Using a photo gallery plugin for WordPress is a great way to spice up your website. You will be able to easily display all your images for your visitors to enjoy. Of course, you want to make sure you are using the best photo gallery plugin for your specific needs.

You can use the built-in gallery feature from WordPress, if you don’t want to use a plugin. However, this feature doesn’t have the same functionality as some of the plugins found out there. Choosing the best WordPress photo gallery plugin isn’t always easy, however.

What’s the Problem With Most Photo Gallery Plugins for WordPress?

Most of the plugins you will find for your photo gallery will often be very slot or they won’t be well-coded. This can cause many issues, even if you have the best WordPress hosting for your site.

When a plugin causes your site to load slowly, it hurts both your SEO and your conversions. Visitors won’t see what they are hoping to see and they may leave your site quickly.

Along with the fact that many photo gallery plugins load slow, they are often complicated for beginners, as well. They come with so many features you simply cannot figure out how to make them work for you.

Another huge issue with many WordPress photo gallery plugins, they are not responsive. If you don’t use a responsive plugin, those using mobile devices will struggle to view your photo gallery.

The right photo gallery plugin for WordPress will be user-friendly, load fast, provide the right features and give you a responsive option. Here’s a look a three great choices for your photo gallery plugin.

NextGEN Gallery

The NextGEN Gallery (https://wordpress.org/plugins/nextgen-gallery/) plugin for WordPress provides a fast loading choice with the right design for your needs. It won’t utilize the built-in features of WordPress to create your gallery. Instead, it uses its own interface, folders and database tables. It’s not the easiest plugin in the world to use, but it’s not complicated, either.

With the NextGEN Gallery plugin, you can easily add images with the button added to the visual editor. The plugin makes it easy to get everything you need done for your gallery and it’s responsive.

Foo Gallery

The Foo Gallery (ooplugins.com/plugins/foogallery) plugin loads just about as fast as the NextGEN Gallery plugin. It’s very easy to use and provides a very simple user interface. You will get a button within the visual editor to add your images to any post or page. This photo gallery plugin provides a great choice for anybody looking to add a professional looking gallery to their WordPress website.

Envira Gallery

When you choose the Envira Gallery (https://enviragallery.com/) plugin for WordPress, you will get the fastest loading plugin for photo galleries available. It’s so fast because the code is very lightweight. The user interface is very easy to use and blends well with the WordPress admin area, as well.

Creating a new gallery is very easy with this plugin and very similar to creating a new post. You will easily be able to sue shortcode to add your gallery into any post or page on your site. Envira Gallery also gives you a button to make it easy to add any gallery to a post or page.

Along with the easy-to-use design and the speed, Envira Gallery also provides a template tag making it easy to edit your WordPress templates. This is great for those developing sites for clients.

All three of these photo gallery plugins are great choices for WordPress users. Envira Gallery is the fastest and easiest to use. However, both of the other choices will work well for many users, as well.

As a beginner, you may not understand how permissions and user roles work for your WordPress website. However, understanding these two parts of your WordPress website will help as you grow. If you need to add a new user, you will need to understand the permissions and roles that go along with adding a user. Here’s a look at both the permissions and the user roles in WordPress.

Different User Roles

 

When you add a new user in WordPress, you have the ability to assign a role for the user. These roles are all different and allow the new user specific permissions.

Administrator

The Administrator role is the most powerful on any WordPress website. They have the ability to add new posts, edit any posts, delete posts and so much more. The administrator can make changes to the site by installing, editing or deleting themes and plugins. They also have the ability to add new users, change passwords, delete users and change any settings within the site.

Often, this role is only given to the site owner. When you add new users to your WordPress website, you want to be very careful with assigning this role.

Editor

 

The editor role is very self-explanatory. They receive full control and access to the content sections of your WordPress site. They can add, publish, edit, schedule and delete posts on your site, along with pages. They can also moderate, delete and edit comments.

The editor role won’t give your user access to change settings, install themes or install plugins. They will also not have access to add any new users.

Author

The author role is another self-explanatory role. When you assign somebody the author permissions, they can add, edit and delete their own posts. They cannot create categories, but they can choose from existing categories.

Authors can view comments, but do not have the power to moderate, delete or approve them. They also don’t have access to the settings, themes or plugins. This is a very low-risk role you can give to a user.

Contributor

When you allow a user to be a contributor, they can add and edit their own posts. However, they don’t have permission to publish their posts. They cannot create new categories, but can select from existing categories. This role will allow the user to add tags to their posts.

Contributors cannot upload files, which means they cannot add images to posts. They can view comments, but cannot approve or delete them. This role doesn’t allow access to plugins, themes or settings, either.

Subscriber

The Subscriber role is the default role given to a new user. This person can log in, update their profile and change their password. They cannot write posts, see comments or do anything else within your WordPress admin area. This is a good role to assign if you require users to login to leave a comment or read a post.

Customizing Permissions and Adding New Roles

If you want to add new roles and customize the permissions of existing roles, you will need the Capability Manager Enhanced (https://wordpress.org/plugins/capability-manager-enhanced/) plugin for WordPress.

This plugin will allow you to set capabilities and create new roles within your website. You can set permissions however you prefer and assign new roles that work best for your WordPress website when you use this plugin.

Now you should have a better understanding of how user roles and permissions work within WordPress. You can easily add new users and give them the access to your website you prefer with this information.

There are a ton of free WordPress plugins out there, but they don’t always do the same thing premium plugins can do. When you choose to purchase a premium WordPress plugin, you often get better coding, more features and support. It’s still a big decision because you have to investing these types of plugins.

Unless you have already established a relationship with the developer, you may not know if the plugin will be as good as advertised. Here are some of the top premium WordPress plugins for your website.

Akismet

The Akismet plugin comes pre-installed with WordPress, but you still need a Key to unlock the features. This is the best filter for spam comments you will find. The plugin scans all the comments on your blog and filters out the spam ones. It may not catch every spam comment, but it will catch most of them.

This powerful plugin provides flexible plans you can use if you don’t have much money or just want to test it out. You can even use it free of charge before you donate to the plugin.

There may be plenty of free plugins you can use to combat spam, but none of them are as good as Akismet. It’s worth it and it’s a plugin backed by WordPress and plenty of users. If you need a plugin to combat spam commenting. Akismet is the best choice.

SmartCrawl

If you want the best SEO possible, you need the robust SmartCrawl plugin. This plugin gives you a great boost by allowing direct interaction with Google and Bing. It will also give you automatic sitemap updates and plenty more. If you want to flag down the attention of the biggest search engines, this is the plugin for you.

WP Rocket

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WP Rocket provides a great choice for caching, which is a great way to reduce website load times. There are several free options for caching plugins, but if you want the best, it won’t be free.

WP Rocket is an “install and go” plugin, which means once it’s activated it will do the job without any configuration. Many of the free plugins for caching require configuration and they still don’t work as well as WP Rocket.

Not only is this the best caching plugin, but it’s also the easiest to use. It will speed up your website, which provides benefits for conversions and SEO.

This isn’t the cheapest caching plugin, but it’s worth it if you are going to use it for multiple websites. You can get an unlimited license and use it on as many sites as you want, but it won’t be cheap.

WP Smush Pro

WP Smush Pro is a plugin that started as Smush.it. It compresses images and provides a better WordPress site that loads faster. After making many improvements, the plugin switched to the new name and became a premium option.

Keeping your image size smaller allows your site to run smother and faster. This is what the plugin does by reducing your image file size by more than 60%. The best part, you don’t even lose the original quality of the image.

There are free plugins for this task, such as EWWW Image Optimizer. However, they will not reduce the image size by nearly as much and usually only reduce it by about 25%.

CustomPress

The CustomPress plugin allows you to create any custom post type you can image. You can do everything from one easy editing screen with plenty of great options. This is a very powerful plugin and allows you to do so much more with custom post types than you could possibly imagine.

Cart66 Pro

If you need a top notch eCommerce plugin, Cart66 Pro is a great choice. This plugin gives you plenty of features and allows you to turn your WordPress website into an online store.

Of course, this can be done with a free plugin, but you won’t get nearly as many features. The best eCommerce plugins are all premium choices and Cart66 is a great choice for your online store.

There are plenty of premium WordPress plugins perfect for your WordPress site. However, these are some of the top choices.

Spammers can cause a headache for WordPress users. You are trying to run a successful website through WordPress and even without attempting to increase your blog traffic, you are receiving traffic from automated bots and spammers. In fact, over half of web traffic is not even human because non-human traffic continues to increase.

While non-human traffic increases, it’s taking away from the authentic traffic of real people that want to check out your website. It makes it difficult when web bots are being easily built and they are causing spam to increase more and more. What can you do about this and is there a way to really stop spammers on your WordPress website?

What are my options?

You can use a free, anti-spam solution which will help counteract the problem. These are effective ways to decrease the spam but they take time to integrate and maintain on your site. Start with some free anti-spam options to protect your WordPress site with choices including Akismet, Antispam Bee and WP Spam-Shield Anti-Spam.

 

The WP Spam-Shield Anti-Spam is a popular choice that works with all popular contact form plugins, subscriptions and WooCommerce plugin. It can protect you from annoying spam bots and human spam, plus it will stop registration spam. It will deal with spam before it hits your database and it will work to defend your site somewhat against SQL injections or XSS vulnerabilities. You can also count on it to work with JS/Cookies Anti-Spam Layer.

The Antispam Bee is free to users, even commercial projects, and it works to differentiate Spam IPs and authorized commentators. It doesn’t require registration for use and won’t store personal data. The plugin will support auto deletion of spam and selective country blocking. Your comments will only be allowed in one language.

Akismet is another great free option and it’s the default for WordPress sites. There is no cost for this plugin and it will auto check all of your comments and filter the spam out. You can see the history of each comment and permit the user to check if a comment was cleared by the plugin. It will work in 42 languages. Since it caps at 50,000 checks for comment spam, you’ll have to either start paying $5 per month or you can add on a different plugin option.

What spam options are for sale?

If you don’t trust the idea of a free anti-spam solution and want to pay for something premium, check out the Anti-Spam by Clean Talk. You’ll have Akismet by default with your WordPress site but you can upgrade to something premium like this for only $8 per year! They will handle up to 2 million spam check requests daily and 99.8% is considered spam.

This cloud-based service not only stops comments but it will stop spam registrations, spam mail through your contact forms and spam created by trackbacks. You also won’t have to worry about spam orders, email subscriptions or spam in your widgets. It uses no CAPTCHA which is a math-based, human/bot testing technique to detect and stop your spam.

The free anti-spam options do this as well but they need more admin moderation than the premium options. If you’re trying to save time, go with the premium anti-spam option. Plus, the anti-spam checks will deter visitors by ruining their experience and you don’t want your users to decide not to leave comments on your site because of this.

This is also a great option for eCommerce businesses that are selling digital products through WooCommerce because it will filter out your spam reviews and spam bot registrations. It’s compatible with most WordPress form plugins so it will be a seamless transition if you decide to upgrade to a premium option from your default anti-spam that’s already installed. You can relax too because their false positive rate is at 0.001% so you’re not going to have legitimate comments flagged for spam.

It might be smart to upgrade to a premium service if you find the free options not working hard enough or the free use of it become a paid membership. That is the best way to stop spammers on your WordPress website.

How can you Easily Secure Your WordPress Login Page?

A secure WordPress login page means fewer issues with hackers. If you want to secure your login page, there are certain things you can do to ensure the security of your login page. Here are just a few of the many things you can do.

Use a Strange Username and a Strong Password

The first way you can make your login page far more secure is by using the right password and username. Don’t choose something common, as it will easily be guessed by hackers and their sophisticated programs. Some of the most common passwords include:

123456
password
12345
12345678
qwerty
soccer
baseball
football
hockey
basketball
987654321

These and other things, such as birth dates, last names, boyfriend/girlfriend names, pet name and other common thing are a hacker’s dream. Don’t make your password something common.

WordPress has a password generator that will give you a strong password, if you cannot come up with one on your own. The best password uses both lower and uppercase letters, symbols and numbers. It also doesn’t fully spell out words.

The username should also be something hard to guess. Don’t use the common “admin” username or even just your first name. Instead, you want to choose something unique and make it a combination of letters and numbers.

Use the Login Lockdown Plugin

The Login Lockdown Plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/login-lockdown/) allows you to limit the number of times somebody can attempt to login from the same IP address. Hackers often will try hundreds of times before they get in, but this plugin will lock them out before they hack into your website.

This is a very powerful way to eliminate the issue of hackers and you can customize the settings to fit your specific needs. If you want great protection for your WordPress login page, this is a must-have free plugin.

Hide your Login Page Altogether

Another great way to keep hackers out and protect your login page is by hiding the page altogether. This can be done with a plugin that will allow you to locate your login age on a different URL to keep hackers out. It will also do the same things for your wp-Admin page.

You can use the WPS Hide Login (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wps-hide-login/) plugin and the Protect Your Admin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/protect-wp-admin/) plugin to provide you with great security for your login page.

Use Two Factor Authentication

The Google Authenticator is a great way to ensure you keep your page secure. When you add this feature to your WordPress website, it will generate a QR code, which needs to be scanned with a mobile device. Then, you have to enter a secret code manually, which keeps your site very secure.

Use SSL or Secure Socket Layer

Adding SSL to your website will allow you to keep information from becoming intercepted. This protects you from having even the strongest password stolen by a hacker.

SSL can easily be added to your WordPress website with the Really Simple SSL (https://wordpress.org/plugins/really-simple-ssl/) plugin and an SSL certificate. You can get an SSL certificate from your hosting company and you only need a basic shared hosting plan to purchase one.

There are several ways to secure your WordPress login page. You don’t need every one of the tips above, but if you use a couple of them, you will be very secure and strong against a possible hacker attack.