In today’s highly competitive world of online shopping, merchants are often pushed to do everything in their power to attract the customer to buy from their store. Since many shops offer similar products, what is it that will inspire the customer to choose you over so many others? Sooner or later, as a businessman, you come to realize that attractive pricing is only one element that influences the customer’s decision to buy from you. Another factor that is just as important is user experience. There are many different things you can do to level up your online store user experience and maximize your conversion rates, like create WooCommerce product bundles, display popular products in WooCommerce, but you also need to do something to provide your customers the best possible perception of your products. Although you can’t offer the convenience of touching or trying on the goods, you can offer a pretty convincing alternative and that’s where WooCommerce product variation plugins kick in.

These types of plugins come with plenty of useful features that enable you to display products with many different variations like size, color, price so that the customer can have a precise image of how each variation looks.Тhe biggest advantage of product variation plugins is that they simplify the process of adding variable products to your online store – if you have a t-shirt that comes in ten colors and five sizes, instead of adding a separate product for each color/size combination, you can add one product and a menu with different attributes. Your visitors will be able to select and buy the goods based on sizes, prices, and other attributes that match their specifications. Plus, they will appreciate the wide selection of products you have to offer. Bear in mind that all the images you use in your WooCommerce store have to be of high quality if you want to achieve the desired effect.

A good choice of product variation plugin for WooCommerce will help you enrich the user experience and boost your sales at the same time. The list we compiled includes versatile product variation plugins for WooCommerce that will surely help you offer the best shopping experience to your customers:

QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce by Qode Interactive

QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce is a simple yet option-rich plugin developed to help you enhance the user experience for all your shoppers. The plugin provides you with a clear-cut way to display detailed product variations alongside your products in lists and on single product pages.

In addition to this, QODE Variation Swatches is fully optimized for mobile devices too.

This flexible tool presents you with a number of easily adjustable product attributes, optional variation tooltips & descriptions, product availability info, and lots more.

You have the option to feature color, image, label, radio button and tab switch attribute swatches, and show them in dropdowns or using labels. Each product variation gets displayed on the fly once it is clicked on.

On top of that, you have an entire assortment of customization options. Color and Image attributes come in five carefully designed, predefined layouts each, while Label attributes come in two variants. You can also easily configure the width, height, and idle/active border colors for each of the attributes.

Each of the attributes can be shown in a classic layout, laid out next to and below each other, or you can feature them in practical sliders.

Moreover, the plugin lets you feature additional information tabs alongside swatch titles and short descriptions. Here you can provide your customers with even more detailed product info.

Another remarkable feature that the plugin boasts is the optional AJAX- powered instant product variation data loading which can easily be enabled.

One more standout feature is the option to display out-of-stock item variants as either crossed out or blurred, or you can opt to omit them altogether.

Last but not least, with the QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce, you can activate automatic back-in-stock notifications for your shoppers, keeping them informed when their desired products are available again.

The QODE Variation Swatches for WooCommerce plugin is available in both free and premium versions, with the premium version which offers lots more in terms of options & customizability currently priced at $69.

WooCommerce Additional Variation Images

If you want to provide your visitors with a more complete insight of your products and their variations, check out the official extension called WooCommerce Additional Variation Images. Its main job is to allow merchants to display additional product images for their variations, so instead of just showing, for example, different color swatches, it actually displays the products in different colors. You can add multiple variation images, from different angles, zoomed-in, and so on. This is a proven way of boosting customer interest and can be a great way to increase sales. Additionally, when you provide as much information and imagery to the customers, you’re also reducing the chance of returns and complaints.

The plugin is very simple to use – once installed, an option to add different variation images will appear in the Variable Product section of the dashboard. Simply upload the images to appropriate product variations, and that’s it.

This plugin is quite cheap, too – it currently costs $4.92 for a single site license.

WooSwatches – WooCommerce Color or Image Variation Swatches by WooMatrix

The WooSwatches plugin is particularly useful in cases when you have an unusually large number of product variations to offer. What distinguishes it is that it comes with an inbuilt product filter on an image and color basis. This practically means that in case there are more swatches than those displayed on the page the plugin will offer a “more’ link. Also, if the number of swatches is higher than the set value, WooSwatches features a slider to display more shop swatches.

This responsive plugin supports dropdown select fields, color, image, and text variation swatches. It allows you to display the selected color or image swatches on the shop, category, or archive pages. It also supports a wide variety of sizes for both square and round swatches.

This plugin is not free and comes at a unique price of $19.

WooCommerce Better Variations

WooCommerce Better Variations plugin is a simple-to-use tool that includes many useful and unique options. Apart from allowing you to add different color variations, display price information, and similar handy options, this is one of the rare plugins that enables you to handle out-of-stock variations too. It lets you grey out and make out-of-stock products unselectable and also alter the style of the variations in a way to make the out-of-stock products show at the bottom of the list. This way all variations are visible to the user, but he is clearly informed about the variation availability at the moment.

By choosing the Grid display mode you can display all the product variations in a grid or in a single table and your customers can easily enter the desired quantities for selected products without having to select each variation individually.

The plugin comes in a two-tiered pricing plan – basic and pro with prices ranging from $49 to $89.

WooCommerce Variation Master

WooCommerce Variation Master is a powerful tool that is easy to configure. One of the most distinguished features is probably the cart page popup window. It shows up after the customer clicks the ‘Update’ button that is displayed each time a new item is added to the cart. It is also possible to select different product variations inside the cart. Practically, it means that in case the customer wishes to change the order at the last minute, he does not have to remove the product from the cart and add a new one – he can simply select a different product variation on the cart page.

Many more useful features are included – you can add a border on swatches and show attribute text above them, display swatches on Shop, Archive, and Category pages, add a custom image gallery for each variation, create gallery images slider, etc. The plugin is responsive so whatever features you choose to use, they will be accessible regardless of the device.

As for the price, you can opt between a regular license for $35 and an extended license for $1999.

Color and Image Swatches for Variable Product Attributes by Phoeniixx

If you want to add image swatches, rounded and squared swatch style to your online store, the Color and Image Swatches for Variable Product Attributes plugin may be a good solution. This free, user-friendly, and comprehensive tool allows you to create unlimited color swatches.

For more advanced options like creating swatches using bicolors, images, radio buttons, and icons or if you want the option to zoom the swatch image on hover, you’ll have to invest in the premium version.

The premium version unlocks a grid library with 300 icons, offers more options for styling the swatch styles, and has many more useful features. You also have the option to create color and image swatches on a per-product basis.

Depending on the number of sites you are going to use the plugin on, you can choose between three pricing plans ranging from $39 for a single site to $129 for up to 25 websites.

In Conclusion

Running a WooCommerce shop requires an agile approach and constant attunement to your customers’ needs. Variation plugins are made to help you describe and display your products in a more detailed and attractive manner. All the plugins in this list can help you level up user experience and boost your conversion rates. If you are running an online store where there is an exceptionally large amount of product variations, then WooSwatches is probably the most recommendable choice. WooCommerce Better Variations plugin is great if sharing the stock status information about products is important to you. WooCommerce Variation Master is often the choice for larger businesses, and the first plugin on our list is ideal boosting engagement by providing quality images of the variations. Investing in a superb user experience always pays off in more than one way and we are sure each of the plugins in this list can prove that to you.

All the posts, comments, and other types of content on your WordPress website needs a safe WordPress database where it will be stored. It would be very hard, if not impossible, for you to manage your website unless there was a neat database that stores a very large part of your content in an organized manner. All the necessary data your WordPress website needs for proper functioning is kept in the database together with other types of content that are not essential for your site’s performance.

Therefore it is not hard to understand why it is of vital importance to backup your WordPress database as well as to clean it regularly. Thanks to the wide variety of WordPress database plugins, the job of keeping your database healthy is not entirely on you. Depending on what you need more – backup or maintenance, you can choose some of the best WordPress database plugins and let them help you run your site more efficiently.

Before committing to any of the database tools, it would be very useful to familiarize yourself with the way WordPress database works. An understanding of the database mechanisms will help you make better choices for your website. What will also help you make a good choice is the list of the best WordPress database plugins we created. Stay tuned to read more about:

WP Database Reset

The WP Database Reset is a lightweight, free, easy-to-use tool that allows you to perform several otherwise complex tasks in just a couple of clicks. This is a simple and safe choice if your main concern is to clean your database quickly and efficiently. Literally, one click allows you to reset your entire WordPress database. It is also possible to select only a couple of tables to clean the database if necessary.

All the options are accessed and configured on one page – you simply select the tables you need to reset, enter the security code to ensure your identity, and click the button for the task to be performed. Note that it is highly recommended to backup your database before using this plugin.

If you need a one-time fix for resetting and cleaning your entire database, WP Database Reset is surely a good choice – it is free, safe, efficient, and very user-friendly.

WP Optimize

WP-Optimize is a well-rounded solution for cleaning, compressing, and caching your WordPress database. With this plugin, you don’t need any additional tools to optimize your database – thanks to the caching feature you’re also able to improve the performance of your website. WP-Optimize cleans your database from the files you don’t need and performs regular backups at the same time. The database is regularly cleaned following a schedule so you don’t have to worry about that at all. It is also possible to see database optimization stats.

The feature that stands out is definitely the ability to compress images and cache pages – these are rare to find in a single database tool. Options for multisite support are also included as well as multilingual integrations.

This plugin has a free version that you can use on as many websites as you need. Site caching, database cleaning, and image compression are all included in the free version. There are also three paid plans to choose from with prices ranging from $39 to $149 per year that offer advanced features like multisite support, more refined scheduling, etc.

Duplicator – WordPress Migration & Backup Plugin

Although it is more of a migration tool, Duplicator deserves a spot high on our list because of its rich options and plenty of ways to use it for optimizing your database. Duplicator boasts 30 million downloads and currently has more than one million active installs, along with the five-star rating over at the plugin repository.

In addition to serving as a simple but reliable and efficient backup tool, Duplicator allows you to safely and seamlessly clone, copy, migrate or move a complete website from one location to another. It bundles up the entire site for distribution or reuse and performs full migration without any manual hassle with SQL scripts. It promises zero migration downtime and is multi-threaded, which is important for larger databases. And since the entire site is packed and bundled, your new location doesn’t even require WordPress installation since all the files are there.

Duplicate is a free plugin but to make the most out of its features and capabilities, or for handling multiple sites, you should check out the Pro version, with plans starting at $49/year.

Participants Database

The Participants Database is a specific type of database plugin that does not offer what you typically expect from tools of this kind. Instead, The Participants Database offers a simple solution if what you need is to generate a list of contacts, visitors, or any list of users and want to have it in your WordPress dashboard. The plugin lets you import all the contacts via a CSV file or you can type in each contact manually. Displaying those contacts on your website is also supported with the help of shortcodes.

This plugin actually allows you to store any kind of information in the database. The plugin’s interface is very polished and intuitive and you can easily manage it via your WordPress dashboard.

As for the price, this tool is entirely free though it is possible to upgrade it with paid addons. If you need something that works similarly to Mailchimp but without the option for sending emails, this plugin may be the answer.

WP-DBManager

WP-DBManager is another excellent, free WordPress database plugin that allows you to optimize your database in a very simple manner. It is also very lightweight. It is primarily made to provide an automatic backup of your database and file log but includes additional features that allow you to repair broken files and tables, run selected queries, examine tables in your database, and decide whether to keep them or not.

Although its interface may seem a bit complicated, the biggest part of the work is actually done upon installation when you are required to configure certain settings. But once you complete this part of the process, you can rest assured your database is safe and clean. In case of a server problem or an attack, you have all the admin database information displayed on the dashboard so you can see immediately if something might go wrong with the database.

The Advanced Database Cleaner

The Advanced Database Cleaner is a plugin that every website owner needs. It is primarily made for removing items in your database that you don’t need or that may be a source of problems for your website. You can choose whether you want to exclude specific files from cleaning, set regular automatic database cleanings, and choose from a variety of cleaning options to use.

The Advanced Database Cleaner lets you remove items like pending comments, trackbacks, old drafts, pingbacks, and orphan data. Before you decide to employ any option, you will see a preview of your database information on the screen, to ensure you are not missing something or making a mistake. But, even if you do make a mistake, there’s the option that allows you to repair damaged tables and even corrupted files.

As for the price, the core version of The Advanced Database Cleaner is free. In case you need additional website licenses you may opt for one of the paid plans with prices ranging from $39 to $149 depending on the number of sites.

Smart Cleanup Tools

When it comes to WordPress database maintenance you usually need more than just regular cleaning. That’s why many WordPress database plugins are so multifaceted and the Smart Cleanup Tools is no exception. This powerful plugin actually works more like an entire suite of tools that help you keep your database healthy while at the same time improving your site’s performance.

The plugin allows you to run a complete clean-up in just one click as well as to select the data and tables you want to keep. What’s particularly good about Smart Cleanup Tools is that it allows you to collect an incredible amount of statistical data each time you run a clean-up. It also supports integrations with many different plugins for database optimization.

As for the price, a one-time fee of $30 is required and includes all the available features of the plugin.

WP-Sweep

Here’s another great and free tool for cleaning up your database. WP-Sweep is a simple and straightforward plugin that helps you clean revisions, automatic drafts, deleted, unapproved and spam comments, orphaned meta data, duplicated content and meta data, unused terms and transient options, plus it optimizes database tables.

Basically, WP-Sweep helps you avoid deleting directly the MySQL queries by using proper WordPress delete functions.

It’s a clean, simple and efficient plugin but bear in mind that it is not compatible with Slider Revolution, MailPress, Custom Fonts, Polylang, WPML, Elementor Popup Builder and several other plugins (check the website for the complete list).

UpdraftPlus Backup & Restoration

UpdraftPlus Backup & Restoration is one of the most popular database plugins. It is easy to use and provides a comprehensive set of features allowing you to take regular care of your WordPress database comfortably. You can backup and restore the data from your database, schedule clean-ups and store your backups using a variety of cloud services such as GDrive, Amazon, Dropbox, S3, and others. Since the plugin is very lightweight you can be sure it will not impact your website performance in a negative manner – you can only expect its improvement once your database is taken care of.

These features are all included in the free version, but there’s also a premium version with more elaborate features. If you need multi-network compatibility, database encryption, and incremental back-ups, you’ll probably consider the premium version. Easy duplication and migration of your website and advanced reporting also come with the upgraded plan and costs $42.

VaultPress

VaultPress is a database plugin that enjoys a lot of credibility as it comes from the WordPress co – founder, and his Automatic team, which instantly gives it a lot of credibility. Based on its background, at least you can be sure that this tool was made with all the best practices in mind.

The most striking feature that separates VaultPress from other plugins of this kind is that the backup runs in real-time so all the changes that you make are instantly saved. It is also possible to set automatic daily backups and forward the results to your computer. All the backups can be restored with a single click and the 30-day backup archive provides additional security for your data. In case you need to migrate your website, easy site migration and one-click automated restores are also supported. Anti-spam protection is also included.

When it comes to the price, VaultPress does not have a free version. But, it does offer a 5-day trial after which you can choose between three price plans with prices ranging from $39 to $299.

WP Cleaner Pro

WP Cleaner Pro is a powerful and practical tool that has all the features needed for keeping your website and your database healthy and safe. After installing it, you can be sure your part of the job is mostly done, the largest part of optimization goes on in the background. The simple and clean interface, as well as thorough documentation, make this plugin a favorite choice of many different types of companies.

With WP Cleaner Pro you can filter database items and choose which ones you want to clean. The plugin also allows you to schedule regular clean-up sessions, backup your data and enjoy the effects all this has on the performance of your website.

The plugin claims to be the only tool of this kind that can clean 26 different types of orphan and obsolete database data. It also optimizes the database, at the same time or in a scheduled event. Note that it is not convenient for use on multi-sites as it was developed for WordPress single-site installations alone.

This tool does not have a free version – you can employ all of its features for a unique price of $19.

Better Search Replace

Oftentimes, when migrating a website to a new domain or a new server, we need to perform a lot of search and replace work to make sure everything migrates correctly. Thankfully, this doesn’t need to be done manually – there’s a plugin designed to automate that process, and it’s called Better Search Replace. This free plugin has over one million active installs and 4.5-star rating, which testifies to its efficiency and convenience.

Better Search Replace was developed with the idea of integrating all the best features that similar plugins have, in a single place. So, what it does is it offers serialization for all database tables, with the ability to select specific tables and to perform a dry run before you start, in order to see how many fields will be updated. It doesn’t require anything on the server side, except for an active WordPress installation. Plus, it comes with multisite support.

The plugin does all this in the free version, but if you need more, you can check out the Pro version. The pricing starts at $59 and allows you to backup and update the database while the search/replace is in course, to save and load custom profiles for more efficient repetition of the search/replace function in subsequent updates, and lets you see exactly what changed during the procedure.

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions

Last but not least on our list is the Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions plugin. Although many plugins on this list are pretty simple to use, it seems like this one is particularly focused on offering as simple a user experience as possible. There’s only one button you need to click to have your database cleaned of all the undesired items that build up in the database.

It is also possible to run the analysis and exclude certain items or types of items from cleaning. All the database optimizations are filed in a list so you can review them at any point in time.

If you need to clean up the common clutter like pages and posts as well as the more persistent waste such as OEMBED cache, expired transients, and database tables, this tool may be a good choice.

Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions is entirely free and you can use it one-time or regularly for scheduled clean-ups, it is completely up to you.

In Conclusion

Most of the database plugins in this list have a free version and offer upgrades. Often, you’ll find the free version provides everything you need from a database plugin. However, it is always better to analyze your needs before making the choice.

A healthy database is definitely of huge importance for any kind of WordPress website. All of your data and content, the essence of your website are in your database so the question of its maintenance should always be taken seriously. Depending on your needs, you’ll find some plugins more suitable than others. If, for instance, you need a general backup you’ll probably go with UpdraftPlus. For those concerned with database optimization WP-DBManager may be a perfect fit. VaultPress is irreplaceable when it comes to real-time back-ups and Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions is, just as its name suggests, great for post revision and database optimization.

Although advertising is still very powerful today, consumers have more access to product information than ever before, and they typically rather rely on personal recommendations and other users’ reviews. Google has become such an inherent part of our lives that we almost automatically consult it when choosing a restaurant, selecting a travel destination, looking for a car wash service, and what have you.

Therefore, if you run any kind of business, good reviews on Google can help you establish a trustworthy reputation and boost sales, raise brand awareness and reach your target audience more easily. But what happens when you get a bad review on Google? Does one bad review jeopardize all the efforts you invested in developing your business, building trust with your audience, perfecting your service/product, etc.? One or just a few bad reviews, as opposed to a great number of good ones, will most probably not hurt your business in any way. A few bad reviews can even help you look more trustworthy – rarely does anyone buy into the image of perfection today. On the other hand, if you’re just starting and one of the few reviews you got is bad, you’d probably do better without it.

Bearing all this in mind, in this article, we will show you how you can delete a review on Google, as well as explore the reasons why you may be getting bad reviews and what else you could do about them apart from deleting them. Stay with us to find out more about:

Types of Reviews on Google You Have the Right to Remove

Google reviews hold the reputation of being objective, and therefore they are trusted by many people. But, that does not mean your business is protected from malicious and unfair reviews that can come from a competitor or an unrealistically demanding consumer. You can get many types of bad reviews that can hurt your business and do not really reflect the quality you offer. These include:

Although such bad reviews are often obviously fake and have nothing to do with your business, they may be deeply disturbing to your potential consumers. It is only natural that a consumer wants to simply distance themselves from threatening content that has nothing to do with them or with the product/service they were looking for.

Luckily, the Google Review policy accounts for all these and many similar cases, so it is possible to delete such bad reviews. But, you will have to be able to prove that they are against the Google Reviews rules.

Google Review Rules

Suppose you are unsure whether a bad review you got is actually against Google’s review rules. In that case, a quick way to check is to think in terms of how the review is harmful to potential consumers apart from harming your business reputation. It is not enough just not to like the review you’ve got. To make sure you have the right to report the review, we encourage you to read through Google’s review rules and see how the problematic review you’ve got fits in with Google’s definition of harmful content.

There are five criteria against which the content of reviews is classified as forbidden or restricted by Google’s review policy. If the content violates the civil discourse, is deceptive, is obscene or violent, is dangerous or illegal, or the quality of information is questionable – you have the grounds to ask for deleting the review.

Generally, you can consider Google as a friend to your business when it comes to reviews. It even offers a free digital Marketing Kit that consists of posters, stickers, social posts, and other types of content to help you encourage your consumers to leave reviews.

How to Delete a Bad Google Review Left By Someone Else

The whole concept of Google reviews is to encourage honesty and provide objective information for consumers. Therefore, arbitrary censorship of reviews is simply not possible as it is directly opposed to the idea of providing objectivity. If you deserve an honest and fair bad review, the only way to make the situation better is to explain the mistake or improve your product/service. But, in the majority of other cases, when the bad review is not justified, you can count on protection from Google.

There is no way you can delete a review on Google written by someone else without getting approval from Google. The first step to getting a review deleted is to bring it to Google’s attention. That practically means you need to report the review to Google.

To flag a review, go to your Google My Business account and select the business the review is referring to. Of course, if you have just one business associated with your Google My Business Account, there’s no selection to be made. The next step is to select the reviews you wish to flag. You will notice a three-dot menu next to the targeted review. Click on it, and then select flag as inappropriate. Now, the offensive review is reported to Google.

There’s no way to know how fast Google will react, but it usually does not take less than 24 hours for the review to be deleted. One way to speed up the process is to ask others to flag the selected review, too, as the more people find it offensive, the greater the chance Google will react swiftly.

Steps to Take if It Takes Too Long to Wait For Google’s Reaction

In case it takes too long for Google to take action, don’t fret. You also have the option of resorting to Google Small Business Support by visiting the www.support.google.com/business page. State clearly the reason for reaching out by typing in remove reviews in the designated field.

You will be directed to the page with more information about removing reviews, and you will also be offered the option to contact the Help Center via email.

The whole process of reporting an issue with reviews is intuitive, and you will be automatically guided through it once you start it. After your report has been sent, you can expect to receive the first feedback in about 24 hours.

How to Delete a Review You Wrote on Google

You can make many different kinds of mistakes, and posting a review that does not do justice to your or someone else’s business, a review that doesn’t make much sense, or is simply outdated or unnecessary for any other reason is a mistake anyone can make. In terms of Google reviews, Google makes it much easier to correct your own wrongdoing than the wrongdoing of others, so deleting a review you posted on Google is simple and easy.

To remove your own review on Google, log in to your Google account. It doesn’t matter whether you log in to Gmail, Chrome browser, or some other Google service – the procedure can be done from any of these login screens. Next, go to Google Maps. You will notice a three-line menu in the upper left corner of the screen.

Click on it and select Your contributions from the menu.

This will open the section containing all your reviews. Simply find and select the ones you want to delete and then choose the Delete option from the menu that opens when you click on the three dots in the upper right corner of the review. You will also be offered the option to edit the review. The choice is up to you.

And, that’s it. You don’t need to wait for Google to approve for you to delete your own review. It is all done in just a couple of clicks.

How to Handle the Reviews You Can’t Delete

It is not easy to establish a business and earn a solid reputation. If the first thing you think of when you see a bad review is to delete it as soon as possible, that’s a perfectly normal reaction. But, remember that even when the review is bad, deleting it may not be the best way to handle it. Not every bad review is a serious threat to your reputation. Sometimes, you can smooth the situation simply by responding to the review in a calm and reasonable manner. Admitting a mistake and showing the will to compensate for it can do wonders for your public image. You also always have the option to turn directly to the person who left the review to ask for an explanation or offer compensation.

In cases when you believe a review can severely damage your business image and reputation, a wise approach would be to consult a PR crisis approach. Many big brands managed to completely repair their reputation thanks to smart tactics designed by expert PR agencies. Of course, you’re probably not going to hire a PR agency due to a couple of bad reviews, but you could learn a lot about maintaining your brand image just by studying how some famous companies handled their PR crises.

Bad reviews are often very triggering, and that’s what you should focus on – stay cool, avoid arguing, and don’t try to outsmart the already dissatisfied consumer. If the mistake is really yours, don’t hesitate to admit it. Although it doesn’t feel good at the moment, this kind of attitude may actually enhance your trustworthiness in the long run.

In Conclusion

A bad review is a good reminder that you should always have a prepared tactic for reacting whenever faced with criticism or some other type of crisis that threatens your business reputation. By staying prepared, you are also minimizing the possibility of being triggered to react in an inadequate manner and make the situation even worse. You are probably aware of your weaknesses in terms of business, so it might be very helpful to come up with a few scenarios that include the type of bad reviews you could get and the best course of action you can take to minimize the consequences.

It is safe to say that Google will back you up in case you get reviews that are not only bad but also potentially harmful for consumers and internet users in general. And since you surely can handle realistic criticism that comes in the form of objective but not flattering reviews, the wise thing you can always do is focus on the quality of your offer rather than worry about a few bad reviews.

In most cases, when you’re transferring a website from one platform to another, you also need to import external images to the new platform. Migration to WordPress is no exception. Images that load in your content from a different website or URL than your primary WordPress website are referred to as external images.

Most frequently, WordPress users have external image issues when switching from Blogger, from Weebly, Joomla, or from WordPress.com to WordPress.org. If you use one of the WordPress importers, it will by default attempt to import images. But, for some reason, this doesn’t always work quite as it is supposed to.

In this article, we will explain how to import external images in WordPress the easiest way.

Stay tuned to read more about:

Checking if the Images Are Imported

As we mentioned, external images can be imported into WordPress using WordPress importers. To check whether the import was successful, go to your WordPress admin dashboard and head over to Media>Library.

You should be able to locate your imported photos there. If you don’t see all the images you need in your media library, you will need to import them, as external images, using a different method.

Importing External Images in WordPress With a Plugin

The most straightforward way to successfully import external images in WordPress is to use a plugin. The Auto Upload Images plugin is a free solution that automatically uploads and imports external images to the WordPress upload directory, adds images to the media library, and replaces new image URLs with old URLs when you wish to save a post. It also looks for image URLs that are already in the post.

The Auto Upload Images plugin has to be installed and activated first. See our step-by-step tutorial on installing a WordPress plugin for additional information.

After the successful installation, go to Settings » Auto Upload Images page to review the plugin settings.

The default settings would be adequate for the majority of users, but you may alter them if necessary.

The plugin will import images, for instance, into your regular WordPress media uploads folder. By providing an alternative base URL, you can set the images to be imported to a different location. Along with that, it also gives you the option to exclude certain post types and specify the filename, image alt tag, and image size.

Don’t forget to click the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page if you do make any changes.

After that, you should edit the pages or posts that the external photos are on. If you have a lot of content, it can get exhausting to edit all the posts and pages manually.

Luckily, there is a simple method for updating all articles that contain external images. Simply head over to the Posts > All Posts page and select the Screen Options option in the upper-right corner.

The “Number of items per page field” value needs to be increased to “999” before you can click the “Apply” button.

WordPress will refresh the page and display up to 999 posts at once this time.

Your server might not be able to handle updating that many posts at once if your web hosting is sluggish. In that case, you might try upgrading to better WordPress hosting (if that makes sense for you considering the other aspects of site performance and requirements as well) or simply submit fewer posts at once.

The next step is to tick the box next to “Title” to pick all of your posts on this page.

Then you should choose “Edit” from the list of bulk actions and then press the “Apply” button.

Your whole selection of posts will now be displayed in a “Bulk Edit” box by WordPress.

All you have to do to update WordPress’s posts is click the “Update” button.

Bear in mind that you should not alter any of the settings in the bulk edit settings that you see, but keep them as they are. All you have to do is press the “Update” button.

By pressing this button, the plugin will scan the content of the articles you’ve chosen and import any external images it finds.

In case you have more than 999 posts, the remaining posts must be chosen from the next page.

That should do it; you should now notice that WordPress has retrieved all of your external images, and they can be accessed in the Media Library, associated to their relevant articles and pages. They function the same way as any other image you’ve posted to WordPress.

More About Images on Your Website

One of the many benefits of WordPress is its user-friendly system for uploading and managing media assets, particularly images. This enables users to instantly change the visuals of their website and generate completely different designs and effects. Images play a vital part in any WordPress website, and as a site owner you should learn more about this topic to make the most of your website’s imagery.

If you are interested in optimizing the imagery of your website you may find yourself in need of tools that can help you create a visually impressive experience for your users. It’s simple to add a picture to a post or page. However, merely stuffing your posts with images isn’t any better than walls of text. A gallery is a sophisticated approach to exhibiting goods and services by showcasing several photographs in a more attractive format. You might also want to try an interactive or a 360-degree image to give your visitors a fresh viewpoint. There are plugins and collections of widgets or addons that come with an array of solutions for displaying images in a visually immersive and exciting way – as galleries, carousels, sliders, animated elements, and more. And Qi Addons for Elementor is probably the best of such collections.

You’ll also find plenty of tools that will help you compress, change the format of your pictures and optimize them in a technical sense. Since exploring all the possibilities you have to customize your images may be time-consuming, we recommend you read our article about most practical and well-rounded WordPress Plugins for managing images.

In Conclusion

Importing external images is very simple when you have the right plugin. Simply by following the procedure we described, you will ensure all your external images are successfully imported in WordPress. There are, of course, other ways to import external images in WordPress, but they are either more complex or more time-consuming or both so our voice definitely goes for the Auto Upload Images plugin.

Cloud storage services enjoy huge popularity because they are a very practical solution for keeping your WordPress website files safe. They help you store and access your site’s files and data from any point in the world. Cloud storage plugins for WordPress streamline the use of cloud storage services, and they help you sync your data on a regular basis and ensure your website is safe. The advantages of using cloud storage plugins for WordPress also include improved website speed and performance as they also allow you to serve your WordPress files from storage servers.

Some cloud storage plugins offer additional benefits like tools for image optimization, media players, and similar. We handpicked a list of the most popular WordPress cloud storage plugins to help you find the optimal cloud storage solution for your website. Keep reading to find out more about:

WP Offload Media Lite for Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, and Google Cloud Storage

The WP Offload Media Lite plugin is a very efficient and easy-to-use tool that copies your WordPress files added via WordPress media uploader to Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3, or DigitalOcean Spaces. The process is fast, yet it is not entirely automated – the files are first uploaded to your server and then copied to the bucket. Your PHP server will be relieved from having to serve up all the PDF files and images, which will also positively affect your website’s performance.

If you want total control over the process, you can monitor it from the plugin’s settings page, and you also have the option to pause and resume as per your needs. Plugin’s controls are available throughout your WordPress Media Library, allowing you to perform various actions like bulk selecting files, copying and removing files to the server from the cloud, etc. It is also possible to handle single files and toggle public/private access without having to leave the Media Library. You can close the browser tab and let your media library start offloading in the background while you focus on other activities. Another good thing about this plugin is that it supports integrations with many popular plugins like WooCommerce, Elementor, Meta Slider, etc.

Note that if you already have a website for some time, your existing media files won’t be copied to or served from Amazon S3, DigitalOcean Spaces, or Google Cloud Storage. Only the files added after the plugin’s installation will be transferred to and served. The premium versions include a feature for handling current media files. There are three pricing plans to choose from, with prices ranging from $39 to $199 per year.

WP Stateless

If you love working with Google Cloud Storage, this plugin may be just the solution you are looking for. WP Stateless is a very user-friendly plugin that is simple to configure. It comes with a setup assistant that takes you through every step of configuration. It will not be necessary to manually create service accounts or buckets, as the plugin does that automatically. This plugin allows you to connect to Google Cloud Storage in minutes.

WP Stateless allows you to split your website’s content across multiple servers without duplicating media files. Your files will be stored with Google, and since Google’s cloud platform has servers worldwide, your files will always be served from the closest server. Thanks to this and other useful features, this plugin can also improve your website’s speed and performance as the load times will be reduced. WP Stateless also automatically replaces hardcoded media URLs with GCS equivalents in the post editor and meta and masks the default GCS URL with your own custom domain.

When uploading existing files and images, you’ll have synchronization tools at your disposal to ensure the files are managed in the most efficient manner. Last but not least, WP Stateless is a free plugin.

Updraft Plus

Updraft Plus is rated as one of the 30 most popular WordPress plugins and enjoys an excellent reputation as a backup and cloud storage plugin. Although it is widely known as a backup plugin, its cloud storage options are not less powerful.

It comes with an integrated remote storage system, the UpdraftVault Storage, that is built on Amazon S3, which guarantees it is flexible, reliable, and scalable. As an Updraft plugin user, you get 1 GB of free UpdraftVault storage space. But, apart from the integrated storage, this plugin also supports a very wide range of storage service providers, including Google Cloud, Dropbox, Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft OneDrive, etc.

This plugin allows you to organize your backups into categories, making your storage easier to manage. You can also schedule automatic backups. The transport to cloud storage is encrypted, which guarantees high security of your WordPress files. In case you need cloud storage for more than one website, this plugin is multi-site compatible, meaning it has the capacity to provide support for more than one site.

There are four pricing plans to choose from, with prices ranging from $70 to $399 per year.

Media Cloud

Media Cloud is a well-rounded cloud storage plugin that is especially practical for websites that rely heavily on images and photos. With Media Cloud, you can move your WordPress files and data from your WordPress server to online cloud storage like Google Cloud Storage, Amazon S3, DreamHost Object Storage, DigitalOcean Spaces, and many others. Media uploads are automatically copied to the cloud by the plugin. The Media Cloud can also be directly accessed using CloudFront, another CDN, or your cloud storage service. It enables you to appoint a CDN or host your media right away from your cloud storage provider.

The reason why this plugin holds the reputation of one of the most innovative WordPress plugins is its seamless integration with Imgix, one of the best real-time image manipulation and optimization CDNs. Thanks to this integration, by choosing this plugin, you also get all the advantages that Imgix offers, including the creative options that no other cloud storage plugin includes. Advanced image editing tools with options like improved cropping, filters, watermarking, special effects, and similar all come with this plugin. Premium versions also offer integrations with other leading image optimization tools like Short Pixel, EWWW, Smush and Imagify.

The core version of this plugin is free, and there are also four premium versions to choose from, with prices ranging from $35.88 to $227.88 per year.

Cloudinary

If your main concern revolves around CDN and managing and manipulating images in the cloud, Cloudinary may be a very sleek answer to your needs. With the help of this plugin, you can upload, optimize, backup, and optimize your images in cloud storage.

Thanks to the full digital asset management platform integrated with the plugin, you will be able to use all the plugin’s options without leaving your WordPress environment. Features like rich media editing, structured metadata, AI-based tagging, and many more will make managing your WordPress media files much more efficient and faster.

One of the things that makes this plugin so practical is its compatibility with popular page builders. Thanks to this feature, you will be able to fine-tune SEO, build forms, and enhance your website performance. Plenty of image optimization options are also offered – you can optimize videos and images and apply specified global transformations to pre-existing media right after you install the plugin. This tool supports automatic responsive images for delivery on various devices in different resolutions with exact pixel accuracy, as well as automatic image and video optimization of assets located outside of the media library.

For the use of this plugin, you need to set up a Cloudinary account. The basic account is free and offers generous usage limits. You can upgrade later on if the need for it shows up.

Out of the Box

The Out of the Box plugin is an excellent solution if you are looking for Dropbox integration on your WordPress website. It smoothly synchronizes your Dropbox library with your website, allowing you to access all types of files and documents and post them to your pages without having to upload them in WordPress.

This plugin allows you to manage your files easily as it comes with the file browser, search bar, and a preview of all your files. You can also use the full-text search option to perform a search beyond the file names. All your files always stay in the cloud, and none is copied to the server.

A sleek media player also comes integrated with the plugin, allowing you to stream media files without burdening your server storage and performance. You can set automatic playlists, use automatically generated thumbnails, add preroll advertisements to the video, and much more.

If you want to allow your users to upload files to the cloud, that’s also possible. Out of the Box integrates with some of the most popular form plugins like Contact Form 7 and WP forms, allowing you to add an upload box to your website forms. You can also set upload restrictions to control the file size, formats, and max uploads.

As for the prices, you can choose between a regular and extended license. The regular license comes at a price of $36, and the extended license costs $299.

Use-your-Drive

Use-your-Drive is a great solution if your Google Drive is full of media files that you want to use on your WordPress website. This highly customizable plugin allows you to easily add all kinds of files from your Google Drive directly to your posts and pages.

Similar to the previously described plugin, this tool also includes a file browser that you can access via your WordPress dashboard and locate the files that you want to add quickly and easily. Plus, it also features quick-add buttons that are integrated with the post editor, making it even simpler to add files to posts and pages.

An easy-to-use, beginner-friendly shortcode builder comes included with the plugin, allowing you to add and use different plugin modules with complete ease. Integrations with powerful form plugins and WooCommerce are also supported, as well as with Gutenberg and Elementor.

You can allow your users/clients to upload files, too – designate a private folder for them and set the permissions that you want to have total control over their access to the storage. The plugin features a report section where you can have a complete overview of all the actions related to your files.

The prices of this plugin range from $36 to $299, depending on whether you choose a regular or extended license.

In Conclusion

Cloud storage services are accessible, easy to use, and often affordable, which makes them an excellent solution for small businesses. No wonder their popularity is on the constant rise. By choosing a cloud storage plugin for WordPress that answers the needs of your website perfectly, you will also be able to improve your website’s performance in general, apart from ensuring the safety of your WordPress files and data. If you mainly use Dropbox or Google Drive, you’ll probably be interested in Use-your-Drive Google Drive plugin and Out of the Box. If you are looking for a tool that can offer support for a wider range of cloud storage services, you may opt for the WP Offload Media plugin or Media Cloud. Whatever you choose, we hope we helped you find the best solution for your WordPress website.

The modern age has introduced many different possibilities for companies to give support to their clients, including automated systems that provide the desired information in a matter of seconds. Still, companies that can deliver real-time interaction with specialized call center agents are often considered more reliable and trustworthy. Despite all the technological advances, the personalized service that you can offer via call center software is the most popular kind of customer support.

The reason why call center software is so useful is that it enables you to connect customers with the designated agents thanks to the features such as call routing and interactive voice response. Many call center software will also typically include tools to help you control omnichannel interactions.

Some of the additional advantages these software solutions bring to you are that they provide you with the data and tools to streamline managing a call center and gain insight into what’s working and what isn’t. Maybe you need to monitor typical call durations, review satisfying or unsatisfying client interactions, and determine which agents are doing well and which ones need additional instruction – that’s all possible with the right choice of call center software.

If you are looking for a call center platform and are not sure which one to go for, stay tuned and read more about:

Things to Consider While Selecting a Call Center Platform

Before you make your choice, it would be a wise idea to get to know more about the common features most call center software offers. If you are already using a call center platform, it may still be useful for you to check if it includes the features that are considered standard:

Now that you are aware of the qualities to look for in call center software, we can share our list of the top call center options for various types of businesses.

Nextiva

If you are looking for a powerful call center solution that can cater to large businesses, Nextiva may be what you are looking for. Nextiva is a top rated cloud-based call center and, as such, requires no hardware and is easy to set up. Whether you just need voice communication or plan on including chat, text, and email, Nextiva can provide you with all the features you need.

To make or receive calls, agents simply log into their Nextiva account. You can let your agents set up their Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) status. This means they will be able to sign in or out of call center queues and chat with team members, which is great for them to keep them updated on the latest developments. They can also take calls on their mobile phones. This is an excellent solution if you rely on remote employees.

Nextiva also includes a call pop feature that allows your agents to see important customer information – data instantly retrieved from your CRM, on their screen when the phone rings. This way, they can always be adequately prepared for the customer and you can be sure you are providing top customer service.

Robust reporting and supervisor tools such as call monitoring and call recording will help you always keep your agents’ performance and customer satisfaction in check. As for pricing, you can choose between three pricing plans, with prices starting at $18.95 per month.

HubSpot

If you are thinking about adding a call center to your business, but are not willing to invest significant funds right from the start, you may be interested in exploring what HubSpot has to offer. Its free version includes all the essential qualities necessary for a good call center service, such as ticketing, contact management, live chat, team email, tickets, closed reports, reporting dashboard, and shared inbox. Plus, it seamlessly integrates with AirCall.

If you are already using HubSpot’s sales and marketing platforms, choosing to go with its call center software, too, will allow your agents to have access to all the customer information collected from these other platforms in a single view. The premium versions include features like a knowledge base that allows you to turn frequently asked questions into a user-friendly library of help articles, videos, and documentation.

Multiple ticket pipelines, logged-in visitor identification, team management tools, and more advanced features are also offered in the three premium plans. Pricing for the premium plans start at $45 per month.

CloudTalk

CloudTalk is a well-rounded call center software that can meet the needs of businesses of all sorts and sizes. It comes with a wide array of unique features that you can customize and combine to offer top quality customer service. You can, for instance, enable your agents to choose how to distribute incoming calls thanks to the custom queue feature, set call transfers, and ensure each incoming call is directed to the most suitable call center agent.

You can personalize your customer support by setting a preferred agent for each client. This option provides many possibilities if, for example, you have VIP clients or segmented customers in some other way. In case you want to limit the availability of your agents to specific business hours, you can define these hours and set a special personalized absence message with a personalized greeting and music and direct the customers to leave voicemails.

Prices start at $25 and there’s also the possibility of creating a tailor-made service pack with a customized price.

RingCentral

RingCentral is a popular commercial VoIP service provider that lets you set up a cloud-based call center for businesses of all scopes. What’s special about RingCentral is that it offers targeted solutions in line with your niche. It provides more than a messaging, video, and phone hub – RingCentral supports organizing virtual events that can cater to up to 10,000 viewers.

Apart from pre-made app integrations with popular business solutions such as Microsoft Teams, Office 365, Salesforce, and Dropbox, with RingCentral, you can also set up custom integrations thanks to their open platform.

As an omnichannel solution, RingCentral allows you to set up rules for calling routes depending on availability, capacity, and other factors. You can also set customized rules to manage customer service more efficiently across multiple channels. Thanks to features such as the team calendar and the ability to schedule incoming calls depending on traffic numbers, you can also manage your support team more easily.

RingCentral also includes detailed metrics about your support team performance and customer satisfaction. The gamification feature allows you to reward agents for good performance. It is also possible to set up call monitoring, key performance indicators (KPIs) for real-time monitoring, agent performance tracking, self-service resources, and more. What’s particularly interesting is that you can create unique statistics dashboards using data visualization and root cause analysis tools.

As for pricing, there are four pricing plans offered, with prices starting at $19.99 per month. There’s the possibility to set up a custom pricing plan with selected features for your business. You can also test the software by opting for a free trial.

Freshdesk

Freshdesk is a full omnichannel customer support solution. It comes with a powerful ticketing system that allows you to track and handle incoming support tickets from multiple channels via a single inbox. You can also set deadlines for ticket response and resolution based on different categories. To boost your support team’s efficiency, you can also set up canned responses for common questions.

Features like team huddle and linked tickets allow your team to cooperate on complex customer issues. Omnichannel support is also included so you can manage all support-related communications via social media, email, chat, website, etc. Thanks to the reporting tools, you can also track agent performance and use the information you acquire to improve customer service.

With Freshdesk, you can easily set up a worldwide contact center. It also includes many practical features, such as the ability to build up automatic voice answers employing artificial intelligence, options for call recordings, call transcripts, call lifecycle information, voice bots, speech-enabled IVR, etc.

Freshdesk offers a free version that can support up to 10 agents, and three premium plans with prices starting at $15 per month.

Ooma

Ooma is an all-in-one virtual, cloud-based, call center solution designed to meet the needs of small and medium-sized enterprises. This platform allows you to set up a cloud contact center and offer first-rate customer service with ease.

It comes with an intelligent call routing feature that allows you to reduce long call queues by connecting clients with the appropriate agent. Additionally, you can design unique call flows for your support team. The drag-and-drop call flow builder that comes included allows you to quickly create a call sequence.

Some of the most popular features offered by Ooma also include multi-level IVR and automated call distribution depending on caller information, business hours, and agent abilities. The feature that stands out is smart reconnect – in case the conversation between the agent and the customer is interrupted, smart reconnect allows you to reunite the customer with the agent they were speaking to before the conversation stopped.

Tools for tracking customer service performance are also included, so you can easily supervise the work of your agents. As for the prices, they vary depending on the region.

8×8

8×8 is a full-contact center solution that is an excellent choice for big businesses and enterprises. It allows you to offer your staff the best possible base by integrating all of your channels into one place. The user-friendly interface makes it easy to use for all users of all levels.

Some of the top features are skills-based call routing, queued callback, online callback, and IVR (interactive voice response). It is also possible to set up ring groups so that agents can distribute calls between themselves more efficiently.

Real-time analytics and reporting tools are also included. The information provided by these tools can be accessed from any device so you can have complete details about the customer journeys and waiting times for each customer across all channels. The private knowledge base feature allows you to equip your agents with all the information they need to provide the best customer service easily.

8×8 Contact Center also fully supports integrations with CRMs such as Salesforce, Zendesk, Microsoft Dynamics, and others. Plus, it provides top-notch security as well as tools to protect the privacy of sensitive data entry fields. A 30-day free trial is offered and the prices start at $15 per month.

CrazyCall

CrazyCall is a great choice if your company is mostly sales-focused and you operate with large sales teams. It includes features like click-to-call, callback widgets, call scripts, call monitoring, auto-dialing, and call transfers.

You will easily notice that all the features are specifically designed to help you maximize sales at your call center. Additionally, CrazyCall offers excellent solutions for e-commerce stores, small enterprises, and support teams. Plus, it even provides options for generating leads on your website. The call script feature, for instance, allows you to make cold calling easier for your agents by providing them with a personalized call script. A simple, clean interface lets your agents focus entirely on the conversation without unnecessary distractions on the screen.

As for the prices, all plans include a free phone number, an API, integrations, and round-the-clock customer service. Every month, 122 nations are eligible for the free minutes. Calls to US landlines begin at only $0.01 per minute after that. Thanks to a 14-day trial period, you may test this product for free to see whether it works for you. You can choose between two pricing plans with prices starting at $20 per month.

LiveAgent

LiveAgent is a user-friendly, cloud-based call center software. It comes with all the features needed for quality customer service, like IVR, callback requests, call transfers, unlimited call recording, smart call routing, and many more. You can also set up video conference calling, in-app push alerts, chatbots, and automatic call distribution (ACD) to streamline the work of your support team. Agents can add private notes to their tickets, only visible to them, to manage their workflow more efficiently.

The software integrates with popular CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot. Additionally, it works well with email marketing tools like Mailchimp and AWeber. You also have the option of adding a live chat button and integrating it with your WordPress website.

LiveAgent offers a free version and three premium plans with prices that vary depending on the number of your agents.

Talkdesk

Talkdesk provides software and solutions to support and boost staff engagement, reporting, and customer involvement. However, their contact center software is the product they are most famous for. It’s a complete customer experience solution made to cater to the demands and expectations of the modern consumer. It also offers targeted solutions depending on the niche you operate in.

Some of the most prominent features of Talkdesk include an outbound dialer, call recording, omnichannel support, agent desktop and mobile agent tools, AI virtual assistant, etc. It also offers the option for customer self-service, allowing you to optimize and streamline the work of call center agents. Thanks to the reporting and analytics features, you will also easily gain insights into your employees’ performance.

Talkdesk also includes collaboration tools that enhance communication between your agents, support teams, and different departments to provide the best service to the customer as swiftly as possible.

This software supports integrations with Salesforce, Zendesk, Slack, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc. TalkDesk’s prices start at $75 per month and there’s also the possibility of creating a custom plan.

In Conclusion

Although today’s world is digital, phone assistance is still essential for providing excellent customer service. Quality call center software is necessary for your business to thrive and stay competitive. Any company that offers live customer support may profit from call center software. Nextiva is a well-rounded solution that can meet the needs of complex organizations. If you need a simpler tool, you may find LiveAgent interesting. If what concerns you most is sales, Crazy Call is an excellent choice. Each option in this list comes with different advantages, so we encourage you to analyze your needs and compare them to the features offered by these tools. That way, you will find it way easier to make the right choice.

WordPress’ robust blogging tools are what most people know it for. People use RSS feeds to subscribe to your fresh content and to feed into third-party reader programs such as Feedly. This allows them to read your new material while on the fly. But, RSS feeds are no longer as popular as they were a decade ago, despite the fact that many people still use them on a regular basis. Social media platforms’ ability to share new content is incomparable to RSS. The necessity to utilize the RSS feed has been almost entirely replaced by social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

We all get the RSS feed functionality by default when we install WordPress, but not all of us need it. There are many legitimate reasons why you would wish to disable the RSS feed on your WordPress website. Not everyone utilizes WordPress’s blogging feature, and some organizations may want to deactivate RSS feeds entirely in WordPress. This is one less issue for them to be concerned about.

In this article, we will point out some reasons why you may want to disable the RSS feed and show you how to do it the easiest way. Stay tuned to read more about:

Reasons for Disabling the RSS Feed

RSS is a form of web feed that allows people to get real-time updates and articles, news, and other types of content from your site. “RSS” stands for RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. It allows subscribers to your email newsletters, RSS feed readers, and other platforms to automatically get fresh information.

Considering that nearly every website has a social media account on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram that notifies all of its followers when new content has been published, the point of RSS feeds becomes questionable. Why preserve it if it serves no purpose or offers no advantages?

Plus, although generally RSS feeds can be helpful for your website, WordPress includes several feeds that you may never need. For instance, there are feeds for authors, taxonomies, specific posts and pages, and more.

By turning off these RSS feeds, you can prevent search engines like Google from using up all of their website crawling resources. By doing this, search engine bots will index more significant pages on your site rather than crawl irrelevant feeds for your website.

But, bear in mind that if you do not actively use social media sites, the RSS feed may be quite advantageous to your website. This is also true if your social media profiles do not have a significant number of followers. Whether the RSS feed is valuable to you is primarily determined by the way you design your online presence.

Let’s now look at how to deactivate RSS feeds in WordPress.

How to Disable RSS Feed with a Plugin

Using a free plugin like Disable Feeds is one of the simplest ways to turn off a WordPress RSS feed. Disable Feeds is a reliable plugin, used by more than 20.000 users. This tool blocks all RSS/Atom feeds on your WordPress website by rerouting all requests. Additionally, it can be used to disable the bbPress forum feeds and BuddyPress group feeds.

The installation of Disable Feeds is no different from any other WordPress plugin installation. Should you have any concerns, don’t hesitate to jump to our detailed guide on installing WordPress plugins.

To adjust the plugin settings, go to the Reading section in the Dashboard settings. The plugin redirects requests to the corresponding HTML content. This means that, for instance, visitors who access a category RSS feed will be sent to the category archive page. Additionally, you may decide whether or not to deactivate the global post feed and global comment feed or just display a 404 error in their place.

Bear in mind that only the feeds themselves are disabled by the plugin; the sidebar and footer widgets that connect to your RSS feeds must still be disabled in your WordPress theme options.

Disabling RSS Feed with Code

You may also disable RSS feeds in WordPress by adding code to the functions.php file of your site theme. The code approach is for you if you don’t want to add another plugin to your website. It is a good idea to back up your website because you will be modifying files in the backend and some functionalities may be lost. In the event that a mistake is made, you will be able to use the backup to go back to the state that existed before editing the PHP.

If you feel confident editing WordPress files and site content, you can employ this option, but if you have never pasted snippets from the web into WordPress, you may want to consult your developer to assist you. Even a tiny error will cause your website to crash, so we don’t advise altering the functions.php file directly on your website.

Additionally, you can include the following code in a code snippets plugin or a site-specific plugin:

function qode_disable_feed() {
wp_die( __( 'No feed available,please visit our <a href="'. esc_url( home_url( '/' ) ) .'">text</a>!' ) );
}
add_action('do_feed', 'qode_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rdf', 'qode_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss', 'qode_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2', 'qode_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom', 'qode_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_rss2_comments', 'qode_disable_feed', 1);
add_action('do_feed_atom_comments', 'qode_disable_feed', 1);

In Conclusion

Turning off the RSS feed is often a smart move because RSS as such is no longer as popular as it used to be and, even more importantly, it can jeopardize user experience and your site’s SEO. There are a few approaches you can take here. If you are not accustomed to coding and accessing the necessary files, we advise using the plugin approach. This process is also quicker and simpler to carry out.

However, the coding approach does the work flawlessly, and if you feel comfortable using it, and don’t want another plugin on your site, it is definitely the better option.

When you run a WordPress website and think about the tools you could use to drive traffic, reduce bounce rates, and maximize conversions, quizzes rarely come to mind. But this form of interaction is very popular among very different types of audiences. That’s why quizzes are a great way to animate multiple different segments of your target group at the same time. They are interactive, they require users to participate, but they are not too demanding. Aside from often being a lot of fun, quizzes can also be very informative. Plus, all you need for adding them to a website is a good WordPress quiz plugin.

In this article, we’ll share with you some of the best WordPress quiz plugins you can use on your website. Stay tuned to read more about:

Why Adding a Quiz to Your Website is a Good Idea

Adding quizzes to your website opens the door for a lot of creativity in content creation. Regardless of the type of website you run, there’s always a way to include a quiz and allow your users to interact and engage with you and your content. Quizzes can be amusing, informative, exciting, serious or anything you want them to be. And, you can also always motivate the users to participate by offering rewards for taking the quiz – encouragement in the form of a discount, special offer, membership, etc.

Of the many reasons why using a WordPress Quiz plugin can be beneficial, let’s just name a few most prominent ones:

Now let’s see what tools you can use to create and add quizzes to your WordPress website with ease.

Quiz Cat

Quiz Cat is a popular plugin that comes in both a free and a premium version. It offers a clean interface and integrates seamlessly with all kinds of WordPress themes. It is made to be responsive so it allows you to create quizzes that look great on all kinds of devices and screen sizes. If you already have or aim to cater to an international audience, the plugin allows you to translate quizzes to almost any language of your choice. Another advantage of this plugin is that it is very lightweight and it surely won’t affect your site’s performance in any negative manner.

Quiz Cat offers some great ways to personalize your quizzes and make them more engaging. You can, for example, add images to quizzes, add custom completion messages, set random shuffling of quiz answers, etc. The premium version of the plugin offers advanced options like social share boosting and personality quiz making. It also includes Facebook Pixel integration and email marketing which can be of great use for advertising.

Note though that quizzes are set to run in their own modules which poses some limits in terms of media and other types of formatting. The premium version comes in a three-tiered pricing plan, with prices ranging from $49 to $149, depending on the number of websites you plan to use it on.

ARI Stream Quiz

ARI Stream Quiz is a free and very beginner-friendly tool that literally anyone can use with complete ease. It installs in just a couple of minutes and you can immediately start creating any type of quiz you want. Many popular options that other tools only offer within the premium plans are incorporated within the free version. You can add images to your quizzes, add Open Graph and Twitter tags for better SEO, export results to CSV, and more.

This tool also integrates seamlessly with many popular marketing tools like MailChimp, Zapier, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, ConstantContact, Drip, GetResponse, and MailerLite services. You can create all kinds of quizzes with it from trivia to personality quizzes and everything in between. It is also fully translatable both in the backend and frontend. It comes with English, French, Russian, Polish, and Turkish translations included.

The social share functionality is also supported so you can share the quiz results on a variety of social networks such as Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn, VKontakte, or via email. You can also make your blog posts and pages more interesting by incorporating quizzes in them – the plugin includes a shortcode for that purpose. It is also fully responsive so all the quizzes will be available in full quality on all screen sizes.

The core version is free, but the plugin also offers a few premium plans with prices starting at $17. Note that personality quizzes are only available within premium versions. But, excellent customer support is provided regardless of the version you opt for.

Formidable Forms

At first glance, Formidable Forms may seem just like another WordPress forms plugin. But, it includes a quiz maker add-on with a powerful drag-and-drop form builder making it easy to create a customized quiz in no time. If you need to create complex quizzes spanning across multiple pages, you may find this plugin particularly useful as it includes a multi-step form feature.

In terms of ease of use, this tool is user-friendly and suited for beginners as well as advanced users. It includes detailed help documentation that covers all proficiency levels. And let’s not forget the obvious advantage – this plugin allows you to add all kinds of forms to your website, not just quizzes. So if you need a versatile tool, Formidable Forms may be a good solution. It also offers a lot of styling options allowing you to create quizzes that visually match your website’s design.

As for the pricing, the core version is free, and you can also choose between four premium plans starting at $39.50 per year.

Quiz and Survey Master plugin

The Quiz and Survey Master plugin is a free, comprehensive quiz tool that enjoys an excellent reputation among its users, and for a good reason. Apart from offering very practical features for creating quizzes it also includes many styling options to customize your quiz visually too. A simple-user-friendly quiz builder is incorporated and includes options like comments, checkboxes, and radio buttons apart from other standard features.

If you want to limit the time users spend solving the quiz, this plugin includes a timer that you can activate and deactivate as per your need. Adding media and images to quizzes is also supported so you can create all kinds of quizzes with ease. You can even set the users to watch a video before completing the quiz. A particularly interesting feature is the ability to add hints for the users to see while they are solving the quizzes.

Quiz and Survey Master plugin also has a premium version. What’s particularly convenient is that you can choose only the premium features that you need and avoid paying the full premium package price that may include some features you are sure you’re never going to use. Some of the advanced features included only in the premium version are quiz landing pages, export results, reporting, and MailChimp integration.

WordPress Viral Quiz – BuzzFeed Quiz Builder

If you are a fan of BuzzFeed-style quizzes, WordPress Viral Quiz will certainly capture your attention. The quizzes you can create with this tool will have almost exactly the same look as typical BuzzFeed quizzes with huge thumbnail images and a variety of quiz outcomes at the end. It is excellent for creating a viral buzz around your content – it also includes a feature for asking users to share their quiz results on their social media.

But, bear in mind that for the moment, this tool can only offer to create personality and trivia quizzes. As for style, you can choose between BuzzFeed Theme and Modern Flat Theme, and if you have the knowledge the plugin supports creating your own CSS theme.

If one of your goals is to improve the number of newsletter subscriptions, WordPress Viral Quiz includes a built-in email capture module for getting more people to sign up. You can also check quiz analytics in the back end to see how the quiz is performing. If you want to boost your marketing efforts, inserting advertisements around the quizzes is supported too. The plugin offers two pricing plans starting at $36.

Poll, Survey & Quiz Maker Plugin by Opinion Stage

If you are looking for a versatile tool that you can use to create quizzes but also surveys, polls, slideshows, and different kinds of forms – Poll, Survey & Quiz Maker Plugin by Opinion Stage may be a good choice. This entirely free plugin allows you to create both fun and professional quizzes. Adding media and engaging buttons to make quizzes more attractive is supported. You can also integrate a lead form in your quiz to collect qualified leads.

This tool comes with hundreds of pre-made quiz templates so that you never have to start creating a quiz from scratch. It also offers insights into quiz analytics – you get an advanced analytics dashboard with results and performance tables and graphs.

As for style, you can customize the design of the quiz in terms of color, font, and size. You can add your own logo to brand your quizzes and use the CSS override feature to fully customize the quiz design to your site and brand.

LearnDash

In case you are looking for a tool that allows creating quizzes for educational purposes like school tests, admission tests, and similar, LearnDash has the features that you need. LearnDash is a widely popular LMS plugin that also allows you to create all types of quizzes with ease.

This tool allows you to create multipage timed quizzes with limited attempts which are all important features for school tests. It supports many different question types – multiple-choice, single choice, fill-in-the-blank, free text, matching, sorting, essay, and even survey. Adding media to quizzes is also supported. You can show questions in a randomized or specific order, and the plugin also allows you to create a question bank.

LearnDash offers three pricing plans with prices ranging from $150 to $329 per year, depending on the number of websites you are going to use it on.

Riddle Quiz Maker

The Riddle Quiz Maker is a versatile, free tool that can offer more than trivia and personality quizzes. This plugin allows you to create 15 types of quizzes as well as lists, surveys, and polls on your WordPress website.

You can create as many quizzes as you need, collect leads and quiz responses and connect the plugin with your preferred email marketing tool like MailChimp or ActiveCampaign for automatic follow-up messages. A shortcode for embedding quizzes anywhere on your website comes included with the plugin so you can add quizzes to any post or page with ease.

You can use the integrated image/video/GIF/audio options to make your quizzes more engaging. GIFs will be particularly useful in that sense. But if you’re not a fan of the BuzzFeed style, and you need a quiz plugin that offers a more professional look, this tool may not be a perfect solution. Still, it offers plenty of possibilities considering that it is free.

Interact Quiz Maker

Interact Quiz Maker is actually a web-based app that allows you to create quizzes of all kinds. Regardless of whether you want to use quizzes for generating leads, improving conversions, building social media following, or generating traffic, you can choose from more than 800 premade templates and start immediately.

You can connect your quiz to your email marketing or marketing automation system and add quiz leads automatically to your system. Segmenting leads based on their quiz results or based on how they answer specific questions is also possible. More than 50 integrations are supported.

Thanks to one-click social sharing functionality, your users can easily share their results on social media, helping you expand your reach. As for the pricing, you can choose between three plans, with prices starting at $17 per year.

WP Quiz

WP Quiz is a free, flexible tool that you can use to create trivia, personality, and flip card types of quizzes. This classifies it as a plugin of choice for blogs and websites that offer amusement. Nevertheless, if you find it convenient for whatever type of website you have, you can try it for free.

As for design, there’s a choice of two styling options – you can create a single page or a multipage page quiz. You can also change font colors easily, adjust the background color to fit the design of your theme, or have it in a contrasting color to make the quiz stand out more easily from the rest of your content. Six animation effects are also included allowing you to create an engaging user experience. You can add images and other media too.

Adding social share buttons is also supported. It is possible to allow users to restart the quiz and they can also see a progress bar so they know their Quiz status. Each quiz that you create will be responsive so your users will be able to enjoy it regardless of the device they are using.

In Conclusion

A well-thought quiz, built with your target audience’s interests in mind can bring you many advantages. If you are looking to add more fun to your website, Quiz Cat or Riddle Quiz Maker may help you add that amusing tone and entertain your users. Educational establishments will probably be drawn to more comprehensive tools such as LearnDash or Quiz and Survey Master. It is important you understand that your quizzes need to match your website purpose and style and choose the plugin that offers you full support in that sense.

The more your target audience trusts you, the easier it will be for you to influence their decisions. Any tool that can help you boost your authority and credibility is valuable and sometimes a simple trick like showing your subscriber counts in WordPress is what you need to take your website to the next level. The power of social proof is indisputable – people love to copy the actions that seem desirable for whatever reason. Sometimes it is enough for them just to see that a large number of people have already done what they are about to, to make them feel comfortable and safe.

In this article, we’ll share with you the simplest way you can display subscriber counts in WordPress. Stay tuned to read more about:

Why Should You Display Subscriber Counts in WordPress

A subscriber count refers to the total number of persons who have signed up for a service or platform. It is the kind of statistic that is often shared by many different types of websites and blogs. For business websites, it may be particularly beneficial to display subscriber counts as this signals the business is reputable and well established. For blogs of all kinds, it can surely be just as important as the power of social proof is never to be underestimated. Once your audience starts perceiving you as reliable, you can expand your business much more easily.

There are different subscriber counts you may share on your pages – newsletter subscriptions, followers on social media, membership site users, etc. Depending on your goal, you may opt to show only specific subscriber counts and leave out others. If for example you managed to grow a huge audience on Facebook but your Twitter account isn’t as successful, you will naturally want to share only the counts from Facebook.

Just like you can use social platforms to increase the number of subscribers on your website, you can also use your website to increase the number of followers on selected social media platforms. Simply by, for example, adding YouTube subscribe button on your website, you could influence your audience to follow you on YouTube too. The same applies to any other channel and media.

When Should You Display Subscriber Counts in WordPress

Unless you already have a solid number of subscribers, you may want to rethink the decision to display your subscriber counts. Just like big numbers can impress and attract your potential consumers, a small number of subscribers may signalize that your blog or website is not serious enough. So, before putting those numbers out there, analyze your situation:

If your numbers are small but are also rapidly growing, it might still be a good idea to share them with your audience, especially if you add the stats about the growth rate. Anyway, think carefully, sharing the numbers technically is the easiest part. Growing your subscriber base is way trickier.

How to Display Subscriber Counts in WordPress with a Plugin

There are many different ways to display subscriber counts in WordPress but using a plugin is probably the simplest and fastest way to do it, especially if you want to avoid dealing with code. The Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons plugin is an excellent choice – it is free, easy to use and integrates with more than 200 platforms to let you show subscriber counts for multiple networks at once.

To install the plugin follow the standard WordPress plugin installation procedure. Should you have any troubles, consult our detailed guide on installing a WordPress plugin to make sure you got it all right.

Configuring the Plugin’s Settings

After you finish with the installation and activate the plugin, a new menu option ‘Ultimate Social Media Icons’ will show up in your WordPress admin panel. Click on it to open the plugin settings.

Then click on the ‘Which Icons do you want to show on your site’ tab to open the drop-down menu and select the boxes for the social icons that you want to be displayed. You will notice that each option is followed by specific recommendations which are very convenient if you’re not familiar with the way certain social platforms work. Simply by clicking the Read more option you will get all the essential info about the specific social platform characteristics.

When you have chosen all the icons you want to display on your website, continue to the tab ‘What do you want the icons to do?’. Click on it to open the drop-down menu. Now, you can configure the actions that visitors can perform when interacting with your icons.

Depending on the icons you have chosen, different options will be offered to you. If you have ticked the RSS, the users will be offered the option to subscribe via RSS. If you’ve also ticked the Email icon to be displayed, you get to choose whether you want subscribers to get automatic updates from you, or want the contact form to show when they click on the email icon. You can also link it to the specific page on your site, etc. Each option is followed by a thorough explanation so you’ll understand easily what each choice brings to you.

After you made all the adjustments, you can move on to the next step which is the ‘Where shall they be displayed?’ section. This is where you choose where the icons will appear.

As you can see, many different options are offered, you can add icons in a widget, have them floating over the site’s pages, show them after posts, etc.

Now we can proceed to configure your subscriber counts. Simply continue to the section ‘Do you want to display ‘counts’ next to your icons?’

Depending on your choices, you will be offered different options for fine-tuning the way subscriber counts are displayed. In some cases, you may need to enter the numbers manually.

Some styling options are offered in section 4, you may set them immediately or go back at any time.

You may choose to add animated effects, or change the icons’ colors and style – just scroll down to see all the options you have.

The plugin makes it easy to understand what is required for you to do at each step. When you are satisfied with the configuration that you made, remember to click the ‘Save All Settings’ button.

Adding Subscriber Counts Anywhere on Your Website

If you want more flexibility and the option to show subscriber count anywhere on your website, go back to section 3 ‘Where shall they be displayed” and make sure you thick the ‘Place via shortcode’ box. You are then provided with a shortcode that you can insert anywhere on your WordPress site.

Make sure you save the shortcode generated by the plugin. You can insert it anywhere on your website. You can simply copy it to any post, page, or widget area.

To add it to a post, find and open the blog post you want to edit. By clicking the ‘Plus’ icon and typing ‘shortcode’ in the search field find the Shortcode block icon and then select the block.

Now, type or copy the shortcode in the shortcode block:

All that is left to do now is check how your subscriber counts look on your pages.

In Conclusion

Now that you know how to display the number of subscribers from different platforms on your website, all you have to do is make sure there are as many of them as possible. There are many marketing tactics you can use for this purpose but the most important thing is to have a good content strategy from the beginning. It’s one thing to attract and another to keep subscribers, and only investing in quality can give you long-term success.

When it comes to content, of course, you have to adapt it to different platforms – it’s not the same to create content for a site and create content for Facebook and other social networks. If your goal is to increase the number of subscribers on the website itself, it is certainly good to use the social network where you already have the biggest number of followers for that purpose.

Fonts are an integral part of any website’s design. They hugely impact the image of a website and can completely alter the design’s style. Font style dictates the atmosphere on a site and shapes the message you want to convey. It would be a pity to stick to using the same font, in the same size, height, weight, and spacing all across your website and miss all the fine nuances variable fonts can bring. You will be amazed how much variety just a bit of customization can offer even when you decide to use just a single font.

Variable fonts allow you to have many different fonts incorporated in a single file, unlike a typical font that needs at least four files. They are an extension of the OpenType font specification that relieves you from having to create a separate font file for every style, weight, or width.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use variable fonts in WordPress in just a few steps. Keep reading to find out:

How Do Variable Fonts Work?

How does a variable font work? It starts with a default style which is usually the ‘Regular’ font style, characterized by an upright design and the most common weight and width. It is most often used for plain text. This default style is connected to other styles in a continuous range and these styles are called the axis. There are five common axes – slant, width, weight, italics, and optical size.

Each individual style can be placed along an axis and it is called the ‘instance’ of the variable font. For example, the variable font Roboto Flex offers three different styles for the weight axes. At the opposite ends to the axes, there are two styles and the regular style is in the middle. There are 900 instances you can choose from.

So, a variable font is a single font that can be customized across five different criteria or axis – weight, slant, italics, optical size, and width. Every alteration is done with CSS and each ax controls one of the facets in the appearance of the font. Each aspect includes a corresponding CSS label:

You can mix and combine all those aspects of the font to alter it and completely change the way your font looks. It is even possible to animate fonts like SVGs.

So, instead of having to incorporate multiple fonts on your website, a variable font allows you to use just one that you can alter to appear completely different for different purposes. One of the greatest advantages of variable fonts is that they can be great for animations. They provide you with a smooth and easy way to animate transitions between different font weights just by using CSS. They are also an ideal solution in cases when you’re using the same font in too many places across your website and have already exhausted all of its available styles.

Installing the Font on Your Website

After you find the right font for your website, the first step is to install it. There are many plugins to help you with that like Custom Fonts, Use Any Font, and similar. If you need some help with installing custom fonts on your site, here is a detailed explanation of the custom font installation process. No matter how you choose to have your selected font installed, the result is the same, and the way you can manage your font is also the same.

As we explained earlier, variable fonts are CSS-based which means you can find them in all the places where you added your custom CSS. That practically means a variable font can be in a custom.css file, a stylesheet.css, and similar places. What you need to do is to enter the code below and include the name of the variable fonts you have chosen to use:

01 @font-face {
02 font-family:'Gingham';
03 src: url('Gingham.woff2') format('woff2'),
04 }

This way, you enable the use of the variable font on your website. Now, you can proceed to style the font. You can apply styling to any class or ID and make your font appear totally different. It is up to you to decide whether you want to apply customization only on H1, H2, H3, the whole page, or the whole post. There are two ways to alter the font – to enter all the changes in one single line of code:

01 h2 {
02 font-family: 'Gingham',Helvetica,sans-serif;
03 font-size: 30px;
04 font-variation-settings: 'wght' 500, 'wdth' 55;
05 }

You can also split the alteration into multiple lines of code if you find it more convenient:

01 h2 {
02 font-family: 'Gingham',Helvetica,sans-serif;
03 font-size: 30px;
04 wdth: 750;
05 wght: 400;
06 }

This way you can basically make all kinds of font alterations anywhere on your website.

Finding Variable Fonts

Google Fonts are the most popular go-to resource for free fonts, but they do not offer a wide choice of variable fonts. If you want to stick to Google fonts you can use the Recursive variable font family from Google Fonts. This is an open-source, OFL font and you can see more about it at recursive design. Some of the other popular free variable fonts are Gingham and League Mono. You can find a wide choice of free variable fonts at 150+ Free Variable Fonts › Fontesk.

As for the premium variable fonts, the choice is of course richer. You can explore Adobe Typekit, V-fonts, Monotype, and many more resources.

How to Choose The Right Font

Choosing the right font for your website requires you to consider many different aspects of your web design as well as to estimate which style exactly will empower your brand and not jeopardize the overall message you aim to convey. How the font style matches your brand essence, which variations to use at which locations on your website, and should you stick to the familiar styles or experiment with something new – these are all the questions that require serious consideration.

Bear in mind that choosing the right font can significantly improve both your website’s design and user experience. Luckily, once you get the hang of it, a variable font is usually easy to use and tweak so that you can try out different styles until you find the variations that work best for you.

In Conclusion

Variable fonts introduce many exciting possibilities without burdening the user with too complicated procedures. They may require some experience with code, but even a total beginner can learn to use them quickly by carefully following the instructions for their use. Since variable fonts are relatively new, we can surely expect many more improvements and possibilities in the near future.