As a business, your overall goal is likely to achieve growth and remain competitive in your market.
Corporate development and business development are two practices that help businesses achieve growth through different means. Read on to learn the difference between the two and how they relate to your business operations.
Corporate development is the process of achieving growth for a business through internal restructuring and external opportunities for acquisitions and mergers, investments, and divesting assets. All corporate development processes increase the value of a business.
Internal restructuring is typically changing the current management to increase efficiency, such as hiring new staff, combining existing positions, or removing other positions.
An example of internal corporate restructuring can be combining two senior positions that are closely related. An external growth example is a larger company acquiring a smaller company that offers something beneficial to its offerings, like PayPal acquiring Venmo, a money sending service meant for friends and family.
Corporate development indirectly relates to sales as management restructuring and acquisitions will increase a business’s ability to serve customers and drive sales, but the processes come long before a customer receives a receipt.
What is business development?
Business development is identifying opportunities to develop relationships with similar companies to achieve key business objectives and bring value to customers. These relationships are usually developed with companies with similar goals and related offerings.
For example, a restaurant partnering with local delivery services so people can order their favorite food for delivery. The delivery business can make more money through a new client base, and the restaurant can increase its number of orders when customers have more ways to get its food.
Business development is closely related to sales because partnerships increase value for customers and inspire them to make purchases. The business dev process also begins through market research and qualifying prospects (companies) that it makes sense to partner with.
Difference Between Corporate Development and Business Development
Business development and corporate development are the same in that they focus on activities to help companies grow. Both processes bring a competitive advantage, as their end goal is to help a business increase the value it can provide to a target audience. Both can also involve relationships with external organizations, and business dev teams can exist within corporate dev teams.
They are different in that business dev is external relationships, and corporate dev is external growth through internal changes. While corporate dev involves finance, it does not directly increase sales as financial transactions include acquisitions and mergers and hiring new staff.
Business development is more closely related to sales because partnerships with external businesses drive more sales among consumers.
How do business development and corporate development work together?
Both processes can, however, work together.
For example, a corporate development team may hire a new vice president of marketing to oversee all marketing operations. This new hire brings along unique perspectives for expansion that help the company grow.
The new ideas impact business development as they involve new markets and new relationships with other relevant businesses in those markets.
Over To You
Most businesses should have corporate development and business development teams rather than one over the other. While each one helps your business grow and increase sales, both do so in different ways that are required for your company to succeed.
Are you worried about hackers attacking your website?
Cross-site scripting, also called XSS, is one of the most common attacks on WordPress sites. Hackers find vulnerabilities on your site and use them to steal information and misuse your website.
What’s worse is that if you don’t fix it immediately, these hacks could lead to more severe damage – the kind that’s really hard to recover from.
If your website is already under attack, we’ll show you how to fix it right away in simple beginner-friendly language. We’ll keep cybersecurity jargon to the bare minimum in this tutorial. We’ll also show you how to prevent future attacks.
First, let’s quickly understand what happens in an XSS attack so that you’ll be better equipped to handle it.
What is an XSS Attack in WordPress?
XSS stands for Cross Site Scripting which is a kind of injection attack where hackers inject malicious scripts into a website.
These scripts are disguised as good code on a trusted website. Next, when a user lands on this website, their browser executes all the code, including the malicious script, because it thinks it’s all trusted instructions.
In simpler terms, imagine you’re a spy and you’ve just received an official email from the government about a top-secret mission. It contains all the instructions you need to follow down to the T.
What you don’t know is that someone intercepted that email and added a few more instructions of their own. The government has no clue about it and you don’t bother to double check because you trust the source.
Some of it doesn’t make sense but you’re trained to obey every order to achieve your mission.
In this scenario, the government is your website, and the spy is the user’s browser. The browser follows the instructions from your website and can’t differentiate between the good and bad scripts.
These scripts are usually in Javascript, one of the most popular and widely-used programming languages. Although, these attacks can take place using any client-side language.
Now there are many ways to carry out an XSS attack. One way is to send a link to unsuspecting users to get them to click on it. Once they click on it, the attack can possibly do one or more of the following:
Redirect users to a malicious site
Capture the user’s keystrokes
Run web browser-based exploits
Steal cookie information of the user logged into an account
If the hacker is able to steal cookie information, they can completely compromise the user’s account. For instance, if you’re logged into your website’s wp-admin panel, the hacker can steal your credentials and log into your site.
What you need to do to prevent these attacks is to make sure all user data is validated and sanitized properly before it enters your website. That way, no user input can be malicious Javascript code. Added to that, you need to make sure there are no XSS vulnerabilities on your site that can allow a hacker to attack.
We’ve barely scratched the surface of XSS attacks but we hope you have a decent understanding of how a WordPress XSS attack works. Now if you suspect your site is hacked, follow our easy step-by-step tutorial below.
How to Find and Fix an XSS Attack in WordPress
To find any kind of malware or hacks on your site, you’ll need to run a deep scan on your entire website including its files and database.
We’ll be using Sucuri to scan and clean up your hacked site. Sucuri gives you a robust security setup including a firewall, malware scanner, and malware cleaner.
Sucuri offers a free website malware scanner that you can install inside your WordPress site by navigating to Plugins » Add New tab.
We recommend using the premium server-side scanner. This will turn your website inside out to find any trace of malware.
Added to that, here are a few of its highlights:
Monitors spam and malicious scripts
Checks for hidden backdoors created by hackers
Detects changes made to DNS (domain name system) and SSL
Checks for blacklists with search engines and other authorities
Sucuri comes with a price tag of $199.99 per year. If that’s out of your budget, you can try other security plugins. See our list: 9 Best WordPress Security Plugins Compared.
While selecting a security plugin, make sure it gives you all the cyber security features you need to find and fix malware infections and protect your website.
Step 1: Scanning Your Website
To get started, you’ll need to sign up for a plan with Sucuri. Then, log in to the Sucuri dashboard where you can add your site.
Here, you’ll need to connect your website by entering your FTP credentials. If you don’t know your FTP credentials, you can get them from your web host.
When your site is connected, Sucuri will automatically run a thorough scan of your website. Once done, it will show you a detailed report under the ‘My Sites’ tab.
Now you can click on the ‘Details’ button next to the warning message. This will open up the Monitoring page where you can view the details of the hack or infection.
Step 2: Requesting a Malware Cleanup
On the Monitoring page, you can see what kind of malware has infected your site. Sucuri adds a rating to indicate the risk level. So if it’s a critical or high risk, you know that you need to fix it right away. Added to that, it will also show you if your site has been blacklisted by any search engines.
Now that you know your site is infected, you need to clean it up and Sucuri makes this really easy for you. To get started with the process, click on the ‘Clean Up My Site’ button.
On the next page, click on New Malware Removal Request button and a form will appear where you can enter your site’s details.
Simply fill out the form and submit it. Once done, Sucuri’s security experts will clean up your site for you. In case you don’t know any of the details you need for the form, you can ask your web host for them.
Now you may be wondering how long would it take to get your site cleaned.
Sucuri gives first preference to users on the Business plan. They assure a turnaround time of 6 hours. For other plans, it depends on how complex your site’s infection is and the volume of requests they have in queue.
Immediately after an attack, we strongly recommend logging all users out of your site and changing your login credentials to be on the safe side.
How to Prevent XSS Attacks on Your WordPress Site
It’s always best to protect your website and prevent these kinds of malware attacks on your site. It’s much easier and cheaper than trying to fix a hacked website. Here are our top recommended steps to prevent XSS attacks on your site.
1. Enable a Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Sucuri has one of the best firewalls for WordPress sites. It not only blocks XSS attacks but all sorts of other malware attacks like DDoS, Brute Force, Phishing, and SQL injections.
The firewall will sit in front of your website and scan every user coming through. It will identify and block bad bots before they reach your site.
To enable the Sucuri firewall, navigate to the Firewall tab on your Sucuri dashboard.
Select your site, and you’ll see setup instructions that you can follow. Sucuri gives you 2 options to set up the firewall:
1. Automatic Integration: Simply enter your hosting credentials using cPanel or Plesk. This method requires you to give Sucuri access to your website’s server to automatically set up the firewall on your site.
2. Manual Integration: You can set up the firewall on your own without granting internal access to Sucuri. To get started, click on the internal domain link and make sure that it loads.
Next, you can configure your DNS to point your web traffic at the Sucuri firewall. For this, you’ll need to access the DNS records in your hosting account. Here, you can change the ‘A’ record of your site and enter the IP addresses that Sucuri provides.
If you’re stressed that this is all too complicated, you can ask your web host for help and they will guide you through the process. Added to that, you can also raise a support ticket with Sucuri and their support team will help you change the DNS records.
To open a ticket, you’ll find a link inside the manual instructions on the same page.
Once you’re done setting up the firewall, it usually takes a few hours for the changes to reflect. You can expect a maximum wait time of 48 hours.
When you enable the firewall, it will automatically add security headers to your site to protect it from XSS attacks.
If there’s an attempted XSS attack Sucuri will block it and report it to you in the Reports tab.
Now what we love about the Sucuri firewall is that it’s so easy for anyone to use, including beginners. You don’t have to be a cyber security expert or know any coding.
You can enable all sorts of protection features with just a click in the Settings » Security tab.
So for instance, you can enable DDoS protection and geoblocking to make it harder for hackers to attack your site.
To enable a security feature here, all you have to do is check the box and save your settings. When you need to disable it, you simply have to uncheck the box.
Aside from this, the Sucuri plugin will:
Regularly scan and monitor for spam and malicious code
Alert you of any cross-site scripting vulnerability
Block bad bots and hackers
Check for blacklists with search engines and other authorities
Monitor website uptime
Detect changes made to DNS (domain name system) and SSL
Send you instant security alerts via email, SMS, Slack, and RSS
So your site will be protected at all times.
2. Use Secure Forms
On a vulnerable website, forms are one of the most common targets for hackers. If your form is unsecured, this means anyone can simply enter malicious code in your form fields.
Our recommendation for securing your website’s forms is WPForms. It is the #1 WordPress form builder that has built-in security so your forms are protected right from the start.
By default, the forms have anti-spam protection turned on. Plus, you can even add CAPTCHA to your forms to block spam bots.
You can enable an invisible captcha or the type where a user will have to solve a little puzzle or tick a box to prove they’re human.
3. Set User Role Permissions
When you have multiple people working on your website, it isn’t wise to give everyone admin access. It’s better to assign them roles based on what permissions they need.
WordPress lets you create roles for:
Super Admin
Administrator
Editor
Author
Contributor
Subscriber
Now if a hacker gets control over a user’s account, they’ll be limited in what they can do on your site.
4. Auto-logout Inactive Users
Hackers can gain access to user accounts by hijacking their browser sessions and stealing cookies.
You can minimize this risk by logging out inactive WordPress users.
Many security plugins have an idle session logout feature or you can use the Inactive Logout plugin.
5. Update Your Website Regularly
WordPress plugins, themes, and even your WordPress installation get updates regularly. You’ll see them inside your WordPress dashboard when they’re available:
Many website owners ignore updates for a long time but this can expose your website to hackers. Updates usually carry bug fixes, new features, and improvements to the software. They can also have security patches. You can see if an update carries a security patch by viewing the details of the update.
This means a vulnerability was found in the software that hackers can use to attack your site. When developers find security problems, they patch them up and release a new version of the software.
All you have to do is update the software on your site.
So if you see it’s a security patch, update it immediately to avoid any risk of being hacked.
One of the main reasons site owners ignore updates is that they can sometimes break your site or cause incompatibility issues. We recommend that you test the update on a staging site and then run it on your live site.
With that, you’ve learned how to fix and prevent XSS attacks on your WordPress site.
Before we wrap up, we’ll give you one more security tip. Always take regular backups of your website.
Even with the strongest security measures on your site, there are many things that can go wrong. For instance, a user can make a simple human error that crashes your website.
1. Is WordPress vulnerable to cross-site scripting attacks?
The WordPress core software is developed and maintained by some of the best experts in the world. Their software is pretty rock solid but keep in mind that no software is free from vulnerabilities.
The reason WordPress websites are attacked often is that the platform is so popular. And most users install tons of third-party themes and plugins. Vulnerabilities can develop in any of these elements and hackers can exploit them to hack your site.
2. Are there different kinds of cross site scripting attacks?
Yes. There are 3 main types of XSS attacks:
Stored XSS (also know as persistent XSS): Attackers stores their payload on a compromised server, causing the website to deliver malicious code to other visitors.
Reflected XSS: The payload is stored in the data sent from the browser to the server.
DOM XSS: Here, the server itself isn’t the one vulnerable to XSS, but rather the JavaScript on the page is.
Self cross-site scripting: Attackers can exploit a vulnerability that needs really specific context and manual changes. The victim here can only be yourself.
Blind cross-site scripting: In these attacks, the vulnerability commonly lies on a page that only authorized users can access. The attacker can’t see the result of an attack.
3. How do I make sure there are no other security issues on my site?
Make sure you always have a security plugin installed on your website. This is a must for all kinds of websites including WooCommerce, blogs, and small business sites. We recommend Sucuri, but you can also check out Wordfence, MalCare, and SiteLock. See more of our top recommendations here: 9 Best WordPress Security Plugins Compared.
That’s all we have for you today. We hope this post has given you everything you need to secure your website.
For more on website security, see our resources on:
Do you want to know what’s new in Google Analytics 4? How is GA4 different from Universal Analytics?
There’s a lot that’s changed in the new Google Analytics 4 platform including the navigation. Google has added new features and removed a number of reports you’re familiar with. And that means we’ll need to relearn the platform.
In this guide, we’ll detail the differences between Google Analytics 4 (GA4) vs. Universal Analytics (UA) so that you’re prepared to make the switch.
In this section, we’re detailing the things that are new in GA4 that aren’t present in Universal Analytics at all. A little later, we’ll go into depth about all the changes you need to know about.
Creating and Editing Events: GA4 brings about a revolutionary change in the way you track events. You can create a custom event and modify events right inside your GA4 property. This isn’t possible with Universal Analytics unless you write code to create a custom event.
Conversion Events: Conversion goals are being replaced with conversion events. You can simply mark or unmark an event to start tracking it as a conversion. There’s an easy toggle switch to do this. GA4 even lets you create conversion events ahead of time before the event takes place.
Data Streams: UA lets you connect your website’s URL to a view. These views let you filter data. So for instance, you can create a filter in a UA view to exclude certain IP addresses from reports. GA4 uses data streams instead of views.
Data filters: Now you can add data filters to include or exclude traffic internal and developer traffic from your GA4 reports.
Google Analytics Intelligence: You can delete search queries from your search history to fine-tune your recommendations.
Explorations and Templates: There’s a new Explore item in the menu that takes you to the Explorations page and Template gallery. Explorations give you a deeper understanding of your data. And there are report templates that you can use.
Debug View: There’s a built-in visual debugging tool which is awesome news for developers and business owners. With this mode, you can get a real-time view of events displayed on a vertical timeline graph. You can see events for the past 30 minutes as well as the past 60 seconds.
BigQuery linking: You can now link your GA4 account with your BigQuery account. This will let you run business intelligence tasks on your analytics property using BigQuery tools.
While this is what’s unique to GA4, there are a lot more changes than this. But first, let’s take a look at what’s gone from the Universal Analytics platform that we’re all familiar with.
What’s Missing in Google Analytics 4?
Google Analytics 4 has done away with some of the old concepts. These include:
Views and Filters: As we mentioned, GA4 is not using Data Streams and we explain this in depth a bit later. So you won’t be able to create a view and related filters. Once you convert your UA property to GA4, you’ll be able to access a read-only list of UA filters under Admin > Account > All Filters.
Customization (menu): UA properties have a customization menu for options to create dashboards, create custom reports, save existing reports, and create custom alerts. Below are the UA customization options, along with their GA4 equivalent.
Dashboards: At the time of writing this, there isn’t a way to create a custom GA4 dashboard.
Custom reports: GA4 has the Explorations page instead where you can create custom reports.
Saved reports: When you create a report in Explorations, it is automatically saved for you.
Custom alerts: Inside custom Insights, which is a new feature in GA4, you can set custom alerts.
Google Search Console linking: There isn’t a way to link Google Search Console with a GA4 property at the time of writing.
Bounce rate: One of the most tracked metrics – the bounce rate – is gone. It’s likely that this has been replaced with Engagement Metrics.
Conversion Goals: In UA, you could create conversion goals under Views. But since views are gone, so are conversion goals. However, you can create conversion events to essentially track the same thing.
Now that you know what’s new and what’s missing in GA4, we’ll take you through an in-depth tour of the new GA4 platform.
Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics
Below, we’ll be covering the main differences between GA4 and UA. We’ve created this table of contents for you to easily navigate the comparison guide:
Feel free to use the quick links to skip ahead to the section that interests you the most.
New Mobile Analytics
A major difference between GA4 and UA is that the new GA4 platform will also support mobile app analytics.
In fact, it was originally called “Mobile + Web”.
UA only tracked web analytics so it was difficult for businesses with apps to get an accurate outlook on their performance and digital marketing efforts.
Now with GA4 data model, you’ll be able to track both your website and app. You can set up a data stream for Android and iOS.
There’s also added functionality to create custom campaigns to collect information about which mediums/referrals are sending you the most traffic. This will show you where your campaigns get the most traction so that you can optimize your strategies in the future.
Easy User ID Tracking
Turning on user ID tracking in UA was quite a task. But that’s all been simplified in GA4 with the new measurement model. You simply need to navigate to Admin » Property Settings » Reporting Identity tab.
You can choose between Blended and Observed mode. Select the one you want and save your changes. That’s it.
New Navigational Menu
In GA4, the reporting interface remains familiar and the navigation menu is still on the left! That keeps things familiar but there are quite a few menu items that have changed.
First, there are only 4 high-level menu items right now. Google may add more as the platform is further developed.
Next, each menu item has a collapsed view. You can expand each item by clicking on it.
Now when you click on the submenu items, it will expand the menu to reveal more sub menus.
In GA4, you’ll see familiar menu items you use for SEO and other purposes but in different locations. Here are the notable changes:
Realtime is under Reports
Audience(s) is under Configure
Acquisition is under Reports » Life cycle
Conversions is under Configure
GA4 also comes with completely new menu items as listed below:
Reports snapshot
Engagement
Monetization
Retention
Library
Custom definitions
DebugView
Measurement ID vs Tracking ID
Universal Analytics uses a Tracking ID that has a capital UA, a hyphen, a 7-digit tracking code followed by another hyphen, and a number. Like this: UA-1234567-1.
The last number is a sequential number starting from 1 that maps to a specific property in your Google Analytics account. So if you set up a second Google Analytics property, the new code will change to UA-1234567-2.
You can find the Tracking ID for a Universal Analytics property under Admin » Property column. Navigate to Property Settings » Tracking ID tab where you can see your UA tracking ID.
In GA4, you’ll see a Measurement ID instead of a Tracking ID. This starts with a capital G, a hyphen followed by a 10-character code.
It would look like this: G-SV0GT32HNZ.
To find your GA4 Measurement ID, go to Admin » Property » Data Streams. Click on a data stream. You’ll see your Measurement ID in the stream details after the Stream URL and Stream Name.
Data Streams vs Views
In UA, you could connect your website’s URL to a view. UA views are mostly used to filter data. So for instance, you can create a filter in a UA view to exclude certain IP addresses from reports.
GA4 uses data streams instead. You’ll need to connect your website’s URL to a data stream.
But don’t be mistaken, they are not the same as views.
Also, you can’t create a filter in GA4. In case your property was converted from UA to GA4, then you can find a read-only list of UA filters under Admin » Account » All Filters.
“A flow of data from your website or app to Analytics. There are 3 types of data stream: Web (for websites), iOS (for iOS apps), and Android (for Android apps).”
You can use your data stream to find your measurement ID and global site tag code snippet. You can also enable enhanced measurements such as your page views, scrolls, and outbound clicks.
In a data stream, you can do the following:
Set up a list of domains for cross-domain tracking
Create a set of rules for defining internal traffic rules
Put together a list of domains to exclude from tracking
Data streams will make a lot of things easier. But there are 2 things that you need to be aware of. First, once you create a data stream, there’s no way to edit it. And if you delete a data stream, you can’t undo this action.
Events vs. Hit Types
UA tracks data by hit types which is essentially an interaction that results in data being sent to Analytics. This includes page hits, event hits, eCommerce hits, and social interaction hits.
GA4 moves away from the concept of hit types. Instead, it’s event-based meaning every interaction is captured as an event. This means everything including page, events, eCommerce transactions, social, and app view hits are all captured as events.
There’s also no option for creating conversion goals. But GA4 lets you flag or mark an event as a conversion with the flip of a toggle switch.
This is essentially the same thing as creating a conversion goal in Universal Analytics. You can also create new conversion events ahead of time before those events actually take place.
In GA4, Google organizes events into 4 categories and recommends that you use them in this order:
1. Automatically collected
In the first event category, there’s no option to turn on any setting for tracking events so you don’t need to activate anything here. Google will automatically collect data on these events:
first_visit – the first visit to a website or Android instant app
session_start – the time when a visitor opens a web page or app
user_engagement – when a session lasts longer than 10 seconds or had 1 or more conversions or had 2 or more page views
Keep in mind that we’re only at the start of GA4. With Google’s ever-advancing and machine-learning technology, more automatically collected events may be added as the platform progresses.
2. Enhanced measurement
In this section, you don’t need to write any code but there are settings to turn on enhanced measurements. This will give you an extra set of automatically collected events.
To enable this data collection, you need to turn on the Enhanced measurement setting in your Data Stream.
Then you’ll see more enhanced measurement events that include:
page_view: a page-load in the browser or a browser history state change
click: a click on an outbound link that goes to an external site
file-download: a click that triggers a file download
scroll: the first time a visitor scrolls to the bottom of a page
3. Recommended
These GA4 events are recommended but aren’t automatically collected in GA4 so you’ll need to enable them if you want to track them.
We suggest you check out what is in the recommended events and turn on tracking for what you need. This can include signups, logins, and purchases.
Before we move to custom events, if you don’t see these 3 event types – automatically collected, enhanced measurement, and recommended – in your dashboard, you should ideally create a custom event for it.
4. Custom
Custom events let you set up tracking for any event that doesn’t fall into the above 3 categories. You can create and modify your events. So for instance, you can create custom events to track menu clicks.
You can design and write custom code to enable tracking for the event you want. But there is no guarantee that Google will support your custom metrics and events.
No Bounce Rate
The bounce rate metric has vanished! It’s been suggested that Google wants to focus on users that stay on your website rather than the ones that leave.
So this has likely been replaced with engagement rate metrics to collect more data on user interactions and engaged sessions.
No Custom Reports
UA properties have a customization menu for options to create dashboards, create custom reports, save existing reports, and create custom alerts.
A lot of this has changed in GA4. To make it easier for you to understand, here are the UA metrics and their GA4 equivalents:
Custom reports can be found in the Explorations page.
Saved reports are automatically created when you run an Exploration.
Custom alerts can be set up inside custom Insights from the GA4 home page.
One more thing to note is that you also won’t find a way to link Google Search Console with a GA4 property (at the time of writing). And that’s all the key differences between Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4.
Now you may be wondering whether you HAVE TO make the switch to GA4. A lot of our users have been asking us this question so we’ll tell you quickly what you need to do.
Do I Have To Switch to GA4?
Google will retire Universal Analytics in July 2023. You’ll have access to your UA data for some time but all new data will flow into GA4. If you have a US property set up, you’ll see this warning in your dashboard:
So you have to set up a GA4 property sooner or later and we recommend that you do it sooner. This is because your UA data won’t be transferred to GA4. You have to start afresh.
You can set up your GA4 property now and let it collect data. In the meantime, you can continue to use Universal Analytics and use the time to learn the new GA4 platform. Then when we’re all forced to make the switch, you’ll have plenty of historical data in your GA4 property.
Want to skip the guide and use a tool? Then MonsterInsights is the best to set up GA4. It even lets you create dual tracking profiles so you can have both UA and GA4 running simultaneously.
These posts will help you track your users and their activity on your site so that you can get more valuable insights and analytics data to improve your site’s performance.
Are you trying to fix issues with WordPress search not working on your website?
While WordPress comes with basic search feature, it has some common errors and limitations that can keep your visitors from finding what they’re looking for.
In this post, we’ll show you how to fix problems with WordPress search not working.
Why Do WordPress Search Errors Happen?
Most websites have a search feature that helps visitors find interesting content on your WordPress blog or products that they may want to buy on your online store.
However, WordPress’ built-in search feature is very basic.
By default, it doesn’t search all types of content such as comments, reviews, or custom post types. This may stop the visitor from finding what they’re looking for.
The built-in search also focuses on matching search words with the post or page content without paying attention to things such as tags, categories, or custom fields. This is important information that can help your visitors get more accurate search results.
Lastly, there’s no easy way to customize the built-in search. For example, if you wanted to prioritize a post’s titles over its excerpt, or exclude certain pages from WordPress search, you would need to edit the code.
With that in mind, let’s look at how you can easily fix common problems with WordPress search not working. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the issue you’re having with WordPress search.
While WordPress has built-in search feature, not all themes may come with a search bar design. If your theme doesn’t come with a search bar, then there are a few ways that you can create one.
You can add a Search block to any widget-ready area of your WordPress website such as the header or footer. This is a quick and easy way to show a search bar across every page of your WordPress site.
To add a Search block, simply go to Appearance » Widgets. You can then find the area where you want to add a search bar, and click on its arrow icon to expand.
Then, just click on the + icon.
In the popup that appears, type in ‘search’ and then select the Search block.
Once you’ve done that, you can customize the Search block using the row of icons that appears above the block. This includes changing the size of the search button and adding some text.
When you’re happy with how your Search block looks, go ahead and click on the ‘Update’ button. You can now visit your website to see the search bar live.
Another option is adding the Search block to a specific page or post. For example, you might just want to show a search bar on your homepage or landing page.
To do this, just open the page or post where you want to show your search bar. You can then click on the + icon and add a Search block following the same process described above.
WordPress’ ready-made Search block is an easy way to add basic search to your site. However, if you want complete control over how your search bar looks and acts, then you’ll need a page builder plugin.
SeedProd is the best drag and drop page builder for WordPress and comes with over 80 professionally-designed blocks including a Search Form block. This allows you to instantly add a search bar to any area of your WordPress website.
All you need to do is open SeedProd’s editor and then drag and drop the Search Form block into place on your website’s layout.
Once you’ve done that, you can customize it using all the settings in the left-hand menu.
Once you’ve added a search bar, you can use the SeedProd theme builder to design a completely custom search results page that perfectly matches your brand. For more information, please see our guide on how to easily create a custom WordPress theme.
How to Fix WordPress Search Showing 404 Error
When a visitor performs a search, your site may show a 404 error such as ‘This page could not be found!’
You can often fix 404 errors by regenerating your permalinks. This rebuilds and repairs the WordPress permalink structure without changing anything on your site.
This may sound complex, but WordPress does all of the hard work for you.
To regenerate your permalinks, simply go to Settings » Permalinks.
Then, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the ‘Save Changes’ button.
That’s it. WordPress will now regenerate your permalink structure. To make sure it worked, head over to your site and try performing a search.
How to Fix WordPress Search Showing Irrelevant Results
Every time a visitor performs a search, you’ll want to show relevant search results. This helps visitors find interesting content, which will keep them on your site for longer and increase your sales and conversions.
However, the built-in WordPress search doesn’t always show the most accurate results. This is because it looks for the search term in your post’s title and content only.
With that in mind, we recommend installing an advanced search plugin.
SearchWP is the best custom search plugin for WordPress, used by over 30,000 websites. SearchWP can search every part of your site including custom fields, WooCommerce products, categories and tags, PDF files, and more.
You can use SearchWP to adjust your website’s search algorithm and make sure your most important content appears at the top of the visitor’s search results.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the SearchWP plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, click on the new ‘SearchWP’ button in your website’s toolbar. You can then go ahead and click on ‘Activate License.’
Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘License’ tab.
You can now either paste or type your license into the ‘License’ box. You’ll find this key in the email you got when you purchased SearchWP.
After that, go ahead and click on the ‘Activate’ button.
SearchWP integrates with WordPress search automatically, so right away your site will start showing more accurate results. However, to get the best results you’ll want to customize SearchWP’s search engine settings.
Here it helps to think about the way that search engines such as Google rank their content.
These search engines use algorithms to find high-quality content that closely matches the search term. It then ranks this content to make sure the best matches appear at the top of the search results page.
With SearchWP you can build your own algorithms and set your own rules, just like Google. This can improve the visitor experience, boost your conversions, and help you make money online with WordPress.
To configure SearchWP’s settings, click on the ‘Engines’ tab.
On this screen, you’ll see sections for the different types of WordPress content such as pages and posts.
For each section, SearchWP shows the attributes it looks at when performing a search. In the following image, we can see that SearchWP searches the page’s title, content, slug, and the page’s excerpt.
There is also an ‘Applicable Attribute Relevance’ scale for each attribute. This is the weight that SearchWP gives to each attribute when ranking its search results.
In the following image, we can see that a post’s title has more weight than its URL slug.
You can make an attribute more or less relevant using its slider.
There are no settings that are guaranteed to provide accurate results for every website. With that in mind, you may want to try different relevancy settings to see what gives you the most accurate search results.
You can also add different types of content to be included in your search results. For example, you can add PDF searching and indexing in WordPress if you have PDF files you want your visitors to be able to search for.
If you have any custom taxonomies or fields, then you can also tell SearchWP to look at this content when searching your site.
To add or remove attributes, click on the ‘Add/Remove Attributes’ button.
This opens a popup. To get SearchWP to ignore an attribute, simply uncheck its box.
If you want to add an attribute, then click to check its box.
Want to include a custom field or taxonomy in your searches?
Simply type in the name of that field or taxonomy, and then select it when it appears.
Once you’re happy with your attributes, click on the ‘Done’ button.
You can now change the relevancy for your new attributes following the same process described above.
Once you’re connected to your site, you can use FTP to open the wp-content/themes/ folder.
Inside the ‘themes’ folder, find the theme you’re currently using on your WordPress website. You can then open this folder and find the search.php file.
Next simply click on the search.php file and select ‘View/Edit.’
This will open search.php in your computer’s default text editor.
Now, check this template for any queries that contain query_posts, new WP_Query, or get_posts. This usually means that your theme is performing a redundant search.
If search.php has any of these queries, then we recommend switching to an alternative WordPress theme. To help you out, we’ve created a list of the most popular and best WordPress themes.
Another option is to hire a WordPress developer who can write a new template that doesn’t perform a redundant search.
How to Fix WooCommerce Product Search Not Showing Accurate Results
Fast search helps visitors find what they’re looking for in less time. This will improve the user experience and can increase your pageviews and conversion rate.
Unfortunately, the built-in WordPress search isn’t particularly fast. As you add more content, you may notice that your site takes longer and longer to return the search results.
The good news is that there are ways to speed up your site’s search. If you’re using an advanced search plugin like SearchWP, then you’re already off to a great start.
SearchWP is designed to deliver search results, fast. It’s also fully customizable, so you can ignore some of your site’s content when performing a search. For example, you may tell SearchWP to ignore your media metadata. This can speed up your search by reducing the amount of content it has to look through.
You can also improve the search experience by adding live Ajax search to your WordPress site. This is a dropdown that guesses what visitors are searching for as they type, which can make your searches feel instant.
Would you like to accept Google Pay on your WordPress site?
When you allow your customers to choose their preferred payment method, you’ll build trust and increase conversions on your website.
In this article, we’ll show you how to accept Google Pay in WordPress.
Why Accept Google Pay in WordPress?
If you’re selling products or services on your WordPress website or asking for donations, then it’s important to let your visitors pay using their preferred method.
Often they will want to pay by credit card or PayPal, but newer methods like Google Pay and Apple Pay are becoming more popular.
Google Pay is available in 40 countries around the world and makes online payments simple. However, your customers can only use it if they’re on an Android device running version Lollipop 5.0 or higher, so you’ll probably want to include additional payment options for people using other devices.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to accept Google Pay in your online store.
Note: We’ll cover how to add a Google Pay option in WordPress without adding a full eCommerce cart, but we will leave other helpful resources at the end of this article for those looking for full eCommerce solutions.
WP Simple Pay is a simple yet powerful WordPress invoicing and payments plugin. The best part is that WP Simple Pay does not charge you any additional transaction fees, and you can set it up without the complexity of a cart system.
It lets you add Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit card as well as ACH bank payments, so you can give users multiple payment options which improves conversion.
While there is a free version of the plugin, you need the Pro plugin to accept Google Pay, create on-site payment forms, and more.
Upon activation, the WP Simple Pay setup wizard will start automatically. You simply need to click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button to continue.
On the first page, you’ll be asked to enter your license key. You can find this information from your account on the WP Simple Pay website.
After that, you need to click the ‘Activate and Continue’ button to move to the next step.
On the second page, you will need to connect WP Simple Pay to Stripe. Stripe is a popular payment gateway, and it’s the easiest way to add Google Pay to your website. It also supports all top credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, ACH payments, and more.
Simply click the ‘Connect with Stripe’ button, and from there you can log in to your Stripe account or create a new one. Anyone with a legitimate business can create a Stripe account and accept payments online.
Note: Stripe requires your site to be using SSL/HTTPS encryption. If you don’t already have an SSL certificate for your website, then please see our step by step guide on how to add SSL in WordPress.
Once you’ve connected to Stripe, you’ll be asked to configure your WP Simple Pay emails.
The options for payment and invoice emails to your customers have already been enabled for you. So is the option for sending payment notification emails.
You just need to enter the email address where the notifications should be sent.
Once you’ve done that, you need to click the ‘Save and Continue’ button to complete your setup of WP Simple Pay.
Google Pay is enabled by default when using Stripe Checkout, and will be automatically offered to Android users in participating countries.
If you decide to disable Google Pay in the future, then you will need to change the payment method settings in the Stripe Dashboard.
Creating a Payment Form in WordPress
Next, you need to create a payment form.
You can do that by clicking the ‘Create a Payment Form’ button on the last page of the setup wizard. This will automatically take you to the WP Simple Pay » Add New page.
You’ll be shown a list of payment form templates. You need to scroll down until you locate the Apple Pay / Google Pay template.
Simply hover over the template and click the ‘Use Template’ button when it appears.
This will take you to the payment form editor.
If you like, you can rename the form and give it a description. After that, you need to select the ‘Stripe Checkout’ option under Form Type.
After you’ve done that, we’ll move on to the Payment tab.
Here you can set the payment mode to either live or testing. Testing mode will let you make payments that are not actually charged so you can make sure your form is working properly and emails are being sent.
Don’t forget to change this to ‘Live’ when you’ve finished testing and are ready to start receiving payments from your customers.
You can also add the products or services that you offer, along with their prices and whether they are a one-time payment or a subscription.
Simply click the ‘Add Price’ button until you have added as many prices as you need. After that, you will need to add a label and price for each one. You can also select other options, such as recurring payments, or the user can determine the price, as in a donation.
You can show or hide a price by clicking the small arrow on the right.
Next, we’ll move on to the ‘Form Fields’ tab. Notice that the essential fields have already been added to the form, including an ‘Apple Pay / Google Pay’ button, credit card details, and a checkout button.
Using the ‘Form Fields’ drop down, you can choose additional fields and add them by clicking the ‘Add Field’ button. Options include name, phone number, address, and much more.
Finally, the ‘Stripe Checkout’ tab allows you to select additional payment methods and tweak the checkout form that is displayed after the user clicks the ‘Pay’ button.
For this tutorial, we’ll leave those settings as they are.
When you are happy with your payment form, click on the ‘Publish’ button to store your settings and push the form live.
Now we can add the form to a post or page on your website.
Adding the Payment Form to Your Website
WP Simple Pay makes it super easy to add forms anywhere on your website.
Simply create a new post or page, or edit an existing one. Then, click on the plus (+) sign at the top and add a WP Simple Pay block in the WordPress block editor.
After that, select your order form from the dropdown menu in the WP Simple Pay block.
Once you’re finished, you can update or publish the post or page, and then click on the preview button to see your form in action.
When your users click the Pay button, the Stripe checkout form will be displayed.
If they are using an Android device running Lollipop 5.0 or higher, then the Google Pay option will be displayed at the top of the form. Otherwise, the Google Pay option will be hidden, and your customers can pay using a credit card.
If you’re looking for other ways to add Google Pay in WordPress, then you can use full eCommerce solutions like Easy Digital Downloads or WooCommerce. Both of them have support for Apple Pay and Google Pay options.
Are you looking to switch to the latest Google Analytics version?
Google is now recommending website owners to move to the new Google Analytics 4 because they will be sunsetting the previous Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023. After the sunset day, you won’t be able to track data in the older version.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily switch to Google Analytics 4 in WordPress.
Why Switch to Google Analytics 4?
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google Analytics. It lets you track your mobile apps and websites in the same account, and offers new metrics, reports, and tracking features.
If you haven’t created a GA4 property yet, then now is the best time to switch to the latest version. That’s because Google announced that it will be closing down the old Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023.
What this means is that Universal Analytics will no longer receive data from your WordPress website, and it will eventually stop working after the sunset date. That means that all your old analytics data will be lost.
Switching to Google Analytics 4 as soon as possible will protect you from starting from scratch with no historical data.
To do this right, a lot of smart website owners are using the dual tracking method which allows you to continue using the current Universal Analytics while start sending data to GA4.
This way, you can future-proof your data while giving yourself plenty of time to learn the new Google Analytics dashboard and features.
That being said, let’s see how you can switch to Google Analytics 4 in WordPress with dual tracking.
If you’d prefer written instructions, just keep reading.
Creating a Google Analytics 4 Property
If you already have an existing Google Analytics account using the old version, then you can eaily create a new GA4 property and start sending stats to GA4.
After that, head over to the ‘Admin’ settings page in the bottom left corner.
If you’re on classic Google analytics, then you’ll see the option to setup GA4.
Go ahead and click on ‘GA4 Setup Assistant’ under the Property column.
In the next step, the setup assistant will give you 2 options. You can create a new Google Analytics 4 property or connect an existing one.
Since we’re setting up a new property, simply click the Get Started button under the ‘I want to create a new Google Analytics 4 property’ option.
A popup will now appear with the details about the setup wizard.
If you’ve implemented your Universal Analytics using the Global Site Tag (gtag.js) code, then you’ll see an option to Enable data collection using existing tags.
This uses the existing tracking code on your site to collect information. That said, if you don’t already have the right tracking code on your website, we’ll show you how to add it to your WordPress blog below.
For now, you can go ahead and click the ‘Create property’ button.
The setup wizard will add a new GA4 property and copy the Universal Analytics property name, website URL, timezone, and currency settings.
You can now view your new Google Analytics 4 property in the GA4 Setup Assistant.
Next, you’ll need to click on the ‘See your GA4 property’ button to see your Google Analytics tracking code.
After clicking on the button, simply click on the ‘Tag installation’ option to retrieve your tracking code.
You should now see your new GA4 property under Data Streams.
Go ahead and click on your new property.
A new window will slide in from the right, and you’ll be able to see your web stream details.
Note: Google Analytics 4 uses both ‘data stream’ and ‘web stream’. These both simply mean the flow of analytics data that Google Analytics receives from your website.
Simply scroll down to Tagging Instructions section and click the Global site tag (gtag.js) option to expand the settings. You’ll now see your Google Analytics tracking code that needs to be added to your WordPress site.
One thing you need to know is that Google Analytics 4 reports are quite different than what you’re used to in Universal Analytics.
They have introduced new terminology, and many familiar metrics and reports are missing completely. Basically if you were using common reports like the Top Landing Pages report or others, then you’d have to recreate those from scratch in Google Analytics 4.
It will help you see all the familiar analytics reports right in your WordPress dashboard, and it also lets you use both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 at the same time.
Not to mention, with MonsterInsights you get all the powerful tracking features such as outbound link tracking, author tracking, and more which can be enabled without writing any code.
Let’s take a look at how to easily set up Google Analytics 4 on your WordPress site with MonsterInsights.
Adding Google Analytics Tracking Code to WordPress Site
The best way to add Google Analytics tracking code to your WordPress website is by using MonsterInsights. This is the plugin that we use on WPBeginner.
MonsterInsights is the best Analytics solution for WordPress, and it’s trusted by over 3 million websites because it lets you easily setup advanced tracking without any coding skills.
You can use the MonsterInsights Lite version to set up Google Analytics in no time. There are also premium MonsterInsights plans that offer more features like custom dashboard reports, email summaries, scroll tracking, eCommerce tracking, premium integrations, and more.
MonsterInsights also offers dual tracking, meaning you can use both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 at the same time. This is available in both the free version as well paid, and we highly recommend using this to ensure that your transition to GA4 goes smoothly.
First, you’ll need to install and activate the MonsterInsights plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you’ll be taken to the MonsterInsights welcome screen in your WordPress dashboard. Simply click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button to add Google Analytics to your site.
After clicking the button, the setup wizard will ask you to choose a category that best describes your website.
You can choose from a business website, publisher (blog), or online store. Once you’ve selected a category, click the ‘Save and Continue’ button.
In the next step, you’ll need to connect MonsterInsights with your WordPress site.
Go ahead and click the ‘Connect MonsterInsights’ button.
Once you click the button, you’ll need to sign in to your Google Account.
Simply select your account and click the ‘Next’ button.
Next, MonsterInsights will require access to your Google Analytics Account.
MonsterInsights App needs these permissions, so it can help you setup analytics properly and show you all the relevant stats right inside your WordPress dashboard.
You can click the ‘Allow’ button to continue.
After that, you’ll be redirected back to the MonsterInsights setup wizard.
To complete the connection, select your Google Analytics 4 property from the dropdown menu and click the ‘Complete Connection’ button.
Next, MonsterInsights will connect Google Analytics with your WordPress website.
On the next screen, you’ll see some recommended settings like file download tracking and affiliate link tracking.
Next, you can scroll down and select who can see reports and add different WordPress user roles.
Once you’re done, click the ‘Save and continue’ button.
After that, MonsterInsights will show different tracking features that you can enable for your website.
You can scroll down and click the ‘Skip for Now’ button.
Next, you’ll see a checklist showing that you’ve successfully connected Google Analytics to your website.
For example, it will show that you’re successfully connected to Google Analytics, the tracking code is properly installed, and the data is being collected.
That’s it, you’ve added Google Analytics 4 property to your WordPress site.
Creating a Measurement Protocol API Secret
If you want to MonsterInsights to track eCommerce purchases, form conversions, and more advanced tracking in Google Analytics, then you’ll need to create a Measurement Protocol API Secret.
First, you’ll need to go back to your Google Analytics account and then go to Admin settings. Next, click on the ‘Data Streams’ option under Property column.
Then you’ll need to select the Google Analytics 4 property that we created earlier.
Go ahead and select your property under Data Streams.
After that, you can scroll down to the ‘Advanced Settings’ section.
Simply click the ‘Measurement Protocol API secrets’ option.
A new window will now slide in with your Measurement Protocol API secrets.
You will have to click the ‘Create’ button.
After that, enter a nickname for your API secret so it’s easily identifiable.
When you’re done, click the ‘Create’ button.
You should now see your Measurement Protocol API secret.
Simply copy the API secret under the ‘Secret value’ field.
After that, you can head back to your WordPress website and navigate to Insights » Settings from your dashboard.
Now click on the ‘General’ tab at the top.
Next, you will have to scroll down to the ‘Google Authentication’ section.
Go ahead and enter the Secret value you just copied in the Measurement Protocol API Secret field.
You’ve successfully added Measurement Protocol API Secret in MonsterInsights.
Setting Up Universal Analytics Dual Tracking
Now that you have setup GA4, the next step is to enable dual tracking for Universal Analytics, so it can run alongside your Google Analytics 4 property in WordPress.
With MonsterInsights, you can easily set up dual tracking and simultaneously track both properties without writing code.
Note: If you already have Universal Analytics tracking code added to your WordPress website, then we recommend disabling it first. Otherwise, it could lead to double-tracking and can skew your data.
To start setting up dual tracking properly, you can head to Insights » Settings from your WordPress admin panel and then click on the ‘General’ tab.
Next, you’ll need to scroll down to the ‘Google Authentication’ section.
Now under the Dual Tracking Profile, enter your Universal Analytics (UA) code.
You can easily find your UA code in Google Analytics Admin settings.
Simply go to the Admin settings page in Google Analytics of your Universal Analytics property.
Then click on ‘Property Settings’ under the Property column.
You should see the Tracking Id, and it will look like this: UA-123856789-5
You’ve now successfully set up dual tracking on your WordPress website.
To see how your website is performing, simply go to Insights » Reports. Here you’ll find all the data you need to make the right decisions to grow your website.
Are you looking for the best WordPress themes of 2022?
With thousands of free and premium WordPress themes available, it’s hard for beginners to choose the right WordPress theme for their site.
In this article, we will share our expert picks of all the best and most popular WordPress themes of 2022.
The Most Common Traits of All Popular and Best WordPress Themes
WordPress themes are either niche-based or multipurpose in terms of features and options.
You can use a niche-based theme that’s designed especially for your industry, such as a restaurant theme.
Alternatively, you can choose a multipurpose theme that’s highly flexible and can work for any kind of website.
Regardless of the type, all the best WordPress themes have the following features and traits:
Mobile-responsive design: The theme designs are responsive and retina-ready, so your WordPress website looks great on all screen sizes and mobile devices.
SEO optimization: The theme follows the best SEO (search engine optimization) practices, so your website can rank higher in search results.
Page builder support: The theme is compatible with popular WordPress drag and drop page builders. This helps you create custom landing pages whenever you need them.
Speed and performance: Your theme plays an important role in the speed and performance of your website. You should look for themes that are well-designed to keep your site fast.
Customer support: The best themes include documentation and instructions that are easy to follow, are updated often, and are backed by a great support team to help you out if you get stuck.
These are the essential features that you should look for in a theme before selecting it for your website. Every theme in our list comes with many other useful features aside from the main ones that we mentioned above. You can read about these features in their descriptions.
Now that we have discussed the common traits of all popular themes, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best themes of 2022.
Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes and is owned by Elegant Themes. It includes an ultimate page builder. It has multiple visual elements and modules that help you create a beautiful website.
The theme comes with hundreds of free ready-made layouts for multiple industries and niches. The 1-click demo importer lets you import professionally designed pages and blog layouts to get started quickly. You can then replace the content with your own using the frontend editor.
With the built-in drag and drop page builder, you can move elements, save and manage custom designs, and use global styles on all your website pages. You can easily add testimonials, too.
Divi gives you complete control of the layout design, inline text editing, and custom CSS on your site. It’s highly flexible and easy to use. Plus, it’s SEO friendly to help your site rank well in Google and other search engines.
Elegant Themes offers great customer support if you have any problems with the theme.
Astra is a modern WordPress theme designed to create any website. It works with all the popular drag and drop page builders seamlessly.
The theme comes with several starter sites that you can use to launch your website quickly. These ready-made websites are perfect for small businesses, startups, blogs, and WooCommerce stores.
Astra has tons of amazing features, including page headers, mega menu, multiple layout choices, Google Fonts, unlimited color customization options, separate blog page layouts, and custom widgets.
Plus, Astra offers powerful integration with the WooCommerce plugin to create an online store. Their WooCommerce theme includes infinite scrolling, quick product view, shop page, product gallery, and cart options.
It also integrates with popular learning management systems like LearnDash. Astra has built-in SEO optimization to help your website rank well in Google and other search engines.
SeedProd is the best WordPress website builder on the market. It lets you design your custom theme layout with a visual drag and drop builder, without writing code.
SeedProd comes with several professionally-designed theme templates. These templates include all the page layouts that you need for your website, as well as high-converting landing pages. They can be used as-is, or completely customized to suit your needs.
You can use the SeedProd page builder to customize the layout and design of all of your theme pages. It shows a real-time preview of all the changes, so you can see how your website will appear to users before it’s even published.
Besides the theme builder, it also offers coming soon and maintenance mode templates. When you’re making your website, you can enable the coming soon page to engage your users and grow your email list.
SeedProd’s visual builder is powerful yet beginner-friendly. Whether you want to design a custom landing page or a complete website, it’s easy to set up with the drag and drop option.
Ultra is a powerful multipurpose WordPress theme built to help you easily make a website. It comes with dozens of ready-made sites for niches such as lifestyle, magazines, restaurants, photography, fashion, and more.
It also includes the Themify page builder that you can use for customization. Ultra has several builder addons to add advanced elements like progress bars, counters, pricing tables, an audio player, and more.
Other notable features include smart layout options, color choices, crisp typography, section-based scrolling, image filters, and portfolio options.
Ultra is also a perfect theme to start an online store as it has full WooCommerce compatibility. It’s easy to set up and customize your site with the live WordPress theme customizer.
OceanWP is a free responsive WordPress theme. It comes with a 1-click demo content importer and hundreds of ready-made sites to launch a website instantly.
The theme has multiple extensions to add features to your website like a login popup, an Instagram feed, a sticky footer, a featured posts slider, and more. It’s translation ready to create a multilingual website.
The OceanWP theme supports WooCommerce out of the box. It has built-in SEO features to help improve your website rankings.
Breakthrough Pro is a minimalist WordPress theme. It’s built on top of the Genesis Framework by StudioPress which makes it powerful and robust.
The theme is ideal for any business website. It comes with 9 custom widgets, 3 layout options, landing page templates, and a custom header. It works with the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg editor) to customize posts and pages smoothly.
Hestia Pro is a modern multipurpose WordPress theme that’s optimized for speed. It has both one-page and multi-page layouts to make any type of website.
With a slick design, Hestia Pro lets you showcase your business and services professionally. It integrates with popular page builders like Beaver Builder, Elementor, Visual Composer, and more.
Hestia Pro is fully compatible with WooCommerce, and it allows you to create beautiful products and shop pages easily. It also ships with multiple starter sites for eCommerce stores and other business niches.
Nozama is a WordPress WooCommerce theme built to start an online store quickly. It’s highly customizable to display your featured products on the homepage.
It comes with a built-in storefront to create product filters, custom product layouts, and more. Other features include social media integrations, color customization, and header visibility.
Eclipse is an advanced WordPress photography and personal blog theme. It’s well-suited for photographers, bloggers, and authors.
The theme comes with a featured slideshow, widgetized columns, Instagram image carousel, ad placement spaces, and more. It’s beginner-friendly and easy to set up.
Sydney Pro is a fantastic WordPress multipurpose theme. It uses the custom Elementor blocks for a carousel slider, pricing tables, and a timeline.
Other notable features include page templates, header choices, customizer options, and a video header. The theme is translation ready and allows you to create a multilingual website easily.
Storefront is a high-quality and popular WordPress WooCommerce theme. It comes with an intuitive and flexible layout to create an online store.
It works with all WooCommerce extensions seamlessly. The theme is fully customizable for background, colors, and font using the WordPress customizer that shows your changes in real-time.
Inspiro is a stylish WordPress theme. It comes with a fullscreen video background slideshow that supports YouTube, Vimeo, and custom videos.
The theme is perfect for a portfolio, small business, or eCommerce website. It ships with a gallery module to display your images, videos, and work portfolio beautifully.
Neve is a modern WordPress multipurpose theme designed to create all kinds of websites easily. It’s highly flexible and easy to use.
This theme is compatible with popular page builders, including the Divi website builder, Beaver Builder, and more. Neve also supports the WordPress block editor to customize your pages and posts.
Authority Pro is a powerful WordPress theme. It’s built with a multipurpose approach to let you create any professional business website or online store.
The theme is highly scalable and works equally well for small to large business websites. It supports the WPForms plugin to create a contact form or any other form quickly.
News Portal is a free WordPress magazine theme. It has a widgetized layout and multiple ready-made magazine templates to launch your online magazine instantly.
It comes with multiple color schemes, category color options, background colors, and more. The theme is easy to set up and manage with the WordPress live customizer. Plus, you can easily add widgets and shortcodes to the widget areas.
News Portal is also retina ready and uses responsive design, meaning your site will look great on all devices.
Shoptimizer is a fast WordPress WooCommerce ready theme. It comes with multiple features to set up and grow your eCommerce store quickly.
The theme has a beautiful layout, custom header, featured content section, cart options, a wishlist, and more. It’s optimized for SEO and speed performance. Plus, it’s designed to boost conversions.
Gema is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for photographers, personal bloggers, authors, lifestyle, and fashion websites.
It comes with a custom logo, a classic navigation menu, buttons, post layouts, and a style manager. The Gema theme is beginner-friendly and easy to set up.
Tusant is a unique WordPress podcast theme well-suited for musicians, bands, podcasters, vlogs, and any audio or video streaming website.
It allows you to embed videos and audios from multiple sources. The theme has several layout choices, crisp typography, and custom background color. You can also use the drag and drop page builders for customization.
Saved is a WordPress church theme ideally built for non-profits, churches, and fundraising websites. It comes with a built-in homepage builder to set up your website’s homepage quickly.
It comes with a Church Content plugin that lets you add sermons, staff profiles, events, and locations. Other useful functionality includes custom page templates, sticky menu, font choices, color schemes, and more.
Didi is a WordPress theme designed specifically for fashion, lifestyle, and wellness blogs. It comes with a white background that makes your content stand out.
It offers multiple layout choices, custom page templates, sidebar layouts, and video support. The Didi theme is compatible with WPML to create a multilingual website.
Travel Way is a modern WordPress theme ideally built for travelers, travel bloggers, and travel photographers.
It features a fullscreen custom header background with call-to-action buttons, social icons, logo, navigation menu, and other details. The theme has multiple sections to display your favorite locations beautifully.
Fitness is an elegant WordPress theme beautifully crafted for personal trainers, gyms, yoga instructors, and any health-related business.
It allows you to create custom pages for trainers and fitness classes, such as online yoga classes. With the 1-click demo content importer, you can import a ready-made website and get started quickly.
Foodica is a modern WordPress theme for food bloggers, food critics, chefs, and food recipe websites. It comes with a minimalist layout and 10 color schemes.
On the homepage, Foodica has a beautiful featured slider, featured recipes section, multiple ad placement spaces, and more. The theme integrates with WooCommerce to start an online food delivery service quickly.
Kale Pro is a premium WordPress food blog theme. It has a beautiful layout that you can also use to create a lifestyle blog, a fashion website, or an online magazine.
It features recipe index templates to showcase your recipes stylishly. Other features include a sticky navigation menu, an image slider, custom fonts, color schemes, and a background image.
Kea is a WordPress hotel theme designed for hotels, resorts, BnBs, and accommodation businesses. It offers a fullscreen image background on the homepage.
Kea allows you to integrate a reservation and booking service to manage your online bookings easily. The theme supports a fullscreen video or carousel slideshow to display your hotel rooms, lobby, and services.
Elite is a creative WordPress fullscreen theme packed with tons of features that you can use to launch a powerful eCommerce store. It allows you to showcase your products in beautiful image galleries and increase your sales.
It comes with image and video galleries, a custom logo option, Google Fonts, page layouts, and more. The Elite theme is easy to set up using the WordPress customizer with a live preview.
Essence Pro is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for health, wellness, and lifestyle niches. It features an eye-catching fullwidth custom header image to create a powerful first impression.
The theme is built on top of the Genesis Framework, which makes it rock solid and robust. It ships with the Atomic Blocks and WPForms plugin to help you get started quickly.
Other notable features include 6 layout options, custom widget areas, landing pages, and more. It’s translation ready and supports WooCommerce out of the box.
Panoramic is a free WordPress multipurpose theme to create any website. It has a minimal layout with a simple and clean design that makes a great first impression on your visitors.
The theme integrates seamlessly with popular WordPress plugins like WPForms, SiteOrigin’s page builder, and WooCommerce. It comes with a homepage slider and flexible theme options that you can manage using the WordPress live customizer.
Agama is a free WordPress theme designed specifically for digital agencies, corporate businesses, photographers, freelancers, and portfolio websites.
It has a white background with a beautiful color selection for fonts, links, and buttons. The theme is SEO-ready and compatible with the WPML plugin to translate your website easily.
Silk is a modern WordPress fashion blog theme. It comes with an attractive layout and a featured content slider on the homepage.
With this theme, you get an Instagram feed display, social tools, custom post layouts, an image slider, and a mega menu. It has color choices, animations, fonts, and custom backgrounds.
Blockchain is a crypto business WordPress theme. It’s ideally built for financial traders, investors, advisors, and consultants.
The theme includes cryptocurrency exchange tables, post types, unlimited color schemes, custom widgets, and more. It fully supports drag and drop page builder plugins and the WordPress WooCommerce plugin.
Do you want to remove the remember me option from your WordPress login page?
The ‘Remember Me’ option is a small checkbox that lets you and your users save their username and password on the WordPress login screen.
In this article, we’ll show you how to remove the ‘Remember Me’ option, step by step.
Why Remove ‘Remember Me’ from Your WordPress Login Screen?
When you or your website users check the ‘Remember Me’ box on the WordPress login page, it will store that information in a browser cookie for 2 weeks.
That means that next time they’re on your site, they can access the dashboard right away without having to go to the login page again.
Although it makes logging in faster, it could be a potential security risk for people accessing their WordPress admin area from public computers and WiFi networks.
By disabling the ‘Remember me’ checkbox, you and your users will have to log in every time the web browser is closed. They can still save their username and password in their browser’s storage or a password manager app so they don’t have to type it in every time.
Overall, this improves your WordPress security and helps to keep your website safe from hackers.
With that said, let’s show you how to remove the ‘Remember Me’ option on your WordPress login page. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.
Method 1. Removing the Remember Me Option from the Default WordPress Login Page
The easiest way to remove the remember me option from the default WordPress page is by using the Remember Me Controls plugin.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the plugin. For more details, see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Note: We’ve tested the plugin as of this post’s last updated date, and it works with WordPress 6.0 with no issues.
Upon activation, navigate to Settings » Remember Me to configure the plugin settings.
Then, simply check the box in the ‘Disable the “Remember Me” feature’ section and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.
Now, you can log out of your WordPress site.
When you return to the login screen, the ‘Remember Me’ checkbox will be disabled.
Method 2. Removing the Remember Me Option from Custom WordPress Login Pages
If you’re creating a custom WordPress login page for your WordPress membership site or online store, then you can hide the ‘Remember Me’ option by using SeedProd.
Aside from create custom WordPress themes, SeedProd also comes with the ability to create custom WordPress login pages, custom 404 pages, and more.
First, you will need to use SeedProd plugin to create a custom login page. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to create a custom login page.
Then, when you’re customizing the login page, you can disable the ‘Remember Me’ option by clicking on the ‘Additional Options’ drop down in the left-hand options menu.
Next, delete the text in the ‘Remember User Label’ box.
Then, click the ‘Save’ button and select the ‘Publish’ drop down to make your login page live.
Now, you can visit your custom login page to see the ‘Remember Me’ option is gone.
We hope this article helped you learn how to remove the remember me option from your WordPress login page. You may also want to see our ultimate guide on how to speed up WordPress, and our expert picks of the best business phone services for small businesses.
Often we’re asked about what are the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that we recommend.
That’s because search engines are a major source of traffic for most websites on the internet. Optimizing your website for search engines can help you rank higher in search results and significantly grow your business.
In this article, we will share the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools that you should use. Some of these tools offer similar functionalities, so we will also highlight which ones are the best for specific use-cases.
Things You Must Know About WordPress SEO Plugins & Tools
When reading SEO WordPress tips or searching for “best free WordPress SEO plugins”, you will come across articles that feature several dozen tools.
This can be quite overwhelming for beginners and non-techy users.
The truth is that you don’t need dozens of top SEO tools to get higher search engine result rankings.
While most blog posts (including ours) will share the top most popular SEO plugins, it is extremely important for you to understand the use-cases of each tool.
For example, you never want to use more than one WordPress SEO plugin on your website. We will mention All in One SEO (formerly All in One SEO Pack), Yoast SEO, SEOPress, and Rank Math. You need to pick only one to avoid plugin conflict.
We’ll mention SEMRush, Ahrefs, and few other powerful tools, but you don’t need them all when you’re first starting out since they have a similar feature set. We will share what tools we use in our business, and which features are the best among each tool.
With that said, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best WordPress SEO plugins and tools.
All in One SEO for WordPress (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. Used by over 3+ million users, it is the most comprehensive SEO toolkit that helps you improve search rankings without learning any complicated SEO jargon.
The free version of AIOSEO has all the essential features, but the pro version gives you everything you need to outrank your competitors.
It comes with the easiest setup wizard that automatically helps you choose the best SEO settings for your business. AIOSEO shows you TruSEO on-page analysis with an actionable checklist to optimize your posts and pages.
The on-page SEO checklist includes a smart meta tag generator where you can use dynamic values (current year, month, day, custom fields, author info, and much more) in your SEO title and meta descriptions. This means you don’t need to update a post just to change SEO titles.
AIOSEO also comes with Rich snippet schema markup, smart XML sitemaps (with advanced controls), SEO health check, and other useful features to grow your search engine visibility.
There is a built-in social media integration to add Open Graph metadata as well. This means you can choose which image or thumbnail you want to show when your pages are shared on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
AIOSEO also comes with built-in WooCommerce SEO tools for eCommerce sites. This includes features like dynamic optimizations, individual product page optimizations, product image SEO, and other handy features to bring more organic traffic to your online store.
For more SEO savvy users, it includes full control of RSS feeds, Robots.txt editor, local SEO, breadcrumbs, Google News sitemaps, video SEO, advanced redirect manager, 404 tracking, IndexNow integration, and more.
For business owners, it comes with SEO user roles, so you can manage access to important SEO features without handing over control of your website.
Update: Recently AIOSEO added a Link Assistant which is a game-changer for internal linking. It helps identify link opportunities, gives you linking suggestions in real-time, and you can bulk-add internal links with just a few clicks.
Overall, All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the most beginner-friendly and comprehensive WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It’s easy to configure and eliminates the need to install multiple plugins to do things on your WordPress site. It works perfectly for all types of businesses, eCommerce, blogs, news, and other websites.
SEMRush is the best overall SEO tool on the market. Used by professional SEO experts, marketers, bloggers, large and small businesses, it provides a comprehensive set of tools to grow your traffic.
You can use it to find organic keywords and search terms that you can easily rank for. It also allows you to do competitive research and see which keywords your competitors rank for, and how you can beat them.
SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant tool helps you improve your website content to beat the top 10 results for your focus keyword. It integrates with WordPress, and this will help you write more SEO-friendly content.
You can also generate SEO templates and get easy search engine optimization suggestions for your content along with advanced SEO recommendations.
SEMRush seamlessly integrates with All in One SEO (AIOSEO) to help you find additional keyphrases for your focus keyphrase. You can see related keyphrases and their search volume right from WordPress. Then, you can add them to your content with the click of a button.
Google Search Console is a free tool offered by Google to help website owners and webmasters monitor and maintain their site’s presence in Google search results.
It alerts you when Google is unable to crawl and index pages on your website. You also get helpful tips on how to fix those crawl errors.
Most importantly, it shows which keywords your website is ranking for, anchor texts, average position, impressions, and more. You can use this data to find keywords where you can easily rank higher by simply optimizing your content. You can also use this keyword data to come up with new blog post ideas.
Tip: You can use MonsterInsights to track your keyword rankings inside WordPress admin area using Google Seach Console data. We will cover this tool later in the article below.
Yoast SEO is a popular WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your WordPress website for search engines.
It lets you easily add SEO titles and descriptions to all posts and pages on your website. You can also use it to add Open Graph metadata and social media images to your articles.
Yoast SEO automatically generates an XML sitemap for all your website content which makes it easier for search engines to crawl your website. It also helps you easily import your SEO data if you have been using another SEO plugin.
Other features include readability analysis, Google and social previews, and faster load times for a better user experience.
Google Keyword Planner tool helps you generate your own keyword ideas from Google itself.
No one on the planet has more insights into what people are searching for than the search giant Google. This free tool is offered to Google’s advertisers for free and anyone can use it. Its main purpose is to show advertisers the keywords they can bid on for their advertising campaigns.
It also helps advertisers choose the right keywords by showing them an estimate of search volume, number of results, and difficulty level.
As a content marketer or blogger, you can use this data to find keywords with high search volume, high advertiser interest, and more importantly keywords where you can easily outrank all other sites.
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO analysis tool for marketers, bloggers, and businesses. It is a popular alternative to SEMRush and offers a lot of similar tools and features.
It allows you to do keyword research, competition analysis, backlink research, SEO audit, monitor keyword rankings, and more.
It also offers a detailed content analysis tool that helps you improve content while targeting specific keywords.
While there’s a huge feature overlap, what Ahrefs does really well is backlink analysis. We can use it to see which sites are linking to multiple competitors, but not us. This helps us get more backlinks and build more partnerships.
They also help us identify which content multiple of our competitors are ranking for that we aren’t, so we can create content on those subjects to get more exposure.
Last but not least, Ahrefs helps us better identify duplicate content and keyword cannibalization which helps us merge and upgrade the right content to boost our rankings.
For the reasons above, we pay for both SEMRush and Ahrefs because they’re both good for specific use-cases.
SEOPress is another simple yet powerful WordPress SEO plugin. It includes all the features you would expect from an SEO plugin like meta title, description, open graph support, image and content XML sitemaps, redirects, and more.
It comes with a straightforward setup for beginners and advanced controls for more experienced users. It is comparable to other top WordPress SEO plugins on the market in terms of features and options.
The paid version of the plugin is cheaper than some other premium WordPress SEO plugins on the market.
Note: SEOPress is a WordPress SEO plugin. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.
Rank Math is another user-friendly WordPress SEO plugin that allows you to optimize your website for search engines and social media. It comes with a setup wizard and allows you to import data from other SEO plugins during the setup.
You can use it to easily add meta title, description, and Open Graph metadata to your blog posts. The plugin also allows you to generate an XML sitemap, connect Google Search Console, and control access to plugin features based on user roles.
Note: Rank Math is an AIOSEO alternative. Remember, you only need one WordPress SEO plugin on your site.
Schema Pro allows you to add rich snippets to your website which makes it stand out in search results.
Rich Snippets allow you to make your website stand out in search results by showing star ratings below a review, prices below a product, image or video next to the description, and so on.
Top WordPress SEO plugins, like All in One SEO (AIOSEO) already add structured rich snippets data to your website. However, if you need more schema types or want to extend the functionality of your existing WordPress SEO plugin then Schema Pro is the way to go.
Schema Pro also allows you to use it alongside your existing WordPress SEO plugin by mapping the plugin data to Schema Pro fields.
KeywordTool.io is one of the best free keyword research tools available right now. It allows you to simply generate keyword ideas by typing in a keyword. These keyword suggestions are gathered from Google’s autosuggest feature. It also shows you keyword suggestions from Bing, YouTube, Amazon, and more.
These keyword suggestions are a treasure of information. You can also get search volume, cost per click, and other data for each keyword by upgrading to their paid plan.
Redirection helps you set up SEO friendly redirects in WordPress. It is a handy broken link checker that helps you easily fix 404 errors in WordPress by setting up redirects.
Broken links can affect your site’s SEO and create a bad experience for your users. If you have been running a blog for some time, then you should check your site from time to time for broken links and fix them.
There are multiple ways to easily find broken links in WordPress. Once you find a broken link, you may need to fix it by pointing users to the correct link or removing the incorrect link.
SEOQuake is a useful SEO tool for website owners. It is available as a browser add-on for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari web browsers.
It provides SEO related information for any website. This data includes page health, age, last updated, Alexa rank, and many other parameters. It is one of the most downloaded browser addons by SEO professionals.
Apart from that, the SEOQuake toolbar can show you all the same data search results when you type in a keyword. This information can be extremely useful if you are gauging competition for different keywords. You can even download search results in CSV format and prepare your own excel sheets of search data.
These tools give you the additional advantage when optimizing your website for SEO. They do not advertise themselves as SEO tools but they are essential for every website and play a significant role in your website’s search performance.
Site speed is a major factor in search rankings. That’s why you need to monitor your website speed & performance to make sure it’s not affecting your SEO.
The easiest way to boost your website speed is by enabling caching. WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market, which allows you to set up caching without diving into any technical stuff.
Many beginners rely on their best guess to make their marketing decisions. You don’t need to do that when you can easily get the insights you need to improve your website’s SEO strategy.
It tells you where your users are coming from, your top content, what users do on your website, and more. It also allows you to track your eCommerce SEO by seeing which products are popular and where you are losing customers.
Having a slow loading WordPress dashboard is annoying, and it hurts overall productivity when it comes to creating content and managing your website. Also the underlying cause of a slow WordPress dashboard can also impact your website conversions.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily fix a slow loading WordPress dashboard, step by step.
What Causes a Slow Loading WordPress Dashboard?
A slow loading WordPress dashboard can be caused by a number of reasons, but the most common one is limited server resources.
Most WordPress hosting providers offer a set number of resources for each hosting plan. These resources are enough to run most websites.
However, as your WordPress website grows, you may notice slight performance degradation or slower loading across the board. That’s because more people are now accessing your website and consuming server resources.
For the front end section of your website which is what your visitors likely see, you can easily install a WordPress caching plugin to overcome WordPress speed and performance issues.
However, the WordPress admin area is uncached, so it requires more resources to run at the optimal level.
If your WordPress dashboard has become annoyingly slow, then this means a WordPress plugin, a default setting, or something else on the site is consuming too many resources.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to troubleshoot and fix the slow loading WordPress admin dashboard.
Here is an overview of the steps we’ll cover in this article.
1. How to Test Performance of WordPress admin area
Before making any changes, it’s important to measure the speed of your WordPress admin area, so you can get an objective measurement of any improvement.
However, the WordPress admin area is behind a login screen, so you cannot use the same tools to test it.
Luckily, many modern desktop browsers come with built-in tools to test the performance of any web page you want.
For example, if you’re using Google Chrome, then you can simply go to the WordPress dashboard and open the Inspect tool by right-clicking anywhere on the page.
This will split your browser screen and you will see the Inspect area in the other window either at the bottom or side of your browser window.
Inside the Inspect tool, switch to the Lighthouse tab and click on the Generate Report button.
This will generate a report similar to the Web Vitals report generated by Page Speed Insights.
From here, you can see what’s slowing down your WordPress admin area. For instance, you can see which JavaScript files are taking up more resources and affecting your server’s initial response time.
2. Install WordPress Updates
The core WordPress team works hard on improving performance with each WordPress release.
For instance, the block editor team tests and improves performance in each release. The performance team works on improving speed and performance across the board.
If you are not installing WordPress updates, then you are missing out on these performance improvements.
Similarly, all top WordPress themes and plugins release updates that not only fix bugs but also address performance issues.
To install updates, simply go to Dashboard » Updates page to install any available updates.
3. Update the PHP Version Used by Your Hosting Company
WordPress is developed using an open-source programming language called PHP. At the time of writing this article, WordPress requires at least PHP version 7.4 or greater. The current stable version available for PHP is 8.1.6.
Most WordPress hosting companies maintain the minimum requirements to run WordPress, which means they may not be using the latest PHP version out of the box.
Now, just like WordPress, PHP also releases new versions with significant performance improvements. By using an older version, you are missing that performance boost.
You can view which PHP version is used by your hosting provider by visiting the Tools » Site Health page from your WordPress dashboard and switching to the ‘Info’ tab.
Luckily, all reliable WordPress hosting providers offer an easy way for customers to upgrade their PHP version.
For instance, if you are on Bluehost, then you can simply login to your hosting control panel and click on the Advanced tab in the left column.
From here, you need to click on the MultiPHP Manager icon under the Software section.
On the next page, you need to select your WordPress blog and then select the PHP version that you want to use.
Some WordPress plugins may run inside the WordPress admin area. If plugin authors are not careful, their plugins can easily consume too many resources and slow down your WordPress admin area.
Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item to your WordPress toolbar.
Clicking on it will show performance results for the page you are currently viewing on your website.
This will bring up the Query Monitor console.
Here you need to switch to ‘Queries by Component’ tab on the left side. From here, you can see the performance impact of plugins and find out which one is taking up too many resources.
You can now temporarily disable the slow plugins and see if that improves performance.
WordPress caching plugins not only improve your website speed, but they can also help you fix a slow loading admin dashboard.
A good WordPress caching plugin helps you optimize page load speed, CSS and JavaScript delivery, your WordPress database, and more.
This frees up resources on your WordPress hosting server that your WordPress admin area can utilize for improved performance.
We recommend using WP Rocket. It is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market. It works out of the box and makes it super easy to optimize your WordPress performance.
WordPress automatically loads some widgets on the dashboard screen. This includes Quick Draft, Events and News, Site Health, and more.
Some WordPress plugins add their own widgets to the dashboard screen as well. If you have a lot of these widgets loading on your dashboard, it could slow things down.
You can turn off these widgets by simply clicking on the Screen Options button and unchecking the box next to the widgets.
Similarly, you can use the Screen Options menu to show and hide sections on different admin screens.
For instance, you can choose the columns you want to see on the posts screen.
8. Fix Slow WooCommerce Admin Dashboard
If you run an online store using WooCommerce, then there are some specific WooCommerce features that can affect the performance of your WordPress admin area.
For instance, you can turn off the WooCommerce dashboard widget by clicking on the Screen Options menu.
Similarly, you can change the information displayed on the Products page.
After a while, your WooCommerce store may add unnecessary data to your WordPress database.
If you are already using WP Rocket, then you can simply switch to the Database tab under plugin settings. From here, you can delete transients and optimize your WordPress database with a click.
9. Lock WordPress Admin Area and Login Pages
Random hackers and DDoS attacks are common internet nuisances that can affect WordPress websites.
These automated scripts access WordPress login pages and attempt to login hundreds of times in a short amount of time.
They may not be able to gain access to your WordPress website, but they would still be able to slow it down.
If you are on Bluehost, then you can simply go to your hosting control panel and switch to the Advanced Tab. From here, you need to click on the Directory Privacy icon.
Next, you need to locate wp-admin directory (usually found inside public_html folder).
Then simply click on the Edit button next to it.
Next, you will be asked to provide a name for your protected directory.
Click on the Save button to continue. The control panel will save your options and you’ll need to click on the Go Back button to continue.
After that, you will need to create username and password for the protected folder.
Now, when you visit your WordPress admin area, you will be prompted to enter username and password.
Next, you would want to block access to WordPress login page. For this, you’ll need to manually edit .htaccess file on your website and generate a password file.
First, connect to your WordPress website using an FTP client or the File Manager app inside your hosting control panel.
After that, go to the root folder of your website (the root folder is where you can see the wp-admin, wp-includes, and wp-content folders).
Here you need to create a new file and name it .htpasswd.
Next, you need to visit this online tool to generate a .htpasswd string.
You need to use the same username and password that you used for the WordPress admin directory.
Then click on the Generate button.
The tool will generate a username and password string under the output box.
You need to copy and paste this string inside the .htpasswd file you created earlier.
Next, you need to edit the .htaccess file and copy and paste the following code inside it.
123456789
### BEGIN BASIC BLOCK<Files wp-login.php>AuthType BasicAuthName "Protected Folder"AuthUserFile /home/username/public_html/yourwebsite/.htpasswdRequire user jsmithSatisfy All</Files>### END BASIC BLOCK
Don’t forget to replace jsmith with your own username and change AuthUserFile value with the path to your .htpasswd file. You can find it inside the File Manager app.
You can now visit your WordPress login page to see the password protection in action.
10. Manage WordPress Autosave Intervals
The WordPress block editor comes with built-in autosave feature. It allows you to easily restore your content in case you close the editor without saving your changes.
However, if multiple users are working on your website during peak traffic, then all those autosave requests will slow down WordPress admin area.
Now autosave is a crucial feature and we don’t recommend turning it off. However, you can slow it down to reduce the performance impact.
Simply add the following line to your wp-config.php file.
1
define( 'AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 120 )
This line simply tells WordPress to run autosave once every 2 minutes (120 seconds) instead of 1.
Reduce Heartbeat API Calls
WordPress uses something called the heartbeat API to send Ajax calls to a server without reloading a page. This allows WordPress to show other authors that a post is being edited by another user, and it enables plugin developers to show you notifications in real-time.
By default, the API pings back every 60 seconds. If multiple authors are working on your website at the same time, then these server calls can become resource-intensive.
If you are already using WP Rocket, then it will automatically reduce heartbeat API activity to pingback every 120 seconds.
Alternately, you can also use their standalone plugin called Heartbeat Control to reduce Heartbeat API calls.
We recommend reducing them to at least 120 seconds or more.
11. Upgrade or Switch to Better WordPress Hosting
All WordPress performance issues depend on the infrastructure provided by your WordPress hosting providers.
This limits your ability to improve performance to the resources offered by your hosting provider.
The above tips will certainly help you reduce load on your WordPress server, but it may not be enough for your hosting environment.
We recommend using Bluehost, as one of the top WordPress hosting companies. Their shared hosting plans come with built-in caching which improves WordPress performance.
However, as your website grows you may need to upgrade your hosting plan.
At WPBeginner, we use SiteGround to host our website.
We hope this article helped you learn how to fix a slow loading WordPress dashboard. You may also want to see our complete WordPress security handbook or see our pick of the best WordPress plugins to grow your business.
