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Three seconds.
That’s all your visitors give you when they come to your website. If your website takes any longer to upload, 40% of people will abandon it.
What’s worse, a one-second delay in page response can cause a 7% reduction in conversions. You’ll end up losing 40% of your website traffic, out of which 80% of these people won’t return—ever.
I could continue talking about these scary loading time statistics, but the bottom line is your website needs to be fast if you want to boost your traffic and conversions. If you don’t work on improving loading times, you’ll end up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars every single year.
Luckily, there is a solution: Installing a WordPress cache plugin.
These plugins are designed to improve your website’s speed by instructing the server to store some files to disk or RAM, depending on the configuration. After that, the plugin remembers and duplicates the content it’s served in the past.
The result? Faster web page loading.
WP Rocket is a premium WordPress caching plugin that many agree is the best in the market.
It’s simple and beginner-friendly, which helps users who aren’t familiar with the typical jargon associated with different caching options. It has been specially designed to boost your website’s speed and performance.
Instead of waiting for someone to request a page to save it to cache, WP Rocket builds the website cache automatically. It also turns on recommended WordPress caching settings like cache pre-loading, page cache, and gzip compression by itself.
Precisely why you see an instant boost in your website’s performance after installing this plugin.
You can also activate other features offered by WP Rocket, such as DNS prefetching, lazy loading images, minification, and CDN support. They can help improve your web page’s loading time while simultaneously reducing bounce rates.
WP Rocket offers three subscription plans:
Learn more and get WP Rocket today.
Swift Performance is a WordPress caching plugin with excellent performance-optimizing capabilities that transforms caching as you know it. Although it’s a relatively new WordPress plugin, it has gained tremendous popularity among users in a short span of time.
It has all the necessary features to take your website performance and speed to the next level without breaking a sweat. The plugin has a unique database optimizer that cleans duplicated metadata, expired transients, and spam comments.
Additionally, you can optimize the delivery of static resources via its minification feature that lets you combine or minify CSS and JavaScript—all with a single click. It’s compatible with bbPress, Cloudflare, WooCommerce, and Varnish, among several other platforms too.
I also like its Async Execute feature that allows users to run scripts individually as they upload. It’s super helpful to improve speed sites, deliver a better user experience, and boost SEO scores.
Swift Performance’s schedule database optimization is another time-saving feature—provided you use the pro version. Lastly, you can also enable/disable plugins on certain pages thanks to its plugin organizer.
Swift Performance offers three subscription plans:
W3 Total Cache is hands down one of the best open-source WordPress caching plugins that offers an out-of-the-box and advanced caching mechanism. While it’s packed with features, it’s also slightly complicated, especially for users who lack technical skills.
The plugin is compatible with most hosting plans, including shared, dedicated, and VPS server hosting. Since it’s free, you can use all of its features after installing the plugin—no upsells for you to worry about.
It can improve your server performance by caching every aspect of your site and integrating with several content delivery networks.
Developers, in particular, like this plugin as it can offer up to 80% bandwidth savings thanks to its minification feature that reduces the size of your HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and feeds without compromising other website elements.
What’s more, this cache plugin works for both mobile and desktop versions of your website. I‘d recommend W3 Total Cache for WordPress ecommerce sites as it has tons of features that make it useful for sites with SSL certificates—something that most ecommerce sites have.
W3 Total Cache is an open-source plugin, and it’s available free of charge.
When a plugin has more than two million active installations, you know the developers are doing something right.
Developed by Automattic, the same people who gave you Jetpack, Akismet, and WordPress.com, WP Super Cache is as popular as a plugin can get, and not without reason.
The plugin generates static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress content. Plus, it saves you a ton of bandwidth and decreases page load times since it makes the web server serve the lighter HTML files instead of the heavy PHP scripts.
You also get three caching modes with WP Super Cache: Simple, Expert, and WP-cache caching.
Out of the three, the Expert mode is the fastest, but you have to modify the .htaccess file, which requires coding and web development experience. But if you do have the technical know-how, you can customize the plugin settings to make it more functional.
You can use the WP-cache caching mode to cache content for known website visitors. Due to this, the caching mode is ideal for websites whose users are typically logged in, can leave comments, or see customized content.
Don’t have web development experience? No worries, you can use the Simple mode, where all you need is a custom permalink. As the setting is easier to configure, you won’t have to change your .htaccess file.
WP Super Cache is available free of cost.
According to the official WordPress directory, WP Fastest Cache is the highest-rated cache plugin. It has limited configuration settings, which makes it user-friendly and appropriate for beginners.
This plugin can create static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress site and also minify HTML and CSS files, which, in turn, reduces file sizes. What’s more, it combines these files to make your code cleaner and web pages leaner.
You can schedule to delete the CSS and JS files at a specific time later.
WP Fastest Cache implements WordPress broader caching effectively to reduce page load time for repeat visitors. It also combines several CSS files into one in a bid to reduce the number of HTTP round-trips. If needed, you can also disable emojis on your website.
The premium version of this WordPress cache plugin offers tons of unique features that boost your page speed by optimizing images, cleaning up databases, caching mobile devices, among several other features. You can purchase the premium version directly from your WordPress dashboard after installing the free plugin.
While there is a freemium version available, you can upgrade to the premium packages too. There are four subscription options:
I’m not going to sugarcoat it: Choosing the best WordPress caching plugin won’t be the most straightforward task on your list.
In addition to similar-sounding names, you’ll find most of them offer similar features in different ways, which is why they may end up conflicting if you use two or more at once. The fact that caching is technical also means you practically need to be an expert to make the right choice.
I’ve already listed my top five picks for the best WordPress caching plugins, but I want you to know how I reached this decision.
Let’s take a look at the factors worth considering when researching caching plugins for WordPress.
CDN stands for content delivery network, a network of data servers that renders cache data to web users from a server nearest to them.
Whenever there is an increase in traffic on your website, there is also a simultaneous increase in your web hosting server’s processing activity. This causes a decrease in your website’s page loading speed.
This is the exact point where CDN comes into the picture.
Hold on. Things are about to get a bit technical here.
If you’re using a CDN, then static data from your website will get cached on every server in the CDN. As a result, whenever a user requests a page on your website, they’ll receive a cached copy from a server nearest to the user, preventing any delay.
This is why you should ensure your prospective caching plugin supports the CDN you use. If not, you might end up losing visitors.
Browser caching means saving your CSS, logo, and other resources that would typically download whenever a visitor opens your webpage. This feature lets you decide how much of your webpage would be cached on the user‘s device, which, in turn, makes you independent of the user’s browser cache settings.
Look for options that allow you to set the time period for which you want the downloaded content to be saved on the user‘s system.
That said, I wouldn’t recommend setting the time for the content to be cached for more than six months as it may result in the user getting web pages that aren’t updated.
While many WordPress websites are purely static content, some also include dynamic content. This can include a membership website, an ecommerce site with WooCommerce, a website selling courses, and so on.
The catch is that dynamic content doesn’t play well with browser caching and page caching. Therefore, it’s wiser to look for a caching plugin that enables you to exclude specific pages and assets from being cached to prevent glitches.
If you’re new to the world of caching, chances are you might be hearing most of the terms we explained above for the first time.
That’s why you should make sure the plugin developers offer efficient customer support that can help you whenever you get stuck with the daunting caching setup. If you find that a premium caching plugin offers better support, I‘d recommend choosing that over a free option.
After all, your peace of mind should always have top priority.
Site speed is incredibly important for your website’s success. So if you aren’t using a caching plugin now, you’re already a step behind your competitors.
Go over customer reviews and do thorough research before choosing a plugin for your website. I’ve done my best to include options that come packed with features and ensure optimal results, but you can always opt for other caching plugins that you think will deliver better results.
In the end, the aim is to get those loading times short and your website super fast.
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A functional online directory plugin will help you deliver business or personal information by location or category for internal or external use.
Whether you want to build a glossary of names and terms for your employees or a comprehensive business index, a good directory plugin for your WordPress website will help you do just that.
Directory plugins serve a simple purpose: to create a user-friendly database with up-to-date details for both your customers and internal team. Your plugin of choice will give you access to this information along with pictures, location information, and contact details.
As there are many directory plugin options out there, I’m here to make it easier for you by narrowing it down to the top five best directory plugins for your WordPress website—so you won’t have trouble finding the right one for you.
If you’re looking for a wide variety of directory categories to choose from, the Business Directory plugin is an excellent option.
This plugin allows you to easily build the directory you want by seamlessly pairing it with any WordPress website.
It doesn’t matter what type of directory you wish to build because the Business Directory plugin has it all. The plugin covers the basic local business directories as well as employee, member, restaurant, medical, tour and travel, hotel, software review sites, and book review site directories.
Along with its extensive category list, Business Directory offers a simple installation process that WordPress users can rely on.
With its easy directory templates, you can change the style and layouts to suit your preferences. This plugin also lets you have full-field control to create your own custom fields for simple list navigation.
Some other helpful features include:
Business Directory offers three pricing plans, including:
These pricing plans may be quite expensive for some, so I recommend the Business Directory plugin for those who need a diverse range of categories for their directory. All pricing plans come with a 14-day money-back guarantee. Try it today.
Customization is important for directory plugins, which is where GeoDirectory comes in. GeoDirectory is an excellent option for website owners who are looking for ultimate flexibility and customization options.
With its incredible compatibility, this plugin works with any WordPress theme and allows you to easily customize your page the same way you do for your actual website and theme. GeoDirectory also lets you customize 40+ widgets, shortcodes, and blocks, and all features are available in any format.
This plugin offers an intuitive drag-and-drop tool that helps you organize and reorder listing pages while easily adding customized tabs, fields, and content.
Custom fields also come with a fully customizable and unique badge system that you can include in your listings. These badges include terms such as new, featured, and recently updated. You can also add badges with counts, video icons, and social links.
By using GeoDirectory, your WordPress website will benefit from multiple advanced features, including:
As one of the most comprehensive directory plugins on the web, GeoDirectory offers four different pricing plans:
Every plan includes all products, add-ons, and premium support for the corresponding period. If recurring subscriptions aren’t your thing, GeoDirectory offers single four, six, and 12-month plans. A 30-day money-back guarantee covers all plans, except for the Lifetime tier. Learn more.
With its high-quality and supportive features, Connections Business Directory is a great free option for those looking for a starter plugin. With over 900,000 downloads, this plugin will help you seamlessly integrate your customized directory with your WordPress website.
The Connections Business Directory system and database have been carefully crafted for maximum compatibility with WordPress, so your installation experience is smooth and simple—especially for website owners with little technical knowledge.
The plugin is also completely scalable and gives you the option to manage hundreds of entries within your directory.
Another outstanding feature of Connections Business Directory is the robust templates. For a free plugin, it offers you a decent range of templates to get you started—with a template pro package available for an additional cost.
Apart from it being free, which is a huge bonus, Connections Business Directory has prominent features, such as:
As you can install Connections Business Directory for free, they don’t have any pricing plans. However, you can purchase premium add-ons and extensions for an affordable price. Some of the most popular add-ons include the Widget Pack for $9.99 and the Custom Category Order for $4.99.
Template bundles include:
Although these prices are very affordable, it’s also important to create a budget not to overspend on the extras. In that case, you may find a different directory plugin with additional features for around the same price.
Create a powerful business directory using the Advanced Classifieds and Directory Pro (ACADP) plugin. With its unique unlimited features, you can build an advanced directory from scratch with little to no effort.
Even though this plugin offers customizable settings and layouts for an easy view of your listings, the multifunctional widgets are by far the best feature to take advantage of.
ACADP has a wide variety of WordPress-compatible widgets that offer a more convenient way for you to add and manage content on your website without complex code, making it a perfect tool for beginners.
ACADP specifically designs the widgets to showcase listing-related information and tools for easy navigation. The widgets include ACADP search/filter, categories, locations, listings, listing address, listing contact, and listing video.
Your website will easily support these widgets and all users need to do is hover and click on the widget they need for extra information.
Being quite a comprehensive plugin, you will benefit from many features, including:
ACADP has two pricing plans you can pay for monthly, yearly, or with a one-time life fee, which includes:
ACADP offers between three and five sites on the Professional plan, but you will have to pay additional costs according to how many sites you want. They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee for all plans and a 20% discount on the lifetime plan.
Name Directory is another free plugin, however, it’s a little different from the other options on this list as it isn’t a standard business index plugin. If you are a beginner looking for a more basic database that can build online glossaries for your WordPress website, Name Directory is an excellent option.
With a similar control panel view to the WordPress administration panel, you will have a simple time adding to, navigating, and managing your online glossaries through Name Directory. You can add multiple directories with this plugin with simple shortcodes to copy and paste into the database.
Every online glossary you build also has a few customization options to alter the directory’s layout and functionality.
Even though this is a basic directory, there are still a wide variety of configuration options you can choose from to help maintain your online glossaries.
Some of these include the option to show/hide title, description, and search function, select the number of columns to display, enter the subject of the directory, and limit the number of words in your description with a ‘read more’ link.
Because it is an entirely free plugin, there are limited features, but Name Directory includes:
Name Directory is free to download and install. However, the developer team offers paid customization for anyone looking at a more extensive plugin at a low price.
Now that you know my top five recommendations for the best directory plugin for WordPress, it’s time for you to look for the right product for your website.
To make it easier for you, I narrowed down the top three criteria that helped me find the best options above. All you have to do is weigh up these criteria against your personal needs to find the perfect plugin for you.
Not every plugin will have all three criteria, but it’s important to find a plugin with at least one or two of these for you to use your website to its maximum potential.
Being able to customize your old and new listings is paramount to the success of your business index.
Having a flexible and customizable plugin like GeoDirectory will make sure your listings are up-to-date for your users.
Not being able to customize your directory will heavily impact your business due to lack of functionality, so it’s imperative to find a plugin that offers at least some customizing options.
A rating and review system is paramount for letting your users express their opinions about your listed businesses.
Just like the Business Directory Plugin that offers a rating module, it helps to bring more inclusivity to your website by allowing users to rate businesses on a scale of one to five.
Plus, ratings and reviews help users decide on the most trusted service, and you can risk losing business without it.
A plugin that offers any sort of bookmarking tool will help transform your website.
ACADP is one of the directory plugins that have this tool alongside advanced searching and filtering features.
This tool will allow your users to bookmark individual listings for future reference, making it incredibly convenient while saving time.
Your business index won’t completely suffer without it, but it’s a handy tool that will increase consistent traffic for your website.
Finding the best directory plugin for your WordPress website depends on a few factors like customization, a rating and review systems, and bookmarking tools, among other features.
Looking for these elements is a great place to start, as it will ensure you get the maximum support from your desired plugin.
I’d recommend the GeoDirectory and Business Directory Plugin to anyone looking for extensive and highly customizable directory plugins for your WordPress website.
GeoDirectory is the most customizable option on the list, with excellent WordPress compatibility and an intuitive interface. As a developer-friendly system, anyone can transform and customize the pre-existing databases to suit your every need.
Business Directory Plugin is also great for extensive categories. If you have multiple niches and locations you wish to cater to, this plugin has it all in terms of options. It’s also mobile-friendly and has great payment integration options if you want to earn as you go.
That being said, the other three directory plugins are excellent options that highly suit beginners.
Here’s a quick recap:
The post Best WordPress Directory Plugins appeared first on Neil Patel.
You already know that WordPress is a popular CMS and that most content marketers love it for their business or personal blog. But there’s a question lingering: How do you choose the right free WordPress theme when there are so many out there?
Trust me; it’s not as easy as you think.
When I started blogging, one of the crazy activities that killed my productivity was checking out new personal blog themes. I just couldn’t find the right one for me. But I know better now.
The reality is you need to find one of the responsive WordPress themes for your personal blog launch’s success.
Did you know that your success as a content marketer goes beyond writing great content?
There are so many factors that will ensure that you’re always at the top of your game and getting the juice from any given search engine.
Your attitude to work, the way you market your content, and, most importantly, your blog’s look all play a key role. It must have a responsive design, not just be pretty.
Investing in a professionally-looking theme is important, but what if you’re just a beginner and you want a free WordPress theme that still looks gorgeous? Can you find one?
Sure you can. I decided to write this article because I get a lot of emails from readers who want to find the right WordPress themes that will aid in effective content marketing.
A free WordPress theme is great, but don’t forgo a responsive design for your personal blog when many themes have a very cost-effective, one-time fee.
Trust me, I’ve got you covered. Without much ado, here is a list of 32 professional, free WordPress themes that you can download:
It’s time to sparkle your personal blog. If you’re looking for a flat, clean, and professional-looking theme, Sparkling may just be the right one. It was developed using Bootstrap 3.
This modern theme has a front-end framework feature that optimizes it to display smartphones, desktops, tablets, and other devices well. This WordPress theme is unique from the millions out there because of its pixel-perfect design, full-screen slider, and widgets that you’ll fall in love with.
‘Sparkling’ is built to have a premium layout, and every content marketer who prides content above everything else will benefit from it. If you’re looking for one of the SEO-friendly responsive WordPress themes, you’re in luck.
It’s Schema compatible — which is great for SEO. Most of the free and paid plugins out there are supported, such as SEO by Yoast, W3 Total Cache, Quick AdSense, Akismet, Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, and more.
For effective content marketing, you need a WordPress theme that hands control over to you so that you can add, modify, or delete any plugin, section, or even modify the layout as you see fit.
Whether you’re interested in using the Sparkling WordPress theme for your personal use or business, you’ve won the jackpot. This theme cuts across different industries such as education, business, web design, marketing, health and fitness, and many more.
Dazzling is an unrivaled responsive theme. It’s developed using Bootstrap 3 and comes with an optional full-screen slider. This is useful when you’re building your first corporate or portfolio site.
This flat theme has mint green accent colors and will inspire you to embrace the best side of content marketing. I’m fond of this theme because it’s clean, unbeatable, and will enhance your personal brand. What more could you want?
Startup entrepreneurs, CEOs, and public speakers will benefit from the full-screen slider because they’ll use it to showcase their keynote speeches or other key presentations.
Dazzling WordPress theme includes added optimization for a lot of the essential plugins and custom widget designs out there, such as All-in-one-SEO Pack, JetPack, Contact Form 7, and more.
OceanWP is a single theme, but it’s so customizable that it feels like getting multiple themes all at once. With more than 3 million downloads, there’s a good chance you’ve come across a few websites using this ultra-flexible theme.
What really stands out about OceanWP is its demos — these are essentially fully-build websites you can copy and then customize. The theme is fully responsive, offers fast load times, built-in SEO features, and is translation ready.
If your business sells physical or digital products, OceanWP has you covered with built-in WooCommerce functionality.
Travelify is another free WordPress theme. It has some premium functionalities that allow you to change the theme layout (full, no sidebar, or wide, for example).
This responsive WordPress theme is mobile responsive, modern, and can be used for virtually any subject or business objective. For example, if you’re a content marketer, Travelify puts value on your content and highlights your best work for your readers to enjoy.
It’s a pixel perfect design, with a featured slider which you can turn off with a single click. The flexibility that the theme offers enables you to alter its layout until it suits your objective. You can also use a background image to customize the theme to your brand.
Ascent WordPress theme is designed with responsiveness in mind. This means that it’ll appear well on tablets, smartphones, laptops, and desktop of all sizes. The innovative technology used is based on CSS3 and HTML5.
What I like about Ascent is the richness of the slider that appears above the header. It’s more than just a personal blog; it’s a visual blogger’s dream.
In other words, your pictures get an added optimization that would make them stand out from the rest. If you’re a photographer, digital marketer, or content marketer, you can use Ascent to improve user experience.
This theme has been downloaded over 30,000 times, making it one of the most popular responsive WordPress themes of both professional and free.
A right and left sidebar gives you added flexibility, and this theme is translation-ready. This is essential if you’ll be serving a wider audience in different languages.
Do you struggle to create the right content for your customers? You’re not alone. If you want to attract and nurture an audience with your personal blog, you need various content.
But, let’s assume that you’ve created a variety of content; how do you showcase all of them in the right manner? You need the right WordPress theme and Auberge may just be the right one.
This impressive WordPress theme is free, professionally-designed and it’s currently used by over 30,000 blogs. Auberge’s overwhelming quality and usefulness make it a one-stop theme for those who want to expand their content marketing reach.
Auberge is built around a mobile-first design concept, which makes it 100% mobile responsive. One vital reason why you probably should consider this theme is because the content can be easily showcased on retina displays that have high resolutions.
A challenge that most site owners face when showcasing their best content, is resizing and compatibility issues, which severely drops the value of the content.
The theme would suit every niche, but it’ll probably best serve restaurants and cafe pages. When constructing your pages, you can use the Beaver page builder plugin. You can download and use the lite version at no cost.
Hestia is a website builder that features a slick, fully customizable design. Don’t let their branding as a”one-page theme” make you think it will limit you — you can build a fully functional, multi-page site with this theme.
Top features include easy to use customizer, WooCommerce ready, page builder compatibility, and fast load times. It is also SEO friendly and provides clean, optimized code for fast loading times.
If you are looking for a highly flexible theme with e-commerce capabilities, Hestia is a solid choice.
Awaken WordPress theme is free and has a 4 out of 5-star rating. If you’re fond of a minimalist design, this theme is for you. It’s extra white spaces push your content to the forefront and eliminate distractions.
Awaken is a magazine theme that includes two widget areas. The posts are also showcased, using three distinct widgets.
The layout of this theme is constructed using the Bootstrap framework, with mobile responsiveness in mind. In particular, mobile users will benefit from your blog, if you use this theme.
Another essential feature of Awaken is the nifty slider. The theme options panel gives you added flexibility, which enables you to change the theme color, font attributes, and links.
Neve is a light, modern WordPress theme that will serve your content marketing needs because it has clean and validated code.
This means that no matter how minimal your technical skills, you can edit and structure your theme to display your content well.
With basic HTML/PHP knowledge, you can structure your content display area. If you’re not a skilled developer, you don’t have to worry, because the theme options panel enables you to update your settings, including custom header and footer designs and layout.
One other feature of Neve WordPress theme offers easy setup, reliable updates, fast load times, and it is compatible with AMP.
Neve is focused on being lightweight, fast, and easy to use, making it an ideal free WordPress theme for beginners or anyone who wants an easy-to-build site.
SSMAG is a mobile responsive, plug and play free WordPress theme that has a grid-based layout. Content creators will find this theme useful, because of its feature that positions your content to go viral– well-designed social share buttons.
The design layout is optimized to engage readers and to cause them to explore your site further. SSMAG was created in 2015. It has custom widgets, to display text and HTML elements.
Apart from being browser compatible, the SSMAG theme supports embedded video, which will play a vital role in explaining what your blog is all about, instead of using your featured image on a post page.
Albar is a multipurpose WordPress theme that can be used to build a business website, portfolio, e-commerce store, or blogging site. It is responsive, which means it easily adapts to all types of devices including tablets, mobile phones, and desktop computers.
The theme features minimal settings to make it easier to use, but enough customizations to let you build exactly the site you need. It is lightweight, scalable, and offers security features so your site will be fast and secure.
Most beginners to blogging are looking for a WordPress theme that will showcase their portfolio or samples so that potential clients can find them easily. If that’s what you’re after, Esteem will be the right personal blog theme for you.
Esteem is a simple theme that offers unlimited theme color options so that you can change the feel and look of your site to stand out from the competition. The Esteem theme comes with two custom themes.
One of the themes is custom-built to display your products, portfolio or services. You can upload and set your custom logo and site title from the theme options panel.
If you want to gain traction, nurture a loyal audience, and establish your brand online, you should leverage the Esteem theme customizable header image.
Who says that you can’t find a modern WordPress theme with a premium look for your site?
Well, Accelerate is right here to fill that spot. Accelerate is a super flexible theme that’s suitable for portfolio, personal, travel, corporate, or business services sites.
If you’re an artist, like a photographer or illustrator, you can use the fullscreen slider to showcase your best work.
Accelerate theme sends a strong, clear message to your target audience, through its flat and straight-forward design that blends perfectly with your content (video, blog posts, audio, etc).
Accelerate is fully responsive and displays well on any type of mobile device. Moreover, the theme is retina-ready, to enhance your audience viewing experience and lower bounce rate.
It’s time to personalize your blog with this eye-catching and professional theme. Ample is a free minimalist and multipurpose WordPress theme that comes with feature-rich options for customizing your layout and setting the right metrics for your site. Mobile device responsiveness helps your search engine results.
Building your personal brand is an essential part of running a successful online business. So, it’s necessary to customize your site, by adding a professional logo and relevant header text that will appeal to your target audience.
Ample multipurpose WordPress theme is suitable for business or personal blog use and will play well in any industry, but it’s particularly useful for authors, freelance writers, and book review writers.
If you’re familiar with Copyblogger, you’ll agree with me that their first theme looked similar to this theme. I also know a few bloggers who started out with this theme, but later changed when their business grew.
Why am I saying this?
Well, it’s to let you know that WP Premium free WordPress theme provides a rich experience for the end-user, as well as premium functionality and a trendy look.
If you’re looking to start a serious blog, you should consider using WP Premium. It’s 100% responsive, which means that your texts and images will display smoothly on any device.
This theme is powered by Foundation – a front end framework that’s flexible, user-friendly, and professional.
WP Premium takes a content-first approach. The homepage widget areas let you manage your sidebar, header, navigation menu, and footer. Other functionalities are a wide selection of widgets, such as the author widget that displays relevant information about the author or blog owner.
You also have the advertisement widget, for monetizing your blog content with AdSense, ClickBank, CJ, and any third-party affiliate network that supports HTML code and CSS.
This is a free and professional theme from Gabfirethemes.com. What differentiates this theme from others is the fact that you can structure your personal blog layout as you want it to be.
Your category page doesn’t have to be a bland list of articles; you can now put the right content there and re-engage your audience. From the themes control panel, you can select alternative header templates quickly. No coding experience is required to effect this change in a highly responsive design.
Localization support is also enabled, because Quickstart was designed to appeal to international and local site owners. It supports multiple languages and it’s compatible with WPML’s multilingual plugin.
There is also another feature that makes this theme unique. The Gabfire module. This is an extended functionality that enables users to embed videos and default post images, so that the difficulty associated with embedding YouTube videos, for example, is eliminated.
Quickstart free WordPress theme is equipped with a single post image slider, category templates, page templates, and an advanced control panel. It’s search engine optimized and mobile one of the mobile responsive WordPress themes we like.
Astra has some amazing functionalities that you’ll love. This is a professional-looking theme that would have sold for $39 or more, but you can download and use it as a free WordPress design.
It has a clever ‘above-the-fold’ slider that displays your best and latest works. If you’re an author, you can use this to showcase your book. If you’re an artist, such as a photographer, illustrator, or web designer, this sleek slider will be very helpful for you.
Astra free WordPress theme displays your content using the default font face that’s clear and professional. If you’re an intermediate blogger or online entrepreneur and need a sophisticated theme that has all the modern functionalities intact, Astra may just be the right one for you.
As the name implies, Onesie is a flat and free WordPress theme. It’s a one page, responsive theme and can be used for business or personal blog purposes.
It adapts to different screen sizes, making it possible for your texts and images to display perfectly on iPads, iPhones, tablets, and other mobile devices, including smartwatches.
Onesie is easy to customize. You can change the background image to whatever you want. The header images can be customized to your taste. You can also create custom navigation menus, choose the right font, and alter the layout design for optimal user experience.
Onesie is browser compatible, which means that it displays perfectly on popular search engine platforms that your target audience will most likely be using, such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and more.
It also contains standard theme features, such as the theme options, automatic updates, and translation-reader functionality.
Note: Path is no longer free, but at just $14, it’s still incredibly affordable and may be worth the cost if you love the features!
You can use Path, a stylish WordPress theme, if you’re working on a multi-author or magazine-related site.
One powerful functionality of Path is that you can use the built-in WordPress custom header to manage your site’s feel, control the logo and other branding aspects of your site, as long as it’s in agreement with WordPress and Hybrid Core.
Several plugins, such as Gravity Forms, Social Path, SEO by Yoast, and more, are fully supported. No matter your industry, as long as you’re passionate about building a community, creating viral content, and generating leads for your business, you can use the Path theme.
If your theme looks professional, it’s going to give you a mindset that makes you think as if you’re on top of the world. You might be a personal blog beginner, but it wouldn’t make any difference – because you’re already on the right foot.
Sinatra is one of the most lightweight and easily customizable WordPress themes that you can download for free. It’s designed by sinatrateam.
This is one of those themes that could have been sold for $39 or more, but the company decided to give it away. While it’s still free, you can download it for your next blog.
It’s mobile responsive, SEO-friendly, and contains multiple layouts for customizing your blog so that your content gets attention. It’s also translatable and built with SEO best practices in mind.
Calenotis Magazine WordPress theme comes free of charge. It’s ideal for any type of project.
If you’ve just launched your book (whether ebook or hardcopy), or you want to create in-depth content that will generate organic traffic for you, this magazine theme will do the job right, from the very beginning.
Calenotis is a popular theme used in the health and fitness industry. The majority of the internet marketers out there aren’t aware of this theme. If they were, why would they not be using it?
The good news is that you’ve got the chance to use it while it’s free. The fullscreen slider will house your best works, latest pictures, upcoming programs, and more. This theme was designed using the minimalist principle – “omit needless things!”
The default font size for the body text may not be perfectly legible, but with HTML and CSS experience, you can always change your text’s size to suit your users.
Portum WordPress is free, responsive, and has a stylish front page slider where you can showcase your best work. This theme also supports modern web tools and plugins.
Site speed is one of the Google ranking factors that you’ve got to always consider. This theme is super fast. Your users will thank you for it.
The single post area is professionally designed, and the font style and size are carefully set to make maximum impact. This is a true, modern free WordPress theme that’s responsive, used by thousands of sites, and is absolutely free.
Typepress is a free and colorful WordPress theme. Colors drive people. In fact, in the psychology of colors, certain colors have proven to improve click rate on call-to-action as well as increase sales.
If you’re looking for a free theme that will be colorful, agile, and has all the powerful functionalities to build your business, Typepress could be your answer. It was developed by Arm Studio and released for free to the world.
Browser compatibility is one feature that makes this theme a resourceful one. No matter what browser that you or your visitors are using, they’ll not have issues reading your content, watching videos, or downloading your report. Even on mobile devices, mobile users will enjoy navigating your site because of it’s mobile-friendliness.
Not all content marketing sites are business blogs or news sites. If you’re looking to build a food or recipe-based website, consider Foodica.
Foodica fills the food-blog gap by providing a beautiful, easy to use theme for food or recipe-based websites. It features a beautiful slider, responsive layout, and featured slider support for posts.
Note that there are two versions of Foodica — the Lite version is free, while the Pro version costs $69 and comes with additional customizations, support, and a recipe index.
When you mean business (a site that will make you money), you’ve got to consider a theme that was designed for that. There are several ways to monetize and make money from a blog.
That said, do you know that the manner by which you place your affiliate links, promotional banners, and other calls-to-action plays a vital role in your conversion rate?
Absolutely. It does!
Business WordPress theme may be free, but it comes with premium functionalities that make it easier to advertise on your blog like a pro. Apart from the monetization aspect, the single post is given top priority, as well.
You can customize your logo, header image, background color, or other images. Its responsive design with the drag-and-drop slideshow interface gives you an added experience, and your site visitors will fall in love with it.
GreatMag is 100% free to use. It’s a magazine theme and has features that enable you to optimize your homepage and add important sections such as about us, our portfolio, products, and careers.
The front page image slider is ideal for showcasing your latest completed projects, clients you’ve worked with, testimonials, or some of the works you’re proud of.
When it comes to branding, GreatMag is flexible. You can upload your logo in the header section, and it’ll be seen clearly because the space provided is large. You can also use different themes to customize your site to your liking.
It also offers bundled widgets so you can easily (and quickly) get your site up and running, works with Google Fonts, features a page builder, and is 100% translation ready.
At some point in your blogging business, you’ll need to focus on getting the right content out, attracting a loyal audience, and answering their questions. You may not need a fancy theme at such points, except if you don’t have enough money to buy a premium theme. But, you can use this Basic theme.
You may think that there is nothing special about ‘Basic’ free WordPress theme, but that’s not true. Most successful marketing blogs are built on minimalist personal blog designs, with the primary focus on the content and user.
If you’re just starting out with WordPress, you need to start with a theme that you can learn from, not a sophisticated one that requires a high level of coding experience.
The layout of the Basic free WordPress theme is super simple, giving you the freedom to customize your site’s look and feel. You can achieve this through the Themify options panel.
This theme was designed with features that will take you from where you are in your content marketing career to a new level. The lightbox gallery, RSS, footer menu, 5 theme skins, social icons, child theme support, and more will enhance your blogging experience and that of your users.
Parallax is a free WordPress theme, and I’ve seen it at work on several industry blogs. It’s well designed and has modern features to bring your content to life. It features parallax scrolling to present beautiful images in an easy-to-navigate format.
One of the challenges of content marketing is producing engaging content. Even if you succeed at creating the right type of content, how do you present it to your audience? What format will be best for you? Parallax is one of the responsive WordPress themes that can help here.
What if you can cut through the chase, use the different widgets for the header, sidebar, footer, and single post to showcase different content types such as videos, slide presentations, blog posts, e-books, and continue to evolve your site based on real metrics?
Parallax offers a drag-and-drop editor, meets SEO best practices, and helps increases time on page with 3D animation effects. Just remember that these images are heavy, so they can slow page speed down.
Airi is the right WordPress theme to use for pretty much any type of business site. For example, if you run a digital camera reviews blog, you can use this theme to display your best shots, edited works, and more.
This theme is highly customizable, as it was built with the Elementor plugin that allows you to easily move all the elements around. It also supports Ecommerce if your business sells physical or digital products.
Airi also offers a bunch of demos you can import, edit, and publish. If you want a professional website done fast, this is an ideal theme to consider.
I like Live Wire WordPress theme because of two things: it’s free, and it’s clean. Any search engine will love its responsive design. It’s primarily designed with mobile in mind and includes an advanced options panel for structuring your layout. It supports Hybrid Tabs, post formats, Gravity Forms, and much more.
Live Wire has features that make it possible for you to customize several elements, such as your navigation menus, layouts, CSS, and even your background.
The theme also includes breadcrumbs, sticky posts, translation-ready capability, featured images, and more.
Note: LiveWire hasn’t been updated recently, but it still gets great reviews. Just keep in mind you could have issues with newer WP features and plugins.
Hemingway’s free WordPress theme is specifically made for bloggers who want to improve their blogs. This theme was designed to conform with the latest version of WordPress, it’s streamlined, and it has the parallax scrolling effect.
It features a two-column layout that was designed specifically with bloggers in mind. Other features include retina-ready assets, block-editor supports, and customizable styles.
As a high-quality theme, Hemingway is sleek, but the developers kept it minimalist design style that always puts content first compared to some other highly responsive WordPress themes. It’s mobile responsive, which means that any device can display this theme perfectly.
Fullby was inspired by Twenty Fourteen, one of the world’s most popular themes, with over 1 million downloads. At first glance, Fullby gives you that feeling of a professional site, because of its layout design.
The framework for this free WordPress theme is based on the latest Bootstrap framework. This is a grid style, lightweight, and fully responsive (displays well on any mobile or desktop device) theme.
You’ll also like the lightweight theme, which includes two customizable images, and the featured option for the posts can be structured exactly as you want it.
This is a good platform for your content, and the galleries and videos that are supported make this theme a favorite for most celebrities. If you’re a blogger, you’re a celebrity, too.
This Fullby free WordPress theme is fully optimized for search engines and has functionalities for your single post page and custom sidebar.
There, you’ve got it, the 32 professional, free WordPress themes to help make your content marketing more effective. Remember that it doesn’t matter which industry your working in because as much as content is king, design is the prime minister.
Getting one of the most responsive WordPress themes is important, even when starting. And there are so many to choose from.
When you give ample time to choosing the best theme for your blog, especially at the beginning, you’re establishing your foot in your industry. Your brand becomes noticeable to your target audience, and, trust me, that is priceless.
What is your favorite free WordPress theme, and why do you love it?
The post 32 Free WordPress Themes For Effective Content Marketing appeared first on Neil Patel.
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WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS platform. According to a 2020 study, 455 million sites worldwide are powered by WordPress.
It’s what I use to manage my blog here at NeilPatel.com, as well as my other sites and ventures.
So if you’re currently using WordPress or planning to use WordPress for your website, it makes sense to invest in WordPress web hosting.
WordPress-specific hosting solutions will be your best option in terms of service, updates, performance, and installations for WordPress. Which web hosting provider is the best option in this category? Check out my reviews and recommendations below to learn more.
Before you can find the best WordPress hosting plan for your site, you must know what to look for as you’re shopping around. Use the following considerations as a buying guide. This will make it much easier for you to narrow down your options.
How much traffic does your website get? For new sites, how much traffic are you expecting?
The answer to this question will definitely have an impact on the type of WordPress hosting solution that’s right for you. A site that has 5,000 visitors per month should be on a different plan than sites with 50,000 visitors per month. Plans that can accommodate 100,000 visitors per month won’t necessarily be suitable for sites with millions of monthly visitors.
New websites and smaller sites will be fine with shared WordPress hosting (more on this shortly). But as your site grows, you might want to consider a VPS (virtual private server) or dedicated WordPress hosting solution.
Most people don’t think to consider the customer service offered by their WordPress hosting provider. But this factor should definitely rank high on your list.
In an ideal scenario, your site will run smoothly 24/7, and you’ll never have any problems. Unfortunately, we live in reality—not a perfect world. So one day or another, you’re going to run into an issue and need some assistance.
The best WordPress hosting providers will have your back. They are available around the clock via phone, live chat, and email support. Agents will work diligently to quickly resolve your problems.
For those of you who currently have an active website on another hosting service, make sure the provider you’re considering switching to will help you with the site migration. The best customer support teams will do this for free.
Your technical experience will help you determine if you want a managed WordPress hosting plan or an unmanaged WordPress plan.
Traditional WordPress hosting is more cost-effective. The host will make the WordPress installation pretty easy for you, usually with just a single click (assuming WordPress isn’t already pre-installed).
Managed plans are a bit pricier, but you’ll benefit from enhanced services. The best managed WordPress hosting plans will come with features like automatic backups, automatic updates, maintenance, and other perks for those of you who prefer to be hands-off.
All web hosting plans branded as “WordPress hosting” should already be optimized for WordPress. So right away, your site performance would be better than a non-optimized service.
But beyond that, there are other factors that affect the two most important site metrics you should be monitoring—uptime and speed.
The type of hosting you choose will have the biggest impact on these. For example, shared hosting will be slower than VPS hosting. Your traffic levels will also play a factor in your performance metrics.
Some providers are just better than others when it comes to speed and performance. The best way to get more information on this is by reading recent customer reviews. If people are constantly complaining about unexpected outages and downtime, you should probably stay away. All of the providers on my list below are reputable and pretty comparable in terms of speed and uptime.
WordPress web hosting can be segmented into a handful of different categories. Here’s a deeper explanation of each one:
As previously mentioned, shared WordPress hosting is the cheapest option. It’s the best choice for new websites, small websites, small blogs, and sites that aren’t expecting a ton of traffic. Most hosts make it really easy for you to get started with a shared plan, and the maintenance is pretty low as well.
The downside of shared hosting is the performance. As the name implies, you’ll be sharing server resources with other websites on the same server. So your site could potentially crash or slow down as other sites on that server get traffic spikes.
Shared hosting isn’t great for business websites. As you start to get 10,000 to 25,000+ visitors per month, you might want to consider upgrading to another tier.
VPS WordPress hosting is a step above shared hosting.
You’re still technically sharing a physical server with other websites, but the number of sites on that server will be much lower. Furthermore, the server gets split into several virtual servers (hence the name), so each site has its own dedicated resources.
The anatomy of VPS hosting helps prevent the traffic on other sites from slowing your site down. VPS WordPress hosting has improved performance and can accommodate higher volumes of traffic than shared plans.
With a dedicated WordPress hosting plan, you’ll have your own server for your website. This results in the highest possible performance, the ability to accommodate large volumes of traffic, and ultimate customization options at the server level.
It’s worth noting that most sites won’t need a dedicated server (it can also be really expensive).
This type of WordPress hosting is reserved for huge companies, sites with millions of visitors per month, and developers that want to customize the hosting environment for multiple websites on a single server.
Managed WordPress hosting is typically offered at the shared or VPS level. It’s definitely an upgrade from traditional hosting, and you’ll get tons of benefits.
The speed, performance, and customer support is better. Behind the scenes, everything will be more secure (which means the site will also be more stable). You won’t have to worry about updates, installations, or security—all of this will be handled by your host.
Prices for managed WordPress plans are higher than basic shared or VPS hosting solutions. But for the service and extras you’re getting, the cost is definitely justifiable.
Powering 2+ million sites across the globe, Bluehost is an industry leader in the web hosting space. This provider has been recommended by WordPress for 15+ years, making them a top consideration for most websites.
WordPress hosting from Bluehost starts at just $3.95 per month.
Bluehost is a great option for anyone building a new website from scratch. You can bundle your hosting and domain registration into a single plan, with a free domain name for one year. Other noteworthy highlights from Bluehost include:
WordPress has excellent customer service and plans to fit budgets of all sizes. Bluehost’s support experts are available 24/7 via phone and live chat. They even have specific solutions for advanced WordPress users and ecommerce sites.
It’s easy to get started, and all plans are backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.
DreamHost is another hosting provider that’s recommended directly by WordPress. They’ve been on this list for over ten years.
Regardless of your website type, budget, or hosting needs, DreamHost has a WordPress hosting solution for you. Plans start as low as $2.59 per month.
DreamHost has over 750,000 WordPress installations under their belt. They have basic WordPress hosting plans for new sites, managed WordPress hosting plans, and VPS for WordPress as well.
All of DreamHost’s WordPress hosting plans come with the following features and benefits:
Whether you want a shared plan, managed plan, or VPS for powering multiple WordPress sites, DreamHost can accommodate your needs.
They have specific servers that are optimized for WordPress and boast a 100% uptime guarantee. DreamHost has a dedicated team of WordPress experts that can help you resolve any issue, large or small.
You’ll also benefit from a 97-day money-back guarantee. No other host on the market today offers this type of promise.
SiteGround is the third hosting provider recommended directly by WordPress. They offer managed solutions for sites of all sizes.
Whether you have 10,000 monthly visitors, 100,000 monthly visitors, or somewhere in between, SiteGround can accommodate your needs.
The entry-level WordPress hosting plans from SiteGround start at just $6.99 per month. Here’s a closer look at some of the features you’ll get from this provider:
If you’re expecting your site to scale and need to upgrade plans to accommodate your growth, SiteGround has you covered. Your WordPress hosting plan is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.
With a name like WP Engine, it should come as no secret or surprise that this hosting provider specializes in WordPress hosting. More than 120,000 customers in 140+ countries rely on WP Engine for web hosting.
Their managed solutions are fast, reliable, and secure, with plans starting at $25 per month.
WP Engine’s prices are a bit higher compared to other options on our list. But their services are unmatched in the world of managed WordPress hosting.
These solutions are built for larger websites. For example, the entry-level plan can accommodate up to 25,000 visits per month, which is 2.5x higher than most entry-level plans from other providers. They even have managed WordPress solutions for websites with monthly traffic in the millions.
Other noteworthy highlights of WP Engine include:
WP Engine is a great option for large websites, developers, businesses, agencies, and marketers. If you’re looking for an advanced WordPress hosting solution, this will be the best option for you.
A2 Hosting is another reputable and well-known provider in the web hosting space. They have shared WordPress hosting plans starting at $2.99 per month and managed WordPress solutions that start $11.99 per month.
So whether your needs are simple, complex, or somewhere in the middle, A2 has a plan for you.
Not many hosting providers offer both shared and managed WordPress solutions; most specialize in one or the other. So the fact that A2 gives the ability to choose is definitely a unique standout.
For those of you with an existing website looking to switch providers, A2 Hosting offers free and easy site migrations. You’ll also benefit from features like:
If you read the reviews from current A2 customers, you’ll quickly see why this host is so popular. For fast, reliable, and secure WordPress hosting, look no further than A2 Hosting.
IONOS by 1&1 isn’t necessarily the most recognizable name in the web hosting world. But that shouldn’t turn you away from considering their solutions.
This provider is my top recommendation for WordPress professionals.
Some of the top highlights and features from the WordPress hosting plans include:
For developers and WordPress experts managing multiple websites, IONOS by 1&1 will be your best option. Plans start at $18 per month. Best of all, you won’t be locked into a long-term contract. IONOS by 1&1 lets you cancel at any time.
If you’re running a WordPress website, you should definitely consider a hosting plan that’s optimized for WordPress.
Which plan is the best? It depends on what you’re looking for. The recommendations listed above will definitely be the best place for you to start your search.
Just use the buying guide at the beginning of this post to help narrow down your options.
The post Best Web Hosting for WordPress appeared first on Neil Patel.