This app will proofread your documents and emails

Whether you’re a professional writer churning out manuscripts, a college undergrad pouring over a research paper, or an office worker sending out countless emails a day, you’re bound to make some mistakes. A few simple grammatical errors can mean the difference between a passing grade and failure, or can result in office-wide miscommunication that suddenly leaves you in a situation of flexible employment.

WhiteSmoke Writing Assistant guards against that by checking your documents and emails for grammar, punctuation, spelling, and style errors, so you can catch any mistakes before clicking send and potentially jeopardizing your future.

WhiteSmoke’s software is compatible with any browser-based text editor and can be activated on both desktop and mobile with a single click. No matter where you are, you can count on WhiteSmoke to keep your writing error-free. It also features a massive plagiarism database that you can use to check any documents you receive for potentially stolen work, and a translator covering over 50 languages.

WhiteSmoke can even proofread your documents and emails in Microsoft Word and Outlook. Regardless of your preferred word processor, WhiteSmoke has got you covered.

A lifetime subscription to WhiteSmoke normally retails for $399.95, but today you can take 80 percent off and get one for just $79 by clicking the button below.

Check it out!

The AAPicks team writes about things we think you’ll like, and we may see a share of revenue from any purchases made through affiliate links. To see all our hottest deals, head over to the AAPICKS HUB.

Source: Android Zone

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5 Best Contact Form Plugins for WordPress Compared

Are you looking to add a contact form on your WordPress site? Not sure which one of the 1625+ WordPress contact form plugins to use? In this article, we have hand-picked the 5 best contact form plugins for WordPress and compared their pros and cons, so you can easily add a contact form in WordPress.

1. WPForms

WPForms is the most beginner friendly WordPress contact form plugin. We use it on WPBeginner and all of our other websites. WPForms is built by the same team as WPBeginner with a single goal: Make a WordPress forms plugin that’s both easy and powerful.

Pros

WPForms’ drag & drop online form builder makes it the most user-friendly form plugin for WordPress.

WPForms Lite is available for free in the official WordPress plugin directory meaning you can install it on as many sites as you like for free.

The free version comes with all the basic contact form features including basic form fields, captcha for spam protection, email notifications, and a thank-you page for form confirmation.

The premium version allows you to extend the functionality, so you can build any type of forms such as multi-page forms, email subscription forms, payment forms, order forms, and more.

WPForms pro also comes with other powerful form fields and features like smart conditional logic, file upload, geo-location, signature feature, form abandonment, user-submitted content (post submissions), login and user registration for WordPress, and over 150+ pre-made form templates.

You can see all your form submissions right inside your WordPress dashboard as well as get customized email notifications. You can even setup conditional notifications, so the right person in your team gets notified.

WPForms surveys & polls addon is by far the best WordPress survey solution in the market. It comes with interactive survey reports, real-time polls for WordPress, and all smart survey fields like star ratings, likert scale, NPS, etc.

They also have a form landing page solution to help you create distraction-free form pages in WordPress.

WPForms integrates with all popular email marketing and payment platforms. There are documentation and guides available along with email support to help you when you need it.

WPForms is being used by over 1 million websites and have built quite a loyal following (See: WPForms user reviews).

Cons

While the lite version is free, you need to upgrade to Pro to unlock more powerful features.

Even though WPForms is powerful, the #1 goal of this plugin is to make it user friendly. That’s why it doesn’t have the more complex features that some other form plugins offer.

WPBeginner users can use this WPForms coupon that will give you 50% off the premium version of WPForms.

Get WPForms Pro Now »

Alternatively, you can start with WPForms Lite for Free.

2. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is the most advanced WordPress form plugin in the market. They specialize in helping developers build complex form-focused solutions quickly.

Pros

Formidable is an all-in-one WordPress form builder that comes with powerful addons to help you go beyond simple contact forms.

You can use Formidable drag and drop interface to create advanced forms like quizzes, surveys, payment forms, registration forms, profile forms, and more.

Advanced users will really love the Formidable Views feature because it allows you to format, filter, and display user-submitted data on the front-end of your website. You can use it to create form-focused solutions like directories, job board listings, event calendars, management systems, rating systems, and more.

You can use Formidable’s advanced calculation fields to create powerful order forms as well as smart calculators like Mortgage calculator, car payment calculator, request a quote calculator, and more.

Formidable integrates with all popular email marketing and payment platforms.

They also have a powerful WooCommerce integration to help you build product forms and even WooCommerce product configurator forms that ties directly to your cart.

Cons

Formidable form builder is not as intuitive as WPForms because they focus on advanced users and developers.

But it makes up for it by being the most extendable form solution in the market. If you’re a developer or agency looking to build form-based solutions or data-driven web applications, then nothing in the market comes close to Formidable Forms.

3. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is a paid WordPress form builder plugin that comes with a lot of advanced functionality and features. They also specialize in helping developers build complex form related solutions.

Pros

Gravity Forms is a powerful drag and drop contact form plugin for WordPress.

With the help of additional add-ons, Gravity Forms can be used to create surveys, quizzes, user submitted content, and even web directory.

It comes with premium support options like FAQs, knowledge base, forums, and email support. This means that help is available when you need it.

Cons

Gravity forms does not have a free version, so it can be a bit expensive than other WordPress contact form plugins. However, if you are using it on multiple sites and projects, then the cost should not be a big deal.

4. Ninja Forms

Ninja Forms is a freemium contact form plugin for WordPress. It can be used to create highly interactive form with very little effort.

Pros

The base plugin for Ninja Forms is available for free from the official WordPress repository. This means you can download and install it on as many sites as you like.

There are premium extensions which allow you to extend Ninja Forms functionality such as connecting with Campaign Monitor, Freshbooks, Salesforce, SMS notifications, etc.

There is a helpful community support option, as well as documentation, guides, and email support.

Cons

Even though the main plugin is available for free, the extensions are not. Buying two or more extensions or even the developer bundle will cost you nearly the same amount as WPForms or Formidable Forms.

5. Contact Form 7

Although we don’t recommend Contact Form 7, this list cannot be complete without the oldest and most downloaded contact form plugin in the official WordPress plugin directory.

Pros

Price is probably the most important advantage of using Contact Form 7. You are free to install it on as many sites as you want.

Although if you’re looking for a free WordPress form plugin, then WPForms Lite, Formidable Forms, and Ninja Forms are all significantly better solutions than Contact Form 7.

There are several third-party plugins that act as add-on plugins for Contact Form 7. Most of them are available for free.

Cons

Contact Form 7 is a below-average solution for creating a basic contact form for your blog. It is very difficult to set up for absolute beginners. The user interface is not intuitive at all.

Since it is a free plugin, support options are limited.

There are several third-party add-ons available for Contact Form 7, but the official plugin website doesn’t have an add-ons directory which makes it difficult to find add-ons to extend the functionality of the base plugin.

Which is the Best Contact Form Plugin for WordPress?

The plugins we mentioned in this article can all help you create a contact form plugin. However deciding the best WordPress form builder plugin varies based on your needs.

If you’re a beginner and don’t want to spend any money, then go with WPForms Lite.

If you’re a business owner and want to create powerful forms without learning code or hiring a developer, then go with the WPForms Pro version.

If you’re a developer trying to build more complex forms, then there’s no better solution than Formidable Forms.

Our overall pick for the best WordPress contact form plugin is WPForms.

We hope this guide helped you choose the best contact form plugin for your WordPress site. You may also want to take a look at our guide on the best WordPress backup plugins compared (Pros and Cons).

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Source: Wordpres

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10 Best WordPress Forum Plugins (Compared)

Are you looking to add a community section on your WordPress site? Forums and discussion boards are a great way to boost user engagement and build a community around your site.

In this article, we’ve hand-picked the best WordPress forum plugins that you can use to build a community around your website or business.

Aside from the basic forum feature, we also made sure to find solutions that have advanced functionalities like question & answer board, custom social network feature, and more so you can build a community of your dreams.

Why Create a Forum on Your WordPress Site?

Online forums are an effective community-building tool where your website visitors can participate by posting questions, sharing solutions, new ideas, etc.

Your forum could be a Q&A (question-and-answer) platform, discussion board, knowledge sharing space, or a problem-solving support zone.

There are multiple advantages of adding a forum to your website.

First, your WordPress forum software will help users engage and participate on your website. When they participate, they’re more likely to come back, buy your products, and recommend them to their friends and family.

Second, it’s one of the most common and effective ways to provide support to your customers. When your customers have a technical or generic support question, they can hop into the forum and check to see if the issue is already posted. If it’s a new problem, then they can post and get their problem solved.

Lastly, it gives some SEO value to your website when a unique issue is discussed and the thread becomes popular. In many instances, forum threads outrank other types of content in search results. Sometimes, the user-generated content makes more sense than formal posts on your blog.

That being said, here’re the best plugins to add a forum to your WordPress website.

Note: You will need to have a WordPress website to use these plugins. If you want to start a new website, then you will need a domain and web hosting.

We recommend using Bluehost because they’re an official WordPress hosting provider, and they’re offering our users a free domain name and 60% off web hosting.

1. bbPress

When it comes to integrating a forum into WordPress, bbPress is hands-down the best plugin for the job. It is a sister project of WordPress.org, which means that it’s built the WordPress way and uses the existing WordPress core to power your forum.

bbPress is easy to set up, easy to moderate and maintain, fast, and clean. Anyone can easily create a forum in WordPress using this plugin. If you need detailed instructions, we have a tutorial on how to set up bbPress in WordPress.

Pros

• Built for WordPress, bbPress utilizes the same WordPress core and follows the same coding standards as WordPress.
• It integrates with any WordPress theme without painful modifications. There are also some excellent WordPress themes for bbPress that you can use.
• More than 200 bbPress extensions available to do just about anything you want.
• Since it doesn’t have a lot of bloat, bbPress is fast and lightweight.
• You can easily create multisite forums and maintain them from one dashboard.
• It’s a free open source software, so you can use it unlimited for free.

Cons

• Not as feature-rich as full-fledged forum CMS like phpBB, Vanilla Forums.
• The core plugin has only the basic features, so you need to install additional extensions for more power.

2. BuddyPress

BuddyPress allows you to build your own social network within WordPress. Just like bbPress, BuddyPress is also an official WordPress plugin. It follows the same coding practices and standards as WordPress.

With BuddyPress, you can create a full-fledged online community with user profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, and networking options.

Similar to Facebook, it allows your users to add friends, send private messages, create groups, and get notifications.

Best of all, you can use BuddyPress and bbPress together and create a feature-rich online forum.

Pros

• Easily integrates with any WordPress theme and plugin.
• Hundreds of third party BuddyPress plugins and extensions to extend the functionality.
• Lets you easily create a complete social network with activity streams, user profiles, social connections, groups, etc.
• It’s free and open source. Download BuddyPress for free and use it on unlimited sites, and also get regular updates.

Cons

• The core plugin lacks advanced features that you may need to build a full-fledged online community. To extend its power, you’ll need to depend on third-party plugins.

3. ForumEngine

ForumEngine is actually a WordPress theme which turns your WordPress site into a discussion forum. It’s a powerful theme built specifically for creating a forum in WordPress. The theme shows the forum threads right on your website homepage.

With ForumEngine, you can create forums where users can interact in many ways like posting topics, questions, replying, liking or disliking a topic. It allows users to quickly search any topic in the list with Ajax live search.

It also provides a private space to your users where they can access and manage all their activities in the forum.

Pros

• It’s a full-fledged WordPress forum theme, so you won’t need to install any plugin to create a forum in WordPress.
• It provides plenty of styling options to change the appearance of your forum and make it look attractive.
• Plenty of widgets for adding forum statistics, categories, hot topics, etc.
• Allows you to display advertisements and earn extra income.

Cons

• It’s a forum specific theme, so it’s hard to create a regular business or eCommerce site with this. You can integrate it with your WordPress blog, but it doesn’t have options to display products, etc.
• It’s a paid theme. If you’ve limited budget, free options like bbPress and BuddyPress may be better options.

4. Simple:Press

Simple:Press is a simple solution for adding a forum to your WordPress site. It comes with both free and premium versions, so you can choose the option according to your need.

Using Simple:Press, you can create unlimited forums, forum groups, sub-forums, private and public forums easily. You can also lock and pin any forum. To let you manage the users, it has a powerful user group and permission system. Your users can create extended profiles with timezone, and a lot more.

Pros

• Fully integrated into WordPress, supports WordPress registrations and logins.
• Supports both standard WordPress and multisite installs as well.
• More than 70 premium plugins are available to extend its features.
• Creates SEO friendly permalinks and includes many SEO features.

Cons

• The free version is fairly basic. You’ll need to purchase a premium plan to add advanced functionalities.

5. wpForo Forum

wpForo is a free WordPress forum plugin which comes with plenty of design and customization options. It features 3 design layouts for your forum: Extended, Simplified, and Question and Answer layout. Each layout has a unique design and features. Plus, there’re 6 set of forum color styles including dark style.

Using this plugin, you can easily create modern forums where your users can participate, get support, as well as contribute. Users can post questions, give answers, vote, subscribe to topics, and receive notifications, share topics on social media, etc.

Pros

• Available for free with options to extend functionalities by purchasing paid addons.
• Built-in features for search engine optimization (SEO), XML sitemap, caching, antispam, etc.
• Smooth integration with BuddyPress to allow more social networking features.

Cons

• Only basic features are granted in the free plugin. You’ll need to pay for advanced features like ad management, polls, user custom fields, private messaging, etc.
• The plugin settings are a bit complex for first time users.

6. Asgaros Forum

Asgaros Forum is a simple WordPress forum plugin you can use on your live website. It’s the best forum plugin for anyone who is looking to add a lightweight forum page on their existing sites with ease. It’s super easy to setup and adds a feature-rich discussion board in WordPress.

Pros

• Simple and lightweight forum plugin for beginners as well as professionals.
• Simple yet powerful options available for content management, members, and permissions.
• Forum statistics to let you see how well your forum is performing.
• Multisite compatible plugin.

Cons

• It doesn’t have extensions to add more functionalities.

7. CM Answers

CM Answers allows you to create a powerful Q&A (question and answer) discussion forum in WordPress. The basic free plugin comes with enough features to quickly setup a Stack Exchange like forum on your website.

It enables users to post questions, answer the questions, vote, upload files, subscribe categories, send private messages, etc. As the admin, you can customize questions, answers, filter out unwanted content, and manage the users. If you want additional features like anonymous posting and payments, you can buy the plugin addons.

Pros

• Integrates seamlessly with most WordPress themes.
• Users can vote on questions and answers.
• Premium version has a lot more features including the ability to choose best answer, profiles, comments, social media login, etc.

Cons

• Your forum is limited to Q&A format.
• Most useful features are available for the premium version.
• Some reviews on the plugin’s page indicate that users found it difficult to use.

8. WP Symposium Pro

WP Symposium Pro is an alternative to BuddyPress. You can create your own social network using this plugin. Similar to BuddyPress or Facebook, it allows your users to create profiles and activity wall, add friends, set email alerts, join forums, and more.

The plugin is designed to work with any WordPress theme or plugin. This allows you to add it to an existing WordPress site.

Pros

• Highly customizable through shortcodes – change colors, fonts, buttons, etc. easily.
• Option to buy Premium version or individual addons to add features. Premium support available for paid version users.
• Documentation with videos is available on plugin’s website to help you get started.

Cons

• Many useful features need a premium plan.

9. DW Question and Answer

DW Question and Answer enables you to create a complete Q&A (question and answer) system on your WordPress site. If you’re thinking of creating a system like Quora or Stack Overflow, DW Question and Answer is the right plugin to start with.

Unlike normal forum plugins, it allows your users to vote the answers, so that the best answer comes to the top and the less meaningful answers go to the end. For more details see our tutorial on how to create a question and answers site in WordPress.

Pros

• You can use the free plugin for creating a basic question answer system. Advanced users can buy the premium version for more features.
• CAPTCHA support helps you to combat spam.
• Great for providing support to your customers/ users.

Cons

• The free plugin lets you create just a simple forum in question and answer format.

10. Discussion Board

WordPress discussion board is a free plugin you can use to create a forum. It’s easy to install and setup the plugin, so anyone can build a forum in WordPress without touching any code.

Using this plugin, you can allow front-end registration and login system to attract more users. To avoid spamming, it has options to restrict repost, moderation for comments, etc.

Pros

• Discussion Board theme specifically designed to go well with the plugin. You can also use this plugin with any theme you like.
• Comes with plenty of handy shortcodes for displaying forms, list of topics, etc.
• A paid version available for adding more options and possibilities.

Cons

• The free version lacks powerful options. You’ll need to purchase their premium plan for many useful features.

Important Advice on Building a Forum Website

Regardless of your choice of online forum software, you will need extra hosting resources to run a successful online community.

You can install all these WordPress forum plugins on a shared hosting plan. You can even run a forum quite effectively for a while on the same starter hosting package.

If you are just starting out and want to test the waters, then we recommend using Bluehost. They are one of the top hosting companies in the world and officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

However, as more visitors use your forum, it will slow down your website and may even crash it. In that case, you will need to upgrade to a managed WordPress hosting plan.

We recommend using WPEngine. They are one of the top managed WordPress hosting companies in the world.

Our second choice would be SiteGround. They are an officially recommended WordPress and bbPress hosting provider.

Need help moving your website? See our article on how to move WordPress to a new hosting server without any downtime.

We hope this article helped you find the best forum plugins for WordPress. You may also want to see our handpicked list of best Analytics Solutions for WordPress Users.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 10 Best WordPress Forum Plugins (Compared) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Source: Wordpres

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Why is WordPress Free? What are the Costs? What is the Catch?

One of the most often asked question by our users is “Do I have to pay to use WordPress?”. We tell them that WordPress is a free and open source software, which is usually followed by, “Why is WordPress Free?”.

In this article, we will discuss why is WordPress free, what’s the cost of running a WordPress site, and what’s the catch?

WordPress is an open source software. It is free in the sense of freedom not in the sense of free beer. You may ask what is the difference between these two?

Open source software comes with the freedom for you to use, modify, build upon, and redistribute the software in any way you like without paying any fees.

However, there might be costs involved in other areas. We will discuss the cost of using the open source WordPress software later in this article.

Why Don’t They Sell WordPress as a Software?

We often get asked, why don’t people and companies behind WordPress sell it? If WordPress is as good as everyone says, then they would obviously make a lot more money by selling it.

This statement would make sense, if a single company or an individual owned WordPress.

WordPress is an open source community project where tens of thousands of talented people have made contributions to make it into a great software that it is today.

There is a core team of developers that lead the project development, but anyone can contribute patches, fix bugs, make features, suggest features, etc.

Furthermore, project leaders change from one version to another. If you get deeply involved in the community, then you can become a core contributor to WordPress as well.

The Philosophy behind Open Source Software

The philosophy behind Open Source software movement is that software are not like other tangible products. Once a software is created, it can be copied many times with little cost.

Let’s take the example of a toy factory. Each toy manufactured has different parts and each part has a cost. The manufacturing cost of these parts can be calculated by the factory to decide a reasonable profit margin for the product.

On the other hand, the cost of creating software and making copies of it is not the same. Some groups believe that with each copy sold, the profit margin of the software becomes more unfair.

To understand more about open source software ideals, check out GNU’s Philosophy.

How Do People Make Money with WordPress?

The two main profitable parts of any open source software are products and services based on the same open source software.

People often confuse WordPress with WordPress.com, but they’re actually two different things. WordPress (often referred to self-hosted WordPress or WordPress.org) is a free blogging platform and website builder.

Matt Mullenweg, co-founding developer of WordPress, launched a company called Automattic which provides “restricted” free blog hosting service at WordPress.com, and you can pay / upgrade to unlock features and remove ads.

However, to get the full power of WordPress on WordPress.com platform, you’ll need to sign up with their WordPress VIP service. This costs over $5000 per month for hosting + $5000 set up fee.

Automattic has raised a total of $317.3M in funding over 7 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Jan 1, 2015 from a Venture round. (Source)

Other developers have also gone ahead to build successful multi-million dollar businesses around WordPress by creating commercial plugins, commercial themes, and even offering WordPress hosting.

Some examples of successful multi-million dollar WordPress companies are:

• WPEngine – a managed WordPress hosting company that has raised over $290 million dollars and now also own StudioPress commercial themes.
• Awesome Motive – led by Syed Balkhi is another multi-million dollar company based around WordPress. The company manages WPBeginner, OptinMonster, WPForms, MonsterInsights, SeedProd, and other popular WordPress plugins.
• Yoast – is the company behind the popular WordPress SEO plugin that’s used by over 5 million websites.
• ElegantThemes – multi-million dollar theme company behind the popular drag & drop page builder: Divi and several other plugins.

Related: See our list of 20 top WordPress companies.

Good WordPress developers and consultants also make a comfortable full-time income by building custom websites, applications, and plugins around WordPress for their clients. A lot of them are making over six-figures in annual earnings by themselves.

Is WordPress Copyright Free?

No, WordPress is not copyright free. It is licensed in a way that allows everyone to use it, but each contribution made to the software is copyrighted.

It is released under GPL, so you are free to use, modify, and redistribute the code. You will have the copyright to modifications you make to the software, not the entire code.

GPL requires that any derivative work you release or distribute should be licensed under GPL as well. You may have the copyright to do anything you like, your derivative work automatically inherits the GPL license, so others are free to use, modify, and redistribute your code in any way they choose.

Does this mean that all premium WordPress Themes and Plugins are Licensed GPL?

According to an official blog post on WordPress.org, themes are GPL too. Images, CSS and Javascript used inside themes and plugins can be excluded, but all PHP and HTML parts of themes and plugins extensively use WordPress functionality thus they are a derivative work therefore are licensed under GPL.

While some folks do not agree with that, most trusted WordPress businesses follow and abide by the community guidelines.

The Content Published with WordPress also inherits GPL?

No, you are entitled to license your content any way you like. Unless the content you are publishing is actually a derivative work of WordPress or any other GPL licensed work.

For example, if you are sharing your articles, photos, or any other artwork on your blog, then you own full copyrights of it.

However, if you are writing a blog post showing people how to use a WordPress function with examples, then that particular blog post could be licensed differently. The code used in examples is actually derivative work and automatically inherits the GPL license.

The WordPress Trademark

The code of WordPress as a software is released under GPL but the words WordPress, WordCamp, and the WordPress logo are registered trademarks owned by the WordPress Foundation.

To distinguish between a site or resource that is official or community run, the foundation asks folks to not use “WordPress” in their domain name.

This is the reason why our site is called WPBeginner instead of WordPressBeginner. Any website, training course, or resource that you see has WordPress in their domain name is probably being run by someone who doesn’t know enough about WordPress. This means you probably shouldn’t pay them any of your money

Most legit businesses built around WordPress are aware of the trademark policies, and they respect the rules.

Cost of using WordPress

WordPress as a software is free for you to download and use. However, to use WordPress on the web, you will need WordPress Hosting.

You can use WordPress.com to create a free blog, but be aware that there are some differences. See our comparison of WordPress.com vs WordPress.org for more details.

The cost of using WordPress is relatively minimal and hold true for running any other type of website as well. The only real cost is web hosting ($7.99 per month) and domain name ($14 / year).

However WPBeginner users can get a free domain name and 60% off web hosting from Bluehost which means you can start a website for as low as $2.75 per month. Bluehost is an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Related: How to Start a WordPress Blog (Ultimate Guide)

Additional costs could be commercial WordPress themes also known as premium WordPress themes. However, you are not required to use those because there are over 6000+ free WordPress themes that you can use.

People often use commercial plugins, but you are not required to use those as well because there are over 54,000+ free WordPress plugins available.

We have created a detailed guide on how much does it really cost to build a WordPress website with instructions on how to start a website on a budget and save money.

We hope that this article answered your questions about WordPress licensing, the costs of running a WordPress site, and the business around WordPress. You may also want to see our list of easy to start online business ideas that actually make money.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Source: Wordpres

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Cover Image vs. Featured Image in WordPress Block Editor (Beginner’s Guide)

WordPress 5.0 was released with the brand new Gutenberg block editor and a host of cool features. One of them is the Cover block, which lets you add cover images to your posts and pages.

This feature has confused some users because it may seem similar to the Featured Image option which has been in WordPress since WordPress 2.9.

In this article, we’ll explain the differences between cover image vs. featured image in WordPress block editor.

What is a Cover Image?

A cover image is usually a wide image used as a cover photo for a new section in a blog post or page. It is part of the overall article. You can use a cover image when you’re starting a new section or a new story within your article.

With the Cover block in WordPress, you can add text and color overlay on your cover image.

By adding an appropriate color overlay that matches your theme color or content’s mood, you can make your article more engaging.

Similarly, adding text overlay helps your users easily identify where a new section starts in your article and what’s it about.

Traditionally bloggers use heading text to separate sections in a blog post. With cover images, you now have options to separate sections in a more visually appealing way.

What is a Featured Image?

A featured image (also known as post thumbnail) is the main article image which represents the content. They’re prominently displayed on your website on single posts, blog archive pages, as well as on the homepage of news, magazine, and blog websites.

Aside from that, featured images are also displayed on social media feeds when an article is shared.

Featured images are designed carefully to make them look attractive. Such images give users a quick glimpse of your content and prompt them to the entire article.

You’ll find a meta box in your post edit screen for adding a featured image because almost all WordPress themes support featured images by default.

Where and how featured images are displayed is controlled entirely by your WordPress theme.

For advanced featured image options, you can check these best WordPress featured image plugins.

How to Add a Cover Image in WordPress?

The new WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) comes with a Cover block to allow you to add a cover image in WordPress.

First, you need to create a new post or edit an existing one. On the post edit screen, click on the add new block button and then choose Cover block.

You can find the Cover block inside the Common Blocks tab.

Upon clicking on the block, you’ll see the Cover block added to your content editor with options to add your new cover image.

You can simply drag and drop an image or video in the block area to upload a new cover image. Alternatively, you can click the Upload button, choose an image in your computer, and open to upload.

If you want to add an image already uploaded to your media library, you can click the Media Library button and select an image from your media gallery.

Once your cover image is added, you can easily customize it by clicking on the cover image.

This will show you a toolbar with customization options above the image, Write title… field in the center of the image, and block settings including color overlay in the panel on the right side.

Aside from alignment option, the cover image block gives you the two width choices: Wide width and Full width.

The wide width option makes the image look as wide as your content. The full-width option makes your image cover the whole window screen.

Next, you can add a title for your cover image. When you click on the cover image, you will see the “Write title…” field in the center of your cover image.

Simply click on that area to add text. You can write your cover image title and format it using the formatting options that appear on top of the text or on top of the cover image.

Finally, there are cover block settings on the right side panel. You can enable Fixed Background to create a parallax effect for when users scroll down the page.

Below that, there’re color overlay options. By default, it adds your theme’s color as overlay color with 50% transparency, but you can change the overlay color and also change the opacity by moving the point.

Lastly, you can add CSS code and add more styles to your cover image by clicking the Advanced option.

That’s it!

You can repeat this step to add multiple cover images in a single article if needed.

How to Add a Featured Image in WordPress?

The process of adding a featured image is the same as it was before. If you’ve had a WordPress blog for a while, then you already know how a featured image is added.

To add a featured image, you’ll need to open a post edit screen firs and then navigate to the Featured Image meta box on the right-hand side of the screen.

You will need to click the Set featured image option.

Next, you can upload a new image by either using the drag and drop uploader or selecting an image one from your existing media library.

After that you can add title and alt text for your featured image, and then click the Select option.

You have successfully added a featured image to your article.

If you want more detailed instructions, then you can read our beginner’s guide to adding featured images in WordPress.

Once you’ve added your featured image, you can preview your post and see how it looks.

If you’re using the new default theme Twenty Nineteen or other modern themes, then you may see a color overlay on your featured images as well.

You can remove it or change the color by going to the WordPress customizer.

Simply click on the Appearance » Customize button in your WordPress menu.

Once on the Customize panel, you need to click the Colors option on the left.

On this tab, you will see your theme’s primary color option and the option to enable or disable the image filter.

You can change your theme’s primary color by selecting the Custom option and choosing a color.

If you want to disable the color filter on your featured images, then you can simply remove the check on “Apply a filter to featured images using the primary color” option.

Please note that featured images are managed by WordPress themes, so you may not find this option in your theme if it doesn’t support image filters.

Conclusion – Cover Image vs. Featured Image in WordPress

Now that you know how to add a cover image and a featured image, let’s take a look at some best practices.

Featured images have been popularly used by WordPress blogs, online magazines, news, and entertainment websites as post thumbnails or main article images.

Well-designed featured images help attract more users to open an article. They’re great for making your website look attractive and visually interactive.

Cover images are actually parts of your article. A user sees your cover image after they open your article to read. Thus, they make your articles more engaging and fun to read.

The best use of cover images is to add beautiful transition between sections inside a long article.

Cover images are unique from regular post images because they have the full-width option and you have the ability to add text overlay on them.

By properly adding cover images, you can improve user engagement on your posts.

We hope this article helped you to understand the difference between a cover image and a featured image in new WordPress block editor. You may also like to read our article on how to update your old WordPress posts with Gutenberg block editor.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Cover Image vs. Featured Image in WordPress Block Editor (Beginner’s Guide) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Source: Wordpres

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Squarespace vs WordPress – Which one is better? (Pros and Cons)

Squarespace and WordPress are two popular website builders that allow you to easily create a website without any technical skills or programming knowledge.

Recently, our readers asked us to compare Squarespace vs. WordPress because they were seeing a lot of commercials on TV for both platforms.

In this article, we will compare Squarespace vs. WordPress with the list of pros and cons for each platform. Our hope is that after reading our comparison, you can pick which one is better for you.

Note: This comparison is between Squarespace vs self-hosted WordPress (not WordPress.com). See the difference between self-hosted WordPress vs WordPress.com.

Since we want to create the most detailed WordPress vs Squarespace comparison, we have broken down the article into multiple sections. We will look at each section and see which platform offers the most benefit to a beginner level user.

• Ease of use
• Costs
• Design and templates
• Extensions and integrations
• E-commerce
• Data portability
• Languages and internationalization

Ready? Let’s get started.

Ease of Use and The Learning Curve

Most business owners and beginner-level users are not familiar with HTML, CSS, and other code related things. They want a platform that helps them easily create a website without hiring a developer.

Let’s see how both WordPress and Squarespace stack up in this category.

WordPress

WordPress is the top choice among users who want to start a blog or small business owners building a DIY website. Over 32% of all websites are powered by WordPress.

While WordPress is fairly intuitive and easy to use, there is definitely a slight learning curve.

Beginners will need to familiarize themselves with WordPress terminology and concepts such as difference between posts vs pages, categories vs tags, understanding themes and plugins.

The default WordPress content editor is fairly easy to use. It comes with custom blocks to add content elements to your pages, so you can build beautiful layouts with media-rich content.

Despite the slight learning curve, in our experience, most users quickly adapt to WordPress.

Squarespace

Unlike WordPress, Squarespace does not come with a lot of choices. This lack of choice makes it very simple and easy to use. Even the absolute beginners can quickly write content and publish it.

Squarespace also uses a block editor similar to WordPress. Adding images, videos, and audio files is simpler than WordPress. There are plenty of content blocks, and layout control choices in the block editor.

Squarespace lets you customize your templates and pages using a visual editor. However, you are limited to the options available in the customizer. It is a controlled environment, which means your options are limited.

Conclusion

Squarespace fares a little better than WordPress out of the box in terms of ease of use for absolute beginners. However it’s limited features might not be ideal for all business owners.

On the other hand, WordPress offers beginners a lot of choices right from the beginning which might be confusing at first, but it is a lot more flexible in the long run.

There are several WordPress page builder plugins that you can use to create completely custom websites with drag and drop (without hiring a developer).

The Costs

Knowing how much each platform cost is important in making a business decision. Let’s look at how much Squarespace cost vs. how much WordPress cost.

WordPress

WordPress itself is free. You are free to download, use, and build upon WordPress. It is an open source software with a GPL license which gives you all the freedom and control.

In order to build your website with WordPress, you will need to registar a domain and signup for a web hosting account.

Depending on your needs, you can choose a shared hosting plan, VPS hosting, or even managed WordPress hosting. Shared hosting plans work for most small personal and business websites.

See our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting.

The cost of web hosting and domain name vary depending on which hosting provider you go with. You are in charge of how much resources you need for your website, and how much you will pay for it.

With over 6800+ free templates and 54,000+ free plugins, you can run your website for as low as $2.75 per month (which includes your domain name and hosting – we recommend Bluehost or SiteGround).

One of the reasons for WordPress’ popularity is that the overall cost of building your website with WordPress is very low.

Apart from that, you can change your hosting plan as your site grows. This means you will only pay for the resources you actually use, so it’s easier to control the cost of your website.

We have a detailed article on the cost of building a WordPress website and how to keep it under budget.

Squarespace

The personal plan for Squarespace starts from $12 per month (billed annually) or $16 month to month. That’s a little more than a shared hosting plan for WordPress.

However, unlike a shared WordPress hosting plan, this personal plan comes with very limited features. You can only add only two contributors to your site, and you cannot sell products.

Whereas you can start an online store with WordPress for less than that.

Squarespace business plan starts from $18 per month (billed annually) or $26 month to month. It includes eCommerce support, but they charge a 3% transaction fees. The business plan comes with unlimited contributors, pages, and additional advanced features.

They also have separate plans for online stores starting from $26 per month with no additional transaction fee.

Conclusion

WordPress beats Squarespace with flexible pricing plans available from a variety of web hosting services from around the world.

The cost depends on how much resources you use, and you get access to all WordPress features right out of the box.

Design and Templates

Both WordPress and Squarespace come with ready-made templates and design tools to make it easy for you to create a custom website.

Let’s see which one offers you more choices and tools to create well-designed websites.

WordPress

WordPress offers access to thousands of free and paid website templates. These templates are highly customizable, allowing you to use your own website logo, colors, upload your own images, and more.

Many WordPress themes come with multiple layout choices, drag and drop page builders, sliders, photo galleries, and tons of other features.

No matter what kind of website you are building, you will find hundreds of professionally designed templates for the job.

Many beginners find this abundance of choices a bit overwhelming. Here are some of our expert-picks of the best WordPress themes for different kind of websites.

• Best free WordPress blog themes
• Best WordPress themes for business websites
• Best WordPress magazine themes
• Best simple WordPress themes

For more on this topic, see our article on how to choose the best WordPress theme for your website.

Alternatively, you can also start with the Divi Theme which is a master theme with a lot of custom skins and complete drag & drop control.

Squarespace

Squarespace offers ready-made website templates neatly organized into different categories. There are themes for all popular website categories, with professional designs that look good on all devices.

However, this is a big area where Squarespace seriously falls behind. The number of pre-made templates are very limited, and your design options are also limited to the set of features available in the Squarespace customizer.

Themes come with a limited number of layout choices with each template. You can still do basic colors, fonts, website logo, and other things, but these templates are not as customizable as WordPress themes.

Conclusion

WordPress comes out as a clear winner in terms of design choices, customization options, and flexibility. Squarespace offers great looking templates, but they are limited in numbers and are not very flexible.

Extensions and Integrations

All website builders come with a collection of built-in features. As your website grows, you would want to add more features and connect your site to work with third-party tools and services.

Let’s see how WordPress and Squarespace perform in this regard.

WordPress

The real power of WordPress comes from its massive ecosystem of plugins. These plugins are like apps for your WordPress site that you can install to add new features or change the default behavior of your site.

There are currently more than 54,000+ free WordPress plugins listed in WordPress.org plugin directory alone. There are also thousands of premium WordPress plugins available from third-party websites.

If you can think of a feature, there is a good chance that you’ll easily find a WordPress plugin that does it.

WordPress plugins are so robust that many of them are full-fledged platforms with their own add-on plugins and a thriving community built around them.

We have a list of the essential WordPress plugins that every website should have.

Then you have specialized plugins to create ecommerce websites, build membership community, sell online courses, and more.

To learn more see our article on how to choose the best WordPress plugin.

Because WordPress is the most popular website builder, most third-party services and tools have their own WordPress plugins which integrate their services to a WordPress website.

All top email marketing services, SEO tools, live chat software, and lead generation tools offer seamless integration with WordPress.

Squarespace

Squarespace comes nowhere close to WordPress when it comes to extensibility and integrations.

It is possible to add third-party integrations and customizations but unlike WordPress, Squarespace doesn’t have powerful APIs that developers can build upon.

They do provide some official third-party integrations, but even those are limited and not all popular services are supported.

For eCommerce, you can use their built-in platform, but you cannot extend it in any way.

Squarespace lacks the functionality to allow custom websites that you might need for your online business idea.

Conclusion

WordPress is the clear winner here with an incredible ecosystem of thousands of plugins and integrations at your fingertips. Squarespace, on the other hand, has very few integrations and many of them are very limited.

E-commerce

Are you building an online store? Let’s compare the eCommerce functionality of WordPress vs. Squarespace.

WordPress

WordPress allows you to integrate and use any payment processor or platform you want.

There are many WordPress plugins that allow you to easily accept online payments using Stripe, PayPal, Google Checkout, 2Checkout, Payoneer, Skrill, and even Bitcoin.

WordPress has plenty of eCommerce plugins that can turn your website into an online store within minutes. World’s most popular eCommerce platform, WooCommerce, is a WordPress plugin.

WooCommerce comes with its own ecosystem with its own WooCommerce add-ons and thousands of WooComemrce ready themes.

There is no limit on how many products you add to your website, how you display them, or how you sell them. You can run your own affiliate program and use all the tricks to grow your sales without any restrictions.

Squarespace

E-commerce is limited on Squarespace. You can only use Stripe and PayPal for payment processing, which are only available in select few countries.

There is no other payment system available which restricts your ability to accept payments from a larger global audience. For a growing business, starting with such limitations is not a great idea.

Apart from that, you can only sell products in Business or Commerce plans.

Let’s say you want to sell only one product, you will still have to pay for the Business plan, and the yearly costs of hosting a site with just one product to sell will be way higher than a shared hosting plan or VPS for WordPress.

As for third-party services, there are very few external services that you can integrate with your Squarespace website. This affects how you promote your website and the things you can do to make more sales and grow your business.

Conclusion

WordPress is way ahead of Squarespace when it comes to running an eCommerce website. The limitations of Squarespace are not so good for the growth of an online business.

The neat part about WordPress is that you can also use it alongside with Shopify. See our comparison of Shopify vs WooCommerce.

Data Portability

When signing a business agreement, you always have safety clauses. Such as if you’re not happy, then you can leave without any hassle.

This concept extends to online businesses as well, and it is called data portability. If you’re not happy with the platform, then you should be able to take all your work and move it somewhere else.

Let’s look at how WordPress and Squarespace compare in data portability and the freedom to switch.

WordPress

WordPress comes with built-in tools to easily export all your data. Not just your content and images, but you can also backup your themes, plugins, and the entire database. See our list of the best WordPress backup solutions.

You can then easily move this content to any other Content Management System you want. You can store your content anywhere else and change web hosts at any time you want.

Squarespace

Just like everything else, the export feature on Squarespace is also very limited. You can only export certain parts of your content in a XML file. This includes your pages, galleries, and one blog page with all its posts.

Your product pages, album pages, text, audio, and video blocks will not be exported.

Conclusion

The content you create on your site is yours, and you should have the freedom and tools so that you can move it elsewhere. WordPress again beats Squarespace with easy to manage tools to export your entire site.

Languages and Internationalization

We live in a global world and many businesses cater to a multilingual audience in different geographical locations. Let’s see how Squarespace and WordPress handle languages, multi-lingual content, and geographical locations.

WordPress

WordPress is fully translated into dozens of languages. Users on a WordPress site can choose their own language from their profile settings.

Most WordPress themes are translation ready and all popular WordPress plugins are also translated into many languages.

Basically, you can build a WordPress website in any language you want. You can even translate WordPress yourself if your language is not yet available.

WordPress does not come with multi-lingual functionality out of the box. However, there are excellent plugins to create multilingual websites that are SEO friendly and incredibly feature rich.

Squarespace

Squarespace platform is fully translated into six languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese). You can change your site language and choose different timezone / country.

You can only use currencies supported by Stripe or PayPal for your store products.

You can create multilingual pages by basically duplicating your pages. You will have to manually create a site structure or create different sites for each language (You will be billed for each site separately).

Conclusion

WordPress is way ahead in terms of languages and localization options. Squarespace again comes out as very limited and totally inadequate to create multilingual websites.

Summarizing Squarespace vs WordPress Comparison

WordPress is a far superior platform than Squarespace when it comes to building a website. Here is a quick breakdown of pros and cons of both platforms.

Pros of using Squarespace

• Easier to use for small websites
• Polished user experience
• Hassle free website setup

Cons of using Squarespace

• Costs higher than shared hosting website
• Limited design choices
• Limited set of features
• Limitations put you at disadvantage in growing your business

Pros of using WordPress

• Easy to use with a slight learning curve
• Incredibly flexible to create anykind of website
• Massive collection of themes and plugins
• Truly powerful eCommerce platform
• Can be started at a very low cost

Cons of using WordPress

• You’ll have to install updates and make backups
• You’ll have to manually scale resources by upgrading your hosting as your business grows
• You’ll be responsible for managing your website security

Weighing in the pros and cons, we can confidently say that WordPress is a better platform to start a website.

The freedom to grow your website as you see fit, is important for all businesses. You should not trade that for any cost. WordPress provides you with this freedom at an much lower cost than all other platforms.

We hope this article offered you a side by side comparison of WordPress vs Squarespace. You may also want to see our complete WordPress review for a detailed overview of the platform.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post Squarespace vs WordPress – Which one is better? (Pros and Cons) appeared first on WPBeginner.

Source: Wordpres

The post Squarespace vs WordPress – Which one is better? (Pros and Cons) appeared first on TuneMaster.ml.