When it comes to optimizing your website, the role of caching in WordPress can never be underestimated. What exactly is caching all about? We know that it can speed up our websites, but is there more to it?

What is Caching?

Caching is the process of creating static versions of your content and serving them to visitors. Static pages are generally rendered quickly in browsers, which improves your website’s performance.

This way, back-and-forth queries to and from the database can be avoided, reducing the server load.

Advantages of Caching

• Enhances the speed and performance of your website
• Help reduce the load on your hosting server
• Save server memory and I/O operations
• Offers a better user experience

The easiest way to do so is by using plugins. Several free and premium WordPress plugins help you enable caching on your website.

In this article, we will learn how to optimize your WordPress website using the WP Rocket Cache plugin.

WP-Rocket

Developed by Jonathan Buttigieg and Jean-Baptiste Marchand-Arvier, WP-Rocket is a premium caching plugin that delivers the best results out of all WordPress caching tools on the market.

It is generally considered one of the top caching plugins for WordPress, yet it is 100% premium. The plugin caches in the background via wp-cron to reduce the load. However, WP-Cron is a plugin that allows taking control over the execution of cron jobs.

It works by stimulating the current user’s session cookies when requesting a page to the cache. In addition to better performance levels, it includes a better and easier-to-use settings area.

How to install WP-Rocket?

• First of all, buy WP-Rocket plugin and download zip file.
• To install the plugin through your WordPress dashboard, you need plugin’s zip file.
• Download the zip file normally and proceed with the installation.
• Go to WordPress admin panel >> Plugin >> Add New >> Upload Plugin.
• Upload the zip file.

Once done with upload, hit activate button, go to the settings panel. You will receive an automatic email saying- a new website has been added to your account.

How to configure WP-Rocket?

Activate the plugin.

According to the WP Rocket team, your site speed improves after only enabling it. So, primarily check whether your site is improved.

However, there are multiple settings you can configure to suit your website’s requirements. To do so, go to Plugins from the left-hand side of the navigation and click WP Rocket.

Dashboard

In the Dashboard, you can see a few sub-sections:

1. My Account: You can check your WP Rocket license and expiry date details here. If you want to share anonymous data with the development team, you can turn on Rocket Analytics.
2. Rocket CDN: Here, you can check your Rocket CDN subscription details if you have any.
3. Quick Actions: This section lets you quickly clear and preload cache files. You can use this option whenever you want to manually purge the cache. WP Rocket auto-generated priority elements for your website that can be cleared using the Clear button.
4. Getting Started and FAQ sections: You can learn more about the WP Rocket plugin and its functionality here.

File Optimization in WP Rocket

It includes minifying CSS Files and JavaScript Files. I recommend enabling the option only if you have an updated version of HTTP1 (For example, HTTP1.1 or HTTP2).

Performance Optimization in an HTTP/2

It reduces the size of each file and allows browsers and search engines to read faster.

CSS Files

You get two options here; the first one is to enable the minify CSS file, which will reduce the size of the file by removing any comments and unnecessary white space in the CSS file.

Optimize CSS Delivery: This option comes with two sub-options where the Remove Unused CSS feature removes all the unwanted CSS code from the rendered page, resulting in a reduction in the overall size of the page.

Optimize CSS Delivery: Enabling it eliminates render-blocking CSS on your website for faster perceived load time.

Fallback critical CSS: WP Rocket makes it as convenient as possible to handle advanced performance optimizations like asynchronous CSS and critical CSS.

When you activate the Optimize CSS delivery setting checkbox, critical CSS will be generated for your website in the background and added upon the next page load. After that, CSS will be loaded asynchronously on your site.

JavaScript Files

1. Minify JS Files: Minify JavaScript removes whitespace and comments to reduce the file size.
2. Combine JS Files: Once activated, it combines your site’s JS info in fewer files, reducing HTTP requests. Not recommended if your site uses HTTP/2. The option is enabled only if you have the minify JavaScript option active.
3. Excluded JS files: If you want to exclude some specific JS from a directory, enter the path or URL using this option. However, this is optional and not highly recommended.
4. Load JS deferred: Like CSS, enabling it reduces render-blocking JS on your website for faster perceived load time. Here, you can also exclude JavaScript files from being deferred.
5. Delay JavaScript execution: This option improves performance by delaying loading JavaScript files until the user interacts with the page. For example, it loads JavaScript when the user scrolls or clicks on the page. This feature comes with one-click exclusions of functional JavaScript for Analytics, ads, installed plugins, and themes. You can also manually exclude JavaScript files by entering the path in the Excluded JavaScript Files section.

Click on Save Changes.

Some essential reasons to remove jQuery Migrate in WordPress

Media Optimization in WP Rocket

Lazy Load

Enable the lazy loading of images, especially if you have a lot of images on your site. Doing so faster the long page by delaying images. You can also enable it for iFrames and videos. Enabling a lazy load for iFrames will replace YouTube embeds with the preview image thumbnail.

If your website has CSS background images, you can enable lazy load for CSS background images.

Exclude images or iframe: Exclude images of iframe from being lazy load. For example, you can exclude logo files from lazy load.

Image Dimensions: Enabling this adds missing width and height attributes to images. This will helps prevent layout shifts to improve core web vitals.

Click on Save Changes.

Preload

Preload cache

Activating sitemap preloading runs automatically when the cache lifespan expires.

If you use Yoast SEO, it will detect the sitemap generated by the Yoast SEO plugin. This option is recommended if and only if you have well-performing servers. It triggers preloading automatically after you add or update content on your website. You can also launch it manually from the upper toolbar menu when you are on the dashboard or from Quick Actions on the WP Rocket Dashboard.

Exclude URLs: You can put specific path that you want to exclude from preloading.

Preload Links

This feature can be helpful if you have more internal links in the post.

Enabling this will improve the perceived load time by downloading page when user hover over the links on the page.

Prefetch DNS requests

DNS prefetching can make external files load faster, especially on mobile networks. You can also add external hosts to be prefetched. For that purpose, you have to enter the URL in the box.

Some of the most commonly used domains for DNS Prefetch:

//use.typekit.net
//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com
//s0.wp.com
//s.gravatar.com
//stats.wp.com
//www.google-analytics.com
//cdnjs.cloudflare.com
//ajax.googleapis.com

Preload Fonts

If your site fonts are hosted on your server, you can preload fonts on your website.

Preloading fonts improves the overall performance of your site by helping browsers discover fonts in CSS files.

Advanced Rules in WP Rocket

Cache Lifespan

Set the cache lifespan according to your convenience. I recommend keeping it 8 hours by default as the cache files will be removed automatically after 8 hours.

Setting this too low will clear the cache too frequently. On the other hand, setting it too high might cause visitors to miss the latest content on your site. However, if you want an unlimited lifetime, set it to 0, and the cache files will remain unchanged.

You can also manually manage, never cache for URLs, cookies, and user agents.

Click on Save Changes.

You can completely disable or manage the cache for individual pages or posts on your editor screen. You can either choose the “Never cache this page” option, which will completely disable caching for that individual page or post, or disable or enable other options.

Database Optimization in WP Rocket

The database involves different cleaning sections, including Post-cleanup, Comments cleanup, Transients Cleanup, Database Cleanup, and Automatic Cleanup.

• Post Cleanup: Enabling post-cleanup post revisions and drafts will permanently delete them. Do not use this option if you need to retain revisions or drafts.
• Comments cleanup: Spam and trashed comments will be permanently deleted.
• Transients Cleanup: Transients are temporary options; they are safe to remove. They will be automatically regenerated as your plugins require them.
• Database Cleanup: Reduces overhead of database tables.

Automatic Cleanup: Enabling this will schedule automatic database cleanup.

Click on Save Changes.

CDN Settings in WP Rocket

RocketCDN

WP Rocket offers a RocketCDN to deliver your content at the speed of light.

To use this option, you need to get a subscription for RocketCDN by clicking on the GET STARTED button. Remember, this feature is not free and is available for $7.99/month for one domain.

BunnyCDN powers RocketCDN. The plugins apply the best CDN configuration to boost your website speed and performance grades.

CDN

WP Rocket is generally compatible with most CDN providers, including Amazon CloudFront, MaxCDN, KeyCDN, and others.

CDN CNAME(s)

• Activate the CDN by clicking on the checkbox.
• Enter the CDN CNAME and choose reserved for all files.

Exclude files from CDN

There are some files that you may not want to serve via CDN. In this case, you can enter the URL of that file or directory in the box. The domain part of the URL will be stripped automatically.

Click on Save Changes.

Heartbeat settings in WP Rocket

Reducing or disabling the Heartbeat API’s activity can help you save some of your server resources. If you have more than one writer on your blog, then it is recommended not to disable heartbeat activity in the post editor.

Add-ons

WP Rocket plugin comes with One-click Rocket Add-ons for extra compatibility and features.

User Cache

Enable caching for logged-in users if you have users who log in to access your site. If there are multiple users on your site, it will offer individual cache to those.

WP-Rocket with Varnish

WP-Rocket is compatible with Varnish. The plugin comes with a one-click add-on that purges all the Varnish cache. Each time, WP Rocket purges a cache to ensure all the caches are up to date.

Enable this add-on to enable Varnish compatibility; no further configuration is needed. For a host like Cloudways, it auto-detects Varnish on the server and enables this option automatically.

WebP compatibility

You can use this feature to serve your visitor the WebP version of the images. If you use the Imagify plugin to generate WebP files on your site, you don’t need to make any changes.

WP-Rocket with Cloudflare

Cloudflare provides CDN functionality along with security features. To keep the Cloudflare cache with WP Rocket, this add-on is necessary if you don’t have a separate Cloudflare plugin installed on your website.

With the Rocket plugin, it is optional to use Cloudflare individually, as the plugin involves a WP Rocket Cloudflare add-on.

WP Rocket’s Cloudflare add-on

In the plugin’s add-on tab, you will see the Cloudflare add-on.

• Turn the button ON and click the Modify Options button. A new tab for Cloudflare settings will open.
• It will ask for the Global API key. To do so, log into your Cloudflare account. You will get your Global API key there.
• Copy the Global API key and paste it into WP Rocket settings.
• In the Account Email, enter the email address used on your Cloudflare account.
• Zone ID: Enter your zone ID for your domain. This is found on the Overview page of your Cloudflare account.

Jumping down, you will see three options as follows:

1. Development mode: Development Mode temporarily suspends Cloudflare’s edge caching and minification features.

2. Optimal settings: Activating this option is highly recommended. It will,

• Set Cloudflare’s caching level to Aggressive
• Activate Cloudflare’s minification
• Deactivate Rocket Loader (name unrelated to WP Rocket)
• Set Cloudflare’s browser cache to 1 month

3. Relative protocol: The Relative protocol setting rewrites the URLs of static files (CSS, JS, images) to use a relative protocol ( // instead of http:// or https://). You should NOT activate it when your WordPress site runs on full SSL. You should enable this only if you are using Cloudflare’s flexible SSL feature.

At the end of the page, you will see a button, ‘Clear all Cloudflare cache files.’ It is highly recommended you do not use this button every time. It is only helpful when troubleshooting problems.

Tools

There is a list of essential tools like Importing or Exporting settings, Rollback and updating inclusion and exclusion lists.

Conclusion

Hence, you are done with some simple WP-Rocket settings.

Now, you have to check if the plugin is working. To do so,

• Log out of WordPress as you have enabled Caching for logged-in users.
• Open your site and check the source code.
• Check the comment appearing as follows:

This website is like a Rocket, isn't it? Performance optimized by WP Rocket. Learn more: http://wp-rocket.me

The comment will not appear if you have enabled minification at Cloudflare’s end. Instead, you can see the links to the minified files in the header.

Bonus Tips

Enabling White Label footprint

Like other cache plugins, WP Rocket also adds a footprint in the HTML source code on your site, which looks like this:

However, the WP-Rocket plugin enables a white-label footprint. Enabling a white label allows you to remove the mention of WP Rocket from the HTML comment footprint on your site.

How to Enable a White-Label Footprint?

• Edit wp-config.php at the root of your WordPress installation and add this constant:

define ('WP_ROCKET_WHITE_LABEL_FOOTPRINT', true);

• Then, clear the cache.
• The footprint will update to a generic message without mention of WP Rocket:

Hide Cloudflare’s API key fields

If you prefer to hide API key fields in WP Rocket’s Cloudflare settings, then add the following code snippet to wp-config.php file.

define( 'WP_ROCKET_CF_API_KEY_HIDDEN', true );

Adding this will hide the API key field in the settings.

You can also add API keys directly in wp-config.php

define('WP_ROCKET_CF_API_KEY', 'put-your-API-key-here');

It is all about performance optimization. In particular, WP-Rocket helps its best as it claims to optimize your site performance. You may like to read my other guide on speeding up WordPress.

How to configure WP-Rocket plugin for WordPress site Amit Malewar

Have you ever walked into a restaurant and instantly known you shouldn’t order anything there and leave the place? Maybe you didn’t like the interior, it smelled terrible, the music was too loud, or you just felt it wasn’t for you.

Every day, people have a similar experience on your website. If you want more of them to stay, you must pay attention to content readability.

Writing content or an article for your website may seem simple.

However, making it entertaining, engaging, and readable for your audience can be more challenging. Using long sentences and heavy, complicated vocabulary are some of the main problems encountered in writing readable content.

Let’s first understand what content readability is.

In simple words, readability is the ease of reading and understanding the content.

Content that is difficult to read will likely suffer from low engagement, even if it is well-researched and offers valuable information. Visitors may abandon it quickly, resulting in a high bounce rate.

Many bloggers try to optimize their keyword density, keyword decoration, meta tags, and hundreds of other on-page SEO. But they often overlook the readability of their content. This is probably because it is not 100% confirmed that content readability is a specific ranking factor.

A blogger must understand that good readability plays a significant role in content marketing and can significantly improve your SEO results.

Years ago, the Google algorithm was only able to understand keywords. But now, it can recognize when content is of quality and when it is not. This means optimizing in Google Search Console is no longer enough. Additionally, search engines can interpret what the user likes to read. Therefore, focusing on the user experience will help you improve your SEO positioning.

The content quality is dependent on various parameters, for example:
• vocabulary used,
• sequence of presentation (one thought follows from another, or the narration is chaotic),
• the complexity of constructing sentences (they are short or take up half a page),
• structure (is the content broken into paragraphs? Are there subheadings),
• how well the text is written (are there any errors or typos).

How do you write content that people want to read?

1. Plan your content

Content written without a plan resembles a stream of consciousness. It is impossible to grasp its central idea and difficult to follow the development of thought.

So, start by properly planning your content with the target audience and goal. And then, write according to the plan so that the article is understandable and logical.

2. Use short paragraphs and sentences

You should break your content into sections. Structure your content into short paragraphs and divide it with subheadings.

Most visitors rarely read Web pages word by word. Instead, they scan the page while only reading sections of their interest.

An easy-to-read paragraph should contain only 5-6 short sentences. You don’t need to make all paragraphs’ lengths the same. So, the text looks monotonous, and users want to avoid reading it.

Also, use short sentences in your content. Short sentences improve readability, reduce overthinking, and allow readers to quickly and easily understand the information. However, some sentences in your content will inevitably require more words than others.

Use tables and lists to structure information. Bullet points make it easier for people to skim a page.

3. Use an active voice

The use of passive voice can give a distant and less clear tone. Using an active voice reduces the length of sentences. It also makes the content less complex to understand. In this way, you will also achieve greater engagement with your readers.

4. Add some pictures and visuals

You can improve the readability of your content by using relevant images, videos, graphs, charts, or other graphics. These visuals don’t just enhance the appearance of content; they improve its readability.

Eye-catching visuals make it easier, faster, and more apparent for readers to understand the information than just a cluster of written words. Content with visuals is also easier to remember. Visuals also serve as stopping points, giving visitors a momentary break from reading.

Just make sure the images and videos are relevant to the section of the content where they are added.

Use Readability Test Tool:

You can use readability test tools to get a second opinion on the readability of your content. These tools will help you assess and improve the readability of your SEO content. Some of them are listed below:

1. Yoast SEO

The Yoast SEO plug-in is one of the most familiar reading score analysis tools. It is a free WordPress plug-in that many digital marketers use to check the basic SEO of their content. But it can also give you a content readability score.

The current readability checks available in Yoast SEO are:
• Flesch reading ease,
• use of transition words,
• paragraph length, sentence length,
• subheading distribution,
• use of passive voice,
• consecutive voice, and
• word complexity

2. SEO Writing Assistant

This tool helps optimize your website content on the go. With SEO Writing Assistant, you can run SEO content analysis, adjust your copy’s readability, check its originality, and maintain a consistent tone of voice – before or after publication.

This content checker helps you
• analyze your copy for complexity and compare it against your top 10 organic rivals,
• find complex words, sentences, and paragraphs,
• discover word count and reading time

3. WebFX Readability Tool

This tool primarily focuses on the readability of your content. It provides a quick and easy way to test its readability.

You can test by URL or direct input in which you copy and paste all content directly into the tool. It uses the following scores to help you better understand how easy your content is to understand:
• the Flesch Kincaid reading ease,
• the Flesch Kincaid grade level,
• the Gunning Fog score, the Coleman Liau index,
• the Automated Readability Index (ARI), and
• the SMOG index.

You’ll also be able to see:
• how many sentences your content has,
• number of words, number of complex words,
• percentage of complex words,
• average words per sentence and
• average syllables per word.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, readability may not be a direct ranking factor for search engine optimization (SEO). Still, it is an increasingly important factor in improving the organic position in your blog or website search engines.

Content readability helps you
• reduce bounce rate on your site,
• improve reader’s time on page,
• conversion rate,
• page scroll depth,
• revenue generation,
• subscriber retention, and more.

It also makes readers share that content, which ultimately helps you reach more audiences. In addition, reading such an engaging article makes them go further into your site, and they keep coming back.

What is content readability, and how to improve it? Amit Malewar

The most common use of MonsterInsights is to see your site’s analytics in real-time. It helps you understand what topics and formats your audience likes best and lets you see how people find your site.

In other words, the MonsterInsights lets you focus your efforts on the marketing tactics that work.

There are more than 2,000,000 users who are using MonsterInsights to grow their businesses with confidence.

In a new update, MonsterInsights has introduced exciting features- Popular Posts and Contextual Insights.

Using these features, users get another chance to boost page views, lower bounce rates, and increase user engagement.

How does the Popular Posts feature work?

Suppose you have written interesting content but got no clicks/views on it. You might be wondering about the reason behind this. Visitors don’t know or can’t find your best blog posts.

This new feature is going to change that case.

This feature lets you show your best articles anywhere on your website. It helps you get more pageviews and engagement and keep visitors on your site.

The more people read your content, the more chance of getting ad clicks; hence, you will see an increase in revenue. It also raises the stakes of giving you more email signups, social shares, and, ultimately, more conversions.

This feature allows you to show your popular posts in three ways:

• Inline Popular Posts – Display posts within the text of your content.
• Popular Posts Widget – Show up to 10 articles anywhere on your site, such as your sidebar or at the end of the post.
• Popular Products – If you have an eCommerce store, make your popular products visible and boost your revenue.

How to set up Popular Posts?

The first requirement is that you have the MonsterInsights Pro plugin. The second requirement is installing and activating the Dimensions Addon (available to Pro level customers and above).

The main steps start from here.

First, you must set up the Post Type Custom Dimension.

Follow this guide for adding custom dimensions in MonsterInsights.

Once you set up the Post Type custom dimension, you must wait 24 hours to take effect in Google Analytics. If you have already set it up, then go ahead.

Now, specify how popular posts are sorted.

For this, go to Insights >> Popular Posts >> Inline Popular Posts >> Sort By.

There are three options to sort your posts by

1. Comments
2. SharedCount 
3. Curated.

Select any one option to display your popular posts.

If you selected the Curated option, the next step is to click inside the text area below the Curated radio button.

It will display a drop-down list of your posts.

Once a post is selected, it’s automatically added to the text area. Each selection is added to the list.

I want to add popular posts directly from Google Analytics. How to do it?

To do so, Go to Insights >> Popular Posts >> Inline Popular Posts >> Automated + Curated.

Click on Add Top 5 Posts from the Google Analytics toggle button to slide to the on position.

Later, you will find a Check Configuration button below the toggle button.

Click on the Check Configuration button.

Once successful, you will get a message as ‘Popular posts data can be fetched correctly.’

Another interesting thing about this feature is it lets you customize the popular posts you want.

For example, if you want to match your popular posts with your site’s theme, you can choose from different themes, edit the colors, change the font size, and select the best layout option. And whichever theme you choose, you get more options for customization, like adding label text.

So, this is all about Popular posts.

Now, let’s focus on another new feature like never before – Contextual Insights.

Contextual Insights encourages you to find better approaches to tracking your visitors and getting critical data that you may be missing up.

MonsterInsights sends you notifications within the plugin, informing you how your website performs.

Wait!

Don’t assume those messages as regular messages.

In addition to your website’s statistics, this feature will help you make the best use of that data.

Wondering how?

Let’s consider an example of getting country-specific traffic. If you are getting lots of traffic from a specific country, then you can translate your website into that country’s language using this information. It is fantastic. Isn’t it?

Based on that data, you can find what’s trending there new content topics and create personalized marketing messages to convert that traffic into money-making.

And that’s it.

You might like to read my other guide on tracking scroll depth in WordPress with Google Analytics.

How to Get Crazy Engagement with Popular Posts Lists in WordPress? Amit Malewar

A multi-step form is a long-form broken down into multiple pieces/steps to make otherwise long forms easier to complete.

Unlike conventional long forms, a multi-step form can increase the site’s form conversion rate, especially if the form has more than 3 form fields. It additionally encourages users to complete the information you want when it’s broken down into pages rather than presented as one long-form.

How to create a multi-step form in WordPress?

First of all, you are going to have to ensure that WPForms is installed on your WordPress site.

Now, go to WPForms » Add New to create a new form.

In this guide, I will create a simple contact form.

I’m sure you are on the Form setup tab. 

Now, name your form and select the template you want to use.

Here, I’m choosing the Simple Contact Form template.

WPForms will create a simple contact form in the drag and drop builder.

Now, you are automatically redirected into Fields tab, from where you can add additional fields to your forms by just dragging them.

You can also click on an existing form field and drag it to rearrange the order on your contact form.

The next step is to split your form into different parts

After adding a field to the form or editing the form, you need to add the Page Break form field to your site to split it into different pages.

Page Break field is found under the Fancy Fields, just below the Standard Fields.

Place the field from where you want to split the form.

You can add the Page Break field anywhere you want. And fascinatingly, you can add additional form fields from there to complete your form.

Moving ahead, it’s time to customize the Progress Bar

Suppose you want to show the progress indicator to let users know about the different sections of your form. This way, they always know where they’re at on your form and how much they have left to fill out before clicking “Submit” based on progress bars.

To make it easier, WPForms has three different breadcrumb style indicator bars:

1. Connectors: shows a connecting bar and page titles of each part of your multi-stage form.
2. Circles: shows one circle and page title per page on your multi-step form.
3. Progress Bar: indicates the progress of the form as the user fills it out.

For customizing the progress bar, you need to click on the First Page break section.

Here, you will see a new panel in the Form Editor, from where you can choose one progress bar. There is also an option for changing the color of the progress indicator.

What’s more, you can change the page title, so users know which part of the form they’re on if you choose the Circles or Connectors option.

To customize the next page title and the button taking site visitors to the next page on your form, click on the Page Break section you created when you added the page break to your form.

You can also enable a feature that will show a Previous Page button on your form. This will allow your visitors to return to the previous page of your form if they want.

Once done, click on Save.

Time for the configuration of form settings

From the Settings tab, go to General.

You can configure:

• Form Name: You can change the name of your form here.
• Form Description: You can add a description of your form.
• Submit Button Text: Customize the copy on the submit button.
• Spam Prevention: Stop contact form spam with the honeypot feature or Google reCAPTCHA.

Spam Prevention feature is automatically enabled on all WordPress forms. In case, if you wanna use another form of spam prevention, unclick this option.

• AJAX Forms: Enable AJAX settings with no page reload.
• GDPR Enhancements: You can disable the storing of entry information and user details, such as IP addresses and user agents, to comply with GDPR requirements.

Once done, click on Save.

Let’s jump to the configuration of the form’s notifications

From this section, you can choose whether you want to receive notification for a new entry (user’s submission).

If you use Smart Tags, you can also send a notification to the user’s email address when they submit a form, letting them know you received it and will be in contact shortly.

The next step includes setting up the form’s confirmation

Form confirmations are acknowledgments messages that appear to visitors after submitting a form. They ensure visitors that their form has been processed.

WPForms has three confirmation types to choose from:

• Message: This is the default confirmation type in WPForms. When a site visitor submits a form, a simple message confirmation will appear, letting them know their form was processed. Look here for some great success messages to help boost customer happiness.
• Show Page: This confirmation type will take site visitors to a specific web page on your site, thanking them for their form submission. For help doing this, check out our tutorial on redirecting customers to a thank you page. Also, be sure to check out our article on creating effective Thank You pages for boosting customer loyalty.
• Go to URL (Redirect): This option is used when you want to send site visitors to a different website.

To start, click on the Confirmation tab. Now, select the confirmation type from the dropdown. Here, I’m going to choose the Message type.

After this, you have to create a confirmation message under the Textbox appearing.

Once done, click on Save.

Now, you are all set to add your form to your website

To start, create a new page or post from your WordPress. After that, click inside the first block, search for WPForms, and select the WPForms icon.

The WPForms widget will appear inside of your block. Click on the WPForms dropdown and pick which one of the forms you’ve already created.

Publish your post or page so your contact form will appear on your website.

That’s it. This is how you can easily create multi-step forms in WordPress using WPForms plugin.

How to create a Multi-Step form in WordPress? Amit Malewar

Getting lots of visitors to your blog or website is fantastic. But, if your conversion rate is low, those visits won’t do much good for your business.

Thus, it is essential to focus on converting your traffic into subscribers as a way of turning website visitors into money.

So, the primary goal should be:

How to get more email subscribers NOW?

Here, I come up with a solution: OptinMonster.

OptinMonster is an enterprise-level technology to help businesses grow their customer base and revenue. It is currently the best looking and best-performing WordPress popup and lead generation solution in the market.

What most site owners do: They add subscribe form on the site and forget the rest of the things. They expect their list to grow. But it won’t be effective.

You need to focus on creating beautiful form design that displays personalized and relevant information based on your user’s interest.

Furthermore, creating forms is not enough. You also need to track your conversions, split tests to get better results, and more.

Fetures of OptinMonster:

MonsterLinks 2-Step Optins:

MonsterLinks turns any image or link into a 2-step optin campaign, with no coding required. When visitors click on the image or link, there’s a popup asking them to subscribe or buy.

Geo-Location Targeting:

This feature helps business owners show relevant campaigns based on users’ locations.

Exit-Intent® Technology:

It is a behavior-based feature that tracks and monitors the movements of visitors. Intended to catch more leads, this technology identifies when visitors are going to leave your site with no buy. It shows visitors pop up with a targeted marketing message just before they’re gone forever.

An estimated 70% to 96% of the visitors abandoning your site will never return. Using this technology, business owners can convert 2 – 4% of their visitors into mail subscribers and paying customers.

How can this technology benefit you?

Let’s consider you have

An e-commerce site:

In this case, you may want to convert a shopper into a high-value user.

OptinMonster’s exit-intent technology will detect your shopper behavior. And, once they are about to leave, you can show targeted campaigns to the user like:

• Special discount offer
• An invitation to download your lead-magnet by joining your email list
• Newsletter subscription or Welcome series
• Free shipping
• Customer Support

a non-e-commerce site :

For a simple website, you can use it for content marketing.

As a website owner, you must want visitors to come back to your site. You may want to leverage every opportunity to convert them into subscribers.

In such cases, OptinMonster’s exit-intent technology becomes handy that helps grow our email list and free-trial signups.

With OptinMonster’s exit-intent technology, You can show targeted campaigns to the user like:

• Creating a free eBook or guide to download
• Encouraging visitors to read reviews or watch testimonials
• Asking visitors to complete a survey
• Directing them to a new site tool
• Signup for your webinar
• Book a free consultation call

Benefits:

• It can encourage 4% to 7% of your site visitors to join your list. Thus, it leads to two new email addresses for every 100 site visitors.
• It can give you the best conversion rates from 10% to 60% (Normal conversion rates are 3.09%).

Now, it has been clear that the technology solely depends on Pop-up.

Now, let’s move to the next step:

Enabling OptinMonster’s Exit-Intent Pop-up

To activate OptinMoster’s Exit-Intent,

Navigate to the Display Rules tab in the campaign builder.

Add a rule to your ruleset and choose exit detected from the dropdown.

Next, you need to choose the device on which you would like to target the campaign. There are options like Desktop, Mobile, and All devices. I suggest selecting all devices.

Now, based on your need, select the sensitivity for your campaign.

The sensitivity is associated with a specific pixel value on the sides of the browser window. It means, when the visitor is that specific pixel away from exiting the browser window, the pop- up will be triggered.

The pixel value for each setting is as follows from the sides of the browser window:

• Low: 1 pixel
• Medium: 50 pixels
• High: 150 pixels

For mobile devices, the sensitivity is referred to as:

• Low or Medium: triggers when the user scrolls up the page.
• High: triggers when the user clicks the back button OR scrolls up the page (whichever happens first).

Once you are done with these settings, click on Save.

It will activate your OptinMonster’s Exit-Intent campaign.

Wrapping up:

The right strategy for your business depends on your goals and actions. It all depends on finding the right solution for your business. When it comes to me, OptinMonster works best for me on my sites.

Enable OptinMonster’s Exit-Intent Technology Amit Malewar

2020 is the best year to start to learn something new. Because 2020 is a year of new-age technologies, and they need data scientists, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Engineer, Software Engineer/Software Developer, Information Security Analyst, and many more. This is the best time to switch careers in IT.

Python is for those who are from IT background who thinks programming is not their cup of tea. It can also be learned by non-IT people willing to learn to program.

Sometimes it’s quite frustrating that we are eager to learn something, but we don’t have proper guidance, and in the end, we give up.

The same thing happens with new programmers. They can’t find help, and they get frustrated.

To help those who want to be a good programmer, we are working on starting a tutorial series on ‘PYTHON.’

Then a question arises!

Why do we choose Python over other programming languages?

As I told you earlier, new-era tech jobs accept new technologies. If you want to be a data scientist or web developer or want to work on new technologies like ML and AI, then you should learn Python first because these technologies are entirely based on Python.

Python is one of the top 10 programming languages, and it is a general-purpose, high-level programming language. When you work on Python, you will realize that it is nothing but fun. If you are a beginner in programming, then Python is the best choice for you.

Python for Web development:

Web development is one of the areas of Python. If you want to be a web developer, then you must know one of the frameworks available in Python.

Python offers many frameworks which are listed below:

1. Django
2. Flask
3. Pyramid
4. CherryPy
5. Bottle.py

Python for Testing:

In software development, we humans make mistakes. To check those mistakes, Python provides you a software testing tools. If you wanted to be a part of automation testing, then you can consider learning some tools powered by Python:

1. Pytest– This is the testing framework provided by Python. It allows you to write code for testing.
2. Selenium with Python– It will enable you to write test scripts in Python.

Python for Data Science and machine learning:

Python is the base of data science, Machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence. So when you choose these technologies as your career, then you should have a basic knowledge of core Python.

Python is an interpreted language, not a compiled language.

In the interpreted language, source code runs line by line, and when the error occurs, it will give you the exact information about the error and on which line-number error occurs in the code. So we can quickly figure out the errors.

In the compiled language, the full source code will be converted to the machine language and then runs the complete code, in between error occurs, it will give you the whole code as an error. We cannot find the error quickly.

So, the execution speed of Python is more than any other compiled language.

Python is a high-level programming language that is being used widely in software development. It is the most desired programming language according to the stack- overflow Developer survey.

Python is an open-source programming language and free to install. It is easy to learn but syntactically not logical.

Conclusion

Python is a programming language that has been growing more comprehensive, and it is the base of future based technologies. So, it is worth learning Python and put a step forward to be part of upcoming technologies.

Why you should learn Python? Rutuja Dhomney

WordPress is a great and primarily considered CMS platform when it comes to starting a new blog. Simple yet free- WordPress can be easily used by anyone, even without any technical or coding knowledge.

Having the best CMS does not drive your website. It needs a combination of CMS and excellent web hosting.

Out of various hosting provider companies, how can you choose the best and greatest one? 

So, there are several factors to consider while choosing the best web hosting. In my Best Managed WordPress Hosting guide, I have covered all those factors.

Despite all of the best companies, I chose to go with DreamHost web hosting. Why?

As you might hear, great things are always admirable, and in my opinion, this investment is well worth it.

How did I migrate to Dreamhost?

A quick search on Google for ‘WordPress web hosting’ took me to DreamHost.

As their statement suggests, DreamHost makes it easy to start your online journey off on the right foot. Seriously, I must say, I experience the same. It’s been three years, I’m using DreamHost and never thought of migrating to another hosting.

Benefits I received from DreamHost:

• Unlimited Bandwidth & Storage
• FREE Email Addresses
• One-click migration
• FREE Privacy Protection
• Free SSL
• Automated Backups
• Instant Setup

In other words, DreamHost offers aspiring website owners a great starting place.

DreamHost offers two essential plans:

1. Shared Hosting:

I recommend beginners to go with the Shared Hosting plan.

Features:

• Top-notch technology
• Fast Solid State Storage
• Optimized servers
• Resource protection
• 100% Uptime Guarantee

They offer two plans in Shared Hosting:

The Shared Starter plan costs $2.59/month, and the Shared Unlimited costs $5.95/month.

There is just a minor difference between these two plans. In the Shared starter plan, you have to purchase Custom Email options separately at a cost starting $1.67/mo, whereas in the Shared Unlimited plan, you get a free Unlimited Email option and can host more than one website.

2. Managed Hosting:

Their managed plan is also known as DreamPress Hosting.

If you have lots of traffic and you want a fast, reliable, and flexible site, then the DreamPress plan is recommended.

Managed WordPress Hosting Plans include three plans:

1. DreamPress Basic starting at a cost $16.95/mo for up to 100k monthly visitors

2. DreamPress Plus starting at a cost $24.95/mo for up to 300k monthly visitors

3. DreamPress Pro starting at a cost $71.95/mo for up to 1M monthly visitors

In this guide, I will tell you how to start a website or blog with DreamHost (Shared Hosting)

Let’s start:

Step 1: Find Your Niche

Niche means what your blog or site is about. To find your niche, identify your interests and passions. Keep in mind that your niche should be unique, as it will serve as the foundation of your blog’s identity.

Step 2: Decide on the name of your blog or site:

The name should resemble the niche of your blog or website. While choosing the name, you should be choosy. It should catch your visitor’s attention. Importantly, don’t try to copy others’ site/blog names, as it will get challenging to rank.

Step 3. Choose a CMS:

CMS is an abbreviation for Content Management System. Among all CMSs available in the market, I observed WordPress is best as it lets you style your blog using themes and add new features via plugins. It also helps to make your blog more secure and perform better with minimal work required on your end.

So, keeping all necessary and beneficial factors in mind, I recommend going with WordPress only.

Step 4. Choose a Web Hosting and register your domain name:

As we talked about above, here we will go with DreamHost.

Signup with Dreamhost:

Sign Up Now on the DreamHost plans page.

Next, choose the billing term for your hosting account: monthly, annually, or every three years. Grab the discount deal on DreamHost hosting.

Select the package.

Step 5: Once you choose your hosting provider, you need to select your domain:

A form will appear, allowing you to register a free domain (included with all annual terms) or enter a domain you already own.

A domain name is your website name. A domain name is an address where Internet users can access your website. A domain name is used for finding and identifying computers on the Internet.

To register the Domain Name:

Visit dreamhost.com and open the domain section. You will see the domain registration portal.

Enter the domain name you want to register into the search bar — press Enter.

A list of Featured, Popular, and Suggested domain names will appear. Look through the list and select the domain name you’d like to register.

Choose the domain you want.

Now, it will ask for your email and password to create your account with DreamHost. Enter the necessary credentials and click Continue.

After that, complete the registration and process the payment. Keep in mind, domain registration is completely free for the first year when you sign up for a shared hosting plan.

Step 6: Complete Billing:

Add your billing information and review all the details about your hosting package. 

Make sure that the box next to “Pre-Install WordPress” is checked.

Step 7: Select Payment Gateway:

Once you have made your account selections, determine your payment method.

You can pay via Credit cards and PayPal.

Once you have successfully inserted Payment information, click on the ‘Submit Order’ button.

The installation of your website’s database will be complete within a couple of minutes. You will receive a verification email with additional instructions on configuring your new WordPress software, including a link to create your WordPress password.

Step 8: Installing WordPress:

To run a site or blog with WordPress, WordPress should be installed on your site before you can use it.

As you have already enabled ‘Pre-Install WordPress’ in Step 6, you don’t need to install it either way.

But, in case you want to install, 

There are two ways to install WordPress:

1. Manual installation

2. One-click installation

Manual installation requires you to install the software on your site. The whole process is infamously quick. If you’re a tech-savvy personality, then only this option is recommended.

On the other hand, the one-click installation tool is a considerably simplified process.

To install WordPress at DreamHost, log into your panel, and navigate to WordPress >> One-Click Installs.

Now, select the domain you want to install WordPress on. You can pick an existing database to use for your new site. However, in most cases, you can leave this set to Create Database Automatically.

Here, you can see that the ‘Deluxe Install’ is already enabled. Keep it enabled and click on Install it for me now!

The free Deluxe Install features several important customizations to make it easy for beginners to get started, including free and open source themes from Automattic, a standard selection of plugins, and security enhancements.

Within several minutes, your installation process will be done.

Once the installation is complete, you will receive a verification email with a link and login information for your new WordPress site.

Step 9: Choose a Theme:

A theme controls the general appearance and feel of your site, including things like page layout, widget locations, and default font and color choices. WordPress.com has a range of themes for you to choose from in the Theme Showcase, where each theme has an about page that includes features and instructions. New themes are always being added. Keep checking for new designs: you can change your theme as often as you like.

Which theme to use? Here is a list of the top 6 WordPress themes.

Step 10: Install the Theme:

• To get started, visit your site and navigate to Appearance >> Themes.
• Click the Add New Button.

You’ll be presented with a searchable version of the Theme Directory.

• Once you know which theme you want, hover over its image and click on the Install button.

It will take just a few seconds to install the theme.

• Once installed, you can see a live preview of the Theme. Now, Click Activate.

Your site will immediately switch to the new theme. That’s it.

Manual Installation for themes:

In case you have bought a premium theme from another directory or a developer’s website, you won’t be able to install it using the above method.

To do it manually,

• Download the zip file of the theme. 
• Once you have the theme’s zip file saved to your computer, go to your WordPress dashboard.
• Visit Appearance >> Themes and click on Add New. This time, however, you’ll want to click on the Upload Theme button.
• Next, click on Choose File. Then navigate to and select the theme’s file on your computer, and click on Install Now.

Step 11: Customize the plugins:

There are 45,656 plugins available in the WordPress plugin repository. In my previous guide, I have listed some essential plugins that will surely add more features and new functionality to your WordPress blog.

Step 12: It’s time for contents:

Posts are what make your blog. It is nothing but the entries listed in reverse chronological order on the blog home page. Due to their reverse chronological order, your posts are meant to be timely. They are written on a regular schedule, and one of their essential purposes is to keep your site fresh with new content.

In my previous guide, you will learn how to write your first blog.

Step 13: Share your Posts:

Gaining readers’ attraction and their encouragement is essential to get real visits from the targeted audience. Thus, it is necessary to share posts.

Social media is the best option to share your posts. They are channels where users can easily be influenced.

Here are some factors to consider that will give you social traffic.

Final Words: 

Your blog or site is completely ready now.

I hope this guide helps you create a new blog or site hassle-free without requiring any technical knowledge.

If you have any queries, ask me in the comments section below.

Start your blog or website with Dreamhost Amit Malewar

Good website writing is the key to making a website or blog successful. It is also the most crucial term for capturing readers’ interests in this rapidly expanding digital universe.

Considering the readers in mind, a good writer will try every possible aspect that makes the content compelling and influential.

Let’s consider that you have multiple authors on your website, and each one works best for their own content. In certain situations, it may be challenging to reward the well-performing author.

So, to highlight editorial success, author tracking becomes essential. Doing this also establishes the means of creating enthusiasm within an organization towards content writing.

Another reason for tracking the author is to check if the author you are paying is worthwhile.

If you’re outsourcing work to several authors, it is always recommended to have metrics on their work performance as well as the quality of their work.

Other reasons to enable author tracking:

• Sort page views for articles by the author.
• See which author’s posts keep visitors on your site by analyzing the bounce rate.
• Get instant WordPress author stats for optimization.

Ready to find out your blog author stats? 

In this guide, I will show you how to enable author tracking in WordPress with Google Analytics.

Install MonsterInsights

The first and foremost thing you have to do is install MonsterInsights. It makes tracking your site with Google Analytics more accessible, and you can read all reports right in your WordPress dashboard.

To enable author tracking, you have to configure custom dimensions both in your WordPress site and in your Google Analytics account.

The MonsterInsights plugin offers the easiest way to add the Author as a custom dimension.

To add a custom dimension,

Activate the MonsterInsights Pro plugin. After activation, navigate to Insights> Addons to install and activate the Dimensions addon.

Now, connect Google Analytics with WordPress.

Next, navigate to MonsterInsights > settings > Conversions > Custom Dimensions.

Hit the ” Add New Custom Dimension button and add the Author by selecting it from the drop-down menu and selecting its ID.

Click Save Changes.

Now, log in to your Google Analytics account.

Open your property (site or blog) in which you wish to add custom dimensions for author tracking.

Now, visit the Admin tab, then click Custom Definitions, and select Custom Dimensions.

A form will appear, where you need to type Author in the Name field and set the scope as HIT.

Click Create. Do not mess with other settings.

Later, match the index number of Google Analytics with the Custom Dimension ID available in your WordPress MonsterInsights settings. The index number is available under the Index column in Google Analytics. Note this index number.

• Head back to your WordPress Dashboard.
• Go to Insights >> Settings >> Conversions >> Custom Dimensions.

Here, check if the Custom Dimension ID matches the index number in Google Analytics.

Adding a custom report to your Google Analytics account

In Google Analytics, go to Customization >> Custom Reports >> New Custom Reports. A form will be generated, where you need to define the metric groups.

Add Author in the Dimension Drilldowns and click on the Save button.

Now, you can see the traffic report for your Author dimension.

To see the report on Author Dimension:

• You can view Author tracking into your WordPress Dashboard.
• To see the report, go to Insights >> Dimensions.

Making an ideal user experience for your site’s users isn’t a precise science, however, focusing on specific performance metrics can give you proper direction.

I hope this guide helped you in setting up author tracking in WordPress with Google Analytics. Let me know your views in the comment section below.

How To Set Up Author Tracking in Google Analytics by MonsterInsights Amit Malewar