On Friday 26 August, Gilo Varghese, founder of Flying Proxy, a CDN, tweeted the following allegation about WP Optimize: https://twitter.com/GijoVarghese_/status/1563097754322501632 . We were not contacted directly but learned of it a few days later when we were asked by a WordPress news site to comment.

In short, the allegation is that WP-Optimize are deliberately deceiving its users by appearing to use page speed tools like GTMetrix to be faster than sites actually are, and are doing this secretly for the purpose of making WP-Optimize look better.

Varghese then proceeded to respond to users who responded to his Tweet to ‘plug’ his company, Flying Press, which is a competitor to WP-Optimize, with a competing plugin product:

The tweet was widely circulated, and resulted in a WP Tavern article yesterday on the allegations.  This was a UK public holiday, when many of our team were away and we didn’t have time to fully investigate the allegations. We were given a few hours before publication to respond, but at that time our main WP Optimize developer was already, in his time zone, asleep.

The team at UpdraftPlus (owners of WP-Optimize) investigated today and found the allegations to be completely false.  The truth is actually the reverse – it is the allegations which have been presented deceptively, missing out obvious and key facts.

The most fundamental is that feature used to construct the claim clearly says in the user interface “…if you would like to exclude scripts from page speed tests”.  The allegation by contrast implies this is hidden only in the code.

Secondly, the advanced setting used in the allegation is a valid feature, useful to find out whether the essential JS/CSS files are actually slowing down the web page or not.  i.e. It has a proper use. This feature is by default, turned ‘off’ and only enabled by advanced users who know what they’re doing.  

Joe Miles, a manager at UpdraftPlus said “the claim is the plugin is being deceptive, but it’s actually an explained setting in advanced settings which a site owner would have to decide to use, which have been used to falsely claim that WP-Optimize is manipulating things.  The setting is a valid tool for testing.  So UpdraftPlus will not be removing it and we’ve asked for the false accusations to be deleted.”

Peter Wilkinson from Divi Engine who developed Divi Nitro, (a speed performance plugin which is not affiliated with WP-Optimize, but actually a competitor), investigated the claims and said “Initially I was shocked at the news and as a competitor, thought it was bad practice to be deceiving customers.”

“Upon further investigation, I found out that it was actually far from the truth. In reality (from my research) WP-Optimize do not “cheat” pagespeed tools when you install or minify your Javascript. 

“To “cheat” the tools, you need to manually add the JS files you want to asynchronous load to a setting that clearly has the label “Use this if you have a completely independent script or would like to exclude scripts from page speed tests (PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix…)”

Wilkinson made this very clear video to show how the untrue allegations have been unfairly presented in a way that misleads people:

“It just goes to show that you should not believe everything you read or hear. Test everything to make sure it is the truth.”  Wilkinson added.

“In my view, Gijo Varghese has used deception to promote Flying Pages and Flying Press.”

Adam Lowe, President of PeakPerformanceDigital.com who was initially quoted in WP-Tavern as asking UpdraftPlus “how are we supposed to continue trusting your company with my clients’ backups when you use these deceptive and fraudulent practices?” replied today in support of WP-Optimize.  He said:

Meanwhile, Andrew Palmer of WP Plugins Plus, tweeted that he believed the original claims to be false:

Summary: Gijo achieved the result that he did by using a clearly labelled expert feature with explained possible use cases to do something else. He then presented this as the normal but dishonestly hidden result of using WP-Optimize. This should never have been made a news story. We do not encourage anyone to try to “game” PageSpeed scores, and Gijo’s allegations that this is our secret intention that people would do so is unworthy, and we hope he will do the honourable thing and retract it. If any other users are puzzled by anything else in WP-Optimize, we hope that instead of stirring outrage on Twitter, they will ask us about it in a support channel.

The post UpdraftPlus completely rejects false allegations of WP-Optimize plugin ‘gaming’ page speed results appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Having engaging, clear and fast loading images on your WordPress site is one of the most effective ways to draw a user/customer in. There is a reason that car dealerships spend so much time making sure that the new models are spotless and sparkling. The visual impact of a product can often be the make or break decision between success and failure. Online showrooms are no different, plus there is the added complication of how an image can impact your loading speed. It is a well used and famous metric, that a user will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. If a website does take more than 3 seconds to load, then there is a good chance that the images you have on your site are part of that reason. 

So as a WordPress site owner, what can you do to ensure that the images you have on your site are both appealing to users and allow your site to load quickly. Your initial instinct might just be to shrink the image down from a 1800×1400 size image to 300×200 size image. This would be the wrong course of action to take, as while your image file size might now be a lot smaller, the quality of the image and user experience has suffered as a result. If you have a car showroom sales website for example, customers will want to get a really good look at the car and be able to see all the features and detail. By making the image so much smaller, any detailed inspection of the car is now impossible – leaving the potential customer frustrated and looking elsewhere. 

So what are your options? Thankfully, there are dozens of different image file options you can choose from, ranging from the high quality, but large file size BMP, the tried and tested JPEG, to the new and widely unknown WebP format. Along with choosing the right format, it is important to remember that regardless of what format you choose, you can additionally reduce the image file size by employing a process via WP-Optimize known as “compression”. 

Site speed is one of the top 10 most important factors Google bots crawling your website observe when they are ranking your site in the search results. Having poor loading speed can badly impact on the ranking of your site and can easily take your site from the first page, to failing to be indexed by Google. Google is very strict on how they rank sites in their search algorithm and if they find that the site offers a poor user experience due to slow loading times, they might not even go through the trouble of even crawling it and making it discoverable via Google search.

Which image format should you choose?

As high quality images are so important for any modern WordPress website, you need to know which format to use, how they affect the performance of your site and how to get the best out of your file selection. 

The two most popular image file formats for websites are PNG and JPEG/JPG. According to w3techs, more than 70% of all websites use these file types. Around 30% of sites use SVG and 22% use GIF.

This is where image file types would come into play as the type of file you use to upload your images play an important role. As there are so many different file types, we will go through the most popular ones and their pros and cons down below:

Before we jump into the type of file we need to understand some concepts before, like what a raster and a bitmap image are? What is compression? What is the difference between a lossy and lossless compression?

Compression – Lossy Vs Lossless

Both of the compression types are aimed at reducing the file size, but it’s what they remove that really matters. In Lossy compression; important data that is relevant to the quality of the image is removed. This can be reflected in the image being pixelated in some cases as your computer can have trouble reconstructing the image.

In lossless compression, irrelevant data that is present in the image (such as metadata) is reduced, which helps reduce the file size. The image quality is not affected at all in this process.

Raster Vs Vector

The most commonly used image file types are typically raster-based. This means that they have a fixed RGB color value associated with every pixel and all of those pixels are combined and used to create a whole image.

Examples of such file formats include jpg, png, and gif.

Alternatively, a vector image is created using shapes and lines that can be scaled infinitely without them ever being pixelated. The vectors are created using mathematical formulas that allow users to change the values, while not affecting the quality of the image.

Now that we have gone over the basics of the images, we can now look at the details of the different file types.

JPEG:

This is a digital image format that contains compressed image data. With a 10:1 compression ratio, JPEG images are used as they are very compact. JPEG format contains important image details and is the most popular image format for sharing photos and other images on the internet. The small file size of JPEG images can also let users store thousands of images (for example on an art site) without the need for extra storage space on your site. 

JPEG is a lossy compression file type that works well for photos, but it is recommended that you use another format when working graphics, such as PNG.

PNG:

PNG is a popular bitmap image format and is short for “Portable Graphics Format”. This format was created as an alternative to Graphics Interchange Format (GIF). PNG has some great features like containing 24-bit RGB color palettes, greyscale images and displaying transparent backgrounds. A lossless data compression method is also used in PNG images when working on high quality images or graphics. PNG images are also frequently used in Image editing as they can give the user more control and options on the image over traditional JPEG format.

PNG also uses a lossless compression algorithm, which means this format can retain more data than JPG. When using a PNG image file, users can also save these images with a transparent background. By using this format, users have the option of working with layered images that can show a clear background (for example – just the flowers in the image below and not the background wall), enabling users to add the image to other images without the need to cut it out and remove the existing background – as you would have to with a JPEG image. This is one of the main reasons why it is the preferred choice for graphics like diagrams and illustrations. PNGs are known to be more popular for users working with graphics, rather than uploading standard photos.

GIF:

You probably know the term “GIF” best from the countless short clips you are sent on messaging apps. GIF stands for “Graphics Interchange Format” and is mostly used to support animation without audio 

Unlike JPEG and PNG, GIFs are used in a more niche case and are not typically used for static images (although this is possible). If you use a GIF on your WordPress site, it is most likely in order to show you visitors a simple animation or process. GIFs have a limited color range and are best used for simple graphics. They use lossless compression and tend to be smaller than JPGs. It is generally recommended that you only use GIFs sparingly in your site, as they can increase loading times (given the file size) and are limited to 256 colours. 

SVG:

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a web-friendly vector file format. As opposed to pixel-based raster image files like JPEGs, vector files store images via mathematical formulas based on points and lines on a grid. This means that vector files like SVG can be significantly resized without losing any of their quality, which makes them ideal for logos and complex online graphics. 

Vectors are best only for simple graphics, shapes, and illustrations. SVGs are a good choice for logos, especially if you need your logo to be responsive and are supported by most browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera.

BMP:

BITMAP is now considered an outdated image format. BMP loads the images in a lossless image format which can result in huge file sizes due to the lack of compression. Considering the importance of loading speed and how site creators want to keep the image sizes to a minimum (not to mention the popularity of SVG and JPEG formats), this format has become largely unused for online images. 

WebP:

This image format was created by Google in 2010 and is starting to prove popular with people who upload lots of images to their site as it has several advantages over JPEG and PNG, such as having better lossy and lossless compression performance.

WebP also typically uploads in smaller file sizes than JPEG or PNG formats given its improved compression performance and will take up less space on your site – allowing it to load faster. While it isn’t supported by all browsers, it is supported by all the most popular browsers – including Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera. 

Conclusion:

There are many types of image formats that can be used on your WordPress site, but it is important to evaluate the purpose of the image. If your site is for a wedding photographer for example, you will want to maintain high quality images that still load quickly and are user friendly (JPEG). However, if you are selling images in an online poster store, then you will want to maintain as much detail and image information as possible (PNG).  

As a general rule of thumb, if you are just uploading standard images for your online store, blog, portfolio, social media or social media site – then it is recommended that you upload you images in a standard JPEG format and then use WP-Optimize to further compress your images

However, should you wish to future-proof your images and improve your loading speed as much as possible, then WebP can offer superior lossy and lossless compression, while still maintaining high levels of details. Whatever you decide, remember to always compress your images using WP-Optimize for the market leading compression. 

The post Which is the best image format for your WordPress site appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Now that you have contributed so much of your time and money to your shiny new WordPress website and have showcased your talents to the world, it is important to ask the questions; “Did you pay close attention to perfecting the WordPress user experience?”

Today’s tech-literate consumers have high expectations, which is why a website that feels clunky and awkward, just isn’t good enough. Providing the best user experience for your WordPress site should be paramount. No matter how professional or high quality your products or services are, if your site showcase doesn’t give a high standard of customer user experience, you will be doomed to failure.

In this blog, we have put together a guide on how to greatly improve user experience in your WordPress site with 7 strategies to succeed. 

Why is the user experience so important? 

In a world filled with so many digital options and distractions, providing a good user experience can be one of the main keys to success. Take Uber for example. Uber revolutionized the taxi industry with a new way to order and track cabs by using an intuitive and simple-to-use app on your mobile phone. Uber is now a world-wide multibillion-dollar company with services in most cities – largely thanks to its innovation and consideration of the end-user. 

The same theory applies when creating your WordPress site. Whether it’s a blog, an online store, a marketing hub, or a portfolio for your services; your chances of success are intrinsically tied to the positive level of user experience you provide. 

Here are some of the most obvious and measurable benefits of a good user experience:

Set a good first impression of your brand 

Setting a good first impression is important for showing potential customers you’re the real deal. It doesn’t matter how good your products, services, or content are, if your WordPress website isn’t aesthetically coherent and functional, no one will want to use it. Users must be able to navigate your pages with ease so that they get an immediate sense of direction and understanding on how your site operates. 

Increased sales

Any website that makes the purchasing process straightforward and easy to follow iis more likely to see an increase in sales and revenue. To put it simply, the easier it is to browse and take action, the quicker users will be able to act on impulse and purchase products and services from you. Simple features like search filters and recommendations can enhance the user experience by giving them multiple options to begin the buying journey. 

It’s a win-win. A positive experience for the customer and more sales for your business. 

Increase user retention rates 

Offering the best user experience keeps customers coming back for more. Satisfied customers will not feel the need to look elsewhere if you’re meeting their expectations. Existing customers are also likely to recommend your site to others and become brand advocates if you offer a professional and friendly UX. 

Improve search engine optimization (SEO)

Take a look at the top-ranked sites on a search engine like Google and you’ll find they all have a professional high end user experience design. The days of cramming as many keywords as possible into your content to rank via SEO are long gone. Google has expanded how it ranks websites and how it views SEO requirements by including such elements as UX design. It is important to remember this when it comes to setting and designing your site using WordPress. 

How to improve user experience in your WordPress site: 7 strategies to succeed

Creating a popular and (potentially) profitable website means putting the user experience first. Try putting yourself in the shoes of a new customer, and design your site around their experience, rather than how ‘amazing’ your product is. The user experience goes hand-in-hand with usability and functionality. 

Image Source

Let’s now look at 7 actionable strategies to help improve the user experience of your WordPress site. 

1. Opt for a simple design 

Image Source

It is important to remember that sometimes less, really is more. Don’t sacrifice functionality for an overly pretty and complex design. Ask yourself, ‘Would I find this website easy to follow if I came here for the first time?’ Users value usability and useful features over crowded visuals. For example, always put buttons where you would expect to find a button. Make your potential customers’ life as easy as possible, as they will quickly abandon your site if they struggle to perform a simple task or have to go looking for the ‘buy button’.

A conventional blog format is suitable in many instances, that is, a header, followed by the main body and a sidebar, completed with a footer. From here, you can make subtle tweaks to enhance the overall design. Be sure to give it a quick mobile friendly test to ensure it’s appearing correctly on mobile devices. 

It’s all about getting that balance between form and function. 

2. Ensure navigation is easy

Navigating through your WordPress website should feel natural and effortless for the user. Try to build your site to incorporate the following features: 

• A navigation bar (this is a must-have)
  Naming key pages for your navigation bar is simple with WordPress. Simply click (Appearance > Menus) in your sidebar to customize your menu’s order and page names.

• A list of categories in your sidebar
  Having an easily viewable list of categories will allow users to quickly navigate to their general area of interest. For example, if they are in the market for a new TV, they can browse all TVs available on your site, without having to also view Laptops.

• A search tool
  Imagine a customer has come to you specifically for a bluetooth headset, give them a search bar to find them fast. WordPress has several search bar plugins for you to try. Some are free while others are paid for.

• An archives page
  For an Archive page, let users search previous content by date, category, and keyword. This will help users find content fast while also helping your WordPress SEO strategy

• Breadcrumbs
  Breadcrumbs are the navigational links found at the top of a page to tell you where you are on the site. For example, (Home > Blog > January 2022 > How to nail your WordPress website.)

Utilizing these common design features on your WordPress page is a great way to create a familiar experience for users. 

3. Make sure your homepage is useful and informative

Your homepage is almost certainly going to be the most viewed page on your website. Think of it as your personal shop window for what goods and services you have to offer. Feature boxes can be a useful addition to the homepage. A feature box pops up on the homepage and can include content of your choice. A popular strategy is to use an ‘Opt-in’ box to introduce yourselves and encourage users to sign up for deals, information and discounts. 

For example, your feature box could say:  

‘Want to know the best magicjack competitors? 

Sign-up now to receive advice on: 

• The best in VoIP call center solutions. 
• The best alternatives out there for your favorite tools.
• The best tools for collecting and analyzing key data…’, etc. 

A well-placed feature box involves the visitor right away and tells them what to expect and how to get more from your site. This can add to a better user experience. However, it is important to make sure your feature box contains legitimate and valuable information and doesn’t just present as an ad attempting to get the visitors email address. 

4. Is your content easy-on-the-eye? 

Content that looks visually appealing is more likely to attract visitors and keep them engaged. Remember to take inspiration and design cues from other popular websites in your niche area to get an idea of how their visual layout enhances the user experience. 

When designing your site, also be sure to pay attention to design elements, typography choices and formatting. Have a look at other popular websites to see what they look like and what choices they made. Once you’ve found inspiration, you can use a pre-existing layout template to start from, or design your own layout from scratch. 

In terms of formatting, consider the following: 

• Keep sentences and paragraphs short and sweet. 
• Use sub-headers to break sections up and make navigation easier. 
• Use bold to highlight keywords and phrases. 
• Italics are useful for emphasis and speech. 
• Images are useful for adding variety and color to a piece. 
• Other visual elements such as tables, lists and quotes help break up the site and provide extra information. 

Creating a good user experience means nailing a design that’s easy-on-the-eye, while also being practical. 

5. Deliver fast page speeds

Image Source

Today’s website users expect fast page speeds and sites that load in a second or two at most. In fact, having a slow loading site is the top reason visitors will leave. 

Ways to increase page speed include: 

• Using only necessary plugins
  Running multiple plugins is one of the leading sources of slowing your site down.
• Watch your image sizes
  Image compression plugins like WP-Optimize reduce the file size of images to boost loading speeds. 
• Use a Content Delivery Network service (CDN)
  This adds a level of protection against WordPress security issues too. 
• Enable caching
  Saves user data to reduce future loading times. WP-Optimize is also one of the leading caching plugins available for WordPress 

6. Include plenty of negative space 

Also known as white space, negative space refers to the parts of your page that have no content.

Somewhat ironically, negative space usually leads to a positive experience. Utilizing negative space lets users focus on the important aspects of your content without being distracted. 84.6% of web designers believe crowded web design is the most common mistake by small businesses. 

Today’s consumers visit dozens of web pages a day. It’s likely they’re going to scan through your website anyway. A clever use of negative space lets them do this at their leisure without becoming bored. 

7. Have a clear call-to-action

What use is your website if you don’t tell users what to do next? Far too often, visitors will leave a website without taking action simply because there was no clear CTA. A well-placed and well-worded CTA is key for boosting your WordPress conversion rates. Modern users want fast results, so placing your call-to-action button immediately after or halfway through your written content is a good way to go. 

Effectively, you want to make it easy for the user to take the desired action without them having to search around for what’s next. WordPress has some useful plugins for managing CTA’s, have a look and see what works for you. 

Final thoughts

Now that you have reviewed all the potential ways you can help improve the user experience for your WordPress site, these tips have got you thinking about the ways you can employ them to help boost your performance and SEO score. 

The strategies above are commonly used across successful business websites all over the world on both WordPress and non-WordPress sites. Failing to have your own strategy could see you fall behind the rest and struggle to gain a foothold in your particular niche. 

Start building your next WordPress website today, and remember to keep the user experience in mind in everything that you do.  

Jessica Day – Senior Director, Marketing Strategy, Dialpad

The post Improve your WordPress user experience: 7 strategies to succeed appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Whether your business is purely based online, or in the real world, building an online presence for your business, no matter how small, has become a necessity. In this blog, we will look at how to build a WordPress business website using Gutenberg. Thanks to the consistent rise of eCommerce, a record 2.14 billion people shopped online in 2021, compared to just 1.24 billion digital buyers in 2020. With the increase in the popularity of online shopping and the mass adoption of smartphones all over the world, it is clear that online shopping is here to stay.

If you’re looking for one of the easiest and fastest ways to build a business website, WordPress is definitely an option to consider. While in the past, the platform required third-party page builders to create elegant designs, with the advent of the new Gutenberg block editor, WordPress now allows you to quickly build almost any type of website out of the box. With the new Gutenberg building options, you can use ‘blocks’ to put together a professional and stunning looking business site in just a few hours. In this blog, we’ll walk you through the entire process of building a small WordPress business site from scratch using Gutenberg. We will also endeavor to answer some of the most important questions you might have about the default WordPress editor.

Let’s get to it!

Why you should build a WordPress site for your small business

A good website can significantly impact the success of your business. While your business may already be performing well without a website, offering your customers products and services online can help you achieve even more sales, improve customer engagement and increase brand awareness.

A few stats

Let’s look at some of the numbers that show the power and importance of owning a business site:

• 84% of consumers think businesses with websites are more credible. In fact, 56% of people asked said they won’t trust a business without one. (Source: Verisign)
• 81% of shoppers worldwide make a purchase decision only after researching the business, product, or service online. (Source: Adweek)
• 88% of people who search for a particular type of business on their mobile phones visit or call a related store within a week. (Source: Google Mobile Movement Study)
• 79% of users believe the reviews they read online. (Source: Salesforce)

Considering these numbers, establishing an online presence and conducting your business through a website is definitely a step in the right direction. Here are some of the biggest ways your small business can benefit from a dedicated WordPress site:

• Attract more new customers and generate sales at a fraction of the cost
  Getting leads through organic and inorganic traffic is one of the major benefits of owning a website. At just a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing, an SEO-optimized site can get you a lot of traffic through Google.
• Help people find out all the information they need easily
  Your site allows you to showcase all the products and services your business offers. You can also include contact information, opening times, product guarantee details and directions to your physical store via Google Maps.
• Conduct business at any time of the day
  Even if you finish work at 5pm, your customers can still make purchases and interact with your business 24/7.
• Add more credibility to your business
  Potential customers will expect your business to have a dedicated website in 2022. A good website design creates a solid first impression and can set you apart from the competition.
• Set the narrative for your brand
  You can showcase your best testimonials and reviews on your site’s homepage and promote your brand by putting your best foot forward.

What Is Gutenberg and why should you use it?

As WordPress continues to grow from its humble blog beginnings, third-party developers have added plugins that made it possible to add more dynamic content. Gutenberg was added to keep WordPress relevant and to deliver on user expectations.

Gutenberg relies on content blocks and allows users to add almost any type of content to their site. It has a clean interface and that allows users to add new content to a site by selecting a corresponding block.

Gutenberg isn’t just a text editor with limited formatting buttons however. With this block-based system, you can easily add buttons, videos, shortcodes or contact form anywhere on your site.

Since December 2018, when Automattic made Gutenberg the default editor in WordPress 5.0, the platform has continually improved the features of the block editor. Other WordPress developers have also integrated some of their plugin features into Gutenberg, making it possible for you to add other custom content types to your site directly within the block editor.

What do you need to build your business WordPress site

Depending on the nature of your business, websites often vary in terms of design and features. Your small business site may be focused on brand awareness, eCommerce or content publishing. Regardless of what industry you are in, any business site built with WordPress requires these common resources:

• Domain name – average cost $10/yr (depending on the extension)
  A domain name is the address users type in their browser’s URL bar when they visit your site. A catchy and memorable domain can help boost your chances of generating more traffic.
• Website hosting – starting from $0.99/month
  Web hosts help you store website files and resources on servers that make it possible for site visitors to access them. There are different types of web hosts and choosing the best provider for you depends on a number of factors.
• SSL certificate
  An SSL certificate can help keep your site files and your users’ information secure. Most popular WordPress hosting providers include a free SSL certificate in their plans. Once you have one, your site will show the ‘https://’ prefix in the URL bar.
• Themes and plugins
  One of the advantages of using WordPress is that you can add specific features and set up your site’s design in minutes with free and premium WordPress themes and plugins. 

How to build your WordPress business site using Gutenberg

Step 1: Get web hosting and install the WordPress software

Choosing WordPress hosting means you can easily install the software in one click. Your server resources are also optimized for website performance. You can buy WordPress hosting from many different sources, with shared hosting plans starting from as low as $2.95/month.

Once you’ve selected your plan, you can either register a new domain name or enter an existing one you have already setup. If you want to register a new domain name, you need to first confirm that it’s available. Next, fill in your account information and all the required payment information. Once your purchase is complete, you can now install WordPress in just one click. 

You’ll immediately be redirected to your WordPress admin dashboard after setting up your account login details.

Your WordPress site is now ready for use. It’s time to set it up and design it specifically for your business.

Step 2: Customize your site with a WordPress Theme

When working on how to build a WordPress business website using Gutenberg, the next step is to customize your site’s design. The fastest way to do this is to use a WordPress theme that includes professional design templates. We recommend using the Astra theme as it is the fastest WordPress theme and includes a number of templates tailored for Gutenberg. To get Astra, navigate to Appearance > Themes > Add New in your WordPress dashboard and search for ‘Astra’.

Select the theme, then click Install followed by Activate.

To setup and use the ready made design templates, go to Astra Options under the Appearance tab. 

Next, click Install Importer Plugin.

After installing the importer plugin, select Gutenberg as your page builder.

You can streamline the template options you’ll see by selecting the type of site you want to build.

As we are showing you how to build a business website, we will select Business.

With Guttenberg, you can even preview each template in a new tab to make sure it suits your needs and that you like the style before you commit. 

Click Import Complete Site when you find the design you like.

WordPress will then apply this template and change your site’s design. To further tweak your design, you can use the default WordPress Customizer. Navigate to Appearance > Customize to do this.

Pages are, of course, one of the major components of any business website’s design. Let’s see how to design important web pages using Gutenberg.

Step 3: Build important pages using Gutenberg blocks

For maximum SEO score, customer confidence and professionalism, some of the most important pages every business website needs must include the following: Home, About, Contact and Privacy Policy pages.The starter template we added should have already created these pages by default. 

If you wish to create a new page that will show different information, such as a page dedicated to your opening times, you can create a new page by going to Pages > Add New.

To edit any of your existing pages, go to Pages. Then click Edit after hovering over the page you want to edit.

You can add any type of content like paragraphs, shortcodes and media such as images, documents, and videos to your web pages using Gutenberg blocks. To do this, click the + icon on the page editor.

To help build pages faster, it can help if you install a WordPress block plugin. We recommend Ultimate Addons for Gutenberg. Apart from adding creative blocks to your site, the plugin also comes with lots more starter templates. Some of the interesting blocks to check out that could be of particular benefit to you include the Price List, Team and Testimonial blocks.

With these ready-made blocks ready to go, you’ll find that you will be able to build as many pages as you need in very little time.

Step 4: Extend website features with WordPress plugins

You can improve the speed, performance, functionality and features on your site by using WordPress plugins. Below are some popular options that you may want to incorporate to your site.

WPForms

WPForms is an excellent forms plugin that enables you to build attractive forms and implement them anywhere on your website. While most websites use forms that only allow visitors to get in touch, a business website should make extra use of the features available by offering a customer the opportunity to reach out, ask questions or engage with your business. 

Alternatives plugins include Contact Form 7, and Formidable Forms

UpdraftPlus

UpdraftPlus is the world’s leading and highest rated WordPress backup plugin that helps keep your website safe by backing it up. After spending all this time and effort setting up your WordPress site, protecting it and creating a secure backup is one of the most important tasks you can carry out. So, should the worst happen, you can rest easy knowing that you will always have a recent backup copy of your site to restore from. 

WP-Optimize

Speed is a hugely important factor for a business site, both in terms of SEO score and customer retention. WP-Optimize is a WordPress optimization plugin that can be used to calibrate and format your site, so it loads as quickly as possible. The importance of how quickly your site loads cannot be overstated. Faster loading websites perform significantly better than sites that take longer to load. So remember, anything you can do to boost performance is a good thing.

All in One WP Security and Firewall

As well as backing up and optimizing your site, you should also remember to protect your site with a security plugin, such as All in One WP Security and Firewall. You use a firewall on a website for the same reason you use anti-virus software on your computer and browser – To keep bad guys out. All in One WP Security and Firewall provides a wide ranging and comprehensive list of security tools to help keep your site safe and is simple to set up and use.

Presto Player

Video is a hugely important communication and marketing tool that every business should use on their site to help promote their products and services. Presto Player can help with that. This plugin helps you control how video looks, how it plays and even lets you monetize videos or add calls to action. Ideal if you use video in your business in any way.

Alternatives to Presto Player include Videopack, and YouTube Embed.

Building your Gutenberg-powered business WordPress site

A well put together and professional business website is an integral part of any successful marketing strategy. The great thing is, that when trying to figure out how to build a WordPress business website using Gutenbergwith, you don’t need to be a coding expert or break the bank to build one for your small business. We hope the tips and processes outlined in this blog go a long way in setting up your business for success. If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments section below.

Author’s Name : Sujay Pawar

Sujay is the CEO and Co-Founder of Brainstorm Force, the company behind Astra. You can connect with him on Twitter @sujaypawar

The post How to build a small WordPress business website using Gutenberg appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

UpdraftPlus is happy to celebrate World Backup Day with everyone today! With millions of users of UpdraftPlus all over the world, we are continually supporting and developing our WordPress backup plugin to help keep your WordPress site safe and secure.

With hacking becoming a bigger threat every day, the importance of having a secure and safe backup of your site available with UpdraftPlus (should the worst happen) cannot be overstated. From opportunistic amateurs to state sponsored cyber-attack units, the security of your site has never been under as much threat as it is now.

World Backup day is a yearly reminder that everything you’ve worked for and built can be lost in just a few seconds. As well as hacking threats, site owners have to also be wary of crashes, viruses, malicious actors and issues with plugins and themes.

Here at UpdraftPlus, we hear stories from users all over the world every day who have had these problems; and were only saved by their UpdraftPlus backup. As the world’s most popular and highest rated WordPress backup plugin, we have made it our mission in life to ensure that should your site ever get hit by any of these problems, you can always restore it to its previous state using your downloaded backup and our plugin.

Installed by over 3 million users all over the world, our easy-to-use interface allows you to backup and restore your website with a single click. You can also set the schedule to backup automatically as often as you like, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to backup your site manually and will always have a recent upload of your site ready to go.

As it is World Backup Day, get 20% off UpdraftPlus Premium for today only using the discount code: WBUD22 at the checkout.

Happy World Backup Day from all at UpdraftPlus

The post UpdraftPlus celebrates World Backup Day: Get 20% off UpdraftPlus Premium appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.

Now that you have your WordPress site in excellent shape and filled with engaging content and compelling designs, you can start to evaluate if it is enough to retain new visitors and keep them coming back again and again.

With so many online options to choose from, it can be hugely difficult to compete for people’s already fleeting attention. To have a successful site these days, you have to do a lot more than just the bare minimum if you hope to increase the traffic on your page. While colourful designs, well-made content and excellent marketing may bring visitors to your WordPress site initially, it is the efficiency, speed and quality that will get them to stay. 

Given how important speed is to a user that visits your site, one of the most important questions you need to ask is, how long does your website take to load a page? Studies show that more than half of the people who visit a site will leave if it takes over three seconds to load a page. Ideally you should aim to have your site load in around two seconds or less. 

Abandonment of your site is not the only damage slow loading speeds can cause. Google confirmed that the speed of your website can even affect a percentage of search queries – and by extension, your SEO ranking. A very large part of your website’s success reflects on how fast it responds to visitor interaction. 

With this knowledge, it is important that you do everything you can to make sure your WordPress site loads as quickly as possible. A great way to help achieve this is by installing the WP-Optimize WordPress plugin. In this blog, we will take a look at the many features and advantages of WP-Optimize, why it should be your WordPress optimization plugin of choice, and why you should upgrade to the premium version.  

What can performance-boosting plugins do for your WordPress site?

No matter how well you may think your site is set-up, you should always have a dedicated tool that will help with your site’s performance. Performance-boosting plugins like

 help optimize your WordPress site to perform at the best possible level. It can help to speed things up for visitors interacting with your pages for the first time, as well as improve the general efficiency of the website. 

As an all-in-one performance-boosting plugin, WP-Optimize consists of everything you need to keep your website fast and thoroughly optimized. With thousands of 5-star reviews and more than one million active installations, WP-Optimize ranks at the very top of the list of the best performance-boosting plugins in the world.  

Why should you use WP-Optimize?

As mentioned earlier, both the free and Premium versions of WP-Optimize expertly optimizes your WordPress site in the following ways:

1. Cleans the database.
2. Compress images.
3. Caching. 

1. Clean database

Your database stores all the data you require for your website to function properly. Some things you don’t need are also stored in the process. The clean database feature removes all the useless data and even reclaims the space lost due to data fragmentation. Database cleaning is the number one, most basic function of a performance-boosting plugin. 

The database feature is easy to use and especially comes in handy for cleaning out the following: 

• Drafts. Gets rid of auto-draft posts and creates space in your database for new and useful drafts. 

• Comments. Removes Askimets and other such redundant metadata from comments. 

• Trash. Deletes old post revisions and trash.  

• Spam. Zero spam tolerance. Automatically removes all spam, unapproved and trashed comments. 

• Trackbacks and pingbacks. Deletes automatic acknowledgments, references, and notifications ensuring a clutter-free website.

2. Compress images

In addition to cleaning databases, WP-Optimize features a tool for image optimization and compression. Large images that would have otherwise reduced your site’s load speed are compressed and saved to your image library, where they are uploaded instantly. WP-Optimize covers a wide range of image formats including PNG, GIF, JPG, BM, and TIF. This feature frees up space, saves server resources for more important tasks, and helps your website load faster. 

3. Caching

Every website has a reserved storage space, which is referred to as the cache system. 

The purpose of this cache system is to store temporary data like the static versions of your website. This way, your WordPress site won’t have to run heavy PHP scripts whenever someone loads your site. Instead, your cache will collect texts, images, and other required data from first-time visitors. This improves the load speed and general efficiency of the site during subsequent visits.  

Every cache system requires adequate RAM and CPU performance. With time, growing page traffic will overwhelm your RAM and CPU causing your site to render slowly. But that won’t happen with performance-boosting plugins like WP-Optimize. With the WP-Optimize cache 

Why you should upgrade to WP-Optimize Premium

As mentioned at the beginning of this blog, WP-Optimize has both a free and a premium version. The basic features of WP-Optimize are free and can be downloaded here. The Premium version comes with the following additional features:

Premium packages

The premium version is available in three packages at competitive prices: 

	Package	Coverage
1.	Starter	1 to 2 websites
2.	Business	5 websites
3.	Unlimited	No limit

Additional benefits of WP-Optimize Premium

Multisite support

While the free version can cater to ONLY one site at a time, the Premium version offers multisite functions. Optimize all your sites on your WordPress network. 

More options

WP-Optimize Premium offers flexibility and a range of advanced options. For instance, you can optimize individual database tables should you wish to do so.

Remove unwanted images

This newly-added Premium optimization process helps to eliminate orphaned images from your WordPress sites. Images that exceed specific size limits are also removed to minimize server footprint – and by extension cost. 

Lazy load

Not all components are needed to load your page. The lazy load feature helps to prioritize the necessary components while delaying the rest until they are required. This optimization process significantly improves website performance for large sites.  

Scheduling

Optimization might be automatic, but with Premium you can schedule when it occurs. This Premium scheduling feature allows you to set up routine optimizations. 

Logging

Every process can now be documented. Log messages are sent to three additional destinations – including Simple History, Syslog, and Slack. 

Versatility

WP-Optimize Premium is available in multiple languages and subscriptions can also be paid for with multiple currencies. 

Geolocation and WooCommerce compatible

Your international WooCommerce store requires an effective geolocation feature to offer country-specific content, determine appropriate VAT and pricing. WP-Optimize Premium can even help with this. 

Run from WP-CLI

You can run optimization commands straight on the command line and receive detailed results on screen.

Power tweaks

This is an advanced option for experienced users. Power tweaks improve your site’s performance by aiming at certain weak points in your website or other plugins. 

Purge pages

This lets you delete HTML copies of your page(s). With the Premium version, you can purge pages when needed – For example, when you update a media file or create a new post. 

Prevent individual page caching

You can use Premium to prevent selected pages on your website from being cached. An example of such a page is the admin page. This feature can also help improve security.

Premium support

Upgrading to Premium automatically gives you Premium support. Your queries will be promptly addressed by WP-Optimize experts. 

Conclusion

If you are serious about getting the best performance out of your site and giving your visitors the best user experience possible, then the short and simple answer is yes – upgrading to WP-Premium is totally worth it. With so many extra Premium features available, the added benefits will remove all doubts once you realize how important factors such as removing unwanted images, lazy loading, power tweaks and premium support are to the success and speed of your site. 

Download WP-Optimize Premium today and see the difference for yourself.

The post Why You Need to Upgrade to WP-Optimize Premium appeared first on UpdraftPlus. UpdraftPlus – Backup, restore and migration plugin for WordPress.