Themes and Mods

The Best Quality WordPress Themes and Plugins

WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that is used by millions of people around the world. It is known for its flexibility and ease of use, and there are a wide variety of themes and plugins available to customize your site.

If you are looking for the best quality WordPress themes and plugins, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, make sure that the themes and plugins are well-designed and easy to use. They should also be compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

Second, it is important to choose themes and plugins that are optimized for performance. This means that they should not slow down your site or cause any security issues.

Finally, you should consider the price of the themes and plugins. There are a wide variety of options available, so you should be able to find something that fits your budget.

Here are a few of the best quality WordPress themes and plugins:

Themes

Astra: Astra is a versatile theme that is perfect for a variety of websites. It is lightweight and fast, and it comes with a wide range of customization options.

GeneratePress: GeneratePress is another popular theme that is known for its speed and performance. It is also highly customizable, and it comes with a free version as well as a premium version.

OceanWP: OceanWP is a powerful theme that is perfect for creating any type of website. It is highly customizable, and it comes with a wide range of features and extensions.

Plugins

Yoast SEO: Yoast SEO is a must-have plugin for any WordPress site. It helps you to improve your site’s SEO by optimizing your titles, meta descriptions, and content.

Akismet: Akismet is a powerful anti-spam plugin that helps to protect your site from spam comments.

Jetpack: Jetpack is a suite of plugins that adds a variety of features to your WordPress site, including social media sharing, contact forms, and more.

These are just a few of the best quality WordPress themes and plugins available. With so many options to choose from, you are sure to find the perfect themes and plugins to create a beautiful and functional website.

How to Optimize Your WordPress Website

Once you have chosen the best quality WordPress themes and plugins, it is important to optimize your website for performance. This will help to ensure that your site loads quickly and runs smoothly.

There are a few things you can do to optimize your WordPress website:

Use a caching plugin: A caching plugin can help to speed up your website by storing static copies of your pages and posts in memory. This means that your visitors do not have to request the same information from the server every time they visit your site.

Optimize your images: Large images can slow down your website. To optimize your images, you can use a tool like TinyPNG or Kraken to compress them without losing quality.
Minify your CSS and JavaScript: Minifying your CSS and JavaScript files can help to reduce their size and improve the loading speed of your website. You can use a tool like Minify Code to minify your files.

Use a CDN: A CDN (content delivery network) can help to improve the performance of your website by delivering static content, such as images and CSS files, from servers that are located closer to your visitors.

By following these tips, you can optimize your WordPress website and improve its performance. This will make your site more user-friendly and enjoyable for your visitors.

8 WordPress Designs Trending in 2018

We know from experience that design trends can turn out to be a short-term fad. Others can remain popular over time. Either way, web designers should ignore them at their peril. The way the industry works becomes a matter of keeping up with the latest trends or lose out to the rising competition.

Your best friend to be able to keep up with these trends is time and effort, many designers tend to prefer to devote their time to the actual design work but can be left behind if they don’t apply themselves to keep abreast of the evolution.

Practice making a trend that works for you whereby it becomes natural as today you can’t add metallic, or smoke shine to your pages as it’s a staple recommendation that many developers turn to, you have to think about and work on something new.

Thankfully there’s WordPress that keeps abreast of all the latest trends for designers. Helping to incorporate elements of these trends in its library of well over 300 pre-built websites.

Here are some examples of the eight latest design trends that have been put to work so far using WordPress in 2018.

Trend #1: Illustration & Graphic Art

Custom illustration and graphic art are always a favorite theme. Vintage watercolors have been seen as more of an underground sub-trend, but it is catching on fast.

It brings nostalgia and a reminder of good times to the table. This may be a reason for it new found popularity. The use of bold fonts (another design trend this year) fits in perfectly. It does so by attracting attention that does not detract from the images you use.

Trend #2: Light, Smoke and Shadow

Designers like to play around with light and shadow to create special effects. Sometimes these can be subtle ones and sometimes more dynamic. Adding smoke to the mix is proving to produce some vibrant and incredible results as smoke can create a range of emotions and can be used to make dynamic statements and emotion in combination with a sultry look.

Trend #3: 3D Moving Stills

3D moving stills can produce the most mesmerizing results with the effects they produce but make no mistake prove not to be the easiest subjects to create or work with. Creating an illusion of motion gives the user an engaging quality that can be another level to that of animation, as an example consider the illusion of flow.

Trend #4: Gradients and Color Transitions

In the recent past, It was bold colours were the hot new trend, but things move at a rapid pace, and now we have color transitions and gradients which are considered even hotter as they are useable in a multitude of situations, including with bold and pastel colors that are always on the designer’s radar. New trends have been incorporating gradients with still life portraits or minimalist geometry, and are a sure bet to experience some rewarding results if used in a modern way.

This trend is ideal for designers to experiment with different textures, using the light, shadow (and smoke), gradients along with color transitions.

Trend #5: 2018 Still Life

Still Life continues to be fashionable. The latest trend swaying in this direction involves 3D images or photographs, and it’s fascinating use of white space, something you should be looking in to.

Trend #6: A Metallic Shine

Its versatility is the main reason for its popularity, and it’s trending in 2018 as it is being used in multiple ways. Metallic shine may be present across the entire page. It is versatile can be applied to specific design elements or element types, as well as typography. Metallic shine’s popularity has become evident in today’s market. It is usable across multiple industry sectors and business niches, so if you are familiar with how to use it, you are ahead of your competition.

Trend #7: Brutal-ism on the Rise

This in-your-face design, in essence, is simplistic, bold and clear. If the “less frills” approach is what you are looking for then this is the trend for you. Basically the opposite of soft pastel like features or romantic themes. Be sure to apply with caution as although this is a new and current trend it is not suitable for all sites.

Trend #8: Off the Cuff Typography

We have been conditioned to keep letters in a straight line. That’s perfectly normal for most situations. But that “rule” or convention can serve as a straight jacket for creatively minded designers. Many, if not most creative design endeavors rely on a certain degree of artistic vision and maybe even chaos, Typography can fall into this category.

Always keep UX at the forefront of your thoughts as this is becoming more and more prevalent in all forms of design today, ensure you do not make users have to think hard to understand the message you are trying to convey.

Summary and Conclusion

Be sure to familiarize yourself with these eight trends to stay one step ahead of your competition. Take note of what is the easiest way to apply them.

Remember to get creative with custom graphic art and illustrations. Surprise yourself, your clients, and your users by adding smoke to a mix of light and shadows.

Make use of moving stills; they tend to be more effective than animation. Apply gradients or color transitions to your favorite trends. Look to create 3D still life with clever photography and make use of white space.

Finally, brutal-ism is back, so when you need to convey a clear message this is a go-to trend. Add metallic elements; these add a touch of glamour to your designs when applied

Author Bio:
James Row is a passionate blogger and professional software developer who started his career in WordPress web development, has a love for informative writing, and looks to keep you up to date with the latest information about the industry.

How to easily find which WordPress theme a site is using?

WordPress is certainly one of the most popular CMS in the world. Right now near 90 percent bloggers, small and medium enterprises using WP to develop their websites. It is also estimated that more than 60 percent clients these days are using WP for their business websites as well as blogs. In respect of the statistics, we can come to a conclusion that WordPress is used all most all sectors irrespective of their types and sizes. Now we will discuss to find out which website or blog is using WordPress, with or without the help of a tool.

We have discussed here given like, method one or method two this way, because there are no specific ways to find out the WordPress theme for a website or a blog. Many man many ways to find out and, no such ways that can tell you this is the one and only way to do it. If you think method one is good to find in a minimum time, then it is good for you, or if you need another one is good, then it is good to you. But it is quite easy for a blog to know whether it is installed a WP theme or not. Let us see how to identify it.

The first method is to see the page source. When you open a website or blog, you normally come to the home page first, and then you see the design and post parts. But if you click right and go to page source will be diverted to a new page called PAGE SOURCE. When you land on the page and type WordPress, if you found that, you will confirm the theme is a WordPress theme.

The second method of identifying the blog WordPress theme, when the first method you did not apply or do not know how to do it. When you are opening a website, you are opening a mother URL. Suppose you are opening a website named ABC123.com, now you want to know if it is a WordPress theme installed. Now type ABC123.com/wp-admin, if it opens and shows the panel of admin and password, then you will come to know about it.

Finding the correct and original theme is quite easy. You can have different tools to use for this type of theme. You do not know how these types of tools will smartly help you. Just open the tool and copy the URL of the website or blog you want to know installed the WP theme. It will show you whether it is installed with a WP theme or not, even it will show you if it is a child theme or an original or premium theme.

If you think method one is good to find in a minimum time, then it is good for you, or if you need another one is good, then it is good to you. But it is quite easy for a blog to know whether it is installed a WP theme or not. A header of the HTML will show you if the theme is built with a WP theme or not, this is also one of the best ways to find out them built in WP or not.

Last, but certainly not the least, the above-described four tips will surely help you find the best bet or better to say the best way to follow to find your website or blog installed a WP theme or not. If you have any other things to share you are welcome.

Author Bio:
Sunny Chawla is a Marketing Manager at AIS Technolabs – a Web-design and Development Company. Helping global businesses with unique and engaging tools for their business. He would love to share thoughts on WordPress website development, web design and mobile app development.

Useful CSS Snippets For Divi WordPress Theme

Divi is a WordPress theme that is shipped by Elegant themes. Due to its long chain of stunning features, it has become one of the most preferred choices for building a website. The features provided by the theme are sufficient enough for delivering a top-notch web design. However, in some cases, you would want to make some changes to the CSS code in order to meet your own requirements.

In this post, I have showcased some of the useful CSS snippets that will prove to be useful for Divi WordPress theme.

Snippets for Sliders

For stopping the slider description animation

.et_pb_slide_description {animation:none!important;}

For adding opaque overlay behind the slider text

et_pb_bg_layout_dark .et_pb_slide_description {
background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
display: inline-block;
padding: 50px;
margin: 100px;
border-radius: 15px;
}

Snippets for Buttons

For squaring off button corners

.et_pb_promo_button, .et_pb_newsletter_button, a.et_pb_more_button, .et_pb_pricing_table_button {
-moz-border-radius: 0;
-webkit-border-radius: 0;
border-radius: 0;
}

Change the Color of Contact Form Submit Button

et_pb_contact_submit:hover {
background: #000000;
}

Snippets for Sliders

Remove the dividing line

.container::before { display:none; }

Menu for Snippets

For aligning the menu to the left

@media only screen and (min-width: 980px) {
‪#‎top‬-menu-nav { width: calc(100vw – 240px);}}

Changing the font Size of Menu

#top-menu li {font-size: 18px;}

Change the hover color of top menu

#top-menu.nav a:hover {
color: #000000 !important;
}

Snippets for Header

For hiding the header completely

#main-header { display:none; }
#page-container { padding-top:0px !important }

Giving a thick bottom border to header

#main-header {border-bottom: 10px solid #f7ead9;}

Font weight of main header

#main-header { line-height: 23px; font-weight: 700; }

Snippets for Image

For changing the border radius, adding shadow and adding a hover pop-up effect

img {
border-radius: 9px;
-moz-transition: all 0.09s;
-webkit-transition: all 0.09s;
transition: all 0.09s;
-webkit-filter:
drop-shadow(5px 5px 5px black);
}

img:hover {
-webkit-transform: scale(1.15);
-moz-transform: scale(1.1);
-o-transform: scale(1.1);
-ms-transform: scale(1.1);
transform: scale(1.1);
}

For Product, Post and Project Image Overlay Zoom In

.et_overlay {
-webkit-transform: scale(.9);
-moz-transform: scale(.9);
-o-transform: scale(.9);
-ms-transform: scale(.9);
transform: scale(.9);
}

.et_shop_image:hover .et_overlay, .et_portfolio_image:hover .et_overlay{
-webkit-transform: scale(1);
-moz-transform: scale(1);
-o-transform: scale(1);
-ms-transform: scale(1);
transform: scale(1);
}

Snippets for Logo

Increasing the Logo Size

.et_fixed_nav #logo {
max-height: 100px;
margin-bottom: 18px;}

Snippets for Maps

Adding borders to Top and Bottom of Map

.et_pb_map_container {border-top: 5px solid #ff3600; border-bottom: 5px solid #ff3600; }

Snippets for Footer

Remove Padding and bullets

#footer-widgets .footer-widget li:before {display: none!important;}
#footer-widgets .footer-widget li {padding: 0 0 10px 0px;}

In The End

Above are a few of the useful snippets that will enable you to make the necessary changes in your Divi website. Most of the website owners have resorted to these CSS snippets for integrating a number of amazing features. It doesn’t matter how feature packed Divi theme is, you will feel the need to add some much needed customizations to your website. This will allow you to make your website stand apart from your competitors and make a mark for itself.

Author Bio:
Lauren McLaren was born and raised in Australia. She is working as blogger for Digital Muscle, affordable Web Design Sydney company. She’s hardworking, competent and trustworthy. Her role within the company is to manage team Experts. In her spare time, she likes to read, cook and watch movies.

10 Efficient Ways to Improve your eCommerce Store Sales

These days, almost all tech-savvy people purchase their favorite products and services from E-commerce websites to save their precious time, energy and some bucks. This trend has provided a great lift to the E-commerce business. As a result, several entrepreneurs have come up with their E-commerce ventures to increase their sales and revenues.

However, selling products and services through E-commerce websites is not an easy task. The presence of many E-commerce companies on the World Wide Web, rapidly changing mood of buyers, volatile SEO, increasing operational cost, etc, make it difficult for e-retailers to have a lucrative E-commerce business.

If you run an E-commerce website and are desperately searching for ways to increase its sale, then you should try some tips which are explained below:

1. Increase your site’s visibility on search engines

People use different search engines to look for the products/services they need. To find their favorite products/services, they visit websites that are shown in top 10-20 results by search engines. If your site has a low ranking in search engine results, then buyers will not be able to find your site easily through search engines. As a result, your get only a little slice of traffic to your site and your sale is affected adversely.

Therefore, you should optimize your site with the latest practices of SEO so that search engines may display it prominently in search results and you could get a steady flow of traffic to your site. Once visitors start visiting your site, you can persuade them for buying their favorite products/services.

There are several methods to optimize E-commerce websites. Some effective tips are-

• Keep your site up-to-date at all the times and make it user-friendly as far as possible by eliminating unnecessary clutters, UX/UI problems, database, etc.
• Optimize your site with high-quality and user-centric content. It elevates your site’s ranking in the SERPs of search engines, diverting organic traffic to your site.
• To boost the outcome of your SEO exercise, you should capitalize the potential of social media channels, video websites, Press-releases, online advertising, link building, guest blogging, etc. All these increase traffic to your site and you get business opportunities worth millions of bucks.

2. Add live chat feature to your site

While visiting your site, many customers need assistance from expert sales executive to complete the purchasing orders and take other actions. If your site doesn’t have that feature, customers may flock to other similar options.

Therefore, you should attach a live chat software to your site and depute an experienced & well-trained person to assist customers whenever they raise questions about your products and services.

3. Display the related products

Displaying the related products (on an item) can encourage buyers to purchase additional commodities. Therefore, you should optimize your website in such a way that it should automatically show the related items to a particular product which is being viewed/purchased by the customers. It helps you to push your sale’s figure little by little.

4. Emphasize on upselling and cross -selling

Upselling is a practice of motivating customers to buy higher-end products than a single product. On the other hand, cross- selling persuades customers to purchase complementary or related items.

Upselling and cross-selling, if done rightly by the sales managers of E-commerce websites, can help customers to get the high-quality products at reasonable price tags and boost E-commerce sales significantly without spending any money on marketing channels.

5. Add multiple payment options

Generally, frequent online shoppers would not like to purchase from your site if it has no payment gateway they want to use to pay for the products and services.

Therefore, you should add multiple payment gateways to your site and allow customers to make payments to you easily and quickly. You can also add COD(cash on delivery) option to motivate reluctant buyers (who are afraid of sharing their banking details of for online shopping)to buy from your site.

6. Display product reviews

Due to the availability of mediocre products in the market, online shoppers have become quite dexterous, clever and choosy when it comes to finding the best products in the E-commerce landscape and buying them finally.

So, to look for the best-quality products, they visit several E-commerce websites and read product reviews, given by the buyers who have already used them. If they find no product reviews on your site, it is possible that they may not buy from you.

But, if you display product reviews against all the products you have listed on your site, it will influence the mind of buyers and encourage them to use your offerings.

So, allow customers to rate your products and services once they use it. Never afraid of negative product reviews as they give you several chances to improve your E-commerce site and boost your sales in the long run.

7. Develop infrastructure to address customer’s concerns

When you run a fully-fledged E-commerce website and make handsome turnovers every month, you are likely to get an increasing number of complaints from customers regarding your products/services. If you don’t address them in a timely fashion, customers become displeased and they start damaging your E-commerce business little by little by persuading people not to buy from your site.

• Therefore, you should develop infrastructure to clear your customer’s complaints off as soon as possible. The following steps can be taken in this regard-
• Display your contact details, official email id, correspondence address, etc, on your site so that customers can contact you easily in case they need your help.
• Recruit and train customer care executives to address the complaints of customers quickly in a professional manner and ensure their 100% satisfaction with your E-commerce brand.
• Reply the Emails of your customers once your get them.

8. Clarify the money return, product replacement and return policy

While running an E-commerce website, you must display a well-drafted policy on money return, product replacement and return. It clarifies several doubts from the minds of buyers and ensures that what they can do in case of unexpected situations such as:

• How to get their money back if the product is of low quality?
• How to find a good replacement of the flawed products?
• How to return the defective/non-required products easily to the seller?

All these give a smooth and pleasant experience to buyers and they love to buy from you frequently.

9. Improve the product delivery service

The majority of the customers want the purchased products to be delivered at their specified address as soon as possible. If you make unnecessary delay in product delivery, it makes customers unhappy and it is highly possible that they may not choose your site for online shopping from next time.

On the other hand, some retailers charge a hefty amount as product shipping cost to deliver the products to customers. In fact, high product delivery charges discourage buyers from online shopping, which impacts the sales of E-commerce websites.

Therefore, you should keep product shipping charge at a moderate level and deliver the purchased products to customers in maximum 24-36 hours. This will delight buyers and they will be encouraged to deal with your future offerings.

10. Reduce Shopping cart Abandonment rate

Shopping cart abandonment takes place when buyers add products to their shopping carts, but leave the site without completing their transaction. High shopping cart abandonment rate can affect the prospect of an E-commerce website and can damage its existence if it is not abolished soon with high priority.

To reduce shopping cart abandonment, you should launch Email marketing campaigns, deliver notifications to customers about their abandoned carts and appeal them to complete the pending transactions as soon as possible. There are several resources that can help you to launch successful Email marketing campaigns and tackle Shopping cart abandonment easily. For example- if you run an E-commerce site based on Magento, you can use Magento extensions to automate your Email marketing campaigns and increase your sales.

Concluding remark

In order to sustain in the highly competitive E-commerce business, retailers have to increase their sales continuously. You may use the above-mentioned tips to accelerate the sale of your E-store and flourish in the E-commerce business.

About the author:
Linda Wester is a proficient web developer and blogger by hobby. She possesses a huge experience in converting PSD to Magento theme and loves all things comes under web development technologies. If you have any question or to check out her more publications follow Linda on twitter.