In popular culture, everyone needs a website whether he is doctor, musician, shopkeeper, writer, dancer etc.Then WordPress is the best option to build own website. So first thing, we need to know how to install WordPress.

After install WordPress first thing comes in mind how to change look and styling our site? Then the best idea is change your theme, because a theme modifies the way  site is displayed, without modifying the underlying software we can choose any theme according to our requirement thousands of free and premium theme are available.

we will provide a step by step guidance for beginners. Now, we will discuss 3 methods to Install WordPress Theme.

#1. Search and Install Theme 

If you are looking for a free theme from WordPress theme directory this is very easy way. By default we get stock WordPress theme which is Twenty eleven at the moment. You can always search themes from WordPress free themes directory. Firstly login WordPress dashboard and next to click  Appearance -> themes -> Add New

Next screen, you can select from : Featured, Popular, Latest, Favorite WordPress Themes. You can apply Feature Filter (like Layout, Features, Subjects) or search for themes with specific features.

you will see a single theme or a list of themes, these are based on your search. You can choose your favorite theme. Here we are using latest theme Mercia and you can use any.

Bring your mouse on that theme and you can check Details & Preview. Click install button for installing. After installing Activate theme.

you can download any .zip file for the theme and upload it directly using any of the below given two methods.

#2 Download, Upload and Install Theme 

At the top, you’ll see Upload Theme option, click that button and Browse your computer files and select the .ZIP file for your downloaded extension.

#3 Manually, installed Theme using FTP

Firstly, you must unzip the folders before you upload Theme using FTP. Once you have uploaded the Theme, you would need to go to your admin area(Dashboard) and click  Appearance -> Themes. You can see Theme that you uploaded. Bring your mouse on top of that Theme and click on the activate button.

The post How to Install WordPress Theme – Beginners Guide appeared first on The Code Developer.

After Installed WordPress ,want to expand the functionality of your WordPress website. Yes, of course! you can fill this requirement after install WordPress Plugins on your website, your website looks great.

WordPress Plugins like apps for Your WordPress Site

WordPress Plugins are apps that allow you to add new features and functionality to your WordPress website. These are worked as same way as apps do for your smartphones. WordPress plugins are written in PHP language and it’s easy for users to add features to their website without knowing a single line of code.

Free Plugins and Premium Plugins:

Some essential WordPress Plugins are premium or paid. Thousands of plugins available free from the WordPress plugin directory and many more Plugins are available from third-party websites like Github.
Paid plugins usually offer a full time support developers that work on maintaining the security and compatibility of plugins with the updated version of WordPress as well as themes and plugins.

Essential WordPress Plugins:

In this article we will discuss TOP 15 essential WordPress Plugins which provide different type of customization for building great website using WordPress. You should be consider for your business Websites.

1. Akismet

Akismet basically an anti-spam plugin which checks all comments, filters out the spammy comments. All comments will have a history for users to view that shows which comments were flagged or cleared by Akismet. spam comments in WordPress are the most irritating of all.

additionally, those comments that were marked as spam or unmarked by a moderator will be highlighted in the history.

2. Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps is very useful SEO plugin for WordPress. The Plugin Notifies Ask.com, Google, MSN Live Search and YAHOO about changes via ping to better index your site with a special XML sitemap. This plugin is available in many languages.

When you activate the plugin, it will automatically create an XML sitemap for your site . it helps easy create to indexing. A sitemap enables the search engine bots view the complete structure of your website and retrieve the results more efficiently.

3. Jetpack By WordPress

Jetpack offers a bunch of powerful features for your WordPress site. Enhanced security, improved site performance, content tools, and visitor engagement features are all part of this plugin.

It have some additional features like spam-free Comments, Social Sharing, Related Posts, Post by Email and more. It monitors your site every five minutes in time-out and instantly inform you for any issues found.

Jetpack even offers a mobile theme option that is lightweight and responsive, designed for phones and tablets.

4. WooCommerce

WooCommerce is the plugin that revolutionized ecommerce for WordPress. WooCommerce is a free eCommerce plugin that allows you to sell anything, beautifully. Built to integrate seamlessly with WordPress.

It is the world’s favorite eCommerce solution that gives both store owners and developers complete control. WooCommerce now powers 30% of all online stores — more than any other platform.

5. W3 Total Cache

Speed is one of the most important SEO factors. Faster websites rank higher in Google, this means more visitors for your business website and more conversions.

WordPress caching is one of the best ways to improve website performance. The general idea of caching is storing the website data temporarily in the cache so that it loads faster the next time the user opens the same page.

6. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the most popular conversion rate optimization software. OptinMonster helps you grow your email list and get more subscribers with popup and other types of high converting optin forms.It allows you to convert abandoning website visitors into email subscribers.
If you want to grow your email list, then this is a must have WordPress plugin in 2017. You can choose from 8 different type of optins including: popup forms, floating bars, slide-ins, sidebar forms, after-post forms, in-line forms, mobile-only popup forms, and Canvas.

All of our templates are 100% responsive and mobile friendly.

7. Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is an awesome plugin which guides you all the way to create better content and improve your ranking on search results. And even though a lot of what we know about what SEO is has changed, a lot of things have stayed important — like creating content that is optimized for Google search.

8. All In One Schema.org Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are the best way to beautify the appearance of your page/ post on search engine result pages. The snippets provide the main information about the product/ page briefly i.e. highlight the attractions of the product.

These useful snippets of information for your content can help you stand out from your competition.The plugin supports the following content types: review, event, people, product, recipe, software application, video, and articles.

9. WP-Optimize

WP-Optimize is an effective tool for automatically cleaning your WordPress database so that it runs at maximum efficiency. It automatically removes the unnecessary data from the WordPress without manual queries. It removes all the spammy comments, trash posts, and trackbacks and ping backs etc.

It will keep your database always clean and optimized. This plugin is Mobile friendly, easy-to-use and Translated into several languages.

10. BJ Lazy Load

BJ Lazy Load can help your WordPress site load faster. you can use a plugin like BJ Lazy Load. The plugin replaces all your post images, post thumbnails, gravatar images and content iframes with a placeholder and loads the content as it gets close to entering the browser screen when a visitor scrolls the page.

In addition, it works with text widgets, embedded videos from YouTube, Vimeo etc. It is a great plugin for website performance optimization and SEO.

11. MailChimp for WordPress

MailChimp for WordPress helps you add more subscribers to your MailChimp lists using various methods. This is one of the most popular email marketing services to manage subscribers, send emails and check result.

you can use its premium version for commercial purpose. Sign-up forms which are good looking, user-friendly and mobile optimized. You have complete control over the form fields and can send anything you like to MailChimp.

12. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup.

The plugin integrates into a post or page by the use of short codes, and you can pretty much customize the input forms and drop down menus as to say whatever you like.

13. Wordfence Security

one of the most crucial things to do is to keep your site secure from the hackers. To keep your WordPress site secure, there are many security plugins available in WordPress.

This features Firewall protection, malware scan, blocking, login security, live traffic monitoring and a lot more. It’s no wonder so many people use it. The Wordfence WordPress security plugin provides free enterprise-class WordPress security.

14. Broken Link Checker

Broken Link Checker monitors the links found in your posts, pages, comments, blogroll, and more. The plugin identifies any broken links that no longer work, missing images, or any redirects. the free plugin Broken Link Checker and take a nice nap because it will do the job automatically.

The plugin checks all your posts, comments and other content for broken links and instantly notifies you if any are found.

15. Snapshot

Backing up your site can save you from a lot of future grief. Did your site just go down? Was your site just hacked? No problem – just restore your site from a backup and it’s as good as new. As stated above, these plugins provide the basic features, improve the site SEO, optimize speed, harden security and help to market your content and products in a better way.

But what if your backup was lost, compromised, corrupted or accidentally deleted? Do you have a backup of your backup? Most people don’t, but you don’t have to worry about that with Snapshot Pro.

This plugin can backup your site, but you can also save your backups to multiple locations such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, your computer and more.

If you are already using these plugins, That’s good! but don’t miss write your feedback. Did I miss any Essential WordPress Plugin then you can suggest me.

The post 15 Best WordPress Plugins appeared first on The Code Developer.

After installing WordPress, the first thing every beginner needs to learn how to install WordPress plugins. Plugins are tools which provide additional functionality to your application and offers new additions to your blog that either enhance features that were already available or add otherwise unavailable new features to your site.

3 Different Methods To Install WordPress Plugins:

Once a plugin is installed, you may activate it or deactivate it from the Plugins menu in your WP administration. Technically, WordPress offers three ways to install plugins.

1. Search and Install WordPress Plugin

2. Manually, installed plugins using FTP

3. Download, Upload and Install WordPress Plugin

1: Search and Install WordPress Plugin

Firstly, we need to go Dashboard (Admin Area). Go to the Plugins -> Add New -> Search Plugin
Find the plugin by typing the plugin name or the functionality you are looking for. Firstly, Make sure you check that the plugin is compatible with your current version of WordPress.

After then, Install Plugin and Activate Plugin

You can pick plugin which you want, here we used (Email Subscribers & Newsletters) plugin. You can click on More Details to see more information about any plugin.

A WordPress plugin can be installed on your site, but it will not work unless you activate it. So go ahead and click on the activate plugin link to activate the plugin on your WordPress site.

2: Manually, installed plugins using FTP

In some cases, your hosting provider may have file restrictions that could limit your ability to install a plugin from the Dashboard. You upload the plugin using an FTP software such as Filezila and configure it.

You simply download the plugin from the WordPress plugin library, unzip it and upload it to your WordPress plugin library using your FTP software. Normally, the plugin upload folder is located under wp-content/plugins.

Once you are done uploading the file, you can simply go to the WP dashboard and activate the plugin. This is a very useful method.

3: Download, Upload and Install WordPress Plugin

How to Install WordPress Plugin Downloaded From 3rd Party Sites. If you have downloaded a WordPress plugin from somewhere, you can upload the .zip file and install it directly from the WordPress dashboard. Click on Upload Plugin and browse your drive to find the .zip file.

WordPress only accepts the .zip format for uploading WordPress plugins and themes.

We hope this helped you learn how to install WordPress plugins.
Please feel free to comment below, your suggestion and problems if you face – we are here to solve your problems.

The post How To Install WordPress Plugin – Beginners Guide appeared first on The Code Developer.

If you want to create your own blog using wordpress ,that’s a good idea. First of all, we need a localhost (such as Apache, LiteSpeed, or IIS), PHP 4.3 or greater, and MySQL 4.0 or greater. Because wordpress requires a webserver to run website your syatem.

XAMPP is a simple, lightweight Apache distribution that makes it extremely easy for developers to create a local web server for testing and deployment purposes.

Read Also: How to Install XAMPP on Windows

How to Install WordPress using XAMPP

Here’s a quick 5 minute procedure to Install WordPress Offline. In order to run WordPress offline, you need an Apache server and MySQL database(PhpMyAdmin) installed on your system.

Step 1:  Download WordPress .zip file

First, you need to go to wordpress.org and for download the latest version of WordPress.

Now, download WordPress.

STEP 2: ADD THE WORDPRESS FILES IN THE RIGHT FOLDER

After downloading WordPress, you need to extract the zip file in the right folder, where you installed XAMPP, there you will find a folder by name htdocs, open it and create a new folder myblog.  For example, if you make the folder myblog, you’ll access your site by going to http://localhost/myblog

Open the folder myblog and extract the WordPress .zip file you downloaded from wordpress.org into it:

STEP 3: CREATE A DATABASE FOR WORDPRESS

• Open XAMPP Control Panel
• MySQL – Click Admin for launch PHPMyAdmin

Then click on Databases at the top:

Create database and enter a name for your database and click Create. Your name can be anything – just remember it because you’ll need it for the next step:

STEP 4: RUN THE WORDPRESS INSTALLER

Open your browser window and type http://localhost/myblog

STEP 5: SETUP DATABASE FOR THE WORDPRESS INSTALLER

Before getting started, you need some information on the database like Database name, Database username, Database passwords, Database host, Table prefix.

when you haven’t created a MySQL username and password. In that case, you need to type in “root” for the user and leave the password field blank and click Submit.

WordPress can now communicate with your database, and ready to install.

STEP 6: SETUP THE WEBSITE INFORMATION

In this step, enter a website title, username, password, and email address then submit

Now, you are successfully install WordPress.

Good job, You now have a fully functional WordPress website running on your computer.

The post How to Install WordPress using XAMPP appeared first on The Code Developer.