If you are considering using either of these free solutions for building websites locally, this guide will tell you everything you need know before making a decision. We’ll talk about what Local and XAMPP offer, laying out their features, advantages, and differences. Get ready for a detailed rundown.

Local vs XAMPP: Setup

Local and XAMPP are both powerful tools that share some common ground. Both are free to use, making them accessible to a wide range of developers. And, they both provide environments for local testing and development. 

Despite these similarities, Local and XAMPP differ significantly in their feature sets and approach. So let’s get started with a closer look at how the setup process compares. 

Local

To get started with Local, you’ll need to first visit the Local website and download the version compatible with your operating system.

Run the installer and follow the prompts. The process is intuitive, similar to installing any standard software.

Once installed, open Local. The initial setup involves a few basic configurations, like selecting your preferred language and agreeing to terms and conditions.

XAMPP 

Getting started with XAMPP is a similar process. Go to the XAMPP official website and choose the appropriate version for your operating system.

During the installation, you’ll select components like Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Perl.

After installation, use the XAMPP control panel to start Apache and MySQL services and set up your local server environment.

Local offers an easier, more streamlined setup process, ideal for beginners or those who prefer simplicity. XAMPP, while still accessible, requires a bit more technical involvement and is suited to those who want more control over their server environment.

Local vs XAMPP: Creating Development Sites

Once installation and setup is complete, you can move forward with creating your first development site. Here’s a brief rundown of how that works on both platforms.

Local

In Local, click on the button that says Create a New Site.

Enter the name and specify the local domain and path.

Choose between Preferred or Custom environments. The Preferred setup is quicker, while Custom offers more control.

Local automatically installs WordPress. You’ll just enter admin credentials to access your WordPress dashboard.

XAMPP

The process to set up a new site is completely manual in XAMPP. You start by launching the XAMPP Control Panel to activate Apache and MySQL. 

Then, you manually download WordPress and place it in the htdocs folder of your XAMPP installation. 

You also have to set up a database for the installation just like you would on a remote server. In XAMPP, this happens under http://localhost/phpmyadmin inside your browser.

Finally, to complete the setup, you navigate to localhost/your_site_name and run through the WordPress installation wizard. 

This process gives you full control over every step but requires more technical involvement compared to Local.

Local vs XAMPP: Importing an Existing Site 

Importing an existing site into Local and XAMPP involves distinct processes as well. 

Local

Importing a site into Local is straightforward and you have basically two options for doing so.

Using the Connect Feature

For WP Engine or Flywheel users, Local’s Connect feature lets you easily manage your site. Simply log into your account and upload or download your site directly from Local’s interface.

There’s also a MagicSync tool that helps you synchronize only the modified files instead of the entire site, streamlining updates.

Manual Import

For non-WP Engine or Flywheel users, manually importing a site into Local is simple, too. You’ll need a zip file containing your site’s SQL database file and wp-content folder. Drag and drop this file into Local, or use the Import option, and Local will handle the rest, including setting up the WordPress environment.

For more detailed instructions, check our Local import and export guide.

XAMPP

For XAMPP, the process is more manual and involves several steps.

You’ll need to prepare your WordPress site for migration. This typically involves exporting your WordPress database and compressing your WordPress files (especially the wp-content directory) into a ZIP file.

Once XAMPP is installed, you’ll need to set up a database for your WordPress site using phpMyAdmin and import your SQL database file.

Then, extract your WordPress site’s ZIP file into the htdocs folder of your XAMPP installation. You’ll then need to edit the wp-config.php file to match your database name, user, and password as set in XAMPP.

After moving your files and database, you may need to update the site URL and home URL in the database to reflect the local setup. This can be done either through phpMyAdmin or using a database database search-and-replace tool.

This method requires a more hands-on approach and is suitable for users comfortable with manual server and database management.

Alternatively, you can use a WordPress migration plugin to complete this task. A couple of options include All-in-One WP Migration and Duplicator, which simplify the process by handling the migration of files and databases automatically. They are particularly useful for seamlessly updating URLs and other settings without manual interventions. 

Local vs XAMPP: User Interface and Experience

When comparing the user interfaces and overall user experiences of Local and XAMPP, there are distinct differences worth noting.

Local

Local features an intuitive user interface that is neatly divided into three primary sections: Sites, Blueprints, and Add-ons.

• Sites – Here, you can easily manage your WordPress websites. The interface allows for quick creation, starting, and stopping of sites. You can also view each site’s details, including its URL, SSL status, and PHP version.
• Blueprints – This section allows you to save site configurations, including themes and plugins, which can be reused to create new sites quickly.
• Add-ons – This area provides access to additional features that can be integrated into your Local environment to enhance your development workflow.

Local’s interface goes beyond basic server management, providing a comprehensive tool set for site-specific actions, from easy access to the WordPress admin and database, to utilities for debugging and site performance.

XAMPP

XAMPP offers a more traditional user interface centered around its control panel.

• Control Panel – The main interface in XAMPP is the control panel where you can manage server services like Apache and MySQL. It’s functional and straightforward, mainly focusing on starting and stopping services, and checking server statuses.
• Server settings and configurations – XAMPP’s control panel provides detailed control over server settings and configurations. However, it doesn’t have an integrated interface for site-specific management like Local. Instead, you often have to edit system files manually.

XAMPP’s interface is less about website management and more about managing the server environment itself. It’s more suitable for users with a technical background who prefer direct control over server components.

Local vs XAMPP: Features and Functionality

Next, let’s compare the features Local and XAMPP offer.

Local

Local has the ability to switch between Apache and NGINX server environments with a click, accommodating various PHP versions. This flexibility is beneficial for testing your site under different server settings.

Setting up a new WordPress site is streamlined in Local as well thanks to one-click installation, making the process quick and efficient. This feature is particularly handy for developers looking to rapidly deploy WordPress sites.

Local includes SSL certificates, which allow for secure HTTPS connections for testing purposes. While they don’t secure the site in the same way as a certificate from a trusted authority would for a live site, they do allow you to simulate a secure HTTPS connection.

Another included feature is Live Link, which makes it so you can share your work effortlessly with clients or collaborators using shareable URLs. This feature eliminates the need for setting up staging servers, allowing real-time presentation of your local WordPress sites.

Additional Features of Local

Other notable features include: 

• HTTP/HTTPS tunneling – Enabled by ngrok, this allows your WordPress site to be accessed from any device with an internet connection, aiding in browser compatibility and responsiveness testing.
• Mailcatcher – Integrated into Local, it handles outgoing emails from PHP sendmail, useful for email debugging without overwhelming your inbox.
• Blueprints, clones, and exports – These features let you save your site as a template, clone sites easily, and export or import them with all configurations.
• Dev Mode and new site defaults – You can customize your environment (like PHP and MySQL versions) and use Dev Mode to prevent aggressive caching.
• Database connectivity and MailHog tool – These allow easy connection to your site’s database and the use of MailHog for testing transactional emails, streamlining processes for e-commerce sites.

For more details, check our comprehensive list of Local features.

XAMPP

XAMPP is a versatile option as well. It runs on multiple operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and Solaris, providing flexibility for various user environments.

It includes Apache, MySQL (now MariaDB), PHP, and Perl, making it a comprehensive web server solution. XAMPP also uses phpMyAdmin as a web-based utility for easy administration of MySQL databases.

Other features include: 

• Supports various CMS platforms – This includes WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento. 
• Application prototyping – Suitable for rapid prototyping of web applications in a local setting.
• Security features – Provides options for encrypting MySQL databases and setting passwords, enhancing data protection.

Local vs XAMPP: Site Management

As you might expect, managing sites varies between these solutions as well. 

Local

Local streamlines the site management process, particularly for WordPress users. You can easily navigate to the site’s folder or open a command shell with a single click. Quick access buttons are also available for the WordPress backend and the live site.

In addition, while in the Overview section, you can perform the following tasks: 

• Modify the site domain.
• Trust SSL certificates for browser safety.
• Change web server type and PHP version.
• Enable one-click admin login.
• Turn on Xdebug for PHP debugging.
• Update WordPress directly from Local.

The Database tab provides essential database details and a link to Adminer for management.

And the Tools tab is where you can set up and manage MailHog for email testing and use Live Links for external site access.

Right-clicking on a site offers more functionalities like starting/stopping servers, cloning, exporting sites, and saving as blueprints.

The hamburger menu in the upper left corner leads to settings, software updates, and log access.

XAMPP

XAMPP, being more manual, doesn’t offer too much in terms of site management. It basically consists of the aforementioned control panel where you can manage its different services. The panel also provides direct access to key components like phpMyAdmin for database management and it’s where you can configure and monitor logs and access settings for each service. 

However, that’s about it. Anything else you want to do always happens directly on the websites and their CMSs themselves.

Local vs XAMPP: Support

When it comes to support and community resources, both Local and XAMPP have unique support options.

Local

Local has a strong community and support system around it, making it an attractive choice for those who might need assistance or want to connect with other users. Here’s what you can expect:

• Community support – Local has a dedicated community forum where users can engage in discussions, ask questions, and find answers to frequently asked questions. This active community is a valuable resource for both new and experienced users.
• Documentation – On the Local website, you can find detailed help documents, providing immediate help for common issues and questions.
• Opportunities to get involved – Local also offers opportunities for Local users to give back to the community by writing a tutorial, building an add-on, or even speaking at a WordCamp.

You also get access to all of these support routes from inside the Local user interface.

XAMPP

​​XAMPP, while not having as centralized a support system as Local, does still have easy-to-find help resourced.

There is the Apache Friends forum, supported by users worldwide, with sections in various languages, including English. This forum is a valuable resource for troubleshooting and gaining insights from other users.

Here, the diverse, global user base surrounding XAMPP contributes to a wide range of discussions, covering various aspects of using XAMPP for different development needs.

Local vs XAMPP: Which is Better Overall?

After comparing Local and XAMPP, it becomes clear that each tool has strengths tailored to different user needs. However, if we were to lean towards one, Local is the favorable option for most people, particularly those working with WordPress.

Local excels with its user-friendly interface and simplified workflows, making it a standout choice for both beginners and experienced WordPress developers. Its one-click WordPress installation, comprehensive SSL support, and seamless integration with WP Engine and Flywheel enhance its appeal. And the supportive community and extensive documentation behind it offer valuable resources for troubleshooting and learning.

While XAMPP offers greater flexibility and control for diverse web development projects, its technical nature and manual setup process can be more challenging, especially for those new to web development or specific to WordPress.

That’s why Local presents itself as a more accessible tool, especially for those prioritizing ease of use, efficiency, and a WordPress-centric development environment. 

When it comes to Local vs XAMPP, which do you prefer? Please let us know (and why) in the comments below! 

The post Local vs XAMPP: Which Should You Use for Local Development? appeared first on Torque.

File permissions are a very important part of protecting your website. They keep your site locked down while giving WordPress itself, its plugins, and other scripts the ability to modify what they need to.

But sometimes things can go wrong. Errors may pop up, or file permissions get changed to improper values. In that case, it’s helpful to know how WordPress file permissions work and how to use them.

That’s exactly what we’ll explain today. Below, you’ll learn all you need to know about file permissions, how change them, and best practices to keep your site functioning smoothly.

Understanding File Permission Levels

If you want to learn how to change file permissions in WordPress, you’ll need to understand the basics first. For that, we need to look into Linux permissions. Here’s a quick crash course on that topic.

Types of File Permissions

There are three main types of permissions files can have. You can set these not just for individual files, but entire directories/folders.

• Read (r) – This allows a user to view a file’s contents or the names of files within a directory.
• Write (w) – Write permission enables a user to modify the file’s content. They might also create, delete, or rename files within a directory.
• Execute (x) – Here, users may execute programs and scripts, or access a directory’s files and subdirectories.

Permission Groups

However, who exactly can have these permissions? In Linux, there are three groups of people who can access a file/directory.

• User (u) – Refers to the owner (usually the creator) of the file/directory.
• Group (g) – Several users that share common permission levels. Any user can be in one or more groups.
• Others, World, or Public (o) – Any users who are not the owner of the file and are not in a defined group.

For each of these, you can set different levels of permission. In WordPress, these are called user roles. For example, you wouldn’t want random website subscriber to have the same permissions as the administrator. That would be a recipe for disaster.

Symbolic and Numeric Notation

When you deal with file permissions, they are represented either in symbolic or numeric notation.

Symbolic notation uses the letters above to denote read (r), write (w), and execute (x) permission, or a dash for none. They are grouped in three sets of three with the first three letters referring to User (u) permissions, the next three to Group (g) permissions, and the final three to Others permissions (o).

Take this example: rwxr-xr--

Here, the User has full permissions (rwx), the Group has read and execute permission (r-x), and the Others group has only read permission (r–).

With numeric notation, each permission is instead assigned a value:

• Read (r) = 4
• Write (w) = 2
• Execute (x) = 1

These are added together to form a three-digit number representing permissions for User, Group, and Others.

Using the same example above, the User’s permission is 7 (r + w + x), the Group’s 5 (r + x), and Others’ 4 (r). That means, the same permission level’s numeric notation is 754.

File Permissions in WordPress

In the context of WordPress and websites in general, file permissions use the same principles as above. But there are also a few differences you’ll want to be aware of.

• File ownership – In a WordPress environment, files and directories are often owned by the web server process (www-data for Apache and nginx for NGINX) rather than individual users.
• Plugin and theme considerations – WordPress plugins may require read and write access to particular files and directories to function properly. Plugins usually use the Filesystem API to interface securely with your server.
• Some groups are already built in – As mentioned, WordPress uses built-in roles like Administrator, Editor, and Contributor. Contributors only have the ability to create and edit their own articles, not others. Functionally, this means they have read permission on all post/page files, and read/write permission on post/page files they create.
• Look out for shared hosting environments – Shared hosting can present issues with file permissions. Certain files may be locked down to prevent other users on your multi-website server from accessing sensitive data. You may find some files set to read-only even for administrators, requiring root access to edit.

The Dangers of Incorrect File Permissions

Now comes the question, why is this even important? Why should you care about this very technical-sounding topic?

The reason is that file permissions form the foundation of website security. Being too loose with them can seriously endanger your site in the following ways:

• Hacking and malware – Improper permissions can let hackers slip through and do basically whatever they want. That includes installing malware, viewing private files, or deleting your site.
• Site takeover – If someone manages to break into your website thanks to lax permissions, they could easily take ownership of your account and lock you out of your own website.
• Data leakage – Improper permissions could result in visitors gaining access to private files, including images, unfinished/test/draft pages, and confidential data.
• Improper file access – Certain permissions may allow users to change existing files on your website, or upload and execute damaging files like malware scripts.

But it’s not just about too much access, it can also be too little. Making your permissions too restrictive will inevitably break your site by preventing WordPress from functioning properly. It’s a fine line between too much and not enough with file permissions.

WordPress File Permission Best Practices

Before you start combing through your website files looking for anything out of place, it’s important to know what a good practices for file permissions look like WordPress. So, let’s go over that now.

Don’t Change Permissions Unless Necessary

The first thing that’s important to keep in mind is that, in most cases, you won’t need to change file permissions. If you are using a good hosting provider and install WordPress properly, this part of your site should be set up in the correct way automatically.

So, unless you’re running into a specific WordPress error, don’t touch your file permissions, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. Messing with settings you don’t understand can cause more harm than good.

Some web hosts, especially shared hosts, may make some permissions more restrictive due to the nature of the hosting. If you’re having a problem with insufficient permissions, it may be best to contact your host and ask for help.

Recommended Permission Levels

If you do run into a problem and you’re not sure what permission settings your files and directories should be on, there is information for that in the official WordPress documentation.

Below is a quick rundown of generally recommended permissions for various files and folders. However, remember that this varies depending on your setup.

• Directories – 755 (rwer-er-e). For your server to work properly, most directories need execute permissions.
• Files + .htaccess – 644 (rw-r–r–). This allows users to see public files on your website without being able to edit them. Most files should only be writable by your user account.
• wp-config.php – Varies; 400 (r——–), 440 (r–r—–), 600 (rw——-), or 640 (rw-r—–) may be appropriate depending on site setup and security needs. The most important step is to prevent random visitors from accessing this important file.

Don’t Be Too Restrictive

Finding the right balance with file permissions can be stressful, but you can’t just set them all to “000”. While your site would be very secure, at the same time, no one would be able to use it.

Functions on your site, from your web server to plugins to WordPress itself, naturally need some access to specific files and directories to continue functioning properly. Even visitors, who should not be given write or execute access to a majority of files, need to at least be able to “read” the public-facing parts of your site.

It can be tempting to clamp down on file permissions, but you can do some serious damage. When plugins and functions stop working, a plethora of warnings will appear on your dashboard. You could even cause your website to encounter the dreaded White Screen of Death if you’ve severed WordPress’ access to core files.

Use the Principle of Least Privilege

The principle of least privilege states that users (including your web server and WordPress itself) should be given just as much access as what’s necessary to do their jobs.

Granting “root” ownership means giving full control and access to the entire system, which is usually excessive. If a hacker gains access to a WordPress site with root privileges, they could potentially wreak havoc on the entire server.

Instead, the owner of most files should usually be your web server user, usually nginx (NGINX) or www-data (Apache), both of which only have the permissions necessary to function properly. This limits the damage bad actors can cause.

There are some situations where root ownership is necessary, so you shouldn’t go changing permissions if you don’t understand what you’re doing. At the same time, seeing it can be a cause for concern – especially if you notice that a file or directory owner has suddenly changed.

In any other situation where you may be creating files or assigning owners, follow the principle of least privilege. Don’t hand out excessive read, write, or execute permissions. Most files you create on your server will not need root ownership.

Back Up Your Website

Before you touch any sensitive settings on your website, it’s best practice to back up both your website and database files.

Things can easily go wrong when modifying file permissions, so this provides a safety net. If you accidentally break something on your website, you can just roll back your server.

Never Use 777

Setting any file or directory permissions to 777 is basically giving everyone in the world free reign over your website.

This grants any random visitor the ability to view files, edit and delete them, upload potentially malicious programs, and execute scripts. Obviously, this is a terrible idea.

While it may seem benign to give full permissions to just one file, a savvy hacker can easily use this to execute a malicious script or escalate their privileges and worm their way deeper into your server. So just don’t do it.

How to Change WordPress File Permissions

Now that we’ve covered the best practices for file permissions, let’s learn how to change these in various server setups.

cPanel or Dashboard

Most web hosts offer access to cPanel or some custom dashboard. You’ll want to check your hosting provider’s documentation, but within cPanel you can generally go to the File Manager, then right click any folder or file and click Change Permissions.

FTP/SFTP

You can also change permissions using FTP/SFTP access. Start by installing an FTP client like FileZilla and log in to your server. Right click any file or folder and select File permissions…

Then, enter the numeric value or just tick the boxes you want to set.

SSH/Command Line

For this step, use a command line access tool. This is usually provided by your web host. You’ll want to use the cd command to navigate to the directory of whatever file or subdirectory you wish to change. For example:

cd public_html/example_folder

You can then modify the permissions of a file or subdirectory in this folder using the chmod command. 

chmod 755 example.html

You can also recursively set permissions for an entire directory at once, but be careful when doing this.

chmod -R 755 example_subfolder

Use a Plugin

Some security plugins will allow you to easily switch file permissions from the dashboard. One example is All-In-One Security (AIOS). With this, you can change file permissions, identify insecure file permissions, and fix issues in one click. 

Common File Permission Errors in WordPress

Finally, let’s take a look at a few common file permission errors in WordPress and what causes them.

• 403 Forbidden (You don’t have permission to access on this server) – You’ll see this error if you try to access a file when you lack read permission. For example, visitors will encounter this if they try to access unpublished articles or pages. You may want to check your permissions if you’re seeing this as the administrator.

• Required file permissions missing – Certain plugins may throw up this error. This may be caused if your website files are not owned by nginx or www-data.
• You need to make this file writable before you can save your changes – You’ll see this in the WordPress editor if you lack write access to certain files.
• Permission denied. Error code: 3 – This error appears when trying to modify or upload files to your website. The causes vary, including website files being owned by root instead of nginx or www-data, needing root access, or simply lacking read/write permissions.
• Installation failed: Could not create directory – If you see this when installing or updating themes and plugins, it means that WordPress does not have write permission to the directory it’s trying to use.

Proceed With Caution When Changing WordPress File Permissions

File permissions are a very important part of maintaining website security, so you shouldn’t change them lightly. One small tweak could break your website, or let hackers more easily slip through.

But it’s good to know how these permissions work, especially if errors start cropping up. Now you know what to do – and especially what not to do – if ever you need to change your WordPress file permissions.

Did you manage to fix a WordPress file permission error? Share your experience in the comments and help others with the same problem!

The post WordPress File Permissions: Everything You Need to Know  appeared first on Torque.

Now Google has updated E-A-T again, adding an extra letter: E-E-A-T, or Double E-A-T. The new E stands for “Experience”, as in personal, hands-on experience.

While this is likely a change for the better, an algorithm update is always confusing. How can you maintain your SEO status? How do you avoid being penalized under the new rules? What does this change about the way you create content? Knowing what adjustments you need to make can save you a lot of headaches.

For that reason, if you’re worried about your SEO, this guide will walk you through the updates and how to master E-E-A-T.

The Evolution to E-E-A-T

E-A-T was first introduced to Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines back in 2014. Quality raters were instructed to rate sites on their “Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness”.

As Google released more updates and refined their search algorithm over time, E-A-T became more and more important impactful to SEO. Notably, in 2018, Google released a major algorithm update which made E-A-T more important than ever.

As a result, sites that were credible, had experienced authors, and produced quality content received preferential treatment in the SERPs.

But the Internet has faced a big change. Unless you live under a rock, you probably know all about ChatGPT and generative AI. While AI has a lot of use as an assistant and productivity tool, it’s also led to a web inundated with poor-quality, AI-generated books and articles.

Noticing this, Google’s algorithm update has added the second E to E-E-A-T: “Experience”. This requires you to show first-hand, personal experience in your writing.

Many people speculate that this is a direct response to AI-generated content. After all, AI is not currently capable of having subjective experiences.

Yet, in the end, this new update will impact more than just AI-generated content. Even if you don’t use AI at all, it can still affect your website. How can you write high-quality content that passes the E-E-A-T test?

How to Master the First “E” in E-E-A-T

Assuming you don’t rely solely on ChatGPT to write your blog, your work is already human-created. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to worry about the new update.

The new E in E-E-A-T is all about first-hand experience. Have you ever written a sponsored post about a product you didn’t try? A roundup of popular software or services you never actually used? Given instructions or advice off the top of your head without double-checking?

These can all lead to bad user experiences – instructions that don’t work, accidental misinformation, or recommendations for products that aren’t actually any good.

Google now prioritizes first-hand experiences above all else. That primarily means no AI-generated opinions, but it has a lot of other implications.

Don’t Use Purely AI-Generated Content

If you’re looking to buy a product, download an app or program, or subscribe to a service, would you rather read an AI-generated review or one written by an actual person who had tried the product?

You probably chose the latter. So why would you put your readers through that?

Even for articles that don’t rely on first-hand experience, it’s a simple fact that AI-generated writing is wordy and lacks direction – subpar compared to the work of skilled human authors.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with using AI as an assistant, but no one wants to read something copy-pasted out of ChatGPT without even a cursory editing pass.

Since AI can’t have the “life experiences” Google now prioritizes, lazy use of AI should now be pushed out of the SERPs.

Actually Try the Product

This requirement is pretty simple, but one bloggers are sometimes guilty of not following.

As mentioned, the new “E” is all about experience, so don’t just write about something – actually use it and demonstrate your “first-hand, life experience”.

So what does this look like in practice?

• When you recommend a physical product, software, or service, actually use it before you write about it.
• Instead of copying quotes from another source, interview someone yourself.
• Actually visit a place you mention, bake and show off a recipe from a cookbook you recommend, use a featured website builder and show the final product, etc.

There are too many articles from people recommending products without even trying them, but the E-E-A-T update will at least attempt to stifle that.

Give Your Honest Opinion

Honesty is important. No product is perfect, and you’ll inevitably have some criticisms about anything you try – or you’d better have a big list of reasons about why it’s actually the best thing ever.

Even sponsored products usually don’t require you to write a glowing review without any criticism. They just want you to try the product and give some compelling reasons why you recommend it.

There’s a reason why informed consumers often place more trust in four-star reviews. A thoughtful four-star review from someone who’s clearly actually tried the product can mean a lot more than a ton of one-sentence five-star reviews that could very well be from bots.

People tune out meaningless praise, and it could indicate to Google that your review isn’t really genuine. If all you have is a bland list of features that looks like it was copied off the company’s website, how can anyone be sure that you actually did your due diligence?

Be honest about your opinion and don’t be afraid to include your real thoughts, including criticism.

Provide Proof

No matter how compelling your praise or criticism, there’s only one way to really prove you actually tried something you’re recommending — pics or it didn’t happen!

So snap photos of yourself using the product, record videos or GIFs, or in the case of online services and downloadable apps, take plenty of screenshots. This will instantly indicate to search quality raters that you have the “Experience” they’re looking for.

Conversely, avoid solely using images and screenshots scraped from the product or service’s website.

Cite Your Sources

If there’s one thing ChatGPT is bad at, it’s citing sources. Sometimes it will even make up academic papers that don’t exist.

If you truly wrote a thoughtfully-researched article yourself, you should be able to link to the sources and references you used while working on it.

Put Yourself Out There

This is already a big part of E-A-T itself, but it will also help in proving that there’s a person, not a bot, behind your articles.

Create a detailed “About” page for your website. Why did does your site exist? What’s it about? Make sure all your writers have author bios, too. Talk a little bit about yourself, any qualifications, and what got you into writing or blogging.

Be transparent about who you are and what your website is about. Proving a real person is running your website and writing your articles is best practice for excelling at E-E-A-T. It’s also great to build trust online.

The 4 Levels of E-E-A-T

To get good at E-E-A-T, it helps to be familiar with its different levels. Because it’s not a criteria your site either succeeds at or doesn’t – it’s an entire spectrum. This is defined fully in Google’s Search Quality Guidelines.

Lowest E-E-A-T

Lowest E-E-A-T is reserved for websites that are illegal, deceptive, misleading, or otherwise provide no value to anyone except scammers. If you’re reading this, let’s hope you don’t run such a website!

These are the qualities of lowest E-E-A-T websites.

• Provides untrustworthy and/or inaccurate information. May provide actively deceptive and/or harmful information.
• Covers medically or financially dangerous YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics while lacking necessary experience or expertise.
• Fraudulent, criminal, and/or scammy behavior (like an e-commerce website that doesn’t fulfill orders).
• Bad reputation in the community.

Lacking E-E-A-T

Low quality pages are defined as lacking in adequate E-E-A-T. Even bloggers with genuine intentions could end up with this designation if they fail to meet Google’s guidelines.

The worst part: No matter how high quality your content or good your reputation, if a page fails the E-E-A-T check, it will be branded “Low Quality” and take an SEO hit.

These are the qualities of websites lacking E-E-A-T.

• Fails to demonstrate first-hand experience (reviews a product or service without having used it).
• Lacks necessary expertise to cover a chosen topic, especially moderately serious/dangerous YMYL topics.
• Does not demonstrate authority (like a website providing advice on a topic outside of its scope).
• Untrustworthy practices like an e-commerce store without an about or contact page.

High Level of E-E-A-T

Websites that satisfy Google’s requirements will be granted “High” page quality.

Achieving this is pretty simple; follow the E-E-A-T guidelines already put down. Demonstrate first-hand experience, expertise where necessary, authority on your topic, and trustworthiness via honest business practices.

Very High Level of E-E-A-T

Demonstrating E-E-A-T may net you a “High” rating, but if you want to distinguish yourself, you need to go above and beyond.

These are the qualities of a website that more than satisfies E-E-A-T requirements.

• Provides an authoritative, “go-to” source on a particular topic.
• Demonstrates a high level of expertise and relevant experience.
• Unique, original, high-quality content with clear effort put into it.
• Fully satisfies users’ search intent.
• Fully qualified to advise on covered YMYL topics.

Other SEO Considerations

“Experience” itself is fairly straightforward: Just write content that reflects first-hand, human experiences. But several other factors are at play here that can complicate things.

To learn more about how Google ranks pages based on E-E-A-T and other factors, check out their Search Quality Rater Guidelines.

E-A-T: Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness

The original E-A-T is still in effect, and it’s important to demonstrate expertise in your field. But how can you do that effectively? Here’s the lowdown:

• Create high-quality content – Bring value and a unique perspective to your readers. Avoid lazy tactics like, again, copying out of ChatGPT.
• Demonstrate expertise – What makes you qualified to write about this topic? Do you have years of experience? Licensure, certification, or relevant education? Awards? A successful business? Show it off on your author bio and about pages.
• Consult experts – If you’re not an expert yourself, having one checking over your content or interviewing them as part of your article can still effectively demonstrate expertise.
• Build your reputation – Having authority in the industry means everyone trusts you and your blog as a great source of information. That means plenty of mentions, inbound links, and collaborations.
• Be transparent – People want to know who you are and where your information is coming from. Be honest about your intentions.

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) Content

YMYL content is about topics that could impact your life, health, or money. The most notable examples are medical and financial issues, especially those that are life-threatening or where misinformation is particularly damaging.

Google demands that publishers of YMYL content adhere strictly to E-E-A-T standards. That means medical information should be written and/or vetted by medically licensed individuals, and qualified financial advisors are handling sensitive topics like taxes and investments.

Some medical or financial YMYL topics allow for perspectives gained from real-life experience. For example, tips on saving money while on a low income or suggestions on staying comfortable while coping with chronic pain are appropriate if you’ve lived through these situations.

Google added some extra guidance on Experience vs. Expertise in their Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.

The Needs Met Rating

One of the primary ways Google’s search quality evaluators rank pages is through determining if the search result does what they wanted – the “Needs Met” rating.

Does it answer the question they asked? Was the content high-quality and helpful? Does it satisfy their search intent?

Maximizing SEO means understanding the users’ intent behind the keywords or queries you’re optimizing for, and meeting that intent as much as possible. Your keyword optimization might earn you clicks, but if you’re not satisfying search intent, you’re failing the Needs Met rating.

What Makes a Low Quality Page

Page Quality is another important ranking separate from Needs Met or E-E-A-T. It’s influenced by the presence of YMYL content, the purpose of the page, the type of website, and, of course, the quality of its content.

So what makes a page low or lowest quality by Google’s standards?

• Lack of E-E-A-T, especially for YMYL topics.
• Does not satisfy search intent.
• Factually inaccurate and misleading content (like titles that don’t reflect article content).
• Disruptive ads or spammy website design.
• Plagiarized or copied content.
• Deceptive and untrustworthy content (including not disclosing purely AI-written works).
• Harmful, hateful, and/or dangerous content.
• Illegal content, scams, and spam.

E-E-A-T: First-Hand Experience Is More Valuable Than Ever

If you’re worried about the new E-E-A-T guidelines, don’t be. As long as your articles aren’t low-quality and purely AI-generated AI but incorporate your first-hand experiences and opinions, your rankings will probably be fine.

Just follow the four tenets of E-E-A-T – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness – to meet Google’s quality guidelines and succeed at SEO.

What do you think of the E-E-A-T Google Search update? What steps will you be taking to keep your site in line with the latest best practices? Share what you think in the comments!

The post Google’s E-E-A-T Guidelines: How to Show Experience in Content appeared first on Torque.

Continuing to make a living – especially if you’re a freelancer without a steady flow of cash – means knowing where to hone your skills and look for work. Keeping on top of upcoming WordPress trends can help with that.

That’s why we’ve taken a close look at where WordPress is headed and identified these ten business trends and opportunities. Keep these in mind as you pursue your WordPress career and perhaps you’ll win out over your competitors.

The State of WordPress

WordPress continues to dominate the web as the software of choice for 43.2% of all websites. The user-friendly interface, extensive customization, open source philosophy, and lively community likely all contribute to that.

Check out these other stats for an idea of how well WordPress is doing these days:

• The official plugin repository has almost 60k plugins.
• The theme repository contains close to 12k themes.
• The most popular WordPress plugin is Elementor, with over 400 million lifetime installs and 5+ million active installations.
• In 2023, Wordfence blocked 100 billion credential stuffing attacks alone.
• Just WordPress.com users produce 70 million new posts and 77 million comments each month. Also, 409 million people view more than 20 billion pages in that same timeframe.

It’s clear that WordPress’ popularity isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Yet, the platform and the environment it exists in continue to change. What new opportunities do these developments offer for savvy entrepreneurs to earn money? Let’s take a look at that now.

1. Incorporating Generative AI

Generative AI has swept the Internet. Seemingly overnight, businesses of all kinds now use AI-generated artwork, writing, and marketing as a major part of their strategy. And there’s no sign of this changing any time soon, or ever.

In an interview between Pootlepress creator Jamie Marsland and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, the latter expressed optimism for the future of AI and various ideas on how it might become a part of WordPress. This was also a popular topic at WordCamp Europe 2023.

With high-profile figures putting their stake into AI, it’s definitely something to look into ASAP.

AI has grown increasingly common in WordPress plugins and services already. Some well-known examples:

• Akismet Anti-spam has been using AI to detect spam comments for a long time now, and recent advances have only hardened its defenses. In addition, they just partnered up with Arwen.ai, which similarly uses AI to detect harmful comments.
• SEOPress has begun bundling in generative AI features, allowing you to generate meta descriptions and image alt text. Yoast SEO Premium comes with similar features.
• Bluehost launched Wondersuite in 2023, an AI-powered onboarding and design tool for new websites.
• Elementor developed Elementor AI, which adds the ability to automatically generate images, write copy, and design websites from within the drag-and-drop editor.

And the list goes on. There are already plenty of things you can do with AI in WordPress. The above cases are just the tip of the iceberg.

So, how can you use this trend as a business opportunity in WordPress?

First of all, if you have a plugin, theme, or service where it could fit in, consider adding AI to your feature list. However, you can also consider the AI route when building websites and find ways to give your clients access to it in the back end.

2. Offering Hand-Made Content Creation and Marketing

AI has become a major productivity tool for many creators. It’s great for coming up with ideas or helping you get unstuck. Unfortunately, some people have had other ideas about how to use AI.

There’s now a lot of low-quality AI-generated content bouncing around the Internet. You’ve likely run into some of it already: completely unedited, AI-generated writing supposedly published by a human author. Even academic journals aren’t free of it.

Some people even dishonestly sell AI-generated artwork and writing to clients without disclosing it.

With the state of AI not changing any time soon, you can expect a market to emerge for skilled content creators – copywriters, ghost writers, developers, marketers, artists, and so on – who don’t rely on it.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use AI as an assistant. It’s completely fine for content creators to do so. However, it’s important that it serves as a foundation for useful and original content.

So, those skilled artists and authors who have a strong style no AI can fully replicate, you may find an emerging market for your work.

3. Focusing on E-commerce

If you’re interested in making a career out of WordPress and not yet sure where to specialize, or considering opening a business of your own, focusing on e-commerce could be a great opportunity.

The business of selling things online continues to grow globally, and has long been a dominant industry. It makes up over 19% of all retail sales and will possibly generate $3.2bn in 2024. As more businesses pivot towards online sales, the demand for e-commerce solutions, particularly those integrated with WordPress, continues to surge.

Even among popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify and Squarespace, WooCommerce wins out as the top ecommerce platform, eclipsing all other options with a 38.74% market share. It’s clear that WooCommerce and WordPress are a favorite among online retailers.

This presents a significant financial opportunity. Capitalize on this trend by specializing in building or working with e-commerce stores using WordPress and/or WooCommerce.

Whether you’re more comfortable creating small boutiques or large-scale enterprise stores, offering tailored e-commerce solutions rather than general WordPress design services can be an opportunity to differentiate your business in a crowded market.

4. Getting Into Headless WordPress

WordPress is a world-renowned CMS and many are big fans of its simple and elegant handling of content like blog posts, pages, categories, and tags.

However, the nature of WordPress means you’re effectively locked onto the platform. Maybe you don’t like the front end side of things and would rather build your website from scratch while still utilizing the CMS features. Or maybe you’d like to port CMS data to multiple channels.

Headless WordPress has been a popular solution for some years now. It means decoupling WordPress’ front and back end. For one, this allows you to utilize front end technologies like Ruby on Rails, Vue, React, or Angular that were incompatible with WordPress before. It also lets you turn WordPress into a dynamic, omnichannel marketing platform.

You can use this concept to make your own unique and profitable projects. Alternatively, take advantage of the ongoing headless WordPress trend to develop and design headless websites for clients.

5. Adding Subscriptions to Your Strategy

Subscription models and membership sites have become more and more common ways to keep customers around long-term. Some examples of platforms that successfully use these models include Netflix, Amazon Prime, Adobe, and Google Workspace.

But it’s not just for massive companies. Small businesses can also benefit from subscription business models. For example, subscription boxes have become a popular and fun way to retain customers. At the same time, platforms like Patreon demonstrate the success of offering monthly goods, services, and exclusive access to content.

The benefits here include greater customer retention compared to a traditional e- commerce store, as well as an ongoing revenue stream for your company.

For WordPress creators and business owners, consider offering recurring benefits like exclusive access to articles, videos, downloadable resources, software, and other members-only opportunities. Plugins like MemberPress and WooCommerce Subscriptions can help you set this up.

6. Taking Advantage of Gutenberg’s Growth

On its initial release, WordPress’ Gutenberg block editor was heavily criticized and caused a big controversy. Many people were not fond of the new editor and its workflow, and even today five million users have the Classic Editor still installed.

Yet, it’s important to point out that the block editor has actually improved a lot. Many UI and workflow issues people disliked have been cleaned up, and more improvements and features are constantly making their way into Gutenberg.

There’s also the shift towards Full Site Editing, allowing you to edit global styles, header, footer, page templates and so on within Gutenberg. This includes, for example, the ability to make the WordPress header sticky.

Gutenberg is even expanding outside WordPress and into other platforms, including Tumblr.

Even if you don’t like it yourself, there’s no denying it: the future is in block-based themes and plugins.

What does this mean for you? If you develop themes, plugins, or client websites, consider focusing on and incorporating Gutenberg.

You may want to design block-based, rather than classic, WordPress themes. Or create and sell custom Gutenberg blocks and pattern collections. Blocks are the new shortcode, so consider adding these to existing plugins – see WooCommerce’s product blocks or Contact Form 7’s contact block for examples.

You might even consider adding Gutenberg to your non-WordPress project.

7. Creating Niche Content

WordPress is an absolutely massive platform. Millions of designers, developers, authors, and marketers wish to apply their skills in a WordPress environment – and millions of businesses small and large are looking to hire them.

While this has led to a sharp increase in job opportunities, it has also made the market very saturated. It can be hard to stand out, especially if you don’t have a decade of experience. Just how many “WordPress developers” are you competing with? It’s a lot.

With generalized designers, developers, and authors struggling to find a job, it can be wise to specialize in a particular niche. Focus on and promote a particular skill or market.

For example, perhaps as an author you’re particularly proficient in a certain topic. Maybe as a developer you specialize in using a particular tool, like WooCommerce or Divi Builder. As a web designer, you could primarily create website mockups for luxury retailers.

In such a large market, it’s better to specialize than to spread yourself too thin and not attract enough clients.

8. Specializing in Mobile-First WordPress

Whether you like it or not, most people are now using primarily or even only mobile devices. Mobile traffic makes up 66% of traffic share, and these days, a quarter of adults can’t even use a computer. Not to mention, Google now prioritizes mobile-first indexing.

As a consequence, a lack of mobile friendliness will damage your SEO, and if you’re building a plugin or theme, this becomes your users’ problem.

So, whether you’re building client websites or add-ons like themes and plugins, it’s extremely important to focus on mobile-first and responsive design. In addition, clients or users will prioritize hiring you and using your extensions if you make mobile usability a key part of your strategy.

9. Get Ready for Real-Time Collaboration

The Gutenberg project has gone through many phases, including the addition of Gutenberg itself in its first phase. In Phase 2, we saw the addition of the Site Editor, block patterns, and block themes, among other customization additions.

Now Phase 3: Collaboration is underway, and with this comes some major changes. Look forward to real-time and asynchronous collaboration, a better publishing workflow, and improved navigation in the WordPress’ back end.

While this doesn’t have any direct profit potential on its own, real-time collaboration will be a boon for many businesses. Faster and more streamlined workflows means more efficient creation of WordPress content. And who knows, as a savvy developer, you might be able to build on top of the new workflow and offer additional value with a plugin or theme.

10. Researching Jobs in the WordPress Industry

By now, WordPress has become basically its own industry. Many designers, developers, and other creators work specifically and primarily in the WordPress environment, rarely if ever using any other platforms. Those who know the ins and outs of WordPress can do powerful things with it.

Finding a job as a WordPress specialist is difficult mostly due to the amount of competition rather than a lack of jobs. With so many businesses relying on WordPress, they’re quick to snatch up skilled employees whenever there’s an opportunity. Now’s a great time to pick up a new skill.

As mentioned above, you may find it easier to get hired or find clients if you work in a specialized role like setting up e-commerce stores or working with particular, well-known plugins.

If you have yet to develop your career, specializing in WordPress may be a good idea. Check WordPress job listings to see what people want and what is hot. You could focus on learning what there’s an obvious demand for and end up making a lot of money down the line.

WordPress job listings can be found on WordPress.org, Indeed, Codeable, and these job boards.

WordPress Business Opportunities About

The WordPress ecosystem is constantly changing, influenced by design and development trends that impact the web as a whole. It’s hard to know for sure what the next big thing is really going to be.

But a little guidance can go a long way. These upcoming WordPress trends can give you an idea of where the platform is headed. Using this knowledge, you can pick up a new skill or take your fledgling projects in the right direction, and perhaps get ahead of the competition.

Did we miss anything exciting on the WordPress front? What business opportunities do you think will dominate WordPress in 2024 and beyond? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

The post What Are the Next Big Business Opportunities in WordPress? appeared first on Torque.

Unfortunately, there are tons of classes to choose from, and narrowing down the best ones is no easy task. What you need is a curated list of some of the best courses so you can decide from there. And that just happens to be what we have put together here.

Below, are going over 15+ beginner WordPress courses, crafted by experts and used by thousands of WordPress novices. Whether you’re creating a blog, an online store, or something else entirely, one of these courses is sure to help you get started.

The Best Online Course Providers for WordPress Learners

Before we get into any specific courses, let’s go over a few reputable providers of online learning material. Even if none of the courses we suggest below are quite right, you can use these to expand your search and find more fitting ones.

1. Udemy

If you’re looking for online classes on any topic, most people will point you to Udemy. This is “the” place for comprehensive lessons hosted by experts of all kinds, and a significant WordPress community is present. There are 1400+ WordPress courses to choose from.

Udemy is a paid service. You can either purchase a monthly plan to gain access to most courses, or purchase them individually at a higher price – though with a lifetime license.

There are also ways to get access to Udemy courses for free, such as through your company or even with certain library cards.

2. YouTube

If you’re on a budget – and that budget is $0 – YouTube is the place to go. There’s a massive amount of content here, from sprawling online classes that cover everything related to WordPress to short videos that quickly explain individual concepts you’re struggling with.

The big problem here is that there’s zero quality control. And this doesn’t just mean less than stellar video editing. You could actually receive dangerous misinformation and bad advice without even knowing it.

If nothing else, it’s a good idea to see what people say in the comments or find recommendations for specific YouTube courses.

3. LinkedIn Learning with Lynda

Lynda was a long-running learning hub, offering online courses since 2002. Before Udemy, this was the main hub for online courses on all sorts of creative and business topics. In 2017, Lynda was acquired by LinkedIn and rebranded to LinkedIn Learning.

Luckily, much of the old content remains, including the popular WordPress courses. You can find 1800+ WordPress courses here.

Just like Udemy, you may be able to access LinkedIn Learning for free or with a library card. Otherwise, you can pay for a monthly plan or buy courses individually.

4. Coursera

Coursera is another popular provider for online lessons, though its WordPress content is sparser compared to other platforms. There are only a handful of actual WordPress-focused courses (though plenty of related, general web design classes), and most have just a few hours of content.

The big benefit is that most of them are free to enroll in. That’s not true for all of Coursera. Many trainings are more guided projects that can take months to complete, and these may require Coursera Plus. But you’re free to sample the beginner WordPress lessons.

Once you’ve looked through our suggested WordPress courses, you may wish to return to Coursera and pick up some useful web design and development skills for free.

The Top 17 WordPress Courses for Beginners

Now let’s dig into the best of the best beginner WordPress courses. One of these is sure to have what you’re looking for.

1. Toto Coaching Web Design Courses

Aspiring web designers and WordPress builders should check out Toto Coaching’s suite of courses.

There are four versions to choose from: a simple but very useful DIY website building course, a full course that teaches you everything you need to know and more, and two fast track versions of this, one without live coaching.

All of these are appropriate for beginners, and the “Building DIY Websites” course in particular can help you get off the ground.

2. WordPress for Beginners: Create a Website Step by Step

Absolute beginners who have never worked with WordPress or made a website before will get the most out of this popular and highly-rated course.

WordPress for Beginners will walk you through the very basics of using WordPress and building a website. You’ll learn all about themes, plugins, and page building, and by the end you’ll have your own website with a few pages and useful functionalities – plus, the foundational knowledge you’ll need to create more.

3. Elementor Academy

Finding high-quality, free WordPress courses may be hard, but you can start with these lessons offered by the creators of the popular Elementor plugin.

The classes will teach you all about various WordPress topics, from website design to content creation tactics. Some are full courses and some are just single videos, but all are free and hosted on YouTube.

Not sure where to begin? Try their Get Started With WordPress training.

4. How to Make a Website with WordPress – Full Course

If you’re looking for a crash course on WordPress that you can finish in an afternoon but still covers all the important bases, try this lesson from freeCodeCamp.

In less than two hours, you’ll learn how to set up WordPress, navigate the Dashboard, create a basic website, and install plugins. No time is wasted, but nothing important is left out.

5. Become a WordPress Developer: Unlocking Power With Code

Do you want to become a WordPress developer with almost zero experience? Then this course is perfect for you.

You should already have some basic WordPress knowledge and a rudimentary understanding of HTML. Besides that, you don’t need anything, this 42-hour, 200-lecture course will cover absolutely everything you need to know as a novice developer.

6. WP101

WP101 was created to teach beginners about a variety of WordPress topics. WordPress 101 will walk you through the basics, and from there you’ll find tutorials on everything from WooCommerce to Ninja Forms.

You can get access to all these courses for a yearly fee of $48, and you’re free to trial the lessons for seven days.

7. WordPress 5 Essential Training

You may notice that this course is a little outdated – the latest version of WordPress now being WordPress 6.4+ – but a majority of the lessons still fit perfectly and the sheer quality offered by instructor Morten Rand-Hendriksen makes it more than worth your time.

This community-loved course will teach you not just the basics, but extremely important advice that you’ll use for years to come. Give it a try and see why so many people recommend it!

8. Up and Running by WPShout

Tired of WordPress development courses that only feed you bits and pieces, never the whole picture? Then you’ll love Up and Running. This course will teach you all the skills you’ll need to become a seasoned WordPress developer, leaving little to nothing out.

While this course is targeted at all skill levels, including beginners, you should have some basic knowledge of PHP, HTML, and CSS going in.

The entire course costs $197, and comes with an eBook you can continue to reference with video tutorials for each and every lesson. There’s also a Pro Bootcamp version which will give you a chance to apply your skills in an instructed environment.

9. Learn WordPress

You want to learn WordPress – where better to start than its own official resources? The Learn WordPress team has crafted a variety of video courses and tutorials that will teach you everything from the very basics to WordPress development.

New free content is always being added, so check back often. Start with the three “Introduction to WordPress” courses to get on the right track.

If you prefer learning and applying your skills with a group, check out the Learn WordPress Online Workshops and see if there are any upcoming live events that cover these courses.

10. Complete WordPress Theme & Plugin Development Course

Maybe you’ve already got the WordPress basics down, but instead want to dive into creating your own themes and plugins. If you’re a new developer, this is the course for you.

You’ll need to have the basics of HTML and CSS down, but besides that, you don’t need to know anything. By the end of these lessons, you’ll be able to work with PHP, Javascript, and templates in a WordPress environment.

11. WordPress.com Learning Hub

Anyone new to WordPress and struggling to grasp the basics should check out WordPress.com’s own Learning Hub. Here you’ll find a handful of free, self-guided courses on blogging, SEO, podcasting, and more.

And if you’re hungry for more, you can also watch the webinars, which are less structured but offer guidance and insight on all sorts of topics.

Try the Get Started course if you’re completely new to WordPress. This will help you get on your feet and prepare you for more advanced lessons.

12. The Complete WordPress Website Business Course 2.0

When your interest lies in business and management, it’s hard to find beginner-friendly courses that fit in this niche. This Udemy course covers topics like ecommerce and creating profitable projects with WordPress.

If you’re planning on starting a business, setting up an online store, or selling products and services, then you’ll want to take this one. It will teach you how to set up WooCommerce and plenty of other relevant skills.

13. Build a Full Website using WordPress

Want to learn WordPress in two hours or less? This course is the one for you. You’ll learn WordPress basics like setting up a website, designing a homepage, creating more pages, and publishing blog posts without wasting a second of your valuable time.

By the end, you’ll have a good grasp of WordPress basics and will have the foundations needed to create your own full website.

14. Yoast SEO Academy

Or are you looking to learn more about search engine optimization specifically? SEO is one of the best ways to get more eyes on your content, and Yoast’s SEO Academy offers specialized training in this field.

Besides SEO-tailored topics, there’s also a basic “WordPress for beginners” course, so you can start there if you need to. A handful of beginner courses are available in full for free, but some others you’ll need to pay a yearly subscription. A free sample is available for all the premium courses.

15. WordPress for Beginners – Master WordPress Quickly

WordPress has changed a lot in the past few years, and you’ll often run into outdated courses with completely different UI and features. If this has you frustrated, try this modern WordPress beginner course, which the creators often update with major releases.

With the 20-step website plan and a detailed tutorial on each part, you’ll learn how to create your dream website from scratch in just under 11 hours.

16. Page Building 101

If there’s one YouTube course that’s free and high-quality, it’s Page Building 101. Rather than teaching you to use Elementor, Divi, or any other specific page builder, this course educates you on the fundamentals of page building and web design.

These skills are very useful and will carry over into any web design project you tackle in the future.

If your specific interest is in WordPress design and crafting beautiful websites, you’ll definitely want to check out this one. There are currently nineteen free, in-depth lessons, though more may come in the future.

17. How To Build An Ecommerce Store With WordPress & WooCommerce

Building an online store in WordPress adds some extra complexity you may struggle with as a beginner. With this course, you’ll pick up the necessary skills to both create a WordPress site from scratch and turn it into a thriving business.

You’ll learn how to use WordPress, WooCommerce, and Storefront, all free tools you can use to start your business with a minimal budget. The lessons are also quick and to the point, so you get all the essential skills in only three hours.

What’s Your Favorite WordPress Beginner Course?

Finding the right WordPress starter course is no easy task, especially if you’re looking for something specialized. This can be courses for newbie developers, ecommerce startups, or absolute beginners with zero web experience.

But with 17 courses to choose from, you’re sure to find something tailored to you. This mix of free and paid courses was hand-picked for quality, and we hope you find what you’re looking for among them.

Which course are you going with? Have you tried any of them before? Let everyone know how it went in the comments below!

The post 17 Best WordPress Beginner Courses: Learn WordPress Now appeared first on Torque.

But despite its popularity, this attractive UX design isn’t built into WordPress by default. Headers will usually stay put at the top of the website. So, how can you make your header sticky?

There are several different methods, from using WordPress blocks over installing a plugin to using code. Let’s cover a few of the best of them as well as best practices for using sticky headers on your site.

What is a Sticky Header?

As its name implies, a header rests at the top of the webpage. It’s usually distinguished by separate colors and a few important links. On this very website, the header contains the logo, links to the most useful pages, and a search bar.

A sticky header is also referred to as a fixed header. It’s the type that remains visible at the top of the screen even as you scroll down – it “sticks”. That means users don’t have to scroll all the way back up to use the navigation menu, search field, or any other elements you have in your header. Sometimes a sticky header will get smaller as you scroll, eliminating all but a few important elements.

You’ll find a good example of a sticky header on Elementor’s homepage, which cleverly blends into the hero image until you scroll down.

Yoast’s website also features a sticky header. This one is a little more fancy and has a few fun animations.

Why Add a Sticky Header to WordPress?

Sticky headers aren’t just a design choice – though they are visually interesting. They’re also a functional web design tool with a number of benefits.

• Lowered bounce rate and higher visitor retention – When people have navigational links in reach, they may choose to stick around. Conversely, having to scroll all the way to the top of a long webpage could cause them to give up and leave.
• Increased engagement – For similar reasons, you’ll find more people clicking the links in your header. People stay interested and browse longer if you make their life easier.
• Good UX – No one likes a ton of scrolling. A sticky header is simply a good UX choice on longer pages, reducing scroll time to one click rather than several seconds.
• Interesting design – As you can see from the examples above, a sticky header isn’t just useful; it gives you a chance to add cool transition animations and a little more visual interest.
• Better conversion rates – You could place CTA buttons in your sticky header, attracting more clicks since it remains on screen 100% of the time.

4 Ways to Add a Sticky Header to Your Website

Now let’s get into all the ways you can add a sticky header to WordPress. Most of these can be done with no coding knowledge at all, though we’ll also mention how to code a sticky header yourself.

Install a Sticky Header Plugin

The simplest way to add a sticky header to WordPress is to install a plugin. This will let you make your headers sticky no matter what theme you’re using. Here are a few of the best sticky header plugins.

• My Sticky Bar – The most popular sticky menu plugin comes with a ton of functionality. While creating notification bars is one big draw, you can also make your header, sidebar, or menu sticky too. Some features, like CSS styling or disabling the sticky feature on certain pages, require the pro version.
• Sticky Menu & Sticky Header – Another popular sticky header plugin allows you to make anything on your website sticky – though only one element at a time. This will work perfectly for getting your header to scroll. The pro version of this plugin lets you stick any number of elements and use their visual element picker.
• Elementor – While Elementor is primarily a website builder, it also comes with various design tweaks, effects, and expansions for WordPress. One of these is the ability to make Elementor headers sticky.
• Divi – Similar to Elementor, Divi is a page builder that uses the Divi theme as a base. As part of its many page building features, you can also create a sticky header – or a sticky anything.

Install a Theme with Sticky Header Support

Instead of installing a separate plugin, you could instead download a theme that comes with sticky header functionality built in.

There are tons of themes out there with sticky headers, so you’ll have to go theme hunting. But here are a few themes that do include sticky headers.

• Sydney – Sydney is a well-known freemium WordPress theme tailored towards businesses. It features a clean and ergonomic design, and comes with plenty of design features to tweak, including sticky navigation.

• Online Shop – Just as the name implies, Online Shop is a free theme especially well-suited for ecommerce stores. There’s plenty of dynamic customizability, with a sticky menu and sidebar just one of many options.
• Astra – The immensely popular Astra theme was designed to be customizable, so it’s natural that it would include sticky elements. You’ll need to activate the Sticky Header module.
• Hestia – This beautiful, modern theme is great for business websites and portfolios. Sticky header functionality is built right into the theme.
• Blocksy – The Blocksy theme was made just for Gutenberg, designed to be versatile and fit in with a variety of website concepts. You’ll need the Blocksy Companion plugin to enable sticky headers.
• Delicio – This premium restaurant theme is beautiful and modern, and comes with plenty of design features to tweak, including the topic of this post.
• Felt LT – Felt LT is a beautiful full-screen magazine theme, featuring a modular layout with built-in widgets and a beautiful scrolling header.

Once you have your theme installed, you can generally find extra design settings like sticky header support in Appearance > Customize or Appearance > Editor on your Dashboard.

Use WordPress Blocks

Thanks to new features released in WordPress 6.2, you can now use the Group block to create a sticky header in WordPress without plugins. You’ll find an official tutorial on the Learn WordPress hub. Let’s go through it.

First, go to Appearance > Editor and open the Pages template (or wherever you want the header to appear). Click the three vertical lines to open List View.

Select the header and click the three vertical dots next to it, then click Group to wrap your header in a group block.

Now click the three vertical dots in the top right corner and open your Settings page. Open the Position tab and select Sticky.

Now click the half moon symbol in the Settings tab and select a background color for your Group block. This is so your design doesn’t look weird if the sticky header is see-through.

With that, you have a simple sticky header, no plugins required! Now start styling your header and making it beautiful.

Code a Sticky Header

Finally, if you have the CSS and Javascript know-how, you can simply code your own sticky header. This requires some basic web development knowledge.

There are two ways to code a sticky header: With CSS and Javascript, or with pure CSS.

For example, theoretically, you can simply create a sticky header by adding the position: fixed; or position: sticky; property to it, like so:

.site-header {
	position: sticky;
}

Unfortunately, in reality, it isn’t always that easy. If you want an example of a sticky header purely made with CSS, you can check this one on CodePen.

As mentioned, another possibility is to also use JavaScript. Here, you usually add a CSS class on scroll that provides the stickiness. In the sticky header tutorial on W3Schools, this is the part that adds the class:

// When the user scrolls the page, execute myFunction
window.onscroll = function() {myFunction()};

// Get the header
var header = document.getElementById("myHeader");

// Get the offset position of the navbar
var sticky = header.offsetTop;

// Add the sticky class to the header when you reach its scroll position. Remove "sticky" when you leave the scroll position
function myFunction() {
	if (window.pageYOffset > sticky) {
		header.classList.add("sticky");
	} else {
		header.classList.remove("sticky");
	}
} 

And here is the CSS itself:

.sticky {
	position: fixed;
	top: 0;
	width: 100%
}

As you can see, it uses the same position: fixed; property that we already talked about earlier.

So, why would you use JavaScript instead of just pure CSS?

If you have the right skills, JavaScript enables you to add more animations to your sticky header. While there are also CSS animations, they don’t have the same range of possibilities. On the other hand, CSS still works even if visitors have disables Javascript in their browsers. In the end, the decisions is up to you.

And if all this is too much for you, you can always just hire a developer.

6 Sticky Header Best Practices

If you are about to implement a sticky header on your website, we have some design best practices for you to keep in mind. While these are just suggestions, deviating could turn your sticky header into an annoyance rather than a useful tool.

Keep it Simple

When it comes to elements that are permanently on screen, it’s best to keep it as simple as possible. 

• Don’t let your sticky header take up a ton of screen space. A large header can cover up too much content and make reading and browsing annoying.
• Avoid overly obtrusive colors and designs. Keep any transition animations quick and subtle. You want to design your sticky header so there’s enough contrast that visitors can easily see it, but not so much that it’s actively distracting.
• Don’t clutter your header with too many menu items and links. Use only the most valuable ones. Use clear and descriptive labels.
• Reduce space by making use of icons, such as by having the search bar turn into a magnifying glass. This is especially helpful when optimizing for smaller screens.

Even if your website’s header is large, uses bright colors, or has a lot of links by default, you can always configure it so it simplifies and gets smaller on scroll.

Make it Responsive

Don’t forget about small screens and mobile devices when creating a sticky header. When building your header, plan on a responsive design from the start.

• Make the menu get simpler and simpler as screen sizes get smaller. Remove less important links, reduce image/logo size, and turn text into icons.
• Reduce the header’s vertical space, as there’s little screen real estate to work with.
• Consider adding a single menu icon that pops out into a full navigation list.
• Make sure any elements are large enough to be easily tapped on mobile screens.

Add Animations

A little animation goes a long way in web design. Even subtle movement can make your sticky header seem so much more elegant.

• Add a small transition animation when users scroll down or back to the top.
• Especially on mobile, consider collapsing the menu and having it slide back on-screen when users scroll up.
• Consider making your sticky header transparent, appearing when users hover the top of the screen.

Ensure Accessibility

Sticky headers can unfortunately introduce accessibility issues if implemented improperly. Keep these tips in mind.

• Make sure your header works with assistive devices like screen readers. Provide ARIA attributes where necessary.
• Ensure sticky header animations don’t break keyboard navigation. Users should be able to navigate the menu using the tab key, and not have their browsing disrupted.
• Design the header so it has enough contrast that visually impaired visitors can read it.
• Use clear and readable fonts rather than decorative ones.

Tailor it to Your Brand

Your sticky header should look good on your website and fit in perfectly with its design. It’s also a chance to highlight your brand.

• Incorporate your logo. It can double as a link to your homepage.
• Use your brand colors in the background, text, and/or icons.
• Design your header so it blends in well with the rest of your website, rather than looking out of place.

Test it Out

Finally, always rigorously test your sticky header – and any other design choices on your website – to ensure it works well and is liked by users.

• Ensure that the header works properly on all devices and screen sizes. Test every responsive break point.
• Make sure it works on all commonly used browsers.
• Test out the various animations and make sure none of them break. See how it interacts with other elements like drop-down menus, rotating a mobile device, etc.
• Implement A/B testing to see what menu layout influences visitors to stick around or interact.

Final Thoughts: Better UX with Sticky Headers

Sticky headers are a small web design element that can really spice up your website and make things a lot more convenient for your users.

Whether you install a theme, add a plugin, or make the header yourself, make sure to keep our suggested best practices in mind. This will keep your sticky header beautiful, useful, and accessible to all users.

Which method did you use to add a sticky header to your website? Let us know in the comments!

The post 4 Easy Ways Create a WordPress Sticky Header (+ Best Practices) appeared first on Torque.

Elementor is powerful yet user-friendly. It has a drag-and-drop interface, extensive template library, and design widgets–all the tools you need to create a website easily.

In this article, we’ll explore everything you need to know about this page-builder solution. You’ll discover how to install and set up Elementor, create your first page, and explore its powerful features. 

Let’s get started.

Installing and Setting Up Elementor

Before you can start playing around with the page editor, you’ll need to install it first. For that, find the Plugins section on your dashboard and click on Add New. In the search bar of the screen that follows, type “Elementor” and hit enter. You should see the plugin at the top of the search results.

Click on the Install Now button next to it. Once on your site, click Activate. Done.

Creating and Editing Your First Page with Elementor

The best way to learn about Elementor is by actually experimenting with it. Follow along with this tutorial to get a better handle on Elementor and its features. 

However, before we begin, here are a few features to get familiar with beforehand:

• Drag-and-drop functionality – The core of Elementor’s appeal is its user-friendly drag-and-drop builder. This feature makes it so you can easily add, arrange, and customize elements on your pages without needing any coding knowledge.
• Real-time editing – Elementor provides a live editing experience. As you make changes to your page, you see them happen in real-time, which streamlines the design process and helps you build sites more efficiently.
• Templates and blocks – Elementor Free includes a basic collection of pre-designed templates and blocks. These resources allow you to quickly build professional-looking pages. Of course, the paid version of Elementor builds on this significantly.
• Styling options – The plugin provides general settings like styling options, animation effects, and multi-column layouts. These options make it easier to create a unique look and feel for your site and are flexible enough to meet a variety of design needs.
• WooCommerce integration – For those running eCommerce sites, Elementor integrates with WooCommerce. This integration allows you to design custom WooCommerce product pages, enhancing the shopping experience considerably.

Now, let’s get to some practical applications for the above.

1. Create a Page

In WordPress, go to Pages and select Add New. Give your new page a title that reflects the content or its purpose. After naming it, click on the Edit with Elementor button. This transitions you from the WordPress interface to Elementor’s page builder.

Get Familiar with the Elementor Page Editor

Elementor opens up to a two-part interface: the main editing screen and the sidebar.

Here is how they work together:

• The sidebar – This is the control center of Elementor. In this place, you’ll find a plethora of drag-and-drop features and widgets that you can use to construct your webpage.
• The main editing area – This is where your page will take shape. As you drag widgets from the sidebar, you can drop them into this area and start shaping your page’s layout. More on that in a moment.
• The Navigator – This highly useful feature acts like a roadmap of your page structure. It provides a visual representation of all elements on your page, organized hierarchically. This includes sections, columns, and widgets. To access the Navigator view, right-click on any widget, column, or section in the Elementor editor and select Navigator from the context menu
• The Finder – This feature allows you to search and access any page, template, or setting within Elementor and WordPress. This includes posts, pages, settings, templates, and even specific Elementor widgets. You can easily open the Finder by pressing CMD / CTRL + E. 

Basic Building Blocks

As you play around with Elementor throughout this tutorial, you’ll likely notice there are three main elements that make up most pages:

• Sections –  Think of sections as the foundational layers of your page. They are the largest building blocks where you will start structuring your page.
• Columns –  Within each section, you can insert columns. These serve as containers for your widgets and help in organizing your content more precisely.
• Widgets – Widgets are the actual content elements – like text, images, buttons, and more. You’ll find many widgets in the sidebar, ready to be dragged and dropped into your sections and columns.

You’ll be making use of all three as you build your page(s).

2. Add Page Elements

To begin, you’ll need to make adjustments to your page’s layout. Use the + button to add new sections.

After that, you can choose between different column structures.

Once you have settled on a basic layout, you can then add widgets. For example, you can add a heading by dragging the Heading widget into a section or column on your page.

To add some text, drag the Text widget from the Elementor sidebar into your desired section. Click on the text box to start typing or paste your content. 

Naturally, to add an image, you would use the Image widget. You can upload images from your library or directly from your computer.

Repeat this process to add buttons or any other features you’d like to include.

3. Customize Elementor Widgets

Once placed, each widget can be customized. To edit sections, columns, or widgets, simply click them. This allows you to access additional customization options like styling, layout adjustments, and more in the sidebar on the left.

For one, there is the Style tab. Here, you can customize the content of the different elements. For example, for a Heading widget, you can adjust the font, size, color, and alignment.

In addition, there is the Advanced tab. Here, you can make changes to margins and padding, border, background, and more. You can even hide elements on certain types of devices.

Experiment with different widgets and styles to find the perfect look for your page. Be aware, however, that the free version only comes with a few basic options.

Basically, all you have access to here are widgets for adding headings, text, images, videos, buttons, dividers and spacers, as well as Google Maps and icons to your pages.

You can also use built-in WordPress widgets like category lists, recent posts, navigation menus, and similar. However, if you want the full toolbox, you have to get the paid version of the website builder.

4. Set Global Defaults

Another thing that wen need to cover in this Elementor tutorial is how to set defaults for global settings on your site, such as fonts and colors. For that, click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner of the Elementor sidebar and select Site Settings.

Use the options under Design System and Theme Style to make adjustments to the colors on your site, configure the look of headings of different orders, style buttons, images, or form fields, and configure settings for headers and footers.

You can override most of this on a per-widget basis, however, establishing defaults goes a long way to make the end result look congruent.

5. Access Revision History

If you ever find yourself in a situation where your design has developed into a direction you aren’t convinced by, don’t worry. Elementor’s Revision History allows you to track and revert changes with a few clicks.

Located at the bottom of the sidebar, the History icon (it looks like a circular arrow with two hands of a clock in it) lets you see a log of all the actions taken during your editing session.

You can use it to move back and forth between actions and revert to previous versions if needed. That way, you don’t have to painstakingly remember and undo everything that has landed you in a design cul-de-sac.

6. Explore Elementor Templates

Templates are a significant time-saver. They are pre-designed pages and sections that you can use as is or customize to suit your needs. Elementor offers them in many different forms.

To access templates, click on the folder icon inside any section in the Elementor editor.

This opens the Template Library.

It contains templates for both blocks and entire page layouts. Use the search function or category filters at the top to zone in on what you are looking for. You can preview templates by clicking on them. If you’re satisfied with your selection, click Insert to place the template in your page (note, you will have to create a free Elementor account to use the Template Library).

Once the template is loaded, you can start customizing it like before. Click on any element in the template to modify its content, style, and settings.

In the free version, the number of available templates is very limited. There are a lot more in the Pro version.

7. Publish Your Page

Once you’re satisfied with the design, click Publish to make your page live. You can always come back and edit the page later, too.

What Does Elementor Pro Offer?

We’ve already alluded to the paid version of Elementor several times in this article. On paper, the plugin is a freemium offer with some basic functionality you can use without paying and additional options in the premium offer.

In truth, however, the free plugin version won’t get you very far. It provides basic design control and general settings that include styling, animation, effects, and the ability to add shortcodes and HTML code. It also includes mobile editing and responsive UI features.

However, if your goal is to build anything other than a really basic website, you will need to buy Elementor Pro. It significantly expands the capabilities of the free version, offering a suite of advanced features that cater to a wide range of web design and marketing needs. 

Powerful Theme Builder

Elementor Pro adds full theme-building support, allowing you to go beyond designing individual posts or pages such as in this tutorial. You can customize your theme template files directly using Elementor, including designing templates for headers, footers, single posts, archives, and even 404 pages. 

This feature also includes special widgets for dynamically inserting various elements like post titles and featured images.

Extended Template Library

While the free version of Elementor offers a basic collection of page templates, Elementor Pro provides a more extensive selection. This includes over 100 website kits, which are collections of templates to help you create a full website, covering various niches. 

These kits can be particularly helpful for building client sites, as you can import a kit and then customize it according to the client’s requirements

WooCommerce Builder

For those creating an online store, Elementor Pro’s WooCommerce Builder lets you fully customize your store, including single product pages, shop listing pages, and key elements like the Cart, Checkout, and My Account pages. 

This feature ensures a consistent and branded shopping experience across your website.

Global Settings

With Elementor Pro, you get more control over your website’s global settings. This includes advanced customization options like adding custom CSS directly to widgets, columns, and sections, and using unique motion effects and custom fonts in your designs. 

Form Builder

Elementor Pro’s built-in Form Builder makes creating complex forms simple and integrates seamlessly with CRM and marketing tools. Use it for lead generation, featuring a variety of field types, styling options, and the ability to set actions after form submission. For example, you can display confirmation popups or redirect visitors to thank-you pages.

Popup Builder

This feature in Elementor Pro replaces the need for dedicated popup plugins. You can design various types of popups (modal, notification bars, slide-ins, full-screen fillers, etc.) with detailed targeting and trigger rules. This builder is versatile for a range of uses, from announcements and email list building to contact forms and social share prompts.

AI Features

Elementor is one of the WordPress companies on the forefront of using AI in WordPress. As a consequence, their plugin comes with a number of features to help you create websites faster with the help of artificial intelligence.

Thanks for a connection to ChatGPT, you can have the plugin create both text and images for your web pages. In addition, AI support is available for creating code snippets and custom CSS.

Final Thoughts: Elementor Tutorial

Today, we’ve covered the essential steps of using Elementor, from installation to creating your first page, and explored the expanded capabilities of Elementor Pro.

Elementor is a very useful tool for anyone trying to build complex WordPress websites but lacking technical skills. It is also a great tool for professional designers and developers to put together websites more quickly.

The page builder plugin offers a flexible and powerful platform to bring your website ideas to life. There is a reason for its success. However, if you really want to take advantage of what it has to offer, you won’t get around paying for its premium version.

What are your thoughts on using Elementor for web design? Will you be giving it a try if you haven’t yet?

The post Elementor Tutorial: How to Use the Popular Page-Builder Plugin appeared first on Torque.

INP tracks how quickly your website responds to user input, for example, how soon after a visitor clicks on a button they will see the effect. It’s probably no surprise that a fast reaction is preferable.

To help you figure out how to ace this part of Core Web Vitals, just like for Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and First Input Delay, we have put together a detailed guide on how to optimize Interaction to Next Paint in WordPress. In this article, we’re going to walk you through what it is, why you should care about it, how to measure INP, and, most importantly, how you can improve it.

What is Interaction to Next Paint (INP)?

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a performance metric that’s becoming increasingly important for web developers. It’s set to replace First Input Delay (FID) as part of Google’s Core Web Vitals by March 2024. 

INP starts measuring the moment a user has their first interaction with a web page. An interaction is, for example, a mouse click or key press. The measurement continues until the page visually responds to that input. In that, INP is a much more comprehensive way of looking at a site’s responsiveness than what FID offered.

The key difference of the two metrics lies in their scope and depth of measurement. FID quantifies the delay from the first user interaction to when the browser begins to process the request. INP goes further. First of all, it measures the entire process from user interaction to the next time the page updates from the visitor’s perspective. This includes the full cycle of input delay, processing time, and presentation delay.

In addition, Interaction to Next Paint observes the latency of all qualifying interactions throughout the user’s visit to a page, not just the first one. The metric reports the worst 2% of UI responses, focusing on the slowest response times. This approach ensures that INP reflects the most realistic measure of a page’s worst-case user experience.

Why Is It Important?

INP is vital for understanding and improving the user experience on websites. It’s a more reliable indicator of overall responsiveness than FID. Good INP values indicate quick visual responses to user interactions. A poor score, however, can lead to a frustrating user experience.

INP’s significance also lies in its impact on SEO rankings. With its incorporation into the Core Web Vitals metrics, Google emphasizes the importance of user experience in website performance. Websites that exhibit quicker visual feedback following user interactions are likely to find favor in search rankings. But that also means the opposite is true: websites with significant delays may see a negative impact on their rankings.

What Causes INP?

A variety of factors related to a webpage’s responsiveness to user interactions influence the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric. You can broadly categorize the factors into three phases: input delay, processing time, and presentation delay.

• Input Delay: This phase is primarily impacted by so-called long tasks in JavaScript. If a user interaction occurs while the browser is already busy, it must complete the task before processing the interaction, leading to a noticeable delay.
• Processing Time: This phase covers the time the browser takes to respond to a user’s input. Delays here often result in frustration, sometimes manifested as “rage clicks,” where visitors repeatedly click on the same page element due to the lack of immediate feedback.
• Presentation Delay: The final phase is the time from the completion of event callbacks to when the browser can render the next frame showing the results of the interaction. 

Main Factors for High INP

Multiple things can cause delays throughout the entire INP measurement period, including: 

• When JavaScript tasks exceed 50 milliseconds, they are considered long tasks. These can block the main thread, delaying the browser’s ability to process the user’s next interaction.
• When interactions have been processed, the browser must render the next frame to reflect the changes. If a web page is large or complex, or if there are issues like layout thrashing (where the browser recalculates styles and layouts excessively), this can delay the presentation of the next frame.
• Pages that require a significant amount of resources to load and become interactive can experience delays in INP. This includes pages with large images, videos, or heavy use of CSS and JavaScript.
• The use of third-party scripts and tools, such as tracking and analytics scripts, can add to the load time and processing time, impacting the page’s responsiveness.
• Slow network connections or high latency can have an impact, too.

How Do You Measure INP?

Measuring Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is key for understanding and improving the interactivity and responsiveness of your WordPress site. Thankfully, there are several tools available that can help you figure out how your website performs here:

• PageSpeed Insights — You are probably familiar with this one. When you enter your page URL, you receive a detailed report including your INP value.
• Chrome DevTools: Built into Chrome by default, the browser developer tools provide a detailed breakdown of INP, including input delay, processing time, and presentation delay. 
• SpeedVitals Core Web Vitals Checker: This tool offers a Core Web Vitals Checker that measures various performance metrics including INP. It provides field data from real-world users via the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) API. 
• Lighthouse: Another tool available within Chrome DevTools, Lighthouse can be used for an in-depth analysis of website performance.

Most of the above solutions simply show the INP score for easy access.

When measuring, it’s important to consider both lab data (synthetic tests performed in controlled environments) and field data (real-world performance data from users). 

This comprehensive approach will give you a clearer understanding of your website’s INP performance across different scenarios and user experiences.

What’s a Good INP Score? 

The Chrome team offers clear benchmarks for determining a good Interaction to Next Paint (INP) score. These guidelines categorize INP scores into three distinct ranges to indicate the level of a webpage’s responsiveness.

As you can see above, an INP of 200 milliseconds or less is considered ideal. If the INP falls between 200 and 500 milliseconds, it means there’s room for enhancement. Any INP score above 500 milliseconds is flagged as poor.

These scores are derived from an assessment of the entire lifespan of a user’s visit to a page, considering all click, tap, and keyboard interactions. Again, the INP metric focuses on the worst (or slowest) interaction to provide a realistic measure of a page’s interactivity.

How to Improve INP on Your WordPress Website

Improving Interaction to Next Paint on your website involves several key strategies that can optimize how quickly and efficiently your WordPress site responds to user inputs. Let’s take some time now to look at these strategies and offer tips for implementing them effectively.

Improve General Performance 

Sometimes, you can improve INP considerably by attending to basic site improvement tasks. Before you do anything more complex, make sure the following are attended to: 

• Opt for reliable and efficient hosting services: This can help to ensure faster delivery of website resources and improve INP. 
• Carefully choose themes and plugins: Those you pick should contribute to your website’s speed and efficiency, not detract from it.
• Keep the number of plugins on your site as low as possible: Fewer plugins mens less code to load. Also, regularly update your website and its plugins to maintain optimal performance.
• Use caching strategies and compress data: This will speed up the loading process and improve the user experience.
• Use a CDN: Using a content delivery network (CDN) can lead to faster file delivery and reduced loading times.

Optimize Main Thread Availability

The main thread is what you call a browser’s work pipeline. All necessary processes for rendering and running a website go through it.

It is therefore critical for processing user interactions, and optimizing its availability for this purpose is vital. Here are some strategies to do so:

• Split Large Tasks: Break down large JavaScript tasks into smaller, manageable chunks. This prevents any single task from blocking the main thread for too long, allowing for quicker processing of user interactions. Using techniques like setTimeout or requestIdleCallback can be effective in scheduling tasks during idle periods, thus reducing input delay.
• Avoid Thrashing: Thrashing happens when your code repeatedly forces the browser to recalculate styles or layout, usually within a loop. Minimize the number of DOM manipulations and style recalculations to avoid thrashing. Batch your DOM read and write operations to reduce reflow and repaint cycles.

(P.S. if you don’t really understand what the above means, it would probably be best to talk to a developer about it.)

Add Lazy Loading

Implementing lazy loading can significantly boost performance. It delays the loading of non-critical resources at page load time, such as images or scripts not needed until later in the user journey.

This reduces the initial load on the main thread, allowing it to handle user interactions more efficiently.

Optimize or Remove JavaScript

JavaScript execution can heavily impact INP. To optimize JavaScript:

• Remove Unnecessary Code: Anything that is no longer on your site can not block it. So, take the time to remove unused JavaScript and CSS to improve INP and overall performance.
• Minify JavaScript Files: Reducing the size of JavaScript files by removing unnecessary formatting and comments makes them load faster, thus freeing up the main thread sooner.
• Use Efficient Code: Optimize your JavaScript code for performance. Avoid unnecessary computations and long-running tasks.
• Defer Non-Critical JavaScript: Load non-essential scripts asynchronously or defer their loading until after the main content is rendered. Prime examples for this are the aforementioned analytics scripts.

Find the Root Causes for Slowdowns

Identifying the root causes of slowdowns is really the key to effective optimization. Use tools like Google’s Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights for a detailed analysis of your site’s performance. They can help pinpoint specific areas that need improvement, such as large DOM sizes or inefficient script execution.

Helpful WordPress Plugins to Improve INP

The above are general tips to improve your website’s INP score for a more responsive and user-friendly website experience. To improve Interaction to Next Paint (INP) in WordPress specifically, you can also try out these helpful plugins:

• WP Rocket: Known for its caching capabilities, WP Rocket also offers code optimization, file minification, and database optimization.
• Flying Scripts: This plugin makes it so you can delay when non-critical scripts are executed to a time when users aren’t trying to complete tasks.
• NitroPack: This plugin provides advanced options for WooCommerce, server-level caching, and generates critical CSS. It’s user-friendly for those less familiar with technical optimization.
• Asset CleanUp: This is another great option for minifying Javascript, delaying scripts, and performing a whole host of other optimization tasks.
• WP-Optimize: This plugin combines database cleanup, image compression, and caching functionalities. It’s particularly useful for its database optimization feature.
• Perfmatters: While Perfmatters works best alongside an all-in-one tool like WP Rocket, it handles many smaller performance tasks efficiently, making it a good complement to other plugins.
• W3 Total Cache: Offering a range of caching methods, W3 Total Cache is a more technical plugin that allows detailed control over various optimization aspects.
• Autoptimize: Handles basics like image optimization and minification. Pair it with a caching plugin for best results.

Final Thoughts: Optimizing Interaction to Next Paint in WordPress

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is emerging as a super important aspect of Core Web Vitals, representing the responsiveness of web pages. 

It’s all about creating snappy, engaging experiences online, which is something everybody values. And by optimizing for INP using the methods discussed here, you can do your site a lot of favors in boosting the user experience, search ranking, and overall performance. It’s not just a matter of making technical adjustments. It’s also a way to ensure a pleasant, smooth experience for your audience. 

But remember, optimizing for INP is an ongoing process that requires regular monitoring and adjustments based on user interaction patterns and website updates. It’s not a one-and-done sort of thing, but the above steps should get your site to a good place. 

Do you have any additional insights or tips on improving Interaction to Next Paint in WordPress? Feel free to share your experiences below.

The post Interaction to Next Paint (INP): WordPress Optimization Guide appeared first on Torque.

A comprehensive report on your site’s search engine optimization collects data from various SEO tools into one place so you or your clients can put that info to work. However, if you’ve never done it before, you might not even know where to start.

That’s why we’ve put together this step-by-step guide. Below, you’ll learn how to effectively put together meaningful data to understand and improve your website’s SEO performance so you can stay ahead of your competitors.

What Is an SEO Report and Why Do You Need It?

An SEO report is essentially a thorough analysis of how your website is performing in search engines. It’s like a report card, showing how well it’s doing in terms of visibility, keyword rankings, traffic, and a whole lot more. 

But it’s not just a bunch of numbers. These reports break down complex data into understandable trends, helping you pinpoint what’s working and what’s not. It helps you track specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as organic traffic, bounce rate, and conversation rates, so you can understand if you are achieving your website’s goals. If not, it will also tell you that. This allows you to make any necessary adjustments. 

Essential SEO Reporting Tools

Before we begin, let’s review the essential tools you’ll need to create an effective SEO report:

• Google Analytics: Offers an at-a-glance way to see how your website is performing across many search traffic and conversion metrics. Check out our in-depth Google Analytics 4 guide for a deep dive on how to use it. You can also go for other analytics solutions.
• Google Search Console: Provides insights on search performance and keyword analysis, among other things. To make things easier, we also have a detailed article on using Google Search Console for SEO.
• Google PageSpeed Insights: Another tool in the Google suite, this one is designed to track website performance and page speed.
• Ubersuggest: Useful for keyword research and competitive analysis, it helps in identifying keyword rankings and exploring new keyword opportunities.
• Link Explorer (Moz): Finally, this tool is great for evaluating backlink quality and domain authority, which is a must for understanding and improving your website’s link profile.

Note that the tools above are all free. We wanted to show you how to create an SEO report for your site without paying any money. If you go for paid SEO tools, such as SEMrush or Ahrefs, they can often create SEO reports for you at the click of a button. However, they are also more costly. We also have a list of free marketing tools for more ideas.

Alright, now let’s get busy creating our SEO report.

Step 1: Set SEO Report Objectives and KPIs

Before collecting data, start by asking yourself, “What do I want to achieve with my SEO efforts?” Your objectives could range from boosting organic traffic to enhancing user engagement.

Be as specific as possible. For instance, instead of just aiming to increase traffic, set a target for how much you want to increase it by, say 20% in the next quarter.

Next, align your KPIs with these objectives. For example, if your goal is to boost organic traffic, the KPI you might track would be the number of new visitors from organic search. For improving keyword rankings, you would look at the positions of your targeted search terms. You get the picture.

Step 2: Gather Data From Your Selected Tools

You can’t create an SEO report without data. Here’s a brief guide on how to extract key information from each of the abovementioned tools.

1. Google Analytics

For website traffic and user engagement:

• Go to the report you want to export.
• Click on the Share button, usually found in the upper right corner.
• Select Download File and choose your preferred format (PDF, CSV, Excel, or Google Sheets).

2. Google Search Console

For search performance and keyword data:

• Access the reports related to performance, such as search queries or site performance.
• Use the Export option to download this data in various formats like Excel or Google Sheets.
• You can also create and apply filters to refine the data to specific aspects like particular countries or device types.

3. Ubersuggest

To create a concise report using Ubersuggest for competitive insights and keyword trends, follow these steps:

• Enter a competitor’s domain into the Keywords by Traffic and Top Pages by Traffic reports to see which keywords and pages are driving traffic to their site.
• Check the Content Ideas section to identify high-performing content in terms of traffic, backlinks, and social shares.
• Review the Traffic Overview for insights on organic keywords, monthly traffic, domain score, and backlinks.
• Use the Export to CSV and Copy to Clipboard buttons to export the information.

4. Link Explorer (Moz)

For backlink analysis:

• Input the URL of the website you wish to analyze. This could be your own website or that of a competitor.
• View the different generated reports, which includes the total number of backlinks, the number of linking domains, and other relevant metrics like the spam score of the backlinks and filter them as needed.
• Export the data in CSV format via the respective buttons.

Step 3: Evaluate Website and Content Performance

For evaluating your website and content performance, you can use Google Analytics and Ubersuggest. They allow you to understand user interaction, content appeal, and areas for improvement.

Using Google Analytics

You can create multiple types of reports to get a good look at how your content and website as a whole are performing.

For page views and user engagement:

• Navigate to the Reports tab in GA4 and select Engagement > Pages and screens. This report shows detailed metrics for each page and screen (in the case of mobile apps) viewed on your site. 
• Analyze metrics like the number of users, views per user, and average engagement time on each page or screen.
• Compare metrics for different time periods to identify trends and changes in page performance over time.

For content performance, key metrics in Google Analytics include Active Users, Average Engagement Time, Engagement Rate, and Unique User Scrolls.

• Active Users provides a clearer view of readers genuinely engaged with your content, as opposed to the broad “total users” metric in Universal Analytics.
• Average Engagement Time, replacing the older “average session duration” gives insights into the time users spend actively engaging with your content.
• Engagement Rate is an improved metric over the often misunderstood “bounce rate” reflecting the number of engaged sessions relative to total sessions.
• Unique User Scrolls help in understanding the depth of engagement of your readers with your content.

Using Ubersuggest

Use Ubersuggest for competitive insights and keyword trends. Identify keywords your competitors are ranking for that you are not, and analyze their content to understand what they might be doing differently or better.

Ubersuggest can also help in identifying new keyword opportunities and content gaps in your strategy, guiding you to create content that addresses unmet user needs.

Step 4: Evaluate Technical SEO Aspects

This step involves analyzing factors like website speed, crawlability, and other technical issues. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights are helpful for this process.

Using Google PageSpeed Insights

This tool is great as it offers a mix of lab and real-world data to give you a comprehensive view of your site’s performance. 

It works by assigning a score from 0 to 100 to your page, with higher scores indicating better performance. This score is based on various metrics like Core Web Vitals:

• First Input Delay (FID)
• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) 
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

The tool distinguishes between lab data (simulated performance) and field data (real-world user experience). Lab data helps spot problems like slow-loading resources, while field data gives insights into actual user interactions​

Step 5: Conduct a Competitive Analysis

Ubersuggest’s Competitive Analysis tool allows you to enter a competitor’s domain to discover long-tail keywords they are ranking for. This can be fantastic for identifying potential keyword opportunities that you might be missing out on.

Then you can create a Keywords by Traffic report that rounds up all the keywords driving traffic to a site. It’s particularly useful for analyzing smaller sites. Sorting the results by position can give you an insight into the top-ranking keywords for them.

You can use Link Explorer in a similar fashion. Once you input a website URL, the tool generates a report detailing the backlink profile, including total backlinks, linking domains, and spam scores. You can also apply filters for a more targeted analysis, such as domain authority, link type (like follow or nofollow), and anchor text. This helps in identifying the most valuable backlinks and also in spotting potentially harmful links.

Step 6: Analyze Mobile Traffic and User Experience

Analyzing mobile traffic and user experience in Google Analytics focuses on understanding how people behave while on your site, what they want to see, and the actions they take while on mobile devices. You can access and interpret this information as follows:

1. Go to the Reports section and check the Reports snapshot for a high-level overview. It includes metrics like the number of new users and insights into your site’s performance across different devices.
2. To specifically analyze mobile traffic, look for reports under Life Cycle and then the Engagement or User sections. They provide details about device usage and demographics.
3. Then to evaluate user behavior, go to Engagement > Pages and screens. This report provides data on pageviews, engagement time, and user interactions.
4. You can also use the Tech report to get an overview of device categories (mobile, desktop, tablet), operating systems, browsers, and screen resolutions used by your visitors.
5. GA4 is event-based, meaning all user interactions, including those on mobile, are tracked as events. You can see all automatically collected and custom events under Engagement > Events.

You can then use this collected data to make better decisions about user flow and mobile optimization. 

Step 7: Put Together Your SEO Report

When creating a report, the goal is to make the “story” of the data as clear as possible. Here are some tips for putting a good one together:

• Start with the Basics: Every good story needs a title, right? Your SEO report is no different. Kick things off with a clear title and a concise summary. This isn’t just about being formal or anything, it’s just about setting the context right from the get-go.
• Highlight the Journey: Include a section dedicated to the TL;DR. This is where you showcase the wins, the hiccups, and other notable items.
• Provide Your KPIs: Just like any good story has its key moments, your report should have a section for KPIs. 
• Present the Data: Here’s where you get into the specifics. Cover the website’s overall performance, keyword analysis, traffic analysis, and backlinking overview.

Using a template is a good idea here. Platforms like Visme and Databox offer customizable templates that can be a real timesaver. 

And remember, most people absorb information better visually. Charts, graphs, and other visual elements can transform your data from a dry list of numbers to something that’s engaging and accessible right away.

Step 8: Develop Insights and Make Recommendations

Each data point you’ve gathered tells a part of the story about the website you’re evaluating and your job is to make sense of this narrative.

Here’s how to analyze the data you’ve collected and make recommendations based on it. 

• Spot the Trends: Look at your traffic patterns, keyword performance, and backlink quality. Are there upward or downward trends? 
• Contextualize the Data: Don’t just look at the numbers in isolation. Consider the broader context. Was there a Google algorithm update? Did competitors change their strategies? Understanding the “why” behind the data is a must.
• Identify Opportunities and Gaps: Use your keyword analysis to spot opportunities. Maybe there are high-potential keywords you’re not ranking for. Or perhaps there are content gaps you can fill.
• Translate Insights into Action: Turn your observations into a concrete action plan. If a particular type of content is performing well, plan more of it. If certain pages have high bounce rates, it’s time to investigate and improve user experience.
• Tailor Recommendations: Finally, your recommendations should align with your business goals. If your goal is to increase conversions, focus on strategies that drive traffic to conversion-optimized pages. And so on.

Step 9: Set a Routine for Regular SEO Reporting

Consistent and regular reporting is a must for a successful SEO strategy. A standard routine should include, at the very least, monthly reports, quarterly deep dives, and annual reviews.

More (or fewer) reports might be necessary as well – especially if there’s a major search algorithm update or something – but this frequency ought to serve you well. 

Create SEO Reports with Confidence 

We’ve covered a lot about SEO reporting here today, and hopefully you now have a clearer understanding of what you need to do to keep on top of your site’s performance. By following the steps outlined here, you can monitor how your site is doing and make adjustments as necessary. And over time, you should see improved performance, based on informed decisions.

What’s the most useful data point in your SEO reports? How do you use that info to make a plan of action? 

The post How to Create an SEO Report for Your Website Step by Step appeared first on Torque.

That’s not all that surprising. At WordCamp EU 2023, Matt Mullenweg already predicted that AI and open source software would make a good match.

To give you a better impression of the possibilities that exist, in this post, we will count the many ways you can use AI in WordPress right now.

1. Create Written Content

This one is a no-brainer. Probably most people who know of ChatGPT have used it to create some type of written content by now. Therefore, it should be no surprise that this is also one of the main applications for AI in WordPress.

There are plenty of plugins out there that bring the power of OpenAI’s large language model to the WordPress editor. We recently examined one in detail, Jetpack AI Assistant. It adds a new block to the Gutenberg editor where you can prompt it to create text on any given topic.

Jetpack AI can write posts from scratch, add to existing content, propose a post title, check for grammar and spelling mistakes, change the tone of your writing, and even do translations. In addition, it helps you with prompt engineering so it’s easier to get what you want.

Elementor and Divi, two of the most popular page builder plugins, both have come out with their own AI tools, unsurprisingly called Elementor AI and Divi AI. Naturally, they each integrate directly with their respective builders so you can create content with AI while setting up your website. Divi even takes your existing content into account, for example, to adhere to your brand tone.

Finally, we have AI Engine, a WordPress plugin that brings artificial intelligence to your self-hosted site in different ways. Among other things, it allows you to connect your site to ChatGPT and you can then use the AI for content generation, brainstorming ideas, translating, corrections, etc.

2. Generate Images

If you are a ChatGPT user, you will probably be aware that its newer version is not only able to generate text but also images, thanks to Dall-E.

In addition, there are other image AIs out there, such as Midjourney, DreamStudio, and even Canva. As a consequence, it probably comes as no surprise that this ability is also available inside WordPress already.

Almost all of of the content AI services mentioned above that are based on ChatGPT (Elementor, Divi, and AI Engine) offer this feature as well.

Another highlight in this area is Imajinn. It can create images right inside the WordPress editor.

In addition, it comes with tools to further edit images (touch-ups, inpainting, resizing), has prompt assistance, and offers style presets.

3. Improve Your SEO

Another area where you can use AI in WordPress is for improving your SEO. Several plugins out there have embraced artificial intelligence to help users optimize websites more easily. Here are a few examples of what that looks like.

Automatically Create Titles and Meta Descriptions

The most popular SEO plugin, Yoast SEO, has integrated AI in a subtle way. It offers the option to create titles and meta descriptions for search snippets automatically with the click of a button.

For that, the plugin analyzes the content of the page, and creates several relevant SEO titles and descriptions. Choose the one you like best or ask the AI to generate more. Make last-minute adjustments, check it in the preview window, and you are done.

Unfortunately, this feature is reserved for premium users, plans start at $99/year.

Two other plugins that offers this feature are SEOPress and AIOSEO. SEOPress also has the possibility to generate ALT tags with AI while AIOSEO additionally uses AI for internal linking suggestions.

Receive AI-Powered On-Page SEO Advice

Another WordPress SEO plugin, Rank Math, is going a slightly different way with their usage of AI for SEO. First of all, it has built-in tools for creating SEO-optimized content with AI. For example, you can use it for brainstorming blog post ideas, creating outlines, fixing grammar, and creating frequent content types.

More importantly, however, it uses AI for its content analysis tool. It tells you how many words your article should have for a certain keyword, plus the number of headings, links, visuals, etc.

In addition, it provides you with related long-tail keywords, frequently asked questions, and sources to cite in your content. Plus, there is an AI assistant you can ask questions about SEO.

The plugin itself is free, however, in order to use Content AI, you need to purchase credits.

Automatically Add Structured Data

Another noteworthy plugin in terms of AI for WordPress SEO is WordLift, which connects your site to a service of the same name. WordLift uses artificial intelligence to automatically add structured data to your content. This helps generate rich snippets inside search results and allows search engines to better understand your website content.

In addition to that, the plugin can generate content recommendations for visitors in the form of related posts and create SEO reports.

4. Communicate With Your Audience

Another area where you can use AI in WordPress is for communicating with your visitors. A common way to do that, of course, are chatbots and we have already mentioned plugins that come with this functionality, such as AI Engine.

However, there are other ways AI can make interacting with your audience in WordPress easier.

Provide Support in Your Contact Forms

A plugin that has found a very innovative way to take advantage of AI is Formidable Forms. As the name suggests, this is a plugin for creating contact forms. One of the ways it uses artificial intelligence is to use it as a support option right inside contact forms.

The AI is able to answer basic support questions before they even get submitted, thereby saving time for both users and support teams. You can even determine the personality your ChatGPT-based support agent should take on.

To take advantage of AI functionality in Formidable Forms, you need their Business plan or higher, which starts at $199.50/year.

5. Get Coding Assistance

Despite WordPress making it easier to customize your website for people without coding skills, there are still situations in which you need some markup to make something happen on your site.

This, too, is a suitable application for AI. For example, the aforementioned Elementor AI allows its users to create code, such as custom CSS or an embed snippet for Google Analytics.

Write WordPress Code With AI

Another example is CodeWP, which can specifically write WordPress code. It works like other AIs, you give it a prompt and it produces PHP, JavaScript, CSS, and SQL markup. CodeWP is trained in WordPress code and has modes for popular plugins.

The service offers a plugin you can use to connect it to your WordPress website so it can take your existing environment into account. Another feature is its chat functionality where you can inquire about WordPress features and get expert feedback.

There is a limited free plan for 100 free actions per month and one project. Paid plans start at $18/month (when billed annually).

6. Translate Your Website

As we have already talked about, many of the plugins and services that connect your WordPress site to ChatGPT also allow you to use it for translation. The LLM does a decent job at it, too, however, there are better options to use AI to translate your site into other languages.

TranslatePress is a plugin that lets you take advantage of AI-powered automatic translation services, specifically Google Translate and DeepL. Once active on your site, it will automatically display translations of individual strings in the translation interface.

The free version gives you access to Google Translate and one extra language. For DeepL and additional languages and functionality, you need the Pro version starting at €7.99/month.

Other plugins you can use to bring AI-powered translation to your WordPress site are WPML and Weglot.

7. Automatically Optimize Images

We have talked about AI image generation already, however, what about using artificial intelligence to optimize your website visuals?

For example, we all know that part of image optimization is including ALT text.

This information helps people who use screen readers to understand visual content and is also taken into account by Google for ranking and relevancy purposes. Yet, adding it can also be tedious and is easy to forget.

Thankfully, you can now automate it with AI. Image recognition has advanced to the point that artificial intelligence can understand the content of images and describe it for ALT texts.

If you want this functionality for your WordPress site, two plugin options are Alt Text AI and Optimize Images ALT Text. As mentioned, SEOPress also has this feature.

8. Improve Website Security

Website security seems like an area that’s a perfect application for artificial intelligence, especially with the growing number of security threats out there. Are there ways to do that in WordPress already?

Indeed there are, for example, in the form of Quttera, an AI-powered security scanner. It checks your WordPress website for malware, worms, backdoors, trojans, and other threats. Quttera goes through all your website files looking for code patterns that could be malware and gives your a detailed report about the threat level of your WordPress site.

Quttera is free to use, paid plans start at $10/month.

9. Enhance Your E-commerce Website

Another area for use of artificial intelligence in WordPress is e-commerce. This is a bit different from running other types of websites, however, you can take advantage of similar AI automation.

Part of the main work of running an online shop is providing titles and descriptions for what you are selling. If have many products, that can be a lot of effort. This is another area where you can lighten the load by using AI.

The AI Power plugin works with WooCommerce and can automatically create product titles and descriptions as well as tags and more. However, that’s just one of many things that it does. You can also use it for SEO titles and meta descriptions, content and image generation, chatbots, converting audio to written text, and more.

10. Make Your Website More Accessible

We have already touched on how AI can help with accessibility by writing image ALT tags. However, there are other ways the technology can help make WordPress websites more accessible.

Scan Your Website for Accessibility Issues

Wouldn’t it be great to have a plugin that could examine your website for accessibility issues and automatically apply solutions for problems it finds?

Yes?

That’s exactly what AccessiBe does. It’s AI scanner checks WordPress sites for missing ALT tags and ARIA markup among other things and adds them if necessary. In addition to that, it provides a widget visitors with impairments can use to make your website more usable, e.g. by increasing contrast or text size.

Offer Text-to-Speech

Another way to improve the user experience on your site for people with vision impairments is to offer text-to-speech functionality.

A good option for that is Voicer, which is based on the Google Cloud Network and its powerful neural networks. It offers human-like speech in more than 275 different voices and 45+ languages and is compatible with a wide range of plugins, themes, and browsers.

The plugin costs $20 plus extra for tokens to use Google’s services.

How Will You Use AI in WordPress?

AI is here to stay and we have to get used to seeing applications for it in more and more parts of life, including WordPress. Already, there are plenty of ways you can take advantage of this technology on your own website.

From content and image creation over SEO improvements, audience communication, and coding, to translation, security and beyond, AI is already taking over important functions in website management. Let’s see what else it will be able to do in the near and far future.

What other use cases of AI in WordPress do you know? Please share in the comments!

The post 10+ Ways You Can Use AI in WordPress Right Now appeared first on Torque.