique storytelling platform.

https://managewp.com/wordpress-storytelling

Something is Rotten in the State of WordPress

WordPress itself is owned by ‘the community’, but let’s not kid ourselves, this is no utopia, let’s see what happens if you try to fork WordPress, it won’t work, it’s not a realistic option and to suggest otherwise is ingenuous, the real power resides in WordPress.org, The WordPress Foundation and Automattic.

http://wpmu.org/rotten-wordpress/

Competitions & Giveaways

Tokokoo Competition: Win 3 Club Memberships 20+ eCommerce Themes

Today we have another great competition for you, we have teamed up with Tokokoo to offer you the chance to win one of three club memberships.

http://wplift.com/tokokoo-competition

Giveaway: Feel the Infinite Power of InfiniteWP

InfiniteWP is fast approaching 100,000 WP sites being managed and to celebrate they are doing some significant discounts and are giving away 5 copies of any of their amazing addons.

http://wpdaily.co/giveaway-infinitewp/

Win a Ticket to Our New Tuts+ Live Workshop

We have 5 tickets to give away for our newest Tuts+ Live Workshop, all you have to do is subscribe to our newsletter.

http://wp.tutsplus.com/articles/news/31787giveaway

Tutorials and How-Tos

How to automatically insert a list of related articles below the post

When a reader finished reading one of your blog posts, why not suggesting him other article he might like as well? Here’s a quick tip to automatically display related posts (based on category) below the current post.

http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-automatically-insert-a-list-of-related-articles-below-the-post

WordPress Plugin Development from Scratch, Part 4/4: Settings Page

Today we are going to complete the basic structure of a plugin by learning how to create a WordPress plugin settings page for our slider. Stay tuned as settings are an important part in customizing the functionality of a Plugin.

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/wordpress/wordpress-plugin-development-settings-page/

Defining a Custom WordPress Menu Hook

When it comes to defining custom option pages, theme pages, menu pages, and submenu pages, the provided API makes this trivially easy; however, one of the less used aspects of these functions is the ability to define a custom WordPress menu hook.

http://tommcfarlin.com/custom-wordpress-menu-hook/

How to Add Multiple Post Thumbnails / Featured Images in WordPress

In this article we will show you how to add multiple post thumbnails / featured images in WordPress.

http://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-add-multiple-post-thumbnails-featured-images-in-wordpress/

The WPLift Guide to WordPress Multisite: Everything You Need to Know

Did you know you can run multiple WordPress websites from just one WordPress installation? If this sounds like something you might be interested in doing then WordPress Multisite is a feature of WordPress you should take a closer look at.

http://wplift.com/wordpress-multisite-guide

The WPLift Complete Guide to WordPress Password Recovery

In today’s post, I’m going to show you four simple steps each of which will help you recover your WordPress password for the superuser better known as the default user ‘admin’.

http://wplift.com/wordpress-password-recovery

Resources & Freebies

WordPress 404 Page Plugins

A 404 page is the error page that users see when the page they’re looking for is not at the URL they’ve landed on. Some 404 pages are creative, some are useless, and some don’t even exist at all.

http://wpmu.org/wordpress-404-plugin/

Soliloquy add-ons

There are a number of add-ons available for Soliloquy that extend its capabilities beyond those included in the core. So in no particular order, here they are:

http://www.doitwithwp.com/soliloquy-add-ons/

Testimonials Widget for WordPress

Adding testimonials to your WordPress site is very simple. Plugins such as Testimonials Widget make the process easy.

http://www.wpjedi.com/testimonials-widget-for-wordpress/

The post The Weekly WordPress News, Tutorials & Resources Roundup No.30 appeared first on WPLift.

In today’s post, I’m going to show you four simple steps each of which will help you recover your WordPress password for the superuser better known as the default user ‘admin’.

Let’s break this down into three situations – the good, the bad and the ugly.

The Good: Your site and admin email is safe

This is the best of a bad situation. All you have to do is click on the “Recover Lost Password” button and enter your admin email address. A password recovery link should reach your inbox within a few minutes (usually less than 30 seconds) and you can follow that link to reset your password. I would advise you to choose a secure password with alphanumeric and special characters with a minimum length of 8 characters.

The Bad: Your site is safe, but your admin email isn’t

If you’re reading this because you’re running WordPress on a local PC, technically termed as ‘localhost’ or you didn’t use a proper email address in the first place (yes I know some folks who do this) then there’s nothing to worry about.

But if your email is compromised and you can’t reset your password because of that please make sure to update your email address after you’ve reset your password.

Recovering your WordPress password when your email is compromised (or does not exist) is fairly simple. There are three basic ways to overcome this situation, all of which are described below.

How to recover WordPress admin password via FTP

This is the simplest of all the three methods mainly because it contains the least number of steps and it is most likely that you have FTP access to your server.

• To start off, login to your FTP server and navigate to your WordPress installation directory.
• Next, navigate to “wp_content/themes/” and enter the theme folder which is currently activated in your website. If my currently active theme was Twenty Twelve, then you should enter the “twentytwelve” folder in the themes directory.
• Download the functions.php file. Regardless of what theme you’re using, there will be a functions.php file.
• In most cases the first line is the PHP tag opener and reads: “<?php” (without quotes)
• Go to the next line and enter the following code:
  • wp_set_password(‘password’,1);
  • Make sure that you don’t insert it within a comment line because that wouldn’t create any effect.
  • I’d recommend using a good text editor, for example, Notepad++. That way, you would be able to distinguish between active code and comment lines (latter being marked in green).
  • Technical know-how: the wp_set_password(‘string’, uid) function is a user-defined PHP function defined in the WordPress core which sets the password “string” for the user whose user ID is identified by “uid”.
  • We’ve used the user ID as 1 since it is the default user ID for the WordPress superuser.
  • Upload the functions.php file back to the same directory you downloaded it from (in this case “wp_content/themes/twentytwelve”) and overwrite it.
  • Immediately go to your WordPress login page typically “yourwebsite.com/wp-login.php”, enter your superuser username (in most cases it “admin” or “Admin”) and fill the password field with the password, “password” (without quotes).
  • Click on “Login”
  • Once you submit the credentials (try to login) the login page will simply reload without redirecting you to the WordPress dashboard. This means you have just reset the WordPress administrator password to “password”.
  • Do not try to login again for now. Each time you try to login, you will reset the WordPress administrator account password. This is because the wp_set_password() function is still being executed. Therefore, we need to remove this function.
  • To do this, simply download the modified functions.php file from the active theme directory, remove the line you have added before, save the changes and upload the file back.

Now you’ll be able to login to your WordPress site using the password “password”. You should definitely change the password to a secure one.

How to recover WordPress admin password using MySQL command line via SSH

This method involves lesser steps, but is a bit complicated for someone who’s new to the command line interface. If you have access to phpMyAdmin, then I recommend you use the next tutorial.

Prerequisites: You need to know the MySQL login credentials, the database name you’re using, the user ID whose associated password you want to change. The user ID is typically 1.

Getting access to the MySQL command prompt depends on your environment.

• If your WordPress site is hosted in a remote server, you must have SSH access. You could use the popular client Putty.
• If you are on Ubuntu, then launch Terminal.
• If you’re on Windows running WAMP, left-click on the WAMP icon > MySQL > MySQL console. There is no default password. Just press Enter once asked for the password in the MySQL console. Since you already have access to the MySQL console, you can skip the next three points.

Login to MySQL:

• Open the terminal emulator and type the code: “mysql –u root -p” and hit Enter
• Enter your password. If you’re on Ubuntu chances are that the default password is null. Simply press Enter.
• Now you should have access to the MySQL console.

We assume the following:

• Database name: wp_genesis
• User ID whose password you want to change: 1
• The new password we’re setting is: mynewpass

Enter the following lines of code accordingly: (I haven’t used any double quotes, so you should enter the codes ditto)

• use wp_genesis;
• SELECT ID, user_login, user_pass FROM wp_users;
• UPDATE wp_users SET user_pass = MD5(‘mynewpass’);
• exit

This sets the new password of the user ‘admin’ to ‘mynewpass’. You should have your account back!

When you try this tutorial, make sure you use the correct database name and set a better password than mynewpass.

How to recover WordPress admin password using phpMyAdmin

This method is one of the most popular recovery methods and the internet is filled with many such tutorials. I’m going to assume that this is your favourite!

• First you need to have phpMyAdmin installed. Most hosting providers provide this software and can be found under cPanel. If you’re running WAMP, then phpMyAdmin is available under “localhost/phpmyadmin”
• Once you’re inside phpMyAdmin, click on the database which is used by your WordPress site.
• You should find a table entry called “wp-users”. That’s the table whose entry we want to edit. Click on it.
• The admin user is usually at the top with ID = 1. Select that row and click on the yellow pencil or on “Edit”.
• Look for the row named “user_pass” (usually the 3^rd or 4^th one).
• In that row, under the “Function” column, select MD5.
• Under the “Value” column, enter your new password. In our tutorial, we’re setting it to “mynewpass”.
• To save the changes, click on Go.
• This updates the password of the admin user to “mynewpass”. You should now be able to login to your WordPress dashboard.

The Ugly: Both your site and admin email are compromised

In such a case it’s most likely that you’ve fallen prey to a malicious exe or cookie. I would recommend you to first scan your computer and/or phone’s browser (if you’ve logged in from any of them) and make sure that they’re secure. Then you should contact your hosting provider and ask them to scan your site and MySQL database for malicious codes/injections. Next, try to recover your email address and use any of the three steps mentioned above for resetting the password. If the email address isn’t recoverable, change it once you have access to your WordPress account.

Conclusion

So we’ve summed up recovery process from beginner to advanced levels. I personally feel that you should try the resetting the WordPress password via MySQL – just for the fun of it. It gives you a glance of how this code works.  I mean, we’re all explorers here, always looking for something new – so why not?

Have you ever faced a nail biting, hear tearing situation where your WordPress password and email were compromised? What did you do to overcome it? We’d love to know!

The post The WPLift Complete Guide to WordPress Password Recovery appeared first on WPLift.

Not many have heard of this feature of WordPress, or really know what is for and what it is capable of. However, by the time you’ve read this guide, not only will you be fully aware of the potential uses for this feature, but you will know how to quickly activate it on your own WordPress installation.

What is WordPress Multisite?

Although this powerful feature of WordPress requires a few little tweaks of the system files to be activated, it has been a part of each standard installation of WordPress since version 3.0. Before then it was a separate application called WordPress MU. Despite coming with WordPress for many years now, many people still don’t know much about it. So what exactly is WordPress Multisite?

When it comes to explaining what WordPress Multisite is, it’s a good idea to give an example of it in use. The best example would have to be WordPress.com, the free service where users can sign up and create their own blog, hosted by WordPress.com

Each blog is created as a subdomain of wordpress.com with an address like myblog.wordpress.com. Each site can have its own theme, content and plugins which is just how it works when you install WordPress Multisite.

Although wordpress.com has chosen to use subdomains for each new blog that is created, you could use subdomains or sub-directories from the main domain such as wordpress.com/myblog. You can even map each WordPress installation to its own domain to mask the fact that it is part of a Multisite network. To find out how, keep on reading.

What Happens When you Activate WordPress Multisite?

When you complete the few simple steps it takes to activate WordPress Multisite, which we will get to soon, a new user role is created which is known as Super Admin. The Super Admin user has access to the newly activated Network Admin dashboard.

From there the Super Admin user can then create new sites which will be part of the multisite network. They can then access all of the sub-sites, doing so in the role of regular Administrator. The Super Admin can also create user accounts for each of the sub-sites and the network itself.

The Super Admin also has the ability to install plugins and themes through the Network Admin dashboard which can be Network Activated or Network Enabled, making them available to the other sites that are part of the Multisite network.

If a plugin or theme is not required for use by every site in the network, the Super Admin user can simply access individual sites from the Network Admin dashboard and then install, activate or remove them as required.

It is worth noting that not all plugins are compatible with Multisite so if you have any essential plugins, check their status before proceeding.

Why Use WordPress Multisite?

Once WordPress Multisite is enabled, you can create multiple new WordPress installation under your initial installation, which you or the Super Admin user has control over. Some examples of why you might want to use WordPress Multisite include:

• A teacher who wanted to give their students access to their own WordPress blog which they can have full control over. This could be for school projects that involve keeping a diary, college assignments for learning to create plugins or individual portfolio sites for design classes. As the Super Admin user has control over the sites, they can include school branding on sites, restrict the use of certain plugins and simplify the process of creating a blog.
• A webmaster with multiple sites, either their own or client sites, could benefit from using WordPress Multisite as they can keep all the installed plugins and themes up-to-date from one dashboard as well as make any changes to content in a quick and convenient way. As the individual sub-sites can be mapped to their own domains, visitors never need know they are viewing a website that is part of a multisite network. To map individual sites to their own domains, the free WordPress MU Domain Mapping plugin is required.
• Creating templates for other sites can make the life of a web designer much easier as they can quickly apply a template to a fresh WordPress installation which contains their stock pages, plugins and content. Multisite can do all this and for people selling off-the-shelf web design packages, it can really speed up their workflow.
• Web designers can work on a multisite version of WordPress in privacy before it is ready to be shown to the client for comment. Once the site is finished and signed off, it can be migrated over to the client’s domain and hosting service.
• Programmers and developers could benefit from having a test environment that they can work in without running the risk of damaging their main WordPress installation. Using a plugin like WP Multisite Replicator allows the Super Admin user to quickly clone one of the multisites, creating a replica that can be used for testing plugins, tweaking the design and generally messing about in without any serious consequences (within reason).
• Building a community around your main site can be aided by using WordPress Multisite. By allowing your readers to create their own WordPress installation, under the banner of your website, you can keep your fans coming back time and time again and allow them to ‘buy into’ your brand. A plugin like Gravity Forms User Registration Add-On simplifies the process for users to create their own site, and you can even integrate it with PayPal to charge people for creating their own site.

As you can see there are a number of good uses for Multisite. Its ability to allow you to update and maintain many seemingly separate sites from one dashboard is its main selling point so if you find yourself in that position, Multisite is well worth a look.

It is worth pointing out that hosting multiple WordPress sites from low-performance budget webhosting could cause problems with the speed and accessibility of those sites. If in doubt, contact your host before setting up a fully-fledged WordPress Multisite network and find out what their Terms of Service are and whether they recommend an upgraded hosting package to handle the extra load.

How to Activate WordPress Multisite

Although WordPress Multisite has been bundled with WordPress since version 3.0, turning it on, or activating it, isn’t as simple as changing a setting in the dashboard. However, it is a pretty simple process and if all goes well, could take you less than five minutes.

There are a number of things you need in order to complete the process and they include:

• Admin access to a self-hosted WordPress installation
• Cpanel Access or FTP access to your hosting and the directories of the WordPress installation
• The ability to edit the wp-config.php and .htaccess files in the root of the WordPress installation (either by downloading them using FTP or via the Cpanel)

Full up-to-date instruction can be found on the wordpress.org website on this page covering how to create a network.

However, when I activated Multisite on my blog which was hosted by HostGator, on a shared hosting account, I found there was a step missing from the instructions which I had to take. After step 1, which covers creating a backup, I had to create a new directory in the root directory of my WordPress installation called ‘blogs.dir’. Once created, I moved onto step 2 and was able to follow the installations and activate WordPress Multisite.

If you can’t turn on WordPress Multisite and are using HostGator or shared hosting, this missing step could be the solution.

Hopefully you are now fully aware of WordPress Multisite and what it could do for you. For some users it could even replace the use of costly WordPress management services saving you time and money in the process. If you have any questions about this feature please leave a comment below.

The post The WPLift Guide to WordPress Multisite: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on WPLift.

How it looks in your dashboard :

Download the Plugin Here »

I also created a quick one-page website for the project which details briefly what it’s about and how you can access the feed.

There are three ways you can access the feed :

• Download The Plugin
• Follow on Twitter
• Subscribe to the RSS Feed

I also did some work on the feed itself and changed how it is handled – before it was a little unstable and sometimes showed duplicate entries. With the new method it has been working perfectly and will be updated with new entries every 30 minutes.

Submissions

I am now looking for new submissions so I can hold a monthly poll to pick new sources for the feed, if you would like to submit your site or someone elses that I have missed out, please contact me and let me know!

The post A Better Planet: Website Live & Plugin in the Repository appeared first on WPLift.