What if the next generation of great stories isn't even offered in print?

One of the things I love about the ManageWP community is that it's made up of a fun and interesting mixture of pragmatic doers and imaginative dreamers. When it comes to being an entrepreneur - which I've come to realize many of you are (as am I) - that's a good mix.

It means that when it's time to get things done you can switch into "closed mode" and knock out a to-do list. It also means that when there's a problem to be solved you can switch into "open mode" or "creative mode" and dream up new solutions for whatever problem you happen to be facing.

It makes you exciting, dangerous and a good group to brainstorm with as you can actually follow through afterwards. As such, I'd like to try an exercise with all of you in open mode thinking.

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

Storytelling & WordPress: A Surprising Lack of Innovation

Over the years WordPress has been a lot of things. It began as a simple blogging platform, progressed into a content management system and is becoming an app environment and possibly even a web operating system! This kind of big and rapid advancement is an integral part of WordPress's success. That and the fact that it's free and open source (obviously).

It is simultaneously the world's most popular blogging platform and CMS; beating out all competitors by impressive margins. As such it has helped to revolutionize the way we (both businesses and individuals) communicate. It's how we break news, build community around specific topics, review products, conduct debates and a whole slew of other forms of communication. But what it hasn't done yet is fundamentally change the way in which we tell stories.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that, for the most part, what we're used to seeing on a blog or WordPress website is just a digital version of an existing print format. The biggest and most popular changes we've made are the addition of hyperlinks, embedded videos and animated gifs. A far cry from fully embracing a digital landscape and effectively re-inventing the art of storytelling. Something that is not only possible right now, but is just waiting to happen! Yet no one has done it.

Of course, many of you are probably wondering what it is. So let's just jump into some concepts that could (probably) happen on WordPress and afterwards talk about the viability and potential market for such experiences.

1. The Gmail Experiment

This is an idea I've been sitting on for so long that I felt it finally time to publish something about it in the hopes that someone, somewhere will want to make it. I initially bounced this around with some of my friends as far back as 2007 and WordPress at the time was not as flexible and powerful as it is today. So in a nutshell, here's the WordPress storytelling concept I call The Gmail Experiment.

Much of our lives comes at us through email. We have an emotional connection to it that is both unique and intense. For many of us it's the first thing we check when we wake up and the last thing we do before going to bed. It's personal, practical, and essential. So why not tell stories in that environment?

I think a Gmail style WordPress theme where emails, chats, etc. are custom post types could provide a rich app-like environment for interactive stories to unfold. Imagine a WordPress install running such a theme, equipped with the necessary plugins to make the interactions I'll describe possible (probably BuddyPress + a gamification plugin).

A reader arrives on the home page of said site. There are a few "story paths" that greet them.

Do you want to experience a couple falling in love through a series of emails/chats/and google hangouts? How about a battle of wits with a fictitious criminal trying to recruit you for a dangerous job? Or maybe you're part of the ground crew of a mission to Mars and it's your job to analyse the images and videos being transmitted back to earth? Working with a team of other users/"readers" to come to various conclusions and solve problems. You could even be on the receiving end of famous stories centering around various types of correspondence: Frankenstein, Dracula or The Mountains of Madness.

All of these scenarios can be uniquely experienced through an email environment in a way that engages and connects to the audience in brand new ways.

For the sake of this concept lets explore a few options you might have if you chose to follow the "couple falling in love" path. Would you like to take part by giving one or both parties dating advice? It might even be fun to work with other users/"readers" to help make special moments happen for the couple in question. Or what if you could earn points/badges based on how well you read and interpret how the relationship is going? The possibilities are endless as there could be a fun combination of pre-made content as well as content produced in response to those participating in the stories.

I think you get the idea. Next concept!

2. The Scrolling Graphic Novel

Remember this? Or how about a slew of these a while back? Beautiful, interactive, story-based web experiences that delight and take the breath away. My question is: why hasn't any of that web design creativity made its way into the way we build WordPress sites?

I mean, I get it. The vast majority of WordPress users are interested in setting up a standard website for their blog or business. Telling stories in unconventional formats doesn't really meet either of those overwhelming needs. So the easiest money for everyone is in supplying themes and plugins that empower the core WordPress user base. But what if there is another huge user base out there just waiting for the right tools to create mind-bogglingly immersive stories with a web-first mentality? I think it's worth considering. Which, obviously, I have.

So how would my concept of a "scrolling graphic novel" work?

Building off of the principles graphic novel artists and writers already use to create and place their page frames we can remove the pages and create a more streamlined distraction free story flow. Text, image "frames", "full page" graphics, motion graphics, video, etc. All of it would smoothly flow and "unfold" downwards (or possibly sideways).

I imagine two web-specific features that would really make this an enjoyable experience beyond the intuitive and seamless flow I just described. The first is a sticky bookmark button that tracks with the reader's scrolling. This of course will allow any reader to place a bookmark where they left off and return to their spot when ready.

The other feature I have in mind is a new annotation/commenting functionality that allows readers to place their thoughts/comments/annotations throughout the piece. Comments would be indicated by small markers on the opposite side of the screen from the sticky bookmark and with a single click any reader could open them up and join the conversation or add their own thoughts.

Hopefully the image above helps to illustrate what I mean by all of that. Next concept!

3. Writing Prompts + Gamified Writing Challenges = Loads of Fun Original Stories

Imagine a combination of 750words.com and The Storymatic running on a WordPress Multi-site with BuddyPress. When community members log in they are greeted with a blank frontend word processing screen and a writing prompt. It's timed with specific word count goals to encourage lots of free writing and spontaneous storytelling.

At any point in time a writer feels stuck they can opt to have another writing prompt revealed to help keep their creative flow alive and propel their story to completion. When finished, the writer is taken to an analytics screen that shares some stats and tips for improving the next round.

Continued participation unlocks accomplishment badges and even improves their stories' visibility on community pages (if they choose to make their stories public).

Simple as that.

Final Thoughts

You may be wondering: where in the world did all of that come from? Well, I guess it's a combination of experiencing the incredible ingenuity and creativity of some fellow artists on the web and my recent re-immersion into the art and design culture.

It's got me dreaming again.

I've been closely following the Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield as he's been sending the most amazing videos from the International Space Station; As well as another huge inspiration of mine Jack Conte who creates the most astounding music videos on a regular basis via his YouTube channel (which lead him to launch the new service Patreon that helps digital artists make a living via monthly "tips" from their fans); And then there's the blog posts I've been reading over at The Digital Telepathy Betterment Blog where their main focus is making the web a better place through design innovation.

I love how each of these people/groups is helping to move the web forward and the more I thought about it I decided it was better to share my somewhat odd or bizarre ideas about the intersection of the web, WordPress and storytelling than to continue to sit on them and potentially let them go to waste. I decided that even if I don't personally get to make any of these ideas happen, I might help spark a conversation that results in something really special.

Personally, I could see a whole group of design and development shops pop up in the coming years to provide various themes and plugins for WordPress users interested in creating beautiful stories like the ones I've just described above. And I'd love to be a part of it! Maybe this is the start?

So please, let me know what you think about this unique intersection of the web, WordPress and the art of storytelling in the comments below. I'd also love to know if you think there are other exciting spaces for innovation within the WordPress ecosphere.

Image Credit: Barker Animation

As we always say here at ManageWP, feedback is the lifeline that empowers us to create an incredible and quality service that we are proud to work on. So to show our appreciation to our community, we decided to run a survey contest for all our paying users. And now it's time to reveal the winners.

We went through all of the survey responses — all 2,500+ of them — and had our fair share of enjoyment going through them.

Some responses were funny, and others went bust. Some were very insightful, and others were something else entirely. But it's all good! But after a solid 10 hours of rigorous review and debate through all the responses, we all have finally agreed to our winners.

Team ManageWP sorting through the thousands of entries.

(Drumroll please...) The winners of an iPad Mini (16 GB) are:

Jan Wanders

Carrie Dils

Marc Hernandez

Congratulations! Our contest winners will be contacted shortly with additional details on how to claim their iPad Minis.

Didn't win? Don't worry, because we will also be sending out 100 ManageWP t-shirts to those of you who provided funny, witty, insightful, and constructive responses. So keep your eyes on your inbox. (If you didn't win, be sure to check out our swag store, and pick one up for yourself.) It's just our way of saying thank you for participating and giving us good feedback or a great laugh.

We will use all the feedback we have received here to improve ManageWP even further, so thanks so much to everyone who participated and took the time to help ManageWP grow.

It's been a bit of a roller coaster ride for WordPress over the past month or two, with stories of the botnet attack and compromises to two popular caching plugins emerging. But as far as I am concerned, the WordPress core is secure. It is up to you as the end user to ensure that you maintain your site so that it is safe against automated attacks.

One particular weak spot for any WordPress installation is out of date plugins. And that's one of the reasons why our Plugins of the Month series is so great -- we only feature the most up-to-date plugins. You will not find a plugin below that was updated prior to April 2013 -- they're all current, have been downloaded thousands (or tens of thousands) of times and come highly rated. Enjoy!

10. WP Content Copy Protection

I am personally not a fan of attempting to prevent people from copying content on your site. Quite frankly, life is too short and you'll tend to irritate genuine visitors whose user experience is somewhat marred by copyright protection measures.

Having said that, if you do want to protect your content then WP Content Copy Protection is a good option. Some of the most common copying methods (such as right click, image dragging and keyboard shortcuts) are blocked. However, the plugin's author does stress that the plugin is more of a deterrent rather than a preventative measure.

Click here to download

9. BJ Lazy Load

I love lazy loading. In short, certain elements are only loaded onsite when they become visible within the browser's viewport, which means that your web page's initial loading time is slashed.

BJ Lazy Load is a great option, not only because it does the usual lazy load job with images on your WordPress site (using JavaScript), but also because it includes a custom function that allows you to lazy load any image and iframe on your site.

Click here to download

8. AddThis Welcome Bar

You may have come across the likes of Hello Bar before and AddThis Welcome Bar does a similar job. However, its job is to present a custom message to site visitors based upon their origination. For instance, if a visitor comes from Facebook they will see the following:

These targeted messages should serve to increase the likelihood of people sharing your content on their social media network of choice.

Click here to download

7. Developer

Now I'm no developer but this looks like a great tool for those who do know how to wrangle code. And with Automattic's involvement, you know it's going to be a quality plugin.

In short, Developer helps you to optimize your development environment by ensuring that you have all the relevant tools and plugins installed.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the plugin provides you a list of recommended development plugins that you can activate from within its settings screen.

Click here to download

6. Google CSE

Although I am a huge fan of the Relevanssi plugin, Google is of course the daddy. And that is why I sat up and took note when this plugin arrived on my radar.

While many plugins have been created in the past to allow you to incorporate Google search within your WordPress site, they've always had their shortcomings and failings. However, Google CSE manages to serve up Google search results from within your WordPress search page template without the need for any customization:

The setup is simple: just follow the instructions to grab a Google API Key and a Custom Search Engine ID and you're good to go!

Click here to download

5. Sendola

This is a cool concept and certainly one that may interest businesses using WordPress. Sendola enables you to add a button to your site that visitors can click on to have your contact details sent to their phone:

By contact details I mean rather a lot, including (but not limited to):

• Phone number
• Google Map
• Opening times
• Payment details
• Images
• Directions
• Google Streetview

Click here to download

4. Barc Chat

Ah, chat rooms. I wasted many an hour in them on my parents' pay-per-minute dialup connection in the late 90s. And although they may seem rather a quaint notion these days, there is definitely still a place for them in the right context.

That's where Barc Chat comes in -- it enables you to create a chat function on your site with ease. Just check out the following video:

Click here to download

3. Stealth Login Page

Given that security has been such a hot topic these past few weeks, it only seemed right that I included a security plugin on this month's list.

In short, Stealth Login Page protects your /wp-admin/ and wp-login.php pages from being accessed without you having to make any potentially confusing manual adjustments to your site's .htaccess page. Any person (or bot) that attempts to access will be redirected to a page of your choosing, while you can still login via the custom URL.

This plugin does not offer you comprehensive protection against malicious attacks but it is another layer of security to consider.

Click here to download

2. Advanced Settings

I've always been puzzled by what I perceive to be missing settings in the WordPress core. Fortunately, the Advanced Settings plugin does a great job of filling in many of the gaps, including (but not limited to):

• Remove comments system
• Insert author bio on each post
• Add description and keywords meta tags in posts (SEO)
• Get the blog description and add a description meta tag
• Hide top WP admin bar
• Remove HTML comments
• Easy FeedBurner configuration
• Insert google analytics code
• Display page loading time
• Add thumbnail support
• Set JPEG quality
• Fix post type pagination

The plugin's author is working on even more settings in the future, so stay tuned!

Click here to download

1. SEO Plugin by Squirrly

I don't tend to get excited by SEO optimization plugins much as I think that WordPress SEO by Yoast has the market pretty well cornered, but having said that I do like the look of SEO Plugin by Squirrly.

Unlike SEO by Yoast, its focus is entirely on onsite optimization, as demonstrated in this video:

It's got a bunch of interesting features that Yoast's plugin doesn't include, so if you're looking to squeeze the most out of each of your WordPress blog posts, this plugin could be well worth a look.

Click here to download

In a way, I'm relieved.

Last month I was spoilt for choice with free themes. My initial shortlist had tens of candidates, which I drilled down to fourteen quality offerings, from which I had to pick five. It wasn't easy.

But this month has seen business return to normal (for the time being at least). The selection was merely "good."

However, this month's new candidates have had to compete with the awesome themes that didn't make it onto the list last month, so the end result is yet another five awesome and diverse free themes for you to check out. Enjoy!

5. Magazino

This was by far the most impressive magazine-style theme on offer this month. As you can see from the above screenshot, Magazino is a clear and uncluttered design that lets the images you choose to include on your site do the talking.

Magazino is responsive (although how well it adapts to various screen sizes and devices is up for debate) and has some limited customization options. All in all it's a good theme to pick up and use out of the box, but perhaps not designed for those who like to tweak.

Download

4. Prana

No Themes of the Month post would be complete without a minimalistic design, and Prana definitely delivers on that front. It utilizes Google Fonts to deliver beautiful typography with minimal system load.

Although Prana is a simple design, it includes some of the features that I consider the most important in any theme:

• Featured images
• Widgetized sidebar
• Threaded comments

Download

3. Sidekick

Sidekick is a child theme of the Superhero theme developed by Automattic. It is an unashamedly single column, no widgets design -- if you want a sidebar then you'll need to go elsewhere.

Automattic seem keen on single column layouts (what with the upcoming Twenty Thirteen theme) and Sidekick is no exception. If you're on the market for this kind of design then it's definitely one worth considering.

Download

2. tdSimple

Speaking of single column designs, tdSimple takes it even a step further with a focus on whitespace and clean typography. This type of design is perfect for bloggers and writers who want nothing to detract from the content -- it's a theme designed for truly great writing. It also looks fantastic and is fully responsive.

Demo / Download

1. Visual

Finally we have something completely different -- a theme that is driven largely by imagery. Visual is designed to showcase images, artwork and photography and arranges the elements in an attractive grid layout.

The theme is responsive and also offers two color schemes (light and dark). If you're a photographer or artist, Visual is well worth considering.

Demo / Download

WooCommerce is far and away the most popular and feature rich eCommerce plugin for WordPress. Since its debut it has been at the forefront of eCommerce in the WordPress space and as of right now it shows no signs of being de-throned.

However, WooCommerce recently had a very large update from version 1.6.6 to version 2.0+. As such, I thought it might be a good idea to offer both seasoned and new WordPress users an overview of the updated plugin.

Now, I'm fully aware that if you go to the WooThemes website there is an enormous amount of information, documentation, videos, etc. showcasing WooCommerce in action. However, I think it's important when choosing the potential lynchpin of your online business that users get a third party overview and opinion. That's what this post is intended to be.

What's New in WooCommerce 2.0?

Before diving into the full overview, I'd just like to take a moment to highlight some of the new features in WooCommerce 2.0:

• WooCommerce 2.0+ was audited by the Sucuri Security team and got their stamp of approval. This means that WooCommerce 2.0+ is almost certainly the most secure eCommerce option for WordPress users currently available.
• A new and improved product panel (a custom fields area of the Products custom post type) with a cleaner and more intuitive design.
• A new orders screen with helpful icons that make scanning and processing orders much easier and enjoyable.
• Multi-download support for digital products.
• A new tax input panel and improved tax options.
• New sorting options for products like "popularity" and "highest ratings".
• Better pagination code and design.
• Inline star rating display.
• Easier email template editing.
• Realtime checkout validation (showing customers if they've entered valid billing information or not).
• Improved PHP Session handling.
• Improved line-item storage.
• Reduced memory usage with autoloading for product classes.
• Localization - a massive amount of translation bundles have been added so more people around the world can use WooCommerce.
• All graphics within WooCommerce have been optimized for Retina screens.
• Improved templates and hooks for easier customization.
• CSS overhaul - cleaner code with better classes.
• Product tabs feature re-written for more convenience.
• Improved lightbox features with the replacement of Fancybox by prettyPhoto.
• Cart widgets now cache friendly.
• And a whole lot more...

You can no doubt see why version 2.0 of WooCommerce is similar to a new product altogether. It's what I imagine someone would have created if they had forked WooCommerce, stripped it down, re-thought critical elements in the code, design, UX, etc. and re-released it as the next evolutionary step in eCommerce for WordPress.

Which I find pretty exciting! Not to mention that it was WooThemes who did this to their own plugin. I think that says a lot about the type of company they are - still willing to shake things up and go big instead of back off and take things easy.

But you be the judge...

A Brand New Welcome Page

Upon installation and activation the first thing you'll notice is a brand new welcome page for WooCommerce 2.0. This page offers a brief introduction to all of the new features and in general makes the idea of diving in feel much less intimidating. A nice touch.

WooCommerce Settings

After you've been introduced to WooCommerce, the first thing to do is get everything set up properly. To do that you'll go to WooCommerce > Settings. On this page there are nine tabs that house the rather extensive settings required to fully configure WooCommerce. I'll do my best to quickly highlight what you can do with each one.

Starting with the General tab. This is where you can configure things like your location, the currency you'll use, the countries that are allowed to place orders, store-wide notices (like a mother's day sale alert), cart/checkout/account options, styling and downloadable product options.

Obviously a lot of basic important elements. One thing I particularly enjoyed here was the ability to quickly sub out hex codes for the colors used. It makes it extremely easy to match your store's design to your website's existing aesthetic.

Under the Catalog tab is where all of the store-wide options for your products are housed. This is where you determine how your products will be sorted, how your shop page will be displayed, which categories will be shown and how customers will get to their cart.

You can enable a number of different product fields such as weight and dimension as well as choose your unit of measurement (kg, g, lbs and oz). You'll also want to be sure to fine tune your currency display options like position and decimal preferences. You can also adjust the height, width and crop settings for product images.

Next we have the Pages tab. When WooCommerce is installed it comes with several custom pages and page templates. For the most part everything here is automatically configured. There are only three instances in which you might have to mess with settings on the Pages tab.

The first instance is if by some error upon installation the accompanying pages for WooCommerce were not automatically created. If that is the case then they already have a list here telling you which pages need creating and a drop-down menu next to each page type so you can pair it with the page you've created for it.

The second reason you might need to configure settings on this page is if you want to create a terms page. If you do, then just create it under Pages > Add New and pair it with the Terms Page ID option.

The final reason you would need to configure settings on this page is if you wanted the names of the pages you created to read differently than the default names. For example, if you wanted your "my account page" to be "my profile page" then you would need to match the page you created called "my profile" to the section that WooCommerce identifies as "My Account Page".

The easiest thing to do (so long as there were no errors upon installation) is just keep things as they are and move on. All of the pages are named well and according to their function as is.

The inventory tab is where you manage your stock settings. You can tell WooCommerce to hold stock for a specific amount of time while an order processes. You can enable low or out of stock notifications. You can set thresholds for low stock and out of stock. You can decide whether or not to show out of stock items and finally you can choose which display option suites you best: always display stock, never display stock or only show stock when low.

Next we have the Tax tab. Far from complicated, this tab actually makes calculating taxes per item very simple. You can enable taxes and then decide whether or not you want your list prices to include tax or have it added later. Then you can choose to have WooCommerce calculate item tax based on the customer's shipping or billing addresses; or your address as the shop owner.

You can even put different items in tax classes that allow you to take shipping and other things into account when determining rates. Those classes are then definable by clicking on their link beside the "Tax Rates" text at the top of the page under the other tabs.

The Shipping tab is where you can choose your shipping method(s)/rate(s) and then set the parameters for each. The types of shipping include Flat Rate, Free Shipping, International Delivery, Local Delivery and Local Pickup. All of which can be defined by clicking on their individual link next to "Shipping Options" at the top of the page under the other tabs.

As far as your general shipping options go though you're able to enable shipping, enable the shipping calculator on the cart page, hide shipping costs until an address is entered and control a few display methods.

One part of this section that I really enjoyed was the drag and drop menu for choosing how your shipping methods are displayed on the checkout page.

Similarly, when you go to the Payment Gateways tab you can choose a default payment gateway and once again use the drag and drop menu to order how those options are displayed on the front end. By default you can use Bacs, Cheque, Cash on Delivery, Mijireh Checkout and of course PayPal. If your preferred payment gateway is not present there are 98 other options to choose from in the WooCommerce extensions page at WooThemes.

Next we have the Emails tab. This is where you configure the settings for your store's automated emails. There's the New Order email, Processing Order email, Completed Order, Customer Invoice, Customer Note, Reset Password and New Account emails as well.

On the general section of this tab you're able to enter a "From" name, a "From" email address, an email header image, email footer text and some basic template styling colors. For per email tweaks all you have to do is click on their respective links beside "Email Options" at the top of the page under the other tabs.

Finally we come to the Integration tab. This is where you can integrate WooCommerce with Google Analytics and a few social sharing options. I'm assuming most of you are familiar with Google Analytics so I'll keep my commentary to the social sharing options.

The ShareThis and ShareYourCart options allow you to provide social sharing incentives to your customers. They can choose to share an item or their whole cart with their social networks and in return you can even reward them with a discount. It's a really fantastic feature in my opinion with a lot of potential for getting the word out about your products.

Ok, so that's all for the settings. Time to take a look at adding products.

WooCommerce Products

Adding products for your WooCommerce store is already a familiar process since the plugin simply creates a custom post type for you. So if you're comfortable with adding new blog posts and creating new pages then you should be equally as comfortable adding new products. There's just a few product specific custom fields to fill in.

There are also product specific taxonomies. Just as your blog posts have categories and tags they fit into, WooCommerce products get their own set of categories, tags, shipping classes and attributes that set them apart from each other and make finding them in your store easier.

WooCommerce Orders

Orders appear in an archived format (such as your all posts, pages or products sections of the admin). As you can see on the far left of the image below there are helpful little icons to help you quickly identify the status of an order. Likewise, on the far right side there are also helpful icons for actions - such as marking an order complete or viewing and editing.

If you do click the edit button on an order, you can quickly get into this editing screen and make any adjustments necessary.

WooCommerce Reports

The Reports section of WooCommerce is rather robust and the design elements in this section are a huge bonus for the chart and graph fanatics.

As you can tell from the screenshot below there are reports on Sales, Coupons, Customers and Stock items. But it's the Sales tab that has the most in-depth information. The following types of reports are automatically generated: sales overview, sales by day, sales by month, product sales, top sellers, top earners and sales by category.

I've included a few images of the different reports below so you can get an idea of how the information is laid out.

WooCommerce Coupons

Coupons, as the name suggests, allows you to create custom coupon codes that your customers can then use based on the constraints you set up when creating them. You can make a code that discounts on the total order, just a specific item or items, enables free shipping and a whole slew of other useful options.

Extensions & Themes

One of the biggest strengths of WooCommerce is that it is free and open source. Over time, just as with WordPress in general, WooCommerce has attracted a huge community of dedicated designers and developers who have created some amazing extensions and themes. Not to mention every single theme built by WooThemes has deep WooCommerce integration.

One of my favorite new themes for use with WooCommerce is called Superstore by WooThemes. Below are a few screenshots of the plugin on the frontend (as seen while using Superstor). This should help put a familiar visual to many of the backend settings we just went over above.

Overall Pros & Cons of Using WooCommerce

After taking the time to dive into the options and features of WooCommerce I wanted to list a few pros and cons as a third party observer. Besides just listing all of its best features I tried to focus on a few benefits that would be central to an end user's basic needs. Here's what I came up with...

WooCommerce Pros

• Is a great option for small and large online shops alike. With enough power and flexibility to become a legitimate online option for regular brick and mortar stores too.
• Fantastic Design
• Intuitive User Interface
• Top notch security
• Large designer and developer community
• Large existing libraries of themes and extensions
• Large user/fan base
• Tons of documentation and tutorials

WooCommerce Cons

• Possibly too complex and settings heavy for a simple digital downloads store.
• Does not "just work" with any WordPress theme.
• Because of its complexity it could be intimidating to new users.

My Conclusion

So, how does WooCommerce stack up to its own hype? Very well, in my opinion. For me the pros far outweigh the cons - which all basically center around the fact that a plugin with this much power and functionality can only be simplified so far. At some point it would start to become less than it needs to be.

I'm confident that almost anyone savvy enough to create their own website with WordPress will also be able to launch their own store using WooCommerce.

What do you think about WooCommerce? Would you (or do you) use it for your online shop? Do you have another alternative that you like better? Tell us all about it in the comments below!

WordPress is under attack. Literally.

You have no doubt heard about it -- the latest WordPress security scare has been publicized everywhere from the BBC, to NBC, to Technorati. A giant botnet made up of "tens of thousands" of computers has attacked an enormous number of vulnerable WordPress websites.

This comes on the back of other worrying recent news (such as the major security vulnerability present in two popular caching plugins) and more historical events (such as the TimThumb saga). It would seem that WordPress has endured its fair share of high profile security scares over the past few years.

I recently spoke to an employee of a major hosting company and he explained that he had moved away from WordPress due to security concerns. That hit me for six -- switching WordPress for an alternative Content Management System (CMS) like Drupal or Joomla seemed like a drastic step I would never even consider taking, and yet people are doing it.

With all of this going on, I knew the pertinent question had to be answered: Is WordPress safe? Should we entrust our websites (and for many of us, our livelihoods) with the world's most popular CMS?

I decided to find out.

A Short History of Recent WordPress Security Breaches

I have already mentioned three security breaches above, of which two are arguably the most major in recent years.

TimThumb was a huge story when it first emerged in April 2011. It only took a security flaw within an image-resizing library present in many premium themes to expose literally hundreds of thousands of WordPress blogs to nefarious hackers. Fortunately, the WordPress community quickly jumped into action to patch the vulnerability. Here's how Matt Mullenweg (WordPress founder) reported on the events:

...the incident brought out the best in the community. The core team sprang into action searching through the theme directory to inoculate any themes that contained the dangerous code. Community blogs quickly got the word out about the problem so people were aware of it. Mark Maunder, who originally discovered and broke down the problem, created a fork of the code called WordThumb that rewrote TimThumb from the ground up. Forking is not usually ideal because it fragments the market for users but Mark soon connected with Ben Gillbanks, long-time WordPress community member, and they’ve teamed forces to release TimThumb 2.0.

Within days, anyone who updated their themes were safe again. Unfortunately, many people didn't update and the security exploit continued to claim victims long thereafter.

But that wasn't all. Just two months later WordPress.org enforced a password reset on all of its users in response to "suspicious commits [to the WordPress.org Plugins Repository] to several popular plugins...containing cleverly designed backdoors." Again, the response was swift -- the commits were rolled back, the plugins were updated and and access to the repository was temporarily shut down as a precautionary measure.

Fast forward to present day and two recent breaches have brought scrutiny from many concerning WordPress' security. The first was the now infamous brute force attack. Matt Mullenweg's response to this outbreak alluded to scaremongering by companies that could benefit from fears regarding security, and proposed a very simple fix:

[The botnet attack] has turned into a news story (especially from companies that sell “solutions” to the problem).

Here’s what I would recommend: If you still use “admin” as a username on your blog, change it, use a strong password...and of course make sure you’re up-to-date on the latest version of WordPress. Do this and you’ll be ahead of 99% of sites out there and probably never have a problem.

Top web security firm Sucuri confirmed that the attack was predominately targeting common usernames such as 'admin,' 'test,' and 'administrator' and obvious passwords such as 'password,' '123456,' and 'qwerty.' Their conclusion was simple:

...by the shear [sic] fact of having a non-admin / administrator / root username you are automatically out of the running.

Furthermore, a strong username and password combination would be likely to protect you even further against these brute force attacks, as Mullenweg argued in his response to the furore.

So it is fair to say that WordPress has had its fair share of security scares over the years. So is it truly secure?

What Causes High Profile Security Exploits?

You may have noticed a pattern emerge amongst the above security exploits -- each and every one was largely driven by the exploitation of known (or quickly exposed and patched) vulnerabilities. This leads us to a curious line of thinking, as explained by Dre Armeda, CEO and co-founder of Sucuri:

It's not a WordPress problem if you're not updating your software in general. This goes for themes, plugins, modules, templates -- any of those fun things that enable you extend any open source platform. Nearly 80% of actual infections across all platforms are due to some type of vulnerability in outdated software or access/password exploits.

Or to put it another way, if there is a freely available fix for an exploit, it is not the fault of your CMS if you do not implement it.

If we take a moment to consider high-profile WordPress security exploits in recent years, every single one has targeted known vulnerabilities that are easily fixed with a simple update. As soon as an update becomes available, the vulnerability essentially ceases to be a WordPress problem and instead becomes an end user responsibility. This reality is underlined by the experience of Michael VanDeMar -- a guy who "de-hacks" and secures WordPress installations for a living (in fact, he wrote a popular guide on de-hacking WordPress):

I clean many [hacked] websites...and it has been a long time since I had to clean one due to an insecurity in the WordPress Core. Most of the time it's either due to an insecure script (such as an older version of TimThumb), an insecure host, or someone whose FTP access has been intercepted by a local virus.

So the conclusion should be pretty apparent -- the issue is less to do with security from the developer's perspective and far more about the end user's own security measures through website maintenance best practice. This applies not only to WordPress, but to all Content Management Systems.

The Real Question

Armeda feels that WordPress has unparalleled prowess in diagnosing and fixing secuirty vulnerabilities. But how secure is WordPress compared to comparable Content Management Systems? How does it stack up against the likes of Joomla and Drupal? That is the pertinent question, because the security of any CMS must ultimately be judged by how well it stacks up against the competition.

VanDeMar had some interesting comments to make on the relative popularity of WordPress and how that affects our perception of security:

WordPress is in use ~3.5x more than Drupal and Joomla combined...Since an exploit found in WordPress means a much larger base of exploitable sites available, hackers will target WordPress more than the other two, which can lead to exploits in WordPress being discovered sooner, which is turn might leave the impression that it has more issues with hacking than the other two. I do not think this is the case currently.

Although there is a very real risk that WordPress will be subject to more attacks than less popular Content Management Systems, VarDeMar does not feel that WordPress is inherently less secure than other platforms for that fact. He also feels that WordPress is far more secure now than it has ever been:

Historically speaking, WordPress has had it's share of insecure versions, of course, and while new issues are always being discovered I do not think that they are with the same frequency or severity that they were pre-2.9.2, which was released in February 2010.

VanDeMar's sentiments are backed up by Armeda:

We haven't seen a major vulnerability in WordPress since the pre-3.x days. There have been some minor security bugs and those have been fixed pretty quickly, but in terms of major security vulnerabilities, we haven't seen one in quite a while.

But what about other Content Management Systems? The security of the Joomla platform is very much in question at the moment due to the discontinuation of support for 1.x versions. Sucuri are seeing a "heavy influx" of 1.x users who are potentially vulnerable to attack. Armeda's thoughts are that the discontinuation of support puts many Joomla users "in an extremely poor security posture." The issue here, as is becoming the common theme, is centered upon known security exploits and keeping your software up to date.

However, our own Predrag Cujanovic argues that Joomla updates are often hamstrung by "a complicated update process." This leads to sites being "left behind" on old versions. One certainly cannot argue that WordPress has a complicated process -- Armeda goes as far as to call it "the best one-click update feature in any web software I have seen." In fact, he summed up WordPress' prowess in terms of security to me perfectly:

When you look at the team and the effort behind the community that comprises WordPress, if you look at the processes that are in place to mitigate vulnerabilities when they are discovered and disclosed, all the way through getting that launch into a patch that's going to hit over 17% of the internet, bar none I would say that in marriage the triad that makes up a successful project like [WordPress] (people, process and technology), hands down it takes the cake.

So if all platforms are of a reasonably comparable standard in terms of "base" security, the real impact comes in adjudging the speed with which emerging exploits are recognised and patched, and the ease with which those patches can be implemented by the end user. There seems little disagreement amongst security experts that WordPress rules the roost in that regard.

The Key to WordPress Security

During our chat, Armeda referred to what he named the "five key principles of website security" (whether you be operating WordPress or any other CMS):

1. Update everything
2. Delete any redundant extensions/files
3. Create unique passwords
4. Manage administrator access
5. Take regular backups

In short, if you follow those principles, the likelihood of your site being hacked is reduced down to an absolute minimum.

Anecdotal and empirical evidence demonstrates that the WordPress core is secure and the WordPress team is unparalleled in its reaction to emerging exploits, which means that the weak link is us -- the end user. If you want WordPress to be secure you must ultimately focus on your actions, which should revolve around the five key principles of website security named above.

If you would like an in-depth guide to taking the most important actions to secure your WordPress site, I recommend the following article I recently wrote: Everything You Need to Know About WordPress Security.

WordPress: As Good As It Gets?

There is no such thing as a 100% secure website, nor is there such a thing as a 100% secure Content Management System. Therefore, all we can do is work with the most secure software and take sensible precautions as our responsibility as a website administrator dictates.

If we keep our house in order by following the five principles of website security, you can rest assured that the WordPress team will keep up their end of the bargain in diligently spotting and patching emerging vulnerabilities. The experts will tell you that there is no one else out there doing a better job, and that's all the proof I need to know that my websites are in safe hands.

WordPress can be as secure as any other CMS out there, but it is ultimately up to you to determine your site's own security by ensuring that the development team's hard work in keeping it safe is implemented by you in your administrator role. You are the key to effective security more than anything else.

Is WordPress secure? Yes. Are you keeping your website secure? Only you can answer that question.

Photo Credit: FutUndBeidl

As the Editor of this fine blog (if I do say so myself ) I am in a unique position.

While I certainly consider myself a devoted member of the ManageWP team (and have been for over 18 months now), I am not directly involved in the ongoing development or support of the app itself. I am a ManageWP user and a ManageWP team member, but I'm not on the "front lines," so to speak.

With the above in mind, Vladimir (our CEO) asked me to write an honest appraisal of the ManageWP app and the team that develops and supports it. Because he is well and truly inside of the operation, he wanted to know what I thought of team ManageWP and the future of the app. That is exactly what I have done in this post.

The Manifesto

My first thought was to turn to the manifesto that Vladimir published here on the blog a couple of months ago. Here it is in all its glory:

Let's break this manifesto down into what I consider (as a ManageWP user) its four most important constituent parts:

1. Making managing multiple WordPress sites easier and quicker (than any other comparable product out there)
2. Giving peace of mind regarding website security and optimal performance
3. Constant innovation in terms of features
4. Top quality support

As a ManageWP team member, these are the areas in which I would like to see us excel. As a ManageWP user, these are the areas in which I would like to see the app excel. Now here's the tough question: does it?

1. Multiple WordPress Website Management

The first time I came across ManageWP (which was shortly before Vladimir asked me to write for this blog back in November 2011), I was astonished at (a) how much easier it made WordPress website management and (b) how no one had thought of this before. Vladimir was definitely ahead of the curve.

Fast forward many months and I believe that ManageWP is still at the forefront of multiple WordPress site management. There are certainly more competitors around these days, but the core functionality of the software (to make maintaining WordPress sites quick and easy) is still unparalleled (in my humble opinion).

I don't tire of logging into the ManageWP Dashboard and seeing this:

22 plugin updates spread over eight websites -- all updatable with the click of a button. And that's not to mention the Post Revisions, Table Overhead and ever-present Spam.

The one-click update process has only got easier since I started using ManageWP. What was once occasionally a little playful now operates flawlessly every time. To think I once logged into every site individually to update plugins!

But what really excites me about the management aspect of ManageWP is that the team is still so passionate about improving what is still the fulcrum of the app. They haven't lost sight of what makes ManageWP so important, and that fills me with confidence for the future.

2. Security and Website Performance

Security has become more and more important to me over the past few weeks, largely prompted by my own blog being hacked. On Monday I will be publishing an in-depth piece on how secure WordPress really is, and just a couple of weeks ago I published a comprehensive post on how to secure your WordPress website on my own blog.

The first thing I'll say about ManageWP is that it is secure; and that's obviously a huge priority. The team employs complex layers of security to ensure that data passed between your websites and ManageWP is never exposed -- I don't understand the science, but I do know that ManageWP's reputation for security is pretty flawless.

However, security for ManageWP goes beyond that. You can also scan any of your websites using Sucuri's SiteCheck Tools to ensure that they aren't infected. When I get the following screen:

I know that everything is hunky dory. Furthermore, with increased concerns regarding WordPress security, I know that the team are hard at work making sure that ManageWP can be as effective as possible in preventing breaches in the future.

3. Innovation

Let's face it -- existing features are all well and good, but we all thrive on the possibility of what is to come. And you only have to look at ManageWP's track record of introducing new features to see that we are in good hands.

Here are a few recent examples:

• The New Website Wizard was updated so that the ManageWP Worker plugin can be installed automatically on your site
• Branded Client Reports
• The brand new ManageWP Dashboard that was unleashed at the start of the year

Then there's some of the features to come, as suggested by Vladimir here. I'm looking forward to these amongst others:

• More security tools
• A remodelled backup system
• Community stats

I think that one of the best things about being a ManageWP user is waiting to see what the team comes up with next. The sheer depth of functionality is impressive and (I believe) unparalleled.

4. Top Quality Support

This is the area in which I am perhaps most proud of the ManageWP team. I know that Vladimir has poured a lot of resources into support and I really think it shows.

In fact, back in February he published a post on the topic in which he was able to boast of an astonishing 36 minute (average) response time! Having dealt with plenty of online businesses in my time I know that 36 minutes blows the competition out of the water. Furthermore, nearly half of all tickets are resolved by the support team's first answer. I've personally dealt with the support team more than once and know that the numbers are backed up by their performance in reality.

I am so glad that the ManageWP team performs so well in terms of support because when it comes to an app like this, support is arguably the most important feature. When we're managing our websites and we come across a problem, we need it resolved pronto. Time is money, as the old cliché goes.

What Do You Think?

I want to add a caveat to all of the above in the interests of complete honesty -- ManageWP isn't perfect. Nothing is. There are things I would like to see improved in an ideal world (incidentally, I know that the team is already working on those things), and features can always be tweaked to perfection. But the reason I am a ManageWP user and would never consider switching to a competitor is that I know there are a team of 20+ people working practically around the clock to make it a better app than it was yesterday.

And as our currently ongoing competition demonstrates, we are always looking to get feedback from you: the ManageWP user. The sheer willingness of the team to really listen to its users and act on what it hears demonstrates to me that we are all in safe hands.

With that in mind, I'd love to get your thoughts on ManageWP. Do you think it is the premier solution for multiple WordPress website management? What do you love about the app and would you like to see improved and/or changed? Let us know in the comments section below!

WordPress frameworks have existed for years but unfortunately the terminology and therefore the basic understanding of what they are, why someone should use one and who should be using them has often been lacking. I want to change that with this post.

I have been planning this guide for quite some time -- ever since my post Why I Switched to a WordPress Theme Framework kicked off such a rich and nuanced discussion on the topic here on the ManageWP Blog in fact. If you get a chance please check it out and give the comments a read -- it's a perfect primer for this article.

The request that popped up over and over again was for a post outlining the current state of WordPress Frameworks. Something that defines precisely what they are, which ones are recommended for who and how they differ from each other.

That is exactly what you'll find in this post. So let's get into it!

Some Important Questions, Terms & Definitions

What is a WordPress Theme Framework?

According to the WordPress Codex, the term "Theme Framework" currently has two meanings:

1. A "drop-in" code library that is used to facilitate development of a Theme.
2. A stand-alone base/starter Theme that is intended either to be forked into another Theme, or else to be used as a Parent Theme template.

What is a Parent Theme?

Almost every WordPress theme is a Parent Theme. Unless it is specified as a Child Theme (or a Framework) then it is a standalone Parent Theme. Parent Themes should contain the theme design, functionality and templates required for it to run on WordPress.

What is a Child Theme?

A Child Theme inherits all of its functionality from its Parent Theme but makes it possible for a user to make further customizations without affecting the future "updatability" of their Parent Theme.

If you're wondering if you should have a Child Theme running on your WordPress website then the answer is yes. Always create (or make sure you've been provided with) a Child Theme if you're planning on making any custom changes. Otherwise you will probably be in for a nasty surprise when your next update comes around.

For more info on how to do this check out this post by our Editor Tom Ewer: How to Create a Child Theme in WordPress.

How are frameworks different from a Parent Theme or Child Theme?

According to the definitions provided above I hope there is no confusion as to where Child Themes fit in and what their purpose is. From my experience it's when attempting to split the difference between the second definition of a WordPress Framework and that of a traditional standalone Parent Theme that things start to get a little confusing.

In this instance the important word to latch on to is template at the end of the second definition of a WordPress framework. A Parent Theme template is not meant to be used as a theme all by itself. It's almost there, and therefore makes a great starting point for further development, but is meant to be used (and often requires the use of) an additional Child Theme.

Genesis is a great example. The Genesis Framework is available by itself but StudioPress is adamant that you (the designer/developer/end user) should either always create a Child Theme to use with it or use one of the many Child Themes they provide.

A standalone Parent Theme on the other hand is just that: a theme meant to be used as is. Which makes a framework like Genesis seem incomplete and less than a standalone theme, begging the questions:

• Why use a framework like that at all?
• Why not just use a great Parent Theme and then create a Child Theme for it?

The answer is that a properly coded framework (like Genesis) is going to be much more feature-rich than a standalone Parent Theme. It will almost entirely separate functionality from design, packing all of its extensive functionality into the framework (and additional plugins) and depend almost entirely on a Child Theme for its design.

With a standalone Parent Theme you get your (more limited) functionality, design and templates all in one. This results in a theme that is perfectly ok to use, but not nearly as flexible when it comes to advanced functionality and design customizations.

Who are WordPress Theme Frameworks for?

This is an interesting question that has a few different answers depending on where you're coming from. For the most part though frameworks are for web developers/designers who want a faster way to produce more powerful and feature-rich websites for their clients with little to no custom development.

StudioPress, the creators of the Genesis framework, have a great car analogy they use which I've borrowed before when explaining this topic. WordPress is like the engine; A framework is the body and internal features/functions; and then the Child Theme is your site's paint job and exterior design elements.

It's a succinct description that helps put things into focus. If all a developer has to do is "put on a different coat of paint" (instead of building everything from the ground up for every new client) then they're able to take on a lot more work and make a lot more money. So of course this is a great tool for developers.

Beyond developers though frameworks are great for web designers, publishers, bloggers and any other type of end user who wants a powerful yet "future-proof" WordPress website without extensive development (that they may or may not know how to do).

In fact I would say that many of the more popular premium WordPress frameworks have become less about providing developers with a lean core of functionality and more about empowering "do-it-your-selfers" in the WordPress community at large. A trend I think will be obvious as you read about the premium frameworks below.

Now whether or not you think that is a good or bad thing is a topic to be discussed in the comments.

My Criteria for a Quality WordPress Framework

My goal with this post was not to begin a massive debate about whose framework of choice is better than someone else's.

While that might be fun I think the most beneficial way to approach this post is to start with the following assertion: every single framework featured in this post is worth taking a look at. From an objective point of view there are no bad frameworks here. They're all good. Most of them have found their own loyal (and in some cases fanatical) followings as a result. The question is: which one is right for you? And only you can decided that after reading about and comparing your options.

For a framework to make my Top 10 List of Premium WordPress Frameworks it had to embody the following qualities:

• High overall value, i.e. be a good investment. This of course is dependent on how well a framework meets the needs of its target market (developers, DIY or both).
• Great customer support and a large/active community.
• The ability to strike a good balance between serving the needs of both customer groups mentioned above without becoming a "diluted product" in the process. Or, be a perfect fit for one or the other.

Similarly, this is how a framework made my Top 10 List of Free WordPress Frameworks:

• Excellent Community
• Helpful Documentation
• Regular Updates
• Support Options

I should also note at this point that this post contains absolutely zero affiliate links. So you can rest assured that I'm not giving any one framework a "boost" in the hopes that I'll generate extra income. The following recommendations are made with the best interest of this readership in mind.

My Top 10 Premium WordPress Frameworks

Please note that I have listed these frameworks in alphabetical order. They are not ranked best to worst or anything like that. The specifics of the framework is what will determine if it is a good fit for you, not my subjective opinion.

Catalyst

Catalyst is premium WordPress framework that's positioned itself nicely within the WordPress community to serve business owners, WordPress DIY enthusiasts and intermediate to advanced developers particularly well.

When you make a purchase it comes with the Catalyst Framework, their Dynamik Child theme (complete with 800+ design options), unlimited licenses for personal or client websites, a framework that's optimized for SEO/Social/Multisite, a very active member's only forum, theme updates and support for life, in-depth documentation and more.

While it does not come with what they call custom skins, you can purchase them separately from the Dynamik Skin Store if you'd rather not start from scratch on your own skin or Child Theme. Or spend time customizing the Dynamik Child Theme. Which, I should add, is pretty fun and easy to do with all of the options they provide.

Arguably Catalyst's biggest strengths are its one-time fee, unlimited website licensing, lifetime support and updates, fanatical fan/user base who appear to be very active in the forums (and elsewhere I researched Catalyst online), and its extremely useful front-end custom CSS builder.

I would say the only real downside to Catalyst is that the control panel and general admin navigation is not quite as polished as say WooThemes or PageLines who market themselves to everyone from beginners to advanced users.

Recommended for: Intermediate to advanced web developers are going to love Catalyst. It's going to give them a flexible and powerful framework to create websites for themselves and their clients. They'll have a lot of help from support and the catalyst forums, as well as solid documentation and tutorial videos.

Full Details | Price: $127 one time fee

Elegant

Elegant Themes is widely known in the WordPress community as "the best value for your buck". They have a stellar library of 75+ pre-made themes that run on the Elegant Themes framework, a growing arsenal of powerful plugins and one of the best support teams available for WordPress -- all for $39 a year.

Unlike most of the other frameworks on this list though, Elegant Themes does not give users access to just their framework, so going in there's no question that members will be using one of their themes -- instead of a custom built Parent or Child Theme they create themselves. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Instead it's a great way to provide potential clients with ready to go options that they can demo. Not to mention you can also switch between the available themes as much as you want.

The options panel is fairly straightforward, easy to understand, and nearly identical from theme to theme. Which means once you're familiar with the backend on one you can more easily switch between them all.

The plugins you have access to as a member are not just usable on your Elegant Theme but on any WordPress theme. Meaning that just having the membership for the plugins might be a good idea for some.

The downsides are obvious though: this is not a blank slate with endless options for customization. The idea is to pick the Elegant Theme that best suits your needs and then tweak it rather than create something original.

Recommended for: Anyone creating a self-hosted WordPress website for the first time and/or beginner WordPress developers and web designers looking to make WordPress Websites an offered service without getting in over their head.

Full Details | Price: $39 Annual Membership

Genesis

Genesis is by far the most talked about and commonly recommended WordPress framework on this list. Chances are you have heard about it even if you've never looked into frameworks before in the past. That's because it is by far the best purchase at the intersection of value and power/flexibility. At just ~$60 you get what many call the industry standard of WordPress frameworks, unlimited website licenses, unlimited updates and support for life.

The Genesis framework by itself is very lean and fast with a focus on SEO, speed, security, site "future-proofing" and flexible design options. It is always meant to be paired with a Child Theme, whether that be one of the many StudioPress offers or one you create yourself.

The StudioPress approach is geared more towards the intermediate to advanced developer and curious DIY users can certainly become "dangerous" with it in short order. Total beginners can use it but they will either want to take a StudioPress Child Theme as is or look for another more beginner friendly framework. I would highly recommend the Prose theme for beginners as it's got the most point and click control over the theme's design elements allowing those users who'd rather not get into a lot of code avoid it. For the most part.

Almost all of the StudioPress Child Themes are aimed at creating great blogs that are tight on security, optimized for SEO and great at converting visitors into email signups. So it's no wonder this theme framework has been such a darling in the WordPress blogging community.

Recommended for: Intermediate to advanced developers who want a tried and tested framework to build out new and exciting Child Themes or quickly turnout new websites/themes for their clients. The only framework on this list that provides such a massive amount of unlimited features/support for such a low one-time fee. And the community aspect of this purchase is enormous; one of if not the largest customer/fan base.

Full Details | Price: $59.95 one-time fee

Headway

For designers and non-coders everywhere Headway is a really exciting Framework option. It's an entirely drag and drop theme builder that gives you insane control over every single element of the entire theme including individual pages, posts, post types, taxonomies and archives.

The Headway Framework uses the Headway Grid to allow their customers to create any layout they can dream of in a dynamic drag and drop visual editor. Once the layouts are complete the next part of the visual editor is all about filling in the design elements section by section -- again, with total control.

You can even build landing/squeeze pages, unlimited navigation blocks and unlimited widgetized areas/sidebars. All things that are very handy when working on custom design solutions for either clients or personal projects.

Everything built on Headway is automatically responsive and easily viewable on both desktop and mobile devices. They also stay up to date on the latest coding standards for HTML5 and CSS3.

And while obviously made for non-coders, Headway is not a total shutout for developers, who of course can use all of the features mentioned above just fine too. In addition though they can build their own Child Themes, use hooks for actions and filters, take advantage of the Blocks and Panel API's as well as sell their own Headway products as third party developers in the Headway Extend store.

Speaking of the Headway Extend store, this is where Headway and various third party developers offer what are called "Blocks," which are basically turn-key solutions built specifically for the Headway framework. Some of the more popular ones include bulk packages of useful features, compatibility with WooCommerce, custom post type template building and a lot more.

So what, if any, are the downsides?

Well, as you can probably imagine it's just about the opposite of lean. That's not to say that you can't make it fast with the right hosting, caching, and Content Delivery Network (CDN)...but it's not going to be anywhere near as quick as some of the lighter weight solutions here. Besides that, developers who love keeping things minimal and coding everything themselves may or may not want to deal with a lot of features and capabilities they will never use.

I should also mention that when you get into the visual editor, it takes a good deal of getting used to before you're pumping out new designs. So in a sense you're not just investing money but probably more than the average amount of time required to familiarize yourself with Headway's capabilities and unique tools.

Recommended for: The Headway framework is perfect for web designers who understand how websites work but don't want to spend any time coding (without sacrificing any control over various site elements). They want a library of turn-key solutions that allow them to quickly create powerful yet totally custom websites for themselves or their clients.

Full Details | Price: $87 Base Annual Subscription; $174 Developer Annual Subscription

iThemes Builder

Builder is another impressively powerful no-coding required framework for beginners and advanced developers alike. Although, as I've mentioned before, actual advanced developers might find all of the built in customization options and turn-key plugin solutions a bit bulky. But that doesn't mean it isn't a great product.

And if we're being fair, which I like to think I am, iThemes does a great job of separating out its "bulk" by placing the vast majority of the design -- or as they call it styling -- options into the Style Manager plugin. So what you're getting is the Builder Core Theme, a varying number of Child Themes depending on which package you purchase, a powerful style management plugin and a year of support and updates before you have to re-up.

While that may not sound like a whole lot, it is only after you dive into the details of what you're getting (and what else is available on the iThemes website) that Builder really begins to look like a top notch WordPress framework option.

First, lets talk about Builder itself. It's a responsive framework that comes with five foundation Child Themes and a very flexible layout editor. This layout editor allows you to very quickly (I'm talking a minute or two tops) create various page layouts by mixing and matching the available "modules" or page parts in your preferred order.

Then of course there is the Style Manager plugin that allows you to manage the various design elements associated with the Builder framework itself or whatever Child Theme you happen to be using. And speaking of Child Themes, depending on which package you purchase, you could have access to 80 of them! That's quite the strong library of ready to go themes!

On top of all that you also get access to something called Builder Blocks. These are feature and design packs that help you create specific types of niche sites. Right now they only have blocks for Restaurants and Event sites but more are on the way.

After all that there's the support, documentation and free tutorials available. If iThemes Builder is not the best documented framework on this list with the largest library of tutorials and extra resources, it's certainly in the top few.

Recommended for: Literally anyone at any skill level (so long as they are at least familiar with WordPress) can use Builder to create an awesome website.

Full Details | Price: $80 Foundation Pack; $150 Developer Pack; $197 All Access Pass

MySiteMyWay

MySiteMyWay is another solid offering by a company who uses their own framework to produce a growing number of themes with a seemingly unlimited number of skins available. This is made possible in large part by their massive (but still relatively easy to navigate and use) admin panel options. You're even able to export and share your personal design settings as a way of adding to the community's skin library! It is one of the most social/community driven features I've come across while creating this post.

As is the case with some of the other frameworks on this list (like Elegant Themes) you cannot get your hands on the MySiteMyWay framework to create your own themes, but if you can find or make what you're looking for from their themes and skins libraries then you'll be in good hands. Each pricing option comes with free updates and unlimited support, layered photoshop files, and a 30-day money back guarantee.

Also, since their pricing options are just one time fees it looks to be one of the best values represented in the roundup.

Recommended for: Anyone looking for ready to use themes, a community crazy about design customizations and theme skinning options and who doesn't want to deal with much (if any) code. They also have a massive amount of shortcodes so the options throughout the site become near limitless when you start tweaking things with them.

Full Details | Price: $35 Single Theme; $149 Theme Bundle

PageLines

After its launch PageLines rapidly became one of the most popular WordPress framework options on the market. Its combination of power, flexibility, and drag & drop functionality has captured quite the loyal following. On top of that, their admin user interface seems to be one of the easiest to use and navigate of the drag & drop frameworks on this list. That probably has a lot to do with it's popularity as it captures the same crowd but makes it easier for new users to get up and running.

The pull here for non-coders and DIY customers is obvious. They get an extremely powerful, easy to use framework that empowers them to either create their own great websites or offer services they would otherwise not be able to.

For developers though, the attraction is two-fold. Not only could they also benefit from the power and ease of use that PageLines offers other user types but with the PageLines store they can now create PageLines specific tools/plugins and sell them to other PageLines users. And seeing as it's a framework already targeting a core user group who's willing to pay for great turn-key solutions I see a lot of potential for extra income for developers here.

Value-wise it's a toss up for me. Personally, I think the framework-only prices are fine -- especially since they include several themes and premium plugins. However the plus membership packages with a bunch of added support features seems a little steep to me. Not that they don't offer enough support, they do and it's amazing, but I just really hate recurring monthly payments and I would almost always rather pay a higher upfront fee to avoid that. But that could just be me.

Overall though, PageLines is excellent. My one gripe has nothing to do with their product itself but with those recurring payment options. Which, after all, are just options. I'd say if you're after a drag & drop design solution you shouldn't make a purchase until you've thoroughly checked out and considered PageLines.

Recommended for: Designers/DIY users and Developers looking for a great starting point for creating powerful and varied WordPress websites for themselves or their clients. People who enjoy a lot of high quality turn-key options will love it.

Full Details | Price: Base rates start at $97 + $14/month for framework & plus membership or $139 for personal framework edition only

Thesis 2.0

The Thesis Framework is one of the most popular, well known and well loved WordPress frameworks on the market. In the past they were a lean framework that had a reputation for being concerned primarily with just one thing: SEO. Now however, ever since their Thesis 2.0 release, they've expanded their features quite a bit and are pulling in a lot more non-coders and DIY enthusiasts who not only want a great theme but something they can control completely and tweak with abandon.

This new(ish) release focuses on three main features: Boxes, skins and packages.

Skins are pre-made designs that you can add on top of Thesis 2.0 in just a few quick clicks. You can also edit them extensively with the new Visual Design Template Editor, which provides very powerful drag and drop functionality to the design process that requires zero coding.

Boxes are "like WordPress widgets on steroids" and they continue to build off of the empowering Visual Design Template Editor by allowing you to put widget like functionality (email signup forms, popular posts, etc.) anywhere you want. And not just anywhere, but only there. A change on one page does not have to propagate across your entire site. Which will make for excellent distraction free home pages, custom side bars, etc.

Finally, there's Packages. Where the skins, template editor and boxes help you to get specific functionality where you want it, Packages helps you change how each of those items looks without having to get into any CSS.

On top of those three new elements Thesis 2.0 is still a fast SEO-centric framework. It still comes with an enormous community of active users and a helpful support forum. If there's a downside it's on the value side and not to do with any features, functionality, design or support.

Recommended for: Anyone passionate about SEO and speed as well as someone who craves code-free customizations. There are a lot of people both in the development and DIY communities who really enjoy Thesis 2.0 so in this case it'll probably come down to personal preference on price/value compared to the other options.

Full Details | Price: $87 Thesis Basic; $164 Thesis Basic Plus; $197 Thesis Professional

WooThemes

The WooThemes WooFramework is possibly the best example of a framework used in-house by a theme marketplace to produce an excellent collection of individual WordPress themes. They've also got a top notch collection of premium and free plugins, the two most popular being WooCommerce and the WooThemes specific WooDojo that houses much of the WooFramework's extensive functionality.

Beautiful is the term I would use to describe their theme designs. On both the front end and the back end! Everything they give to their customers is neat, well documented and in general has a sense of "polish" and "togetherness" that goes above and beyond what most of the other frameworks listed here provide.

"It just works" is a phrase that comes to mind, and hundreds of thousands of customers agree. So you're joining quite the online community when you buy anything from WooThemes.

Obviously it's probably the best framework option for building out a website with an online store. Due to the massive success of their WooCommerce plugin, it's deeply integrated into all of their themes, but it doesn't come baked in (which is important). Just like all of the other great features offered by WooDojo, WooCommerce is something that you can activate and add it to your site with just a few clicks, but if you don't want it then it's not there contributing to unnecessary bulk.

Of course creating online stores is far from all WooThemes cares about. Their themes catalogue contains themes for online apps, businesses, magazines, multimedia, personal blogs/sites, creative portfolios, etc. Their most versatile theme, Canvas, is a brilliant zero coding required option for designers/developers who want a great starting point to create a wide variety of websites.

Recommended for: Anyone who enjoys a beautiful theme that "just works" with some of the best and most powerful plugins made for WordPress. Developers/Designers are going to love using Canvas and the average user is definitely going to get their money's worth when it comes to individual themes used for specific purposes.

Full Details | Price: $70 Standard Package; $150 Developer Package; Club Memberships available starting at $125 + $20/month

YOOtheme

YOOtheme uses a business model similar to WooThemes and Elegant Themes. They use their Warp Framework in-house as a drop in code library to build out an exclusive marketplace of WordPress themes for their members to download and use, which they add to with a new theme each month! But they also provide the Warp Framework for developers to download and build their own themes with which is something the other companies I mentioned do not do.

Probably one of my favorite things about them is that they provide multiple design skins for each theme in their marketplace so that the end user has several nice starting points for their customizations; or the option to just swap out the copy and run with a great looking website.

YOOtheme also provides comprehensive documentation, premium support, a community driven support system (forum) and other exclusive tools for their members -- such as their Widgetkit. This makes for an attractive package for anyone who wants a powerful future-proof site, with clean code, premium support and tools for advanced features.

On the downside their subscription model is a bit on the expensive side when compared to others on this list. Mostly because of their Euros pricing and the extremely low site license restrictions that seem designed to push everyone into the Developer Membership.

Also, anyone who enjoys an extensive admin panel with a lot of options may not be quite as happy with this framework as they would be with some of the other ones on this list. The admin is far from incomplete or difficult to use, simply minimal.

Recommended for: Anyone (Developer or DIY User) who wants to spend as little time as possible on theme design and most of their time on content, features and site layout.

Full Details | Price: 39 Euros for Basic Membership; 79 Euros for Standard Membership; and 249 Euros for the Developer Membership.

My Top 10 Free WordPress Frameworks

Please note that I have listed these frameworks in alphabetical order. They are not ranked best to worst or anything like that. The specifics of the framework is what will determine if it is a good fit for you, not my subjective opinion.

Carrington

The Carrington WordPress framework by Crowd Favorite is all about flexibility and easy theme styling. To do this the developers focused on providing a solid core so that anyone using Carrington would only need to create custom templates for their various categories, post types and comments. To help get the ball rolling Carrington comes in three different variations: blog format, text-only format and mobile theme.

Carrington Framework Features:

• Extreme flexibility
• Modular approach to design
• Allows for custom page layouts
• Comes with three starter types (as listed above)
• Support through the Carrington Community Forums
• In-depth Documentation
• Design/Development showcase for discovering what's possible

Recommended for: Anyone who buys into the Carrington development philosophy. This framework is probably the most unique out of everything on this list as it does not try to follow certain WordPress conventions in favor of leaning heavily on custom templates and less conditional coding.

Full Details & Download

Gantry

Gantry is a WordPress theme framework created by the folks over at RocketTheme. They developed it to be the basis for all of their Joomla and WordPress projects but have made it available to the rest of us via a General Public License (GPL).

Gantry puts the most emphasis on flexibility and a collection of rich features. This is accomplished by creating a new layer on top of the traditional module configuration of WordPress to provide users with an unprecedented level of control and flexibility.

Here are the Gantry Framework Features:

• Responsive grid system based on Twitter Bootstrap
• WordPress 3.2+ support
• New admin interface
• XML driven with overrides that make customization easier than ever
• Built-in fields
• Per override level control over any configuration parameter (layouts, colors, features, etc)
• Built-in extensible AJAX communication layer
• RTL language support
• More with LESS (built-in LESS CSS compilation)
• Flexible grid layout system for unparalleled control over block sizes
• Optimized codebase with speed, size, and reuse core tenets of the framework design
• Growl-style event notifications
• Responsive HTML5 base template
• 65 base widget positions
• 38 possible layout combinations for mainbody and sidebars
• 4 Column Mainbody
• Many built-in widgets and gizmos such as font-sizer, Google PrettyPrint, Google Analytics, to-top smooth slider, etc.
• Ability to force 'blank' widget positions for even more advanced layout customization
• Flexible parameter system with ability to set parameters via URL, Cookie, Session, Presets, etc.
• Advanced typography
• WordPress base styling
• Automatic per-browser-level CSS and JS control

Recommended for: Intermediate to advanced developers looking to create WordPress websites that are highly extendable.

Full Details & Download

HTML5 WordPress Shell

The HTML5 WordPress Shell is a WordPress framework created by Brooklyn-based web design studio mimoYmima. This is the same framework they use when creating their own websites and they hope to improve it by opening it up to the public under a General Public License (GPL).

HTML5 WordPress Shell Features:

• It comes with a "base plugins" package of 15 free plugins that they recommend using to get the most out of every WordPress install.
• Responsive design
• dynamic sidebar examples
• "The mother of all WordPress BODY tags"
• Smart sidebar disable
• 404 & 503 error pages
• Will detect visitors using the iPhone
• Contains IE conditional stylesheets
• Has clearly commented code
• Has lots of useful CSS classes in the basic.css stylesheet
• And more

Recommended for: Developers who are crazy about HTML5.

Full Details & Download

Hybrid Core

The Hybrid Core Framework for WordPress was created by Justin Tadlock. His goal was to create a development framework for himself and others to use when creating Parent Themes. It allows developers to skip the really complex stuff and jump right into their theme's HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Hybrid is a modular framework with a solid PHP code base that allows developers to pick and choose commonly-used features for their themes.

Hybrid Core Features:

• Breadcrumb trail
• Cleaner Galleries
• Loop Pagination
• Theme Layouts
• "Feature Images on Steroids"
• Theme Settings
• Translation friendly
• Drop-down Menus
• Post Templates
• A starter theme called Hybrid Base
• Support via the theme hybrid club membership
• And much more

Recommended for: Anyone who enjoys a modular approach to developing WordPress Parent Themes.

Full Details & Download

Reverie

The Reverie Framework by ThemeFortress is a versatile HTML5 responsive framework based on Zurb's Foundation. Both are available under the MIT License.

Reverie's features include:

• HTML5 Boilerplate
• hNews microformat ready
• Optimized for SEO
• Basic CSS included
• Foundation files packaged separately
• Clean image HTML output for TinyMCE, only class and alt are returned. Post title will be automatically used for alt.
• Custom menu output for ZURB's sub nav
• Custom caption output for HTML5 figure and figcaption tags
• Custom filter for images, will automatically wrap images with figure tag
• Two Widget: sidebar and footer
• Two menus: top navigation menu and footer information menu
• Template structure inspired by Roots. Separated loops from templates, for better WordPress practice.
• bbPress.php included, compatible with bbPress 2.0. Looks good even without styling
• Several custom page templates are included in the package. A folder named custom is used for storing all your custom page templates
• Check out what's new and how to implement extra features in the 2.0 version
• Custom WordPress menu output, dropdown menu added
• Pagination added using WordPress built in function. (WordPress 3.1 required.)
• Use Google Web Fonts Open Sans as major heading font
• Don't need these features? You can turn them off
• Support through the GitHub forum

Recommended for: WordPress developers looking for a grid approach to developing mobile first WordPress websites.

Full Details & Download

Simon WP Framework

The Simon WP Framework was created by web designer and developer Simon Urbina. His mission is to "deliver common sense web design solutions [with] designs that are beautiful..." And when it comes to his framework he'd like to empower others to do that too.

Simon WP Framework Features:

• Responsive
• It comes with widget ready areas
• Has the ability to activate post formats (audio/video/image/text)
• Comes with a starter Child Theme
• Clean code
• Free icons
• Typography options
• Completely open source

Support is run through a form on the Simon Web Design website and I'm actually unclear how fast responses come. There is no forum.

Recommended for: Adventurous and self-relient advanced developers looking for an open source WP Framework that is clean and minimal.

Full Details & Download

Thematic

The Thematic Theme Framework is an extremely popular free framework created by the Theme Team at Automattic. It has been downloaded over 600,000 times and has a 4.5 out of 5 star rating in the WordPress.org theme repository. So not only is it high quality but the community is huge too.

Thematic Framework Features:

• The ultimate in SEO-ready themes
• Highly extensible
• 13 widget-ready areas
• Drop-down menus
• Grid based layout samples
• Footer shortcodes
• Minimal Design
• Fast and friendly support in the forum

Recommended for: Fans of Automattic, minimal design and large open source community.

Full Details & Download

Underscores

Underscores is by ThemeShaper, aka "The Theme Team" at Automattic. It is is their attempt to give back to the open source community all of the theme developing wisdom they gain creating great products for WordPress.com.

They refer to this starter theme as a 1,000-hour head start, stating, "That’s the approximate number of design and development hours you get for free every time you use it in a project. Weeks and weeks of refinement by dozens of WordPress theme experts over several years that you don’t have to do."

This also means that as they continue to build themes for the future of WordPress, that added developer time and knowledge will also find its way into this starter theme.

Its current features include:

• A just right amount of lean, well-commented, modern, HTML5 templates.
• A helpful 404 template.
• A sample custom header implementation in inc/custom-header.php that can be activated by uncommenting one line in functions.php and adding the code snippet found in the comments of inc/custom-header.php to your header.php template.
• Custom template tags in inc/template-tags that keep your templates clean and neat and prevent code duplication.
• Sample theme options in /inc/theme-options/ that can can be activated by uncommenting one line in functions.php.
• Some small tweaks in /inc/tweaks.php that can improve your theming experience. They can be activated by uncommenting one line in functions.php.
• Keyboard navigation for image attachment templates. The script can be found in js/keyboard-navigation.js and is enqueued from the image attachment template, image.php.
• A script at js/small-menu.js that makes your menu a toggled dropdown for small screens (like your phone) ready for CSS artistry. It’s enqueued in functions.php.
• 5 sample CSS layouts in /layouts: Two sidebars on the left, two sidebars on the right, a sidebar on either side of your content, and two-column layouts with sidebars on either side.
• Smartly organized starter CSS in style.css that will help you to quickly get your design off the ground.
• The GPL license in license.txt.

Recommended for: Developers who want to do things the Automattic way.

Full Details & Download

UpThemes Framework

The UpThemes Framework takes a free approach to the same business model some of the premium theme marketplaces utilize above. While they do run a premium WordPress themes marketplace they offer their framework up under a GPL for any developer who wants to use it.

Some of its features include:

• Use of the Settings API (improving their admin panel)
• Custom layouts and color schemes
• A live theme customizer
• Customizable header and background images
• Multiple language support and more

Access to the support forums is free but there is no premium or dedicated support option. As a bonus though they do provide a nice Getting Started Guide.

Recommended for: Developers looking to add the features above to an existing theme they've created.

Full Details & Download

Whiteboard

The Whiteboard WordPress framework has been around since 2008, which (I think), makes it the oldest framework on this list. Definitely the oldest free WordPress framework on this list. But that of course does not mean that it isn't regularly updated.

The goal of Whiteboard has been and continues to be consolidating the universal needs of WordPress theme designers and developers in order to speed up quality development. Here's how they do it:

• Responsive Design
• Free and Open Source
• Built with the Less Framework for an instant mobile website
• Comes with a minimalist theme
• Strong and flexible div structure for easy development and diverse usage
• More dynamic Classes and IDs than any other WordPress Framework
• Lightweight and well noted for a shallow learning curve
• Cross browser compatible with all major browsers
• Strong Search Engine Optimization, including dynamic content, tags, titles, and more
• Follows the Web Accessibility Initiative for easy access by visitors with disabilities
• Simple CSS3 Animations with graceful degradation
• Follows WordPress’ CSS and PHP Coding Standards
• Fully Compatible with WordPress 3.0 and up
• Comes with a Child Theme ready to go
• and much much more…

Recommended for: Advanced developers who enjoy working with the Less Framework to create responsive WordPress sites for any device.

Full Details & Download

Final Thoughts

After reading this post you should know the following things: What a WordPress framework is, how it fits into the WordPress ecosphere and what exactly you're looking for in a framework that's a good fit for you. I tried to do my best to provide quality options without being too biased. Hopefully I succeeded!

Let me know how I did and what you thought about the various WordPress framework options in the comments below!

Recommended Reading on WordPress Frameworks

If after all of that you're still in the mood for researching WordPress frameworks then here is a list of some of the best articles and roundups I came across while putting this post together:

• WordPress.org Codex - Theme Frameworks
• Frameworks? Parent, child, and grandchild themes?
• Why I Switched to a Theme Framework
• Comprehensive Review of 7 of the Most Popular WordPress Premium Theme Frameworks
• Round 2: Comprehensive Review of 6 More Popular WordPress Premium Theme Frameworks
• Free WordPress Frameworks for Designing Your Own Child Theme
• 7 Free, Modern Starter Frameworks for WordPress Designers

Image Credits: NYPL Digital Gallery, Pim Fijneman, International Art Therapy Organization, Dudnyk and irinakostyuk1

Some of the best feedback we get on the ManageWP app is from you -- the end user. Your thoughts and comments act as a fulcrum for the ongoing development and improvement of the world's best WordPress management tool and we appreciate it hugely.

With that in mind, we have decided to launch a new competition in which you can be rewarded for your valuable feedback. If you are a current ManageWP user and want a chance of winning an iPad Mini just for giving us your opinion on ManageWP, read on...

How to enter

To grab your chance of winning one of three iPad Minis, all you need to do is answer our simple survey, from within the ManageWP dashboard -- log in right now and it will be waiting for you!

Rules:

• In order to participate in the survey you need to be a paying user
  
• The three people who leave what we consider to be the best feedback will each be rewarded with an iPad Mini (16GB WifI White or Black as available). We will contact you through your ManageWP registered email.
• We're also going to send out  ManageWP t-shirts at random just as our little way of saying thank you for continuing to support ManageWP!
• The survey will last for 7 days. You are able to edit your response during this time

In our opinion this is a win/win situation -- we get to hand out some nice goodies to you guys and we get a bunch of awesome feature ideas for ManageWP that we can use to make the app even better for you. We can't wait to get your feedback and use it as fuel for the ongoing development of ManageWP.

What Are You Waiting For?

The survey will close at noon (CET) Monday,  14h may, 2013 so be sure to get your answers in quickly!

Please share this survey amongst your friends and colleagues to give everyone a chance of winning! If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask them below, and remember that the survey must be filled in from the ManageWP Dashboard.

If you're a blogger then you probably love comments.

When you're just starting out, each and every comment you get is cherished. And while that special feeling fades over time, I still love getting comments. I still like to see each post on my blog get 30+ comments. A single figures comment count looks awful to me. Comments mean engagement and interaction -- in a way they define blogging.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't consider comments to be the fulcrum to successful blogging. But it is an important part, symbolic or otherwise. And that's why your comments system is so important. The platform that people use to submit comments on your site is something that most bloggers have deliberated over (perhaps more than once) in their time. With the multitude of options out there, it can get rather overwhelming.

And just to add to that confusion, we now have Google+ Comments. It looks sleek and sexy and it integrates beautifully with WordPress. So is it set to make a major difference to commenting on WordPress, or is it just another option that will fall by the wayside?

A Short History of Comment Systems

I've spent a fair amount of time deliberating over comments systems during my time as a blogger.

At one point I actually switched to Livefyre on my blog, only to switch back a few weeks later having discovered that I much preferred the default comments system. I still run the defaults comments system, albeit with the very snazzy Jetpack Comments module:

It allows visitors to login via Facebook, Twitter and WordPress.com, as well as giving them the option to subscribe to comments and/or new posts.

The likes of Livefyre and Disqus offer extra features such as bespoke spam protection and social media integration, but there's a whole other breed of comments system out there too. For a long time Facebook Comments has stood alone as the fully social media integrated comments system, but with the introduction of Google+ Comments that has now changed.

Google+ Comments

Google first announced in April that it would be integrating Google+ Comments into its Blogger platform. Without wanting to put too fine a point on it, my first thoughts were, "Holy crap that looks beautiful."

It's what you'd expect from Google to be honest, but the integration is seamless and (in my opinion) very sexy.

There's functionality under those curves too though. It's extremely easy to share your comments on Google+ as a whole as well as with individual people and Circles. In a perfect world, if everyone who visits your blog uses and loves Google+, it's a dream solution.

The Google+ Plugin

It was only a matter of days before a bright spark (Brandon Holtsclaw, to be precise) developed a plugin to utilize the new commenting system.

He's managed to retain the same style from the official version while seamlessly integrating the default system as well as any other systems you may have installed:

It's been done in a very slick fashion and Brandon is to be congratulated for his efforts, regardless of how well-adopted (or otherwise) the system becomes.

However, the most pertinent question remains -- is Google+ Comments a good option for WordPress users?

The Problems with Comments in WordPress

When I was considering switching to Facebook comments a few months ago (in the hope that it would boost referrals from Facebook to my blog), the overwhelming response I got from people was that they wouldn't comment.

Why? Because a lot of people don't want to use their social media account for commenting. They don't necessarily want their comments being published on their Facebook page. Even though Facebook Comments includes an option to not publish your comment elsewhere, many people simply aren't willing to hand over their social information so readily.

The result of this is that the number of comments will go down if you implement a social media commenting system. The potential upsides are that you may get more referring traffic from the social media network in question and you may get far less spam. Those are two pretty good upsides, but ultimately not enough to encourage me into change.

Ultimately, the default WordPress comments system is so popular for one reason: it is simple and unobtrusive. You don't have to give any information that you don't want to (with exception to your email address, but people are used to that) and you can post a comment without having to go through a tiresome login process. It just works.

I believe that the problem people will face with integrating Google+ Comments is twofold:

1. Many people don't have (or don't actively use) Google+.
2. Many people will be unwilling to share via a social media network.

If every Internet user in the world were an avid Google+ user and there were no qualms about privacy and the distribution of comments, I would say that this is a very intriguing option indeed. But Google+ is no Facebook, and I won't even use Facebook.

What Do You Think?

I'd love to get your thoughts on the new Google+ Comments system and on blog commenting in general. Is it that important, and if so, which system do you use and why? Let us know in the (you guessed it) comments section below!