AMP is an open-source, Google-backed service that makes your website pages load faster and easily improve speed on mobile devices without sacrificing any ad revenue that you may rely on. Google officially integrated AMP into its Google search results on Feb. 24, 2016. AMP offers better user experience and can also send more traffic to your site. In this article, I will show you how to set up Google AMP in your WordPress.

How Does AMP Work?

Google AMP consists of three parts:

• AMP HTML — AMP HTML is basically HTML extended with custom AMP properties. This markup language has custom tags and properties and some restrictions.
• AMP JS — The AMP JS library implements all of AMP’s best performance practices, manages resource loading and gives you custom tags, all to ensure a fast rendering of your page.
• Google AMP Cache — The Google AMP Cache is a proxy-based content delivery network for delivering all valid AMP documents. It fetches AMP HTML pages, caches them, and improves page performance automatically.

How to Setup Google AMP on Your WordPress Site

To start using Google AMP for your WordPress site, you’ll need to download plugin from WordPress repository. Once you’ve installed and activated it, go to your Dashboard > Appearance > AMP

From here you can view a live preview of your mobile site while you configure the design for mobile view.

You can change the header text color, header background and link color and the color scheme. You can also add your site’s logo or icon if your theme supports it.  Once you are done customizing click on the “Save” button. Now you can go to any blog post and add “/amp” to the end of the URL to view the AMP version.

Installing Plugins to Extend AMP Functionality

You can install other plugins to extend the functionality and compatibility with AMP. One of the best plugins for this is AMP for WP Accelerated Mobile Pages.

You can upload your logo for the AMP version on the general section. If you have a Google Analytics account you can enter your ID.  You can also select which one of your pages to be the front page for your website’s AMP version.

Adding Advertisements

You can add advertisements to your AMP pages with the AMP WP plugin. Locate the “Advertisement” tab on the plugin.

Switch the button to “ON” whenever you wish to add another advertisement on your pages. Once you’ve switched it to “ON” you can select the ad sizes to display.

Single Post Settings

Go to the Single Post settings to configure settings. You can choose the featured image width and height and from which category to show the related posts from. Don’t forget to click on the save changes button when done changing the settings.

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WordPress is considered one of the most convenient and easy to use content management systems for website owners. Despite this, many website owners and those who are new to using the website, wonder how they can add a contact form to their website to build a large customer base and influence high sales turnover. In this post, we look at why contact forms are important and how you can add one on your website.

Benefits of Using Contact Forms

A contact form is simply a set of questions that have to be filled out by visitors to obtain detail about their name, email address, and other questions that are specific to the website. Many owners use contact forms since they offer a number of advantages. These are a few.

Helps generate awareness and interest

Contact forms are important for building awareness and interest of a brand. This is particularly important if you have recently created your website or brand and are in need of recognition from followers. By taking customer details such as name, email address, and other useful information, you can send information about products and services, as well as price quotes.

Helps obtain useful feedback

Contact forms can also be used to get a good insight into what customers or visitors feel about your products and services or your website. Obtaining sufficient feedback is important for ensuring your products and service meet customer expectations to grow your online business.

Builds customer base for marketing purposes

You can also use contact forms to formulate your online marketing strategy. Customer details, such as name, gender, and email address can be used either for email marketing, weekly newsletter, content marketing, and lead generation tactics.

How to Add a Contact Form?

You should use the following steps to add a contact form to your website.

• Log into your WordPress account
• Under the dashboard, go to plugins and then click on Add New
• Next you have can either go on the Search Plugins box to look for a plugin of your choice or click on the Upload Plugin option at the top to install another contact form party plugin.
• After you have selected the Contact Form 7 plug, click on the Install Now
• Once WordPress is done installing your plugin, click on the Activate Plugin box to complete the process.

Customizing Your Contact Form

Each contact form plugin you install on your website will offer you plenty of customization features that you should use to gain information specific to your target market of niche customers. For this, you will need to add multiple fields for questions, but also be careful not to ask too many questions as visitors will not be willing enough to give their details. Keep it concise and relevant.

Another thing you should note is not to get intimidated by too many tags when customizing your contact form. You don’t need to have a computer degree to be able to customize plugins to suit your business goals. Check out our other blog post on how to make your WordPress websites speed optimal here.

No matter what type of WordPress website you’re creating, it’s important to think about SEO from the get-go. First order of business: choose the right theme. 

Just a decade ago, most website owners wouldn’t ever have tried to do SEO on their own. It was just all so new, so risky, and so complicated. Plus, webmasters back then didn’t have access to all the great tools that you have today.

Luckily for you those days are over, and you have a world of resources at your fingertips: beginning with your choice of WordPress theme. There are dozens of small choices you can make to improve the odds you’ll eventually get traffic for your new website (or increase traffic for an existing one), so don’t fall for the common misconception that all you have to do in the way of SEO is post tons of content. If that’s all you plan on doing, you will most likely never see any meaningful increase in traffic whatsoever.

These days, the way to do SEO right is to make use of all the SEO resources available to you, starting with the right WordPress theme. There’s an amazing plethora of SEO-optimized WordPress themes out there, for the taking, and all you have to do is figure out how to identify which ones they are.

With that in mind, here’s how to tell which WordPress themes are good for SEO.

What Makes a Good WordPress Theme for SEO?

First things first: any theme designer can claim that his theme is “SEO-friendly” but there’s no governing body of regulators out there policing their claims or setting standards or anything like that. Nope, it’s up to you to know whether a theme is truly SEO-friendly.

To help you with that, here’s a short list of criteria that any good WP theme should have in order to help your website first appear, then rank in the search engines.

1. Content SEO

A good theme will offer on-page SEO capabilities that help the search engines find and learn about your website through the text that you enter. This text includes not only what you write on your pages, but also the text that appears in the following places on your website:

• Meta Information
• Page Text that’s not Content
• Navigation

Any WordPress theme that allows you easy control of all these elements is good for SEO.

Meta information is snippets of identifying text that describes each individual page on your website, as well as your website in general. Think of your meta information as road signs for search engines. Things like title tags, meta descriptions, meta keywords, meta tags etc. count heavily in whether or not search engines find and favor your site.

Page text that’s not content: your sitemap is important,  and a sitemap shows all your important pages and website sections. It’s also a good idea top to put Image ALT tags on all your images, and to include link title tags as well. Basically, the more “labels” on all your website elements, the better.

Navigation elements: having “breadcrumbs” on your site is also considered to be SEO-friendly because they help users understand the layout of your site. Your menus are also important: they should work fast, they should be easy to understand, and you should have full control over them, including colors and visual effects.

2. Technical SEO & User Experience

Besides the text-based SEO indicators on your website, there are also other characteristics that make it liked or disliked by the search engines. These traits have more to do with how your website behaves.

You see, search engines increasingly favor websites that give users a good experience – and that’s not limited to whether they find good content that’s relevant to their searches. It also has to do with how long they have to wait before a page loads, for example. Or whether they can view your website on all their devices (“responsive”), including phones (“mobile-friendly”).

1. Fast-loading
2. Responsive
3. Mobile-Friendly
4. Clean code
5. Advanced formatting options
6. AdSense integration
7. Natively optimized for the search engines
8. 
   

   Now for a Few Good Examples…

   Check these out, since they meet a majority of the criteria for an SEO-friendly theme (plus they’re absolutely gorgeous).

   1. Divi Theme. https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/
   2. Schema Theme. https://mythemeshop.com/themes/schema/
   3. SociallyViral Theme: https://mythemeshop.com/themes/sociallyviral/
   4. Coni-pro Theme: https://www.quemalabs.com/theme/coni-pro/
   5. SEO WP Theme: https://themeforest.net/item/seo-wp-online-marketing-seo-social-media-agency/8012838?s_rank=1

   Finally, Don’t Forget About SEO Plugins

   WordPress plugins are a huge part of what makes WordPress the best SEO-friendly CMS platform in the world. There are hundreds, and many of them are designed to help WP users with the SEO on their sites.

   Without a doubt, the top SEO plugin is Yoast. Yoast efficiently handles many of the criteria on the lists you’ve just read, including such features as helping you manage meta descriptions and post titles.

9. 

   As for content, Yoast also provides a content analysis tool which lets you gauge the readability of your writing (short sentences rate high, as do sentences with “connecting words” like therefore).

   There’s much, much more that Yoast does, but we’ll leave it at that since I know you don’t have all day and I wanted to get in one more great SEO plugin before we clock out: WP Super Cache. This helps your site load faster. This, combined with a fast-loading WordPress theme, should get you all set up with a lightening-fast website that loads in a flash.

   This brings us to one last criteria: the theme you choose should be updated and compatible with the plugins you need for good SEO.

   Conclusion

   There are so many WordPress themes in the world- handing you an “exhaustive” list is nearly impossible, especially since there are new themes every day (and old ones stop getting supported). The best thing you can do for yourself is to arm yourself with knowledge of what makes an SEO-friendly WordPress theme, then go out into the world and find one that suits you and which also meets all the criteria I’ve set out for you in this article. With that, I send you forth into the wild (I think you’re ready!)… good luck with your website!

Adding a floating bar to your WordPress website allows you to show to visitors current promotions you have going on or show information you want them to see. Floating bars or “sticky” bars are notification bars that are placed on the bottom of the visitor’s browser and stays there as they are scrolling. Sticky bars are now very common to use amongst bloggers and WordPress users.
If you wish to catch a visitor’s attention to promote an article, make an announcement about a product, etc. then adding a sticky bar will do just that. You can also use it for social media promotions to get more subscriptions.

There are different options, styles and features you can choose to add to your sticky bars. WordPress has various plugins available to add the floating bar to your site. In this article, I will show you how you can add a sticky floating bar to your WordPress site.

Installing the floating bar to your blog

To start adding a floating bar to your site, go to Plugins > addnew

I will be using the GC Message Bar plugin. Go to the search form and type in GC Message Bar. Once you get the search results, you can begin installing the plugin.
As soon as you press to activate, you can check out your blog and see that the floating bar is already up. The default settings for the plugin places the floating bar at the top of your site, but you can configure the settings to your liking.

To start configuring your floating bar go to your dashboard, Plugins > GCMessageBar

From here, you can select your background color, text color, floating bar location, etc. To pick the location of your bar, go to the General Settings tab.
General Settings tab you can also enable animations, alignment of your content, enabling a close button, CSS caching, and more.
Filters tab allows you to choose whether you want the floating bar to show up on just the desktop, or both mobile and desktop. You can also choose whether you want your floating bar to show up only on your home page or on other pages as well.
Compose Message tab is where you write what you want your floating bar to display and type in the URL location of where you want your visitors to be directed.
Style Settings tab choose the footer color, text, color, font size, font style, etc.
After getting familiar with the settings, you can start configuring your floating bar to get it ready to show up on your WordPress site. Don’t forget to press save anytime you make any changes.

The world you have known is there no more. Thankfully, the new world has more exciting opportunities stored in it, if you know the right doors to knock. This also means that those on the other side of these chosen doors have the right abilities and energies that you are looking for.

Setting up a catering business? Need to promote your photography skills? A freelance policy consultant up for hire by the hours? No matter which industry you belong to, giving a face to your work requires a strong online presence for others to discover and access.

First thing first, you need to have a website to showcase all your brilliance. Setting up a website requires technical expertise; hence, it is imperative to have on-board the right kind of people who can assist you with the relevant know-hows and ongoing maintenance.

You need a reliable web host provider.

A group of highly skilled life-savers who will store your website’s files on its servers and deliver them to your readers’ and customers’ browsers. Web hosting companies offer a diverse mix of services such as, monthly data transfers, storage, email, etc. Even payment systems can be different (monthly, annual, mixed packages, etc.). So how do you decide who to buy your hosting from?

A credible company is embedded with the following core principles:

Lower costs: It is not about whether you have the ability to splurge on your budget. It’s about investing in a host provider who works in the interest of both parties efficiently to acquire a satisfactory returns on your investments.

Higher bandwidth: It’s all about how easily accessible your website is to your catered customers/beneficiaries. A credible web host provider will enable the aspect of speedy loaded pages, plugins and features given that it has rock-solid coding built in.

Good security: No point in having a user-friendly website if there’s no decent security system in place. A web host provider will provide not just the set up but also ensure support to tweak and update the security features, from time-to-time.

Rapid support: You also want a web host with 24/7 customer support – by phone, chat, knowledge bases, tutorials (check out how XonHost’s support system is designed to cater to any support of your choice). Easy-to-reach communication and stand-by support from technical experts is essential to get things sorted out quickly as well as for maintenance purposes.

A few additional points to ponder:

• Consider the duration – whether you need hosting support for a short time period or for longer. There are refund options and various financial packages which you should look into for making best use of your budget and timeline.
• Web hosts often provide different offers in starter packages and then expand on their services in advanced tier plans – read everything before finalizing a plan, including features such as domain, website builders, SSL Certificates, email, etc. Having these features integrated will make your operations smoother.
• Before you make a decision, familiarize and do a research of the different web hosting services that are available (such as, shared, virtual private server (VPS), dedicated hosting, Linux Reseller hosting and WordPress hosting plans). Each of these offers different features and packages that you should analyze to decide what best suits you and the service/content you intend to curate.
• Every provider has their unique niche factors – some focus on security more while some offer email marketing and e-commerce tools. Some offers integrated packages while some encourage customized plans.  Be careful to not get carried away. If you know your product/content well, it will be easier to prioritize.
• Read the in-depth customer reviews. Real time experiences provides insight into what the company actually is capable of providing in terms of service and quality (hence, avoiding the trap of false advertising).

As you choose the right web hosting service, you become a part of the bold new world where you get back more than what you give.

WordPress is the most popular content management system out there. It is used by 25% of the websites on the web. WordPress is great when it comes to design and functionality. But, it lacks in-built caching capabilities.

So, what exactly is caching?

Caching is the method of storing temporary data to improve website loading time. Caching your website not only improve user experience but also help your website to rank higher on Google.

And you will need to install cache plugin to make sure that your WordPress website is as fast as possible.

The good news is that there are some awesome WordPress cache plugins that you can use to make your site faster. So without any delay, let’s get started with Top 5 WordPress Cache Plugins.

Top 5 WordPress Cache Plugins

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is one of the most advanced cache plugins out there. The plugin has more than 1+ million active installations. The plugin offers easy customizable options. Moreover, the plugin is free of cost!

To get started, you simply have to install the free version. You can customize the plugin if you know how to do it or you can also use the simple “one-click” setup option. W3 Total Cache uses GZIP compression and file minification to ensure proper caching for your website.

W3 Total Cache also comes with premium extensions which further improve the plugin functionality.

Download

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is yet another popular WordPress cache plugin. Just like W3 Total Cache, it is easy to install and work with. This plugin offers easy to use options. It also comes with mod_rewrite option so that the static pages are delivered faster compared to the legacy caching options. However, if your website doesn’t support mod_rewrite, you can opt to use the legacy aching mode.

Other key features that WP Super Cache comes with are CDN support, HTML and CSS minification, GZIP and good interface. Also, you can use the plugin free of cost!

Download

WP Rocket

If you are looking for a paid cache plugin that comes with all the features from the get-go, then WP Rocket is for you. It is a paid plugin and is worth every single penny you spend on it. It is built with user simplicity in mind. Hence, you will find it easy to install and configure.

The key features that WP Rocket offers are GZIP, cache preloading, HTML, CSS and JavaScript concatenation and minification. It also comes with lazy load image feature which makes images load only when users scroll down. You can also integrate WP Rocket with CloudFare and optimize Google Fonts HTTP requests.

Download

WP Fastest Cache

Our fourth cache plugin is the WP Fastest Cache. It comes in par with the other free plugins on our list. Just like other cache plugins, it aims to deliver fast loading times by using popular cache mechanisms such as static HTML file, GZIP, mod_rewrite, cache for mobile devices and much more.

It also does performance optimization by minifying HTML and CSS, leveraging browser caching, combining CSS and JS.

Download

Comet Cache

Our last plugin is Comet Cache. Comet Cache is a perfect plugin to improve your site speed. It works differently compared to other plugins by taking snapshots of every category, page, post, etc. Once done, it stores the cache and delivers the cache when a user requests the site. If there are new changes, it simply rebuilds the cache.

The plugin is easy to install, and you can access all the features from the dashboard. Furthermore, it offers a PRO version which comes with more features. So, if you like the free version, you should check out the PRO features.

Download

Which one should you get?

Now you must be thinking which plugin should you get? For starters, using a free plugin is always a good idea. They can use WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache as they are not only popular but have a strong community backing up. If you know what you are doing and want the best, it is recommended to go with WP Rocket.

So, which one you decided to choose? Comment below and let us know.

If you are operating an online business, you already know how important it is to have a website that reflects your business. Creating one, however, means investing a huge amount of money and time. Thankfully, we have WordPress. WordPress ecosystem is known for offering great themes and plugins.

In this article, we will list the five best WordPress business themes. All these themes are handpicked and offer great features and design. All the themes are apt for promoting your business online and will always give a lasting impression on the audience.

5 Best WordPress Business Themes

Divi

Divi is a complete WordPress theme with a focus on innovation. It is termed as the “Ultimate” theme and also comes with a visual page builder. The biggest selling point of this theme is that it comes with 20+ layout templates. All these templates are customizable to the core, with real time design.

Divi is also an excellent choice for new businesses as it supports drag and drop builder. This means that you don’t have to hire a developer to do all the work. If you can use the builder effectively, you can create a professional website in a span of few hours.

Key Features

• SEO Friendly
• Completely responsive design
• 46 content elements
• Premade layouts

Demo

TheGem

The Gem is an excellent theme that is modern, elegant and offers high performance. The theme is designed for creatives. That’s why the theme offers 70+ creative concepts which can be used by individuals, agencies, hotels, bloggers, business and many more! At the time of writing, the theme is also going for only $39 which is a steal deal in itself.

The Gem is also one of the cleanest theme out there. It offers unlimited creativity with the help of 150+ pre-made creative demo pages. Each demo page can further be adjusted with 250+ styles.

Key Features

• WooCommerce support
• Comes with Visual Composer
• Premium sliders
• SEO friendly and mobile responsive

Demos

ZerifPro

It is common to see one-page layout themes used by businesses. ZerifPro is one such theme that offers one-page layout and flexible interface. It also comes with drag and drop builder so that you can shape your website the way you like.

So, what makes ZerifPro amazing? First, it is compatible with page builders. So, if you like a particular page builder, you can go with it and customize it!

Key Features

• Great support
• Optimized for speed
• Supports Translation and it is RTL ready
• SEO friendly

Demos

Studio8

Studio8 is a premium modern website aimed at Creative Professionals, Photographs, Web Designers, Filmmakers, Agencies, Photographs, and Architects. The theme is visually appealing and offers great features and functionality. Its modern outlook enables business owners to create sites that can appeal a modern audience with a great user experience.

The theme is built on latest WordPress practice and hence have clean code. This also makes it SEO friendly and fast.

Key Features

• WooCommerce support
• Responsive design
• Advance theme options
• Multilingual ready

Demo

X-Theme

X-Theme is one of the most selling themes with over 170,613 copies sold at the time of writing. It is dubbed  as the “last theme you will have to buy.” As you might have guessed by now, it is a fully functional theme with tons of templates, elements and plugins to play with. It also comes with a front-end page builder.

The theme can be a little bulky and you might want to get rid of extra plugins that you don’t need. However, the theme is SEO friendly and loads fast if done right.

Key Features

• Live editing
• Stacks which help you get started.
• Cornerstone page builder

Conclusion

Business themes make it easy for anyone to set up their online business. So, what do you think about the themes listed above? Comment below and let us know.

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To stay afloat, business needs not only to have a great website but also require a good hosting. At XonHost, we understand businesses and their requirements. Get a hosting now according to your budget and make the most out of your online presence.

Backups are important. It doesn’t matter if it is your computer or your online website, backups can help you stay at peace. WordPress ecosystem works well with backups. You can also do manual backups or ask your website hosting company to provide backups for you.

However, there is one more way you can backup your WordPress website, i.e., by using backup plugins. In this article, we will go through the five best WordPress backup plugins. All the plugins are top-notch and will help you backup your website in the best possible way.

So, without any delay, let’s get started.

5 Best WordPress Backup Plugins

BackUpWordPress

Our first plugin on the list is the BackUpWordPress. With this plugin, you can backup your watch with a simple process. It comes in both free and premium version. The plugin helps you to set proper schedule to backup your website and it is compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

If you are looking for more features, it is advised to go for the PRO version as it will give you more control over the whole backup process.

BackupBuddy

If you are looking for the best possible backup plugin out there, don’t look further than BackupBuddy. So, what makes it so special? Firstly, it doesn’t come with a subscription model, like the other paid plugins. Secondly, it comes with tons of features!

By using BackupBuddy, you can schedule your website backup the way you want. It can be daily, weekly or monthly. It also provides an easy way to monitor your backup using their Stash service. Also, you can save backups to popular online cloud storage services such as Rackspace cloud, Dropbox or Amazon S3. It also supports FTP backup. The plugin has great documentation and regular updates as well.

BackWPUp

BackWPup is easy to use backup plugin. It comes with all features that you would need. Moreover, it is a free plugin. To use the plugin, you just need to set it up once.

The plugin can be used to store backups either in the cloud or your computer. The cloud platforms that are currently supported is Amazon S3, Rackspace, Dropbox, etc. For desktop, it supports email and FTP. You can also schedule backups

UdraftPlus

Just like all the other plugins on the list, UdraftPlus offers both free and paid version. With this plugin, you can easily backup your WordPress powered website. It can also be used to backup on cloud or computer. All you need to do is schedule the backups and set the desired location. You can store backups on Google Drive, Rackspace, Dropbox, and so on.

It also offers backup to work through FTP and SFTP. If your website is not big, you can also try the email backup option. Overall, the plugin is a great pick as it offers excellent features with decent support.

VaultPress

VaultPress is a paid backup service offered by the creator of WordPress itself, Matt Mullenweg. It comes preloaded with one of the most popular WordPress plugin, JetPack. However, it stays disabled by default. To use it, you need to buy subscription plan which starts at just $3.50 per month.

VaultPress provides a one-click backup solution. Monitoring your website is also easy. Overall, VaultPress is a great choice if you want the best possible backup solution. However, it does come with some drawbacks such as limited archive period of 30 days.

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This brings us to the end of our article. Our hosting services come with automatic backups. Still, it is a good idea to backup your website regularly using backup plugins that we have mentioned in the post. Do let us know which plugin you are thinking to use!

Pro Tip: Check out our WordPress hosting plans which already include automatic backups!