The reason I am here today is to tell you about a rather neat feature of Gutenberg. The blocks of content created in a website using Gutenberg can be imported from and exported to another website which is must also be built on the WordPress platform. Analyzing the possibilities of this functionality, I can tell that it is a brilliant feature that can improve productivity between sites.

Any developer or individual, if involved with more than just managing their WordPress websites, this feature is going to make your life a lot easier. Because with this feature you can move your content blocks across multiple WordPress websites in just a few very simple steps. This will save a huge chunk of your time because now you don’t need to create new blocks for every website.

So, let’s dive in and show you how easy it is to import and export Gutenberg blocks across WordPress websites.

Gutenberg Editor 101

As you already know, Gutenberg is a pure block based WordPress Editor. Gutenberg launched with the fifth update of WordPress and it changed the way content is created in WordPress websites.  

With Gutenberg, each and every content can be inserted in a separate block. Images, videos, banners, paragraphs, gallery, button, list, HTML, etc. are brought to life via a completely new block. These blocks can be adjusted across the webpage according to the liking of the creator or client. And by adjusting, I do not mean just its placement and alignment. With its amazing customization options, you can have full control over its looks as well. 

These renewable blocks are an excellent time saver when it comes to making multiple blocks for a specific type of content. Imagine that all the pages of your website require a header which is made through Gutenberg means you have to create a header block multiple times. Gutenberg saves the frequently used block for you so that accessibility becomes easy for the developer.

With such diverse extent of editing and flexibility, each website made using Gutenberg can be potentially unique, robust, rich in content, strategically designed to connect with the users and thus a long term money maker.

If you want to know more, read our complete guide located here.

How to Export/Import Gutenberg Blocks

Gutenberg’s feature list is superiorly exclusive and constantly evolving. For the current set of developers, spending few hours understanding the movement within Gutenberg will do them wonders in the future. However, for the old set of developers who are more accustomed to the Classic Editor, Gutenberg will not be a very pleasing experience at first.

Editing blocks are not restricted to the theme which it is using for the overall feel of the site. They can be moved among other WordPress themes and remodeled to the suit the new website. So let’s go through the steps to import/export your WordPress Gutenberg Blocks.

Step 1: Making a Reusable Block

Gutenberg amongst all its features offers you with this brilliant time-saving feature with which you can create a block and save it to be used later. You can either use this block as it is or with a few edits to make slight or major changes to meet your requirements. All of it is possible directly from your editor. Here is how you can create this block.

First of all, just create a new block using the ‘+’ sign on your left. Now select the block, add a name to it and save it.

After that, you can customize the block. Once the customization is completed, just click on the 3 dots on the toolbar and click on ‘Add to Reusable Blocks’ from the dropdown. This will automatically add your block to the reusable blocks group. You can pick it up at any time and use it on any new or old post that you create. Here’s showing you how to do it. 

Click on the 3 dots on the top right corner of the Toolbar. Select ‘Manage All Reusable Blocks’ from the dropdown menu.

Where To Find The Saved Blocks

When you create a block that can be reused, it automatically gets saved to your list of the reusable blocks. To find them just click on the ‘+’ sign that you use to add a new block. Now You can either select the reusable block by scrolling down the small popup or use the search field to locate it.

Here are the two ways of doing it.

To edit a reusable block, you can click on the edit button on the top of the block and customize it as per your needs. However, these changes will not be shown in the block you created earlier. You can save the new block again with another name if you want it to be added to the reusable block list.

Step 2: Export your Gutenberg Blocks

The option to export your Gutenberg blocks will be visible to you under the Reusable blocks. Just go to the block management page. Here’s a screenshot to show you where to find it. 

By clicking on the Manage All Reusable Blocks link, you will be redirected to the page shown in the screenshot below with the following options –  Edit, Trash, and Export as JSON.

Now click on the Export as JSON option. This will download a JSON file of your block into your computer or laptop. Save the file properly. You can use this on any other WordPress website that you manage. 

Step 3: Import your Gutenberg Block

Go to the target WordPress website where you want to import the Gutenberg blocks which are downloaded in your laptop/desktop. For that go to the ‘block administration display’. You will see a button ‘Import from JSON’ at the top of the block administration display page.

Click on the import button which will give you a pop-up box with the ‘Choose File’ button requesting you to upload the relevant file. Upload the JSON file that you downloaded from the previous website earlier. Once the upload procedure is complete, you will see an ‘Import’ button at the bottom right corner of the pop-up dialog box. Click on the Import option to proceed further.

Now, WordPress will automatically upload the file for the new website. To verify the same, refresh the page after the upload procedure is complete. Then you will be able to see the name of the block which you uploaded (The very name that you used the save the block in the first website).

Step 4: Access the Block in a New Website

In the new website when you have to add blocks for editing, first you have to select ‘Add Block’, go to ‘Reusables’ and there you can find the block that you just imported from the previous website.

To know what these blocks look like, all you have to do is hover the cursor over the block name to and look at the preview.

Important Note:

The block Import/Export feature will give fruitful results only if the blocks belong to the original Gutenberg Editor.

If blocks are made using a plugin on the parent site then for a successful import/export procedure, the target sites will also require the same set of plugins that were used to design the block. Then again, the blocks design may vary from theme to theme depending on the primary location from where the CSS is applied.

Conclusion

So, there you have it. A full blown walk through the import/export feature of Gutenberg blocks. Well, I can never stop admiring the developers involved in the creation of the Gutenberg editor.

Navigating through the editor makes me encounter a new feature which I did not know was there before. And these features are a time saver for the developers as well as the end user clients.

For those who are not happy with this new way of editing, all I can say is, Gutenberg ain’t going nowhere. Though WordPress still gives an option to switch to the Classic Editor, that might not be for long. So it is a better move if everybody starts getting to know Gutenberg up, close and personal.

Features such as the Import/Export of blocks lay hidden inside the many options of Gutenberg. So before you dive into the rabbit hole, have a quick read of this page so that your journey is smoother.

Hope you enjoyed the post and found it helpful. If yes, then let us know your thoughts. We would be glad to hear from you.

Today WordPress is used by more than 60 million websites. What makes it even better, is its regular updates. And each update seamlessly enhancing the customer experience in a more positive and enriching way.

However, things are not the same now, as it was back in 2003. Today, WordPress finds itself in the midst of tough competition from platforms such as Ghost, Joomla and recently Medium and Wix.

In a bid to make WordPress a go-to site for anything – from personal blogging to a small business websites, the new Gutenberg Editor was launched. The editor was first introduced by Matt Mullenweg at the World Camp Europe in 2017. It was named after Johannes Gutenberg, the person who designed the mechanical printing press.

This launch of Gutenberg Editor on the 6th of December 2018 created a lot of excitement and fuss among its users. So what exactly is the Gutenberg Editor? Let’s have a quick look.

What Is The Gutenberg Editor?

Gutenberg is a block-based editor that allows users to create complex posts/pages effortlessly and without coding a single line. It is aimed to make blogging easier for the newbies who have no professional knowledge of web designing.

In the old Classic Editor, we had to use a lot of shortcodes and HTML in order to make things work. This will not be the case anymore as Gutenberg Editor uses blocks to add more advanced layout options. These blocks can be a paragraph, images, buttons, tables, list, columns etc.

You can easily rearrange blocks from one part of the post to another. And as each block is not linked to the rest of the content, you can customize a particular block while all the other blocks remain the same.

Also, all the WordPress themes are now compatible with Gutenberg Editor as it is the default editor. Having said that, if you select a theme specially meant for Gutenberg Editor, it will offer some real benefits.

In short, these blocks give you more options to express your creativity and make your post stand out. The Gutenberg editor is perfect for websites meant to appeal people with its looks and media content. You can use it to create the most advanced look for your site by choosing to place and adjust your content strategically to appeal to your visitors.

How to install Gutenberg?

If you have a WordPress website, you should have got a pop up telling you about a new editor. You just had to click on that pop-up and start using the Gutenberg Editor for creating your posts You can even give them a great layout now.

Till the release of the WordPress 5.0, it was available as a plugin. However, Gutenberg Editor is now the default editor. But you always have the option to disable Gutenberg Editor and continue with the classic editor via use of a free plugin.

As of writing this, Gutenberg Editor had more than 2 lakh active installations and is active in 45 languages. If we check the ratings, we see that the opinions of the vast majority of users are divided and so far it is not great.

A lot of people are still not being able to welcome the huge change that the Gutenberg editor has brought in. Unlike the Classic Editor, Gutenberg is a lot more complex, with having to add all the blocks and elements separately for each new paragraph. So there is a learning curve that comes in with this editor. And that’s okay because with every new invention there is something new to be learned. Gutenberg is no exception.

Now that we are familiar about Gutenberg Editor, let us see how to use it on your website.

Getting Started With Gutenberg

If you are using the WordPress version 5.0, then Gutenberg is surely your default editor. Unless, of course, if you have installed the old classic editor plugin. So let’s check out how easy it is to use this editor.

So this is how your editor will look like.

In the above editor, the ‘+’ sign lets you add new blocks to your page or post.

Adding New Blocks

To add a new block to your draft, you just need to click on the ‘+’ sign on the left top corner of your document. You will then have a small screen pop up asking you to choose your content type. Select the paragraph option, if you want to type your text. If not, choose the block type according to your requirement.

Now if you want to style your text, you can use the basic styling options that will automatically appear above your block everytime you hover over it. So you have the bold, italics, underline, alignment and insert link option here.

But if you want more advanced styling options, you can access them on the right-hand side of your screen under the Block tab. Just click on the block you want to make the changes and continue making the edits. You can change the font size and color, add a different background and more.

Adding a Non-Text Block

Adding a non-text block is as easy as adding a text block. Just click on the ‘+’ sign on the top left corner and select the image option to insert an image.

You will then have the option to upload the image from your computer. This is similar to uploading an image in your classic editor. The image will be stored in your media library and you can then have it in your post.

Here’s how it will appear on your editor.

To the right side of your screen, you can see the options to insert your tags, alter your image size etc.

Uploading an audio file, a gallery of images, a cover needs you to follow the same process. Just select the type of content and upload the file from your computer.

Let’s now check how to insert a quote. Just click on the ‘+’ sign again and select the Quote option. Type in your quote for it to reflect on your page or post. To delete the quote block keep clicking on the backspace button until you have it removed.

Adding Columns

To add columns to your draft, just click on the ‘+’ sign to add a new block. Now go to Layout elements.

You will have the following options to select from. Select the Columns option to add it to your draft.

Your columns will reflect like this on your screen.

You can also select the buttons, page breaks, separators, read more option, that are all available under the Layout Elements.

Rearranging Individual Blocks

Sometime after creating your draft, you may feel that a certain block should have been below or above another. So what are the options to rearrange them?

Gutenberg allows you to do that too. You just have to hover over the block you want to rearrange. You will see 2 Up and Down arrows appear on the left side of your block. Use them to place your block in the required position.

You can also use the drag and drop option by clicking on the six dots that will appear between the Up and Down arrows.

Using The Gutenberg Shortcuts

Now unlike the Classic Editor, Gutenberg comes with a long list of shortcuts that can be used for quick results. These are the additional shortcuts that you will get to use other than the standard formatting ones.

You can open the shortcuts list by clicking on Alt+shift+H. You will have the following pop up on your screen.

Creating Reusable Blocks

So with Gutenberg, you can also create a bunch of reusable blocks that can be used later for any other post or page that you create. These blocks can be named separately to easily identify them at the time of using them later.

To create them, you will first have to select the block you want to include. Now click on the 3 dots icon. You will see several options pop up. Select the ‘Add to Reusable Blocks’ option.

In the beginning, Gutenberg may seem like a bit too much, especially if you have loved the classic editor. With all the block creation and design options, you may find it a bit confusing. But once you get used to it, you will surely love it with all its flexibilities.

Adding Buttons With Gutenberg

Adding buttons has never previously been so easy on WordPress. In the classic editor you had to use shortcodes or CSS to add buttons to your draft, but here things are completely different.

To add a button to your post, you simply click on the ‘+’ just where you want your button to be. Now go-to Layout Elements>Buttons

Your button will appear on your screen now. You can add the link to which your visitors should be directed on clicking on the button.

The default button appears to be oval in shape and black in color. You, however, can change the button style and color to complement your website design. To make these changes, you will see the option on the right side of your screen. Here you can select the button shape which comes in 3 different styles.

• Rounded
• Outlined
• Squared

You can choose whichever you want. You can also change the background color of your buttons. You have a whole lot of bright and fancy colors to choose from. The font texts can also be customized.

Can You Deactivate Gutenberg?

Although Gutenberg is a great option for content and media-rich websites, you may or may not be too fond of it in the beginning. So what if you don’t like the new editor experience?

Well, you simply go back and install the old editor. Since Gutenberg is currently the default editor, if you want to remove it, you will have to install the old classic editor which is available in the form of a plugin. The plugin already has more than 2 million downloads.

Uninstalling Gutenberg & Activating The Classic Editor

To go back to your old Classic Editor, go to your Dashboard>Plugins>Add New. Now, look up for the Classic Editor Plugin. Once you find it just go ahead and click on the install and Activate button.

I already have the plugin installed on my site. Since it is currently deactivated it appears with the Update button. But if you have not installed it before the Update Now button will appear as Install Now at your end.

Once your plugin is activated, you can get back to the old editor and start working just like you used to before Gutenberg popped up. Here is a screenshot of how your editor will now appear.

Conclusion

The Gutenberg Editor, without a doubt, the new face of WordPress. Although currently, it does have many cons, the developers are doing a great work resolving some of the queries users were facing. Soon you may be able to use this editor without any problem. Only time will tell whether the Gutenberg Editor has fulfilled all that it was supposed to do.

Well, there is, and it’s called self-hypnosis. You’ve probably heard of hypnosis in general before. This method may be something you’ve seen in movies, but there is actually scientific proof that hypnosis works for a wide variety of problems. Self-hypnosis works in much the same way, besides the fact that you can do it at home on your own schedule.

How Does Self-Hypnosis Help?

You may be wondering how self-hypnosis actually helps you become more productive, lose weight, improve your finances and more. Basically, you currently have certain ways of doing things and have internalized certain limitations for yourself. That’s why you may feel like you’ve hit a wall after a certain point in your day. Therefore, there’s nothing external that’s stopping you from getting work done; your problem is largely created by your own mind.

However, self-hypnosis can help you break this cycle. Therefore, instead of falling victim to the same patterns of thought over and over again, you can start thinking in new ways. That, in turn, leads to more productivity.

Hypnosis Downloads

Ready to give it a try? It’s fast, easy, convenient, and you can do it anywhere. If you want to increase your ability to focus, become more productive, and handle your work more easily without constantly feeling stressed then take a look at these Hypnosis Downloads we have picked for you.

These downloads are from a site called “AssuredMind” and have all been created by a professional Hypnotherapist and are designed to be listened to each night and help you form new habits or cut out habits you wish to lose.

Stop Procrastinating

Procrastination is one of the most common issues that leaves people feeling that they aren’t being productive enough. After all, it’s so easy to procrastinate. This is especially the case if you experience any type of anxiety. If we are nervous or uncomfortable completing a task, we tend to put it off for a longer period of time. Of course, this can lead to even more stress and anxiety, which perpetuates the cycle.

You don’t want to get stuck in this kind of loop. When you can learn to stop procrastinating by trying self-hypnosis, you will no longer fall victim to the kind of thinking that convinces you to put tasks off until later. Instead, you’ll be better able to identify when you need to get a project done, and you’ll be more likely to move forward without feeling a great amount of anxiety. Who doesn’t want that?

View Download

Sleep Better and Wake Up Earlier

It’s hard to focus and be productive if you feel like you never get enough sleep. Unfortunately, this is all too common these days. Exercising more and making sure you don’t use any screens before you go to sleep can help you get better rest, but so can self-hypnosis. And as one of the simplest and most convenient ways to change your habits, it is certainly worth giving it a try if you want to start waking up earlier. After all, self-hypnosis requires very little effort on your part. You just have to sit back, relax, and listen to the audio recording. This alone can make a huge difference in how much sleep you get every night. It can also improve the quality of your sleep, which will make it easier for you to wake up refreshed and ready to take on the day.

You owe it to yourself to be as productive as possible. After all, the more you can get done, the more accomplished you feel. You want to lead a happy, busy life and attend to all of your responsibilities (and hobbies!) with ease. That’s why you need to look into self-hypnosis. Self-hypnosis can help with a wide variety of problems that can keep you from being as productive as you know you can be.

View Download

Improve Self-Discipline

Do you tend to get distracted easily? In a world dominated by smartphones and social media, that’s hardly surprising. More and more people are having a hard time focusing on one task at a time. However, self-hypnosis can help you develop your focus, so you can concentrate more. When you can improve your focus, you can get projects completed quickly and with ease. You’ll be surprised at how much more quickly you get everything done when you’re not constantly distracted.

Try out this hypnosis which aims to help you improve your self discipline and ignore distractions and focus on the task at hand.

View Download

Become Better at Trading

There’s a lot more to trading than just having the right knowledge and the right skills. In fact, you need something that’s almost completely unrelated: the right mindset. Without going into trading with the right mindset, you put yourself at risk of making significant mistakes that could end up costing you a lot of money, which is something you obviously want to avoid.

Self-hypnosis is a great option for traders of all kinds to gain this specific kind of mindset. Try it out, so you can see the real benefits it provides.

View Download

Become More Frugal

You want to be more responsible with how you spend money, and that’s completely possible to do. You just have to be willing to try something new, like self-hypnosis. Give this program a try if you are ready to make some positive changes in your life.

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Become Debt Free

One of the major reasons why people have a hard time managing to get themselves out of debt is the fact that they regularly fall victim to limiting thoughts. Instead of imagining all that they could do to help manage their money more responsibly, they start thinking about how they have failed in the past. This makes them think that they are only capable of making the same choices that they’ve always made.

Self-hypnosis goes a long way in helping you move past these thoughts, so you can rely on more helpful internal dialogue. Rather than thinking of all the ways you might not succeed, you can instead put your focus on what you need to do to move forward with your life and your finances.

View Download

Control Your Hunger

Do you find yourself feeling hungry all the time, even after you’ve just eaten? Do you search for food when you are feeling bored, lonely, depressed, or anxious? Or do you just feel like you can never get a real hold on your cravings?

If you’ve experienced any of these situations before, you probably know how difficult it can be to truly control your hunger. After all, eating provides you with feelings of well-being, which is why it can easily turn into a low-grade addictive behavior for some. And unfortunately, many seem to turn to unhealthy, calorie-rich foods when they are unable to control their hunger in this way. Not only can this type of pattern result in weight gain, but it can have even more immediate effects on your health, as well, making you feel sluggish, tired, and worn out.

You don’t have to go to an expensive therapy session, spend hours on self-improvement, or force yourself into uncomfortable situations to get the benefit of a self-hypnosis practice. All you have to do is sit back, relax, and listen to the audio. Therefore, it’s perfect for those with busy lives who simply want to learn how to control their hunger fast.

View Download

Self Confidence

Self confidence plays a big part in your day to day life, whether you are applying for a new job, trying to meet new friends or partners or asking for a raise at work. If you feel that your confidence is lacking then you could try out this download which can help you in this area of your life.

View Download

However, the only problem is that, by default, all of these resources are available in the English language. Because of the vast popularity of WordPress, and its widespread use by webmasters, entrepreneurs, bloggers, and individual professionals alike, it is not unlikely to expect people to want to access it in other major languages as well.

What if you are not an English speaker and you still want to use WordPress and its resources, that too in your own language? Although that sounds like a difficult task, WordPress allows you to do so. You can easily localize any theme or plugin and even WordPress as a whole to your language and enjoy its brilliant features.

You can contribute to plugin translations for your own use or for the benefit of others. It will not only help you use the plugin in the language you best understand but will also let others use it in the future.

In today’s post, we will focus on how to translate a WordPress Plugin in any other language.

How To Translate a Plugin That You Use On Your Site

You might be using various WordPress plugins on your website to enhance your functionality and services. You will notice that most of these plugins are available in English which is considered to be the universally accepted language.

But not everyone speaks or understands English. You might be one of them. That, however, doesn’t stop you from using this plugin. You can easily have your plugin in your own language. There are hundreds of people who contribute their plugin or theme translations to the WordPress community so that others can use it for their benefit.

You can be one of them too. To start contributing to translations you will have to first register for an account on wordpress.org. Now visit the page of the plugin that you want to translate.

You might find a line that says “The plugin is also available in X language. Help improve its translation”. By clicking on this line you will see all the languages that WordPress supports. You will also see the progress of translations next to each language.

If you click on those percentages you will see the list of strings that have either been accepted for translations or are awaiting approval.

You can contribute a translation for those strings without a translation available. For that just click on one of those strings, make your own contributions using the basic editor. Once done your translations will be checked by the WordPress Polyglot Team. When the team will approve your translations, you will see the translation strings increase. So everytime someone makes a translation, these strings will keep increasing.

You may not want to be a regular contributor, but there might be a specific plugin that you want to translate into a different language. For that, you will first have to install a plugin that will help you in the localization process. This is the Loco Translate plugin which is a free product available in the WordPress directory.

About Loco Translate

Loco Translate is an amazing plugin that lets you translate your themes and plugins to any other language you want. With more than 600,000 installations, Loco Translate has been considered to be one of the most popular translation plugins in the market.

This plugin simplifies the process of translating your plugins and themes and lets you do so without writing a single line of code. Once the plugin is installed on your WordPress site, it becomes easier for you to create and update language files directly into your WordPress theme or plugin.

It also allows you to use the built-in WordPress locale codes, extract translate-able strings from your source code, protect your language directory for saving custom translations and much more.

This plugin is compatible with the latest versions of WordPress and works beautifully with tons of other plugins that you might have installed on your site. The PO file editor also supports various shortcuts to make your translation process faster. Here are some of the shortcuts that it supports –

• Done and Next: Ctrl ↵
• Next string: Ctrl ↓
• Previous string: Ctrl ↑
• Next untranslated: Shift Ctrl ↓

These are just a few. There are many other shortcuts that you can use with this plugin.

Let us now look at how this plugin works.

Translating Your Plugins With Loco Translate Plugin

Once Loco Translate is successfully installed and activated on your site, you can start localizing your plugins directly from your dashboard. This can be either a specific plugin or the entire set of plugins that you are using on your site. To begin the process, start by going to your dashboard and then to Loco Translate>Plugins page.

The list of activated plugins on your site will be reflected on your screen. Now you can choose the plugin that you want to translate. Suppose we want to translate the WP Forms Lite plugin that is currently active on the site. For that, we will have to click on the plugin name which will show us the following page.

You will see various languages on your screen along with the translation process stats, file info, last modified date along with other information. WP Forms Lite currently allows you to translate it into three different languages. Russian, French, and German.

If your preferred language is one of the languages on the list, then it becomes even more simple for you to localize your site. Suppose you want it to be translated to the German language, just click on German and you are done. Your site will be automatically translated into German.

Selecting a New Language

If your language is not one of those listed on the plugin, then you can click on the New Language option at the top just below the plugin name.

You will now be redirected to the following page.

On this page, you are supposed to choose the language in which you want your plugin to be translated. For that, you will get two options. One is WordPress language. If you set this language to the WordPress admin area, then the site will automatically start using this language.

The second option is a custom language. Here we will choose a new language with the first option. In the next step, you will have to select the location where these translation files are to be stored. Generally, the Loco Translate plugin recommends you to save all of these files in its own folder. But if you want you can change the location.

When you are done with the settings, click on the ‘start translating’ button for the process to begin.

Loco Translate comes with a built-in editor. With the help of this editor, Loco Translate will reflect the list of strings that it will compile for the plugin that is to be translated.

You will see the source text and below that the translation field will also be reflected you.

Now you can enter the translations to the source string and select the Next string to start translating. To the right-hand side, you will see a small comment box popping up. This box can be used to save all your little notes that come up while you are translating your plugin.

It can also be used by any other user who is working with you on the translation. The plugin also lets you check your translation progress. It will show you the number of strings that were translated and the ones that are remaining.

Managing Your Translations

It’s easy to manage your translations with Loco Translate. You will see various buttons and labels on the top of your editor that lets you manage your work.

You can also trace the progress of your translations in terms of your advancing percentage and the number of strings that have been translated or are yet to be translated.

Below that you will find a few more options like Save, Sync, Revert and Fuzzy. I am sure you know what these buttons will do for you. The last one called the Fuzzy button lets you save you mark your strings if you are not very sure of it. You can then work on it for as many numbers of times as you want before you finally save it.

You can even leave the fuzzy lines to be worked upon later and exclude them from being included in the translation files. These can also be translated by someone else in the future.

You can also search for a specific string and edit them if you want. Just type the line in the search box and press enter to locate it. These lines can then be translated easily.

You can also download the PO, MO or POT files of your translations. The download icons appear towards the right end of this row.

Activating Your Translations

Once your translations are complete its time for you to activate them on your site. You won’t find any specific buttons to activate these translations. You will instead have to switch the language of your WordPress site. For that, you will have to go to – Settings > General. On this tab find the “Site Language” option. Now switch the language to the one you translated the plugin to. You can save your changes for the results.

Once that is done you can open the plugin’s settings to see the translation in action.

Conclusion

There are other ways through which you can translate your plugins. But Loco Translate is one of the most featured plugins that can help you translate your themes or plugins easily.

Although it might be a little time-consuming to have it in a language that is not very popular among WordPress users, it is still a very good way to have your plugins in a language you can best understand. By contributing your translations strings you also help many others use the language for themselves too. It also makes it easier for other contributors to work on it for good.

As the translation system improves, you will find more strings on your plugin which we hope will only improve your experience translating themes and plugin. We hope this guide was useful to you. Let us know if you have any queries. We would love to hear from you.

Its plugin repository, loaded with thousands of plugins is one of the primary reasons why WordPress has emerged as an amazing platform to work with. All of the plugins in WordPress repository is free to use and distribute.

This is what WordPress has to say about their plugin repository – “The goal of the WordPress Plugin Directory is to provide a safe place for all WordPress users – from the non-technical to the developer – to download plugins that are consistent with the goals of the WordPress project.”

In this article we will describe how you can submit your plugins and theme’s to the official directories along with the benefits that it offers.

Why Submit your plugin to the repository?

Now if you are wandering why you might need to host your plugin at the WP Directory, here are a few reasons to do so –

• Maintain Statistics – By uploading your plugin, you can keep track of how many times your plugin has been downloaded and when.
• Builds Credibility –Having your plugin at the official repository builds your credibility as a developer. Also, WordPress users tends to  have more trust on plugins that are a part of the repository.
• Feedback and Reviews – The WP Repository provides a centralized location where users who have downloaded and used your plugin, can rate your plugin, provide feedbacks, comments, bug reports and suggestions on improving your plugin.
• Exposure –When you submit your plugin to the repository, you are making it available to the entire WordPress community. This gives your plugin a good exposure, which in turn may lead to client acquisition and even PayPal donations.
• Easily Upgradable –With SVN, releasing plugin upgrades and notification to users is all very easy to do.

Along with the above mentioned, developers also enjoy the benefits of hosting their plugin for free, managing their code using SVN Client, track bugs and provide extensive documentation.

How to Submit a WordPress Plugin

Before adding your plugin, please check the official guidelines to follow before starting the submission process as follows:

• The plugin must comply with the GPL, GPL2 or a GPL-Compatible license.
• The developers have to take sole responsibility of the contents and actions of their plugins
• A stable version of the plugin must be hosted in the repository
• No trialware is permitted and all functionalities must be made available without any payment or upgrade.
• Plugins should not track user’s activity without their prior consent

Create an Account

Needless to say, if you want to submit a plugin, first you need to register yourself at WordPress.org and create an account. This is  fairly simple to do.

Go to wordpress.org, then click on the plugins tab and then on register at the top right corner. Fill in the details and click on Create Account

Have your plugin ready along with its ReadMe.txt file

Aside from having your plugin built and ready for installation, you are also required to create a Readme.txt file which will contain detailed description about your plugin.

WordPress has a pre-defined standard for ReadMe.txt and we recommend sticking to it. Typically, the ReadMe.txt file should contain the following –

=== Plugin Name ===
Contributors: (this should be a list of wordpress.org userid's)
Donate link: http://example.com/
Tags: comments, spam
Requires at least: 3.0.1
Tested up to: 3.4
Requires PHP: 5.2.4
Stable tag: 4.3
License: GPLv2 or later
License URI: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html

Here is a short description of the plugin. This should be no more than 150 characters. No markup here.

Once you have completed the ReadMe.txt file, run it through the official validator  to get it approved.

Submitting Your Plugin

Now it’s time to submit your plugin for manual review. Login to your WordPress account and click on Plugins tab. Head over to WordPress Developer Center -> Add Your Plugin. You will be presented with the following page

Add a unique plugin name for your plugin and make sure it’s final since you can’t change the name once you are granted access to the repository.

Give an overall description for your plugin. You can skip much of the details here since everything is already included in the ReadMe.txt file

In the Plugin URL section, specify the location of where your plugin is uploaded. You may upload you compressed plugin file to your website. In case you don’t have a website, there are several other third party websites like Dropbox.com, mediafire.com or Google Drive where you can upload your plugin and then paste the link here.

Once you are done filling up the information, click on Send Post and then wait for the approval. The waiting period may be of several hours so just be patient.

If everything looks good, your plugin will be approved. Eventuallyyou will receive an email with all the credentials you need to access the subversion repository.

Setting up the Subversion repository

Subversion, basically is an open-source software that acts like a version control tool and keeps track of all the changes made to the plugin, along with listing all of the previous versions of your plugin.

The subversion repository is where you will upload and store your plugin. The WordPress system will use the files stored in the subversion repository to generate the web-page for your plugin. You can either use the command line or other GUI subversion clients such as SVN Tortoise.

For this tutorial we will be using the TortoiseSVN. So go ahead,Download and install the software. Installation is pretty simple, similar to the installation of other Windows Applications.

Once the installation is complete, follow the below mentioned steps-

Head over to the directory on your PC where you want your SVN repository to live in.

Right Click on the directory and click on SVN Checkout, which should present you with the following menu

In the “URL of Repository” field, enter the URL that you had received from the WordPress team on your plugin approval email.

In the “Checkout Directory”, enter the location of your local directory. This is where all your downloaded plugin files will be stored locally.

For the rest of the options, you may keep it the way it is.

Finally, click on the OK button.

All the files and the directories that exists in the WordPress SVN repository will now be downloaded to your computer in the specified directory.

Once the operation is completed, you will notice a few new directories are being created inside your local directory with the same name as in the SVN directory.

About the Directory Structure

• Screenshots, icons and headers go into the /assets/ directory
• The/trunk/ is the working directory, where you do all your main development. All the main files are placed inside this directory
• Any Major Updates to your plugin are stored in the /branches/
• The revisions of your plugin are stored in the /tags/ This is where the backups for each version of your plugin are stored.

To summarize, place all your main files in the /trunk/ directory and for the future versions of your plugin, store the major updates in the /branches/ directory and minor updates in the /tags/ directory.

The primary use of subversion is that, any changes made to your local files are automatically copied to the SVN repository on the WordPress server.

Committing Changes

Now that we are done with setting up the repository, we can now work on uploading our plugin to the repository.

First we need to add all our files to the source control. To do that, open the trunk folder select all the plugin files and folders including your readme.txt file. Then Right click and select Add

This will instruct subversion to track all these files.

Again right click and click on SVN Commit

You will now be presented with the following screenshot

In the top box, you can specify a simple message indicating the version of your plugin.

Below, you will see a list of files. Select those files that you want to be tracked in the repository.

Note: if you find a file thumbs.db, you can unselect it since it is a windows file and has nothing to do with the plugin.

Click on

Next you will be prompted with a login page. Enter your WordPress username and password and click on

The files should now upload to the SVN repository from your computer. An update log will appear on your screen, showing the uploaded files and a bold Completed message once it’s done.

Finally click on OK and your plugin is now publically available from the WordPress Plugins directory.

Adding Revision to tags directory

We have to tag our plugin to have it actually published. The steps are –

Navigate inside your trunk directory in your local computer. Right click on blank space and select TortoiseSVN -> Branch/tag

Next, in the “To path” field, edit the location from /trunk/ to /tags/<version-number>. Most subversion clients by default sets this field with the trunk So make sure to change it as mentioned above.

Check “Specific revision in repository”, located in the middle section of the window.

Click OK

Enter your WordPress username and password in the following login page and click on

You will now be presented with a window indicating that the task is complete. Click OK

Finally go to the tags directory, right-click and choose SVN Update. This will download all the revision to your computer from the SVN repository.

That all there is to uploading your plugin and making it available in the plugin repository.

How to Submit a WordPress Theme

The WordPress theme directory is where the WP themes live. It is the perfect place to find safe and elegant themes for your WP website. These themes are submitted by developers around the globe. However, enlisting your theme in their repository is no piece of cake, as there are several conditions and requirement to it, aside from a long waiting period.

Here we will discuss about how to upload a theme to WordPress.org theme repository along with the various criteria needed to get your theme approved by the WordPress Community.

WordPress Themes Guidelines

WordPress is quite strict when it comes to uploading themes or plugins. They have a pre-defined set of guidelines that one has to follow during the development process, deviating from which may lead to rejection of your theme. WordPress makes sure that only high-quality and secure themes becomes a part of their repository.

It is highly advised to go through their official Theme Requirements page before you start your development process.

Some of the coding guidelines that you need to meet are –

• It should be free of any PHP or JavaScript errors.
• All input data should be validated and sanitized prior to entering into the database along with proper escaping of output data, since it is critical to developing a secure and safe theme
• It should have a valid DOCTYPE declaration and include language_attributes
• All PHP functions and classes are required to be prefixed.
• Non-presentational hooks should not be removed or modified
• JavaScript and CSS should not be included in headers and should be linked as an external file.
• Provision for an extensive and offline documentation

Apart from the above mentioned coding rules, there are several other guidelines that a developer needs to follow –

• The theme must be GPL, GPL2 or GPL-compatible licensed
• All theme text strings are to be translatable
• The words – WordPress, Theme should not be used as part of the theme’s name
• WordPress should be spelt in that exact way, with an upper case W and P, in any public facing text
• Themes cannot include plugins and can recommend only those plugins which are available in the WP plugin repository

These list of theme guidelines goes on with several other requirements.

Setting Up Your Development Environment

After you have familiarized yourself with the various guidelines, it’s time to develop and test your theme. To run and test your theme, you need to setup a WordPress development environment on your local machine, which in a nutshell is a collection of tools to safely test your project before they go live. The steps are mentioned below –

Download a web server application

Since WordPress is PHP based, you will need a webserver software locally installed on your system. Download and install a local server stack such as XAMPP, WAMP or MAMP on your local computer.

In addition, you will also require a text editor to write your code. You can choose any text editor you want like SublimeText, Notepad, etc.

Enable Debugging

Before you start coding, it is important to enable WordPress’s debugging function. This function enables WordPress to display any errors generated by your code.

Open your WordPress installation’s wp-config.php file.

 Import Theme Unit Test data

Next you need to import the Theme Unit Test Data, which will fill your local WordPress installation with dummy test data, giving a real feel of how your theme will look and perform with different content and layouts.

Installing Plugins

Additionally, you can install the following plugins to further enhance your development environment

• Debug bar – this add an admin bar, providing a central debugging location
• Query Monitor–for debugging your database queries
• Developer –to optimize the environment and ensuring code quality
• Theme Check–This plugin checks if your theme is in compliance with the latest WordPress standards and practices.

Check your Theme

By this time, you are almost ready with your theme. But before publishing your theme, you need to do the following –

• Check your theme’s compatibility with different browsers. Also install the theme across various devices and screen sizes to check its layout.
• Use the Theme Check Plugin to review your theme’s code
• Double check your HTML,CSS and JavaScript to make sure it does not throw any errors.
• Go through the guidelines and recommendations once again, for the last time

If everything is fine, you can go ahead with uploading your theme.

Uploading your theme

• To upload your theme, login to your WordPress account
• Navigate to https://wordpress.org/themes/upload/and then upload your theme’s .zip archive
• During the uploading process, your theme may run against a series of pre-set checks to test your theme. Be Patient!

Theme Review

Once your theme has been submitted, it will be reviewed by a group of WordPress volunteers, whose sole responsibility is to review the submitted themes and approve or disapprove it. This approval process may take months to complete and so being patient about it is perhaps the only thing you can do.

During the review process, you may receive an email if there are any issues with your theme. Fix the issues and resubmit the theme.

When all the issues are resolved and your theme has met all the requirement, it will be approved by the reviewer.

Theme Approval

If you are expecting your theme to go live after approval, then sadly you are mistaken. After your theme has passed the initial review, next it is appended to another queue, where it will be thoroughly reviewed by an admin team member or a key reviewer.

This process again is time consuming and you might need to wait for another month or so, depending on where your theme is placed in the admin review queue.

You can also check the current theme approval queue using this link

https://themes.trac.wordpress.org.

Only when all the issues generated at this phase are resolved, your theme will get the final approval and ultimately go live. You will also receive an email from the WordPress team indicating the same.

Conclusion

If you are a developer, then consider making this effort to publish your plugins or themes in the WordPress repository. Not only will you be making a big contribution to the online community, you will also be building your own credibility as a proficient developer.

And even though, the entire process may extend up to several months, it’s worth spending that time to get your theme published.

Instagram currently has more than 280 million active users. With that big a number, we don’t think there is any need to tell you how you can benefit by integrating your Instagram account into your WordPress website.

Showing your Instagram pictures on your WP blog has many advantages for bloggers and entrepreneurs. Firstly, it helps you gain traffic to your site, which consequently can help your business grow faster.

Secondly, if you have a good skill at capturing beautiful moments through your photography, you can quickly increase your followers through those pictures on your blog. You can then continue to keep them engaged with the brand that you have created so far.

Many entrepreneurs are taking full advantage of Instagram to build a relationship with your followers by engaging them with their stunning posts. This also encourages their followers to share the content with others which ultimately is only increasing your outreach.

Not just this.  Your pictures can also help you increase brand awareness by sharing information through visual effects that appeals to people much faster than your written content would. Afterall, only a glance is enough to do its bit.  There is so much you can do with pictures and videos.

In today’s post, we will tell you how to automatically post your Instagram pictures on your WordPress blog. But before that let’s see how to keep your personal stuff private and still connect your Instagram posts to your WordPress blog.

How To Keep Personal Stuff Private While Posting On Your Blog

Not everyone Instagram user likes keeping their accounts open to the public. If you are a new user and is one of them then you might be wondering how to keep your personal stuff private if your posts automatically get shared on your blog.

Well, that is not a very tough thing to do. You just need to create another account which is meant only for those pictures that you want to be shared on your blog.

You can keep this account open to the public so that your feeds get displayed to other users and you get discovered by them. The key to gain more followers on your Instagram account is to be very creative with whatever you post on your account. so try bringing out the most artistic side of you and see how your insta account gets flooded with thousands of followers.

That being said, let us now move on to see how you can display your new Insta posts on your WordPress blog.

How To Post Your Instagram Pictures On Your WordPress Blog?

There are two methods by which you can post your Instagram pictures on your WordPress blog. Let’s see each one of them in detail.

1. Manual Selecting Which Post To Display On Your Blog

With the release of the WordPress version 3.5, you have the possibility of embedding your Instagram pictures directly on your website. To do that the first step obviously is to open an account through which you want your pictures to be shared.

Once your account is active, you can start sharing your pictures and follow people of the same interest group. As mentioned earlier, you should keep your account settings open to the public if you want more followers to follow your posts.

By doing so your pictures gets reflected on other users feed and people can even follow you for more updates. Now if you want your pictures to be shown on your blog or website, every time you upload a new picture, you will have to find out the embed link of the picture that you want in your blog.

You will find this link just next to the comment box.click on the three dots and you will find three options being displayed. Click on the embed option and click on the copy embed code option. A message on your computer screen will confirm that your link has been copied once that is done.

In the next step, you will have to paste the embed code that you have just copied. To do that open your WordPress website dashboard and go to the page where you want your picture to be shown.  Now paste the embed code on your WordPress Text Editor.

And there you are. Your Instagram picture will now be reflected on your WordPress site too. Another way to do it is by simply copying the image URL and pasting it on the text editor of your site.

The images that you will see on your site is generally of 612 px width.  If that is the size you want for your images, you can directly paste the code on your site’s text editor. But if you want a smaller or bigger size of the image, you will have to use the following code to alter its size.

instagram url = “https://www.your image’s url” width = “550”

The image that you will now see on your blog will have a width of 550 px. You can set the image size as per your need.

Sharing your instagram posts on you blog or website by this method is one of the simplest ways and it needs no coding or other professional knowledge of web design. This method works beautifully on almost all types of websites and can be done on sites that are powered by WordPress too.

2. Reflecting Instagram Photos Automatically On Your Website

Sometimes you might want to dedicate one a full blog post to display the images that you just uploaded on your Instagram account. In this step we will tell you how to do it.

For that, you will first have to open an account on IFTTT. For those of you who doesnot know what IFTTT is, it is a platform through which you can bring all your apps together and each of them can interact with the other  and help you stay even more connected with your friends and followers.

IFTT is a free online tool and there are no charges for using it.  Once your account is created and you are logged into your account, you will need to find the MyApplets option.

When you click on this option you will see another option which says NewApplet. You will now have to click on this option to get started.

In the next step you will have to connect your Instagram account by locating Instagram on IFTTT. For doing that you will see an option saying ‘+this’. You can click on this option and locate Instagram to activate your account.

Now that your Instagram account is activated, you will be asked to login to your account and authorize IFTTT to access your account.

Following this, you will be asked to choose a trigger.

This will take you to an option which says, ‘If this then +that’. Click on the +that statement.  This step will help you select what exactly you want to do with your pictures.

In the third step you will have to locate WordPress as your action service.

You will now be asked to connect WordPress to IFTTT. A popup box will appear with the connect option. Click on the Connect button after entering the URL of your WordPress site, the admin username and your password.

Now you will have to select the action that you want to take. This can be done either by creating a blog post with new Instagram photos or create an entire post for photographs.

 Suppose you select the option to create a photo post.  For either of the options, you will have to map your Instagram fields to your WordPress site. For this you can fill up all the fields that you think is important for you. For example, you can add alt tags, custom caption etc.

The last thing for you now is to save your settings by clicking on the finish button. And that’s it. You are ready to share all your Instagram pictures on your WordPress blog.Just go ahead and upload a beautiful picture on your Instagram account and check for the same picture up on your blog.

3. Displaying Your Latest Instagram Uploads on Your Site Using a Plugin

Our third method to make your Instagram pictures appear on hyour WordPress blog is by using a plugin. We will use the plugin called Instagram Feed by Smash Balloon which is a free plugin that can be downloaded directly on your WordPress site’s dashboard.

By using this plugin you can skip all the repititive work of embeding the code or writing a code each time you want your pictures on your blog.

After the plugin s installed on your site, you will see the plugin name appear on the left side of your admin panel.

You will have to authorize the plugin first before you start using its features. To get your plugin authorized, log in to your Instagram account. Now click on the ‘Log in and get my Access Token and User ID’ that will appear under the
Configure option of the plugin settings.

By doing this you will allow the plugin to access your photos on Instagram.  The plugin will then bring you back to the plugin page in WordPress with your access token and user ID which will be already generated.

Copy the Access token and User ID and paste them in the boxes as shown below.

Save the changes that you have just made and move on to the Customise tab. In this section you can size of your feed. This part also allows you to set the background color of your feed. You can even set how many pictures you want to display in each columns.

For the image resolution option, although by default the plugin recommends the auto-detect option, you can set your own image resolution if you want.

You also have the liberty to change the padding and the spacing between the pictures. When you are satisfied with the changes that you have made, go ahead and save your settings.

In the next tab, you will see the Display your feed option.

In this tab, you will see a shortcode for your feed. With this shortcode, you can make your pictures visible on any part of your website. You just need to copy this code and paste it into the text editor or the widget text element.

If you want your photos to appear differently on your website, you have an option for that too. However, you will have to upgrade your plugin to the Pro version to enjoy services like displaying hashtag instead of the pictures and so on.

You can also display different users in a single feed. Here is an example :

[instagram-feed id=”ANOTHER_USER_ID, YET_ANOTHER_USER_ID” num=4 cols=4 showfollow=false]

Other Plugins To Integrate Instagram With WordPress Site

Apart from the one mentioned above, you can try out the following plugins to make your Instagram pictures visible on your WordPress blog.

Instagram Journal

Download

This is an amazing WordPress plugin that will help you display your Instagram posts directly on your blog. This is one of the most elegant, responsive and flexible plugins that is compatible across different browsers. It comes with tons of amazing features.

From specifying your picture location, adding multiple hashtags, pulling in popular posts from Instagram feed and more, this plugin allows you to do so much flexibility that you are definitely gonna love it.

WP Instagram Widget

Download

The WP Instagram Widget is a free WordPress plugin that has more than 200,000 active installations. Using this plugin is probably one of the easiest ways to integrate your Instagram account with your WordPress site.

The plugin has been designed with the motto of keeping the user interface as simple as possible. It gives you all the freedom to come up with the most elegant and stylish design that suits your needs and interest.

Feed Them Social

Download

This is another free plugin that you might want to consider for all the amazing features that it offers. This plugin responds beautifully to devices of all sizes and looks equally stunning on desktops, laptops and mobile devices.

This plugin not only works on Instagram, but also works on other social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

This plugin is a brilliant option to display content from various social media platforms in your blog. Moreover, you donot necessarily have to share content from your accounts only. You can share content from others feed as well. This can either be a photograph or even be a video.

This plugin already has 60,000 plus active users and has been rated as a good choice by most of them.

Conclusion

Displaying your Instagram pictures on your WordPress blog can definitely help you handle your social media accounts more effectively. It not only gets your more traffic to your website but also makes your WordPress blog appear visually appealing.

Many entrepreneurs have tried this method and found that the results are amazing. Have you tries sharing your Instagram pictures on your WordPress blog yet?

Which method did you try ? Did it help you boost your website traffic? Let’s discuss in the comment section below.

So unlike the old trend where you would have to click on the Next button to go to the following page for more content, infinite scrolling will automatically load more content for the visitors.

Many authority sites have been using the Infinite Scrolling feature to create a seamless user experience by making things effortless and distraction free. What made this feature more popular is the extreme success it achieved when social media giants like Facebook and Twitter used it as a strategy to keep its visitors glued to it.

Infinite Scroll, Image by The End Result.

In this tutorial, we will tell you how to add infinite scroll to your WordPress site easily and efficiently. But first let’s answer a few other things you need to know before you add this feature to your site.

Is Your Site Suited To Use Infinite Scroll?

Before using the Infinite Scroll feature on your website, it is good to find out whether this feature is a good fit for your website. Not every website is meant to use this feature. For example, websites that want its visitors to perform a particular task like searching for a specific product or looking up for a specific content, should not be using this feature.

This is because this feature might make your visitors overwhelmed with the amount of information they can see. Besides they might just get distracted and get diverted from what they were looking for. This in return can affect your site’s goal.

This feature is a big no-no for e-commerce sites. It, however, works great with sites that contain a lot of content that is regularly posted and updated. You should also definitely use this feature on blogs and websites that publish posts of equal importance and more or less of the similar length.

Does This Feature Have Any Negative Impact

One of the major flaws that I came across is that the footer links never show up on the Home page of your blog where you generally display your latest posts. This is not a great thing that you would want to happen on your site.

Another drawback about these plugins is that it might sometimes overwhelm the readers with the amount of content that is displayed all at once. Many visitors also do not like this feature because they fail to relocate the content they read seconds ago. And instead of making things easier, they get stuck locating the content that was just lost.

What Are the Positive Effects Of This Feature

Even though the Infinite Scroll feature has a few drawbacks, it comes with its own set of advantages too. And people who have used this feature on their site have loved it for this reason.

Using the Infinite Scroll feature is one of the best ways to keep your readers and visitors stick around for longer. By using this feature you can easily keep your readers engaged on your posts by continuosuly producing interesting content for them. This would subsequently result in making them stay on your site for longer. This is a great way to decrease the bounce rate of your site.

That’s not the end. This feature also simplifies the process of navigating to other pages of your site. By doing that you enhance the user experience of your site. And readers love visiting sites that are easy to navigate.

Let us now look at how this feature can be added to your WordPress site.

How To Add Infinite scroll To Your WordPress Site?

Adding the Infinite Scrolling feature to your WordPress site is not a very complex task, provided you have a theme that is coded well enough to support such a feature. However, this doesn’t at all mean that you would not be able to add this feature to your site if your theme does not support it.

In today’s post, we will tell you 2 different ways of adding this feature to your website.

1. Manually Method By Coding
2. Through Plugins

1. Adding Infinite Scroll Manually By Coding

Freelance Web Developer Tyler Longren offers some amazing solutions for adding this feature to sites with themes that do not support the feature.

For that let us first activate Infinite Scroll. This can be easily done by adding the following code to your theme’s function .php file.

function mytheme_infinite_scroll_init() {
add_theme_support( ‘infinite-scroll’, array(
‘container’ => ‘content’,
‘render’ => ‘mytheme_infinite_scroll_render’,
‘footer’ => ‘wrapper’,
) );
}
add_action( ‘init’, ‘mytheme_infinite_scroll_init’ );

In the next step, you will have to setup function for the Render Parameter. Render Parameter is the function in the code that is responsible for loading new posts for endless scrolling.

In this case, it is the mytheme_infinite_scroll_init. Now add the following snippet to the function .php file.  This is a basic implementation that can be used with the Jetpack Plugin, which is a free plugin that can be easily activated at the backend of your site.


function mytheme_infinite_scroll_render() {
get_template_part( ‘loop’ );
}


And that’s it. Your infinite scroll should start working as soon as this is done. But wait. Is it still not working? Well in that case, we would suggest you to consider changing your theme altogether. Because like most modern themes, yours is not probably built to support the function.

Let us now move on to the second method.

2. Adding Infinite Scroll Feature By Using A Plugin

You can add this feature to your site by simply installing a theme that supports the function.
Let us consider the Infinite Scroll Plugin in this case which is a free plugin and can be downloaded directly from your website.

You just need to activate this plugin and start using it to get the feature running. It is a completely customizable plugin that quickly adapts to your site and theme. This plugin is compatible with RSS readers, browsers with Javascript and mobile devices. The best thing about this plugin is that it maintains a local database of various theme presets.

Let us now check out how this theme can be installed and activated on your website. You should, however, know that this plugin works only on the home page and not on the categories or tag/archive pages.

Once you install and activate this plugin, you will see a new menu under your settings tab. This will be reflected in the Infinite Scroll Menu.

Generally, you can start using it, without having to do any changes in the settings. But if your site is a customized one, you might have to change your settings slightly in order to make the plugin work smoothly without any interruption.

For this, you will have to go to the plugins settings page and select the ‘Selectors’ tab.

Under this tab, you will see that the fields are already filled to meet the standards of your theme. Your content is wrapped on the main page with the help of the content selector that is marked as div.

In our case it was #content. This is generally the standard content selector for most of the sites and might be the same for you too. So you can keep this part as it is. It was by default shown as #content div.post in our case.

But many bloggers want to wrap their post with an extra div called .post-container. This has two reasons.

First, when you use this separator, your content and the thumbnail gets split into two different grids. And secondly, it helps load your thumbnails easily.

You can use the plugin with its general settings too. But sometimes it may not load your thumbnail. This might negatively affect your SEO.

If you want to customize how your texts end or loads and how the image loads, you can do all of it under the General Options tab.

Top 5 Plugins To Add Infinite Scroll To Your Blog

Infinite Scroll is not the only plugin that you can use to add the Infinite scroll feature to your blog. There are many other great plugins too, which can be used to make this feature work on your website. Here are the top 5 plugins that you can use for the purpose.

1. JetPack Plugin

Download

If you are not new to WordPress then JetPack must be a very familiar name to you. It is a free, all in one plugin that is loaded with tons of amazing features. Infinite Scroll is just one of them. However, this feature works only with themes that support it.

If your theme does not support it, you will have to add a very simple code to make it work for you. Here is the code that you need to use.


add_theme_support( 'infinite-scroll' , array (
'container' => 'content' ,
'footer' => 'page' ,
) );


This should get your work done. But for those sites that use a theme that supports the feature can download the plugin and activate it directly from the dashboard.

Once that is done you need to activate the Jetpack Infinite Scroll module. This option is available in the Theme Enhancement section under the Settings menu. Here you just need to check the box which says ‘Load more posts as reader scrolls down’. Do not forget to Save your settings.

There you are. Infinite Scrolling feature is activated and ready to be used on your site.

2. DMD Infinite Scroll

Download

DMD Infinite Scroll is a free WordPress plugin that comes with amazing features. You can use this plugin for Ajax loading too if you use WooCommerce on your site. It also paginates up to 10 posts in the same template.

The plugin automatically loads more content as soon as the user reaches the end of the page. It also has a fancy Load More Button which can be used to make people click on it for more content to load. So you can choose from either of the options – whichever suits you the best.

If your site has the e-commerce facility it will make your clients reach the top of the page every-time a product is being replaced. This plugin has multiple sets of settings and can be easily set up on your site.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, you have to go to the DMD Infinite Scroll option in the admin area. There you can select the theme you are using from the presets that will appear in the drop-down arrow.

If your theme is not listed on it, you will have to add the correct selectors.

3. YITH Infinite Scrolling

Download

This is another brilliant WordPress Plugin that can be used to instantly add the Infinite Scroll feature to your site. This plugin comes with the easiest interface for users and has a simple and direct navigation. With more than 8000 active installations this plugin has been one of the most loved plugins for the Infinite Scroll feature.

This is an open source plugin, so if you think an idea can make it even better you can contribute to enhancing its features for the users. With this plugin, you can show more of your content at one go. This plugin comes with a direct and simple navigation so your users are gonna love it.

It is also compatible with mobile devices, so your users will get the same user experience on their mobile devices too. This plugin also offers a smooth transition effect.

To start using this plugin, you just have to install and activate it on your WordPress site. Once that is done, you can activate it right from your dashboard and start enjoying its features.

4. Auto Load Next Post

Download

Just as the name suggests the Auto Load Next Post plugin helps you increase your page views by automatically loading the next post for your readers.

The JavaScript used to design the plugin loads the net post by inserting the content via a special template that matches the theme structure for a single post and places the content underneath the parent post within the main post container.

The JavaScript automatically detects whenever the reader is reading the next post and changes the URL to the one of the current posts. The process is repeated until there is no more post to be loaded. If you have not yet tried this plugin, it’s time you try it.

Sometimes after installing the plugin, you might be asked to integrate the plugin with your theme. This can be easily done by adding a single line of code below your functions.php file and then save it.  Here is the code –

add_theme_support(‘auto-load-next-post’);

However, if you want to use this plugin, you should know one thing. It works on sites that are hosted on WordPress. So you will have to shift from WordPress.com to WordPress.org to be able to use this plugin.

5. Ajax Load More

Download

This is another beautiful plugin that for lazy loading posts, single posts, pages, comments and more with Ajax powered queries. So when you use this plugin, it will load a certain amount of the content first and then slowly load the other section as and when you scroll down.

This plugin also lets you build some complex custom WordPress queries and generate shortcodes to your page through the content editor or directly into the template file.

You can also include multiple instances of Ajax Load more on a single page, post or template. The plugin also has the option to let you manage the repeater template across all sites in the network.

6. Ajax Pagination and Infinite Scroll

Download

Ajax Pagination and Infinite Scroll is a brilliant plugin that simplifies the process of using the feature on your site. This plugin works on your individual pages, posts, searches, custom post types etc.

In this plugin, you have 3 different pagination options to choose from.

The Infinite Scroll option in which the content automatically loads for your visitors as they reach the bottom of the page.

The second option is the Load More Button option where your users will have to click on the Next Button to load more content.

The final option is the normal Pagination option. In this option, your users will experience the pagination effect but the next page will load with Ajax.

This plugin also has the option to query and display multiple sets of posts in the same template and independently paginate them.

Conclusion

Infinite Scrolling is a great feature to keep your readers engaged on your site if used wisely. It not only makes people stay on your pages but also prolongs their stay by providing them continuous content as they read on.

This happens because by using this feature you lower the barrier of the user for getting into the next page. They are also at a higher chance of finding something more interesting. And all of these contributes to a lower bounce rate along with an improved user experience.

So if you want all of these to happen on your site, they try out this feature now. We are sure it will help you take your site to the next level.

Although most websites have the robots.txt file, not all webmasters are aware of how important this file is and how it can affect the performance of their website.

In today’s tutorial, we will tell you what exactly the robots.txt file is and everything else that you need to know about this file.

What is the WordPress Robots.txt File?

Every website on the internet is visited by a certain type of robot which is a kind of bot.

If you do not know what a bot is, search engines like Google and Bing are the perfect example for you to understand it.

So when these bots crawl around the internet, they help search engines to index and rank billions of websites that exist on the internet.

So these bots actually help your website to be discovered by search engines. However, it does not mean that you want all your pages to be found.

You would especially want your dashboard and the admin area to remain hidden because that is the private area from where you control the front end of your website. Sometimes you may want the entire site to stay hidden from search engines for the very reason that it is still in the development mode and is just not ready to go live.

Robots.txt Commands, image from The Web Robots Page

This is where the robots.txt file comes in. This file helps you to have control over how the bots interact with your site. So using this file you can either restrict or entirely block its access to a specific area of your site.

Does Your Site Need This File?

Although search engines won’t stop crawling, in the absence of this file, it is always recommended to have it.

Search Engines will come to this file if you want to submit your XML sitemaps to search engines like Google. You can obviously control it by particularly specifying it to the Google Web Master Tools.

Creating the robot.txt file has two major benefits for your website. Firstly, it helps search engines figure out which pages you want it to crawl and the ones to be ignored. By doing that you make sure that the search engines are focused on the pages that you want it to show your audience.

Secondly, it helps you optimize the research usage by blocking the bots that are unnecessarily wasting your server resources.

If your site is powered by WordPress, you generally do not have to make the extra effort to create the robots.txt file for your site. A virtual robots.txt is automatically created on your WordPress site. But it is still better to have a physical robots.txt file.

Is Robots.txt File A Foolproof Way To control Which Page Is To Be Indexed?

Well, as I have already mentioned, search engines won’t stop crawling your pages in the absence of this file. Creating this file is not a foolproof way of controlling which page you want the search engines to index.

If you want to particularly stop search engines to crawl a certain page, you can use the meta noindex tag to entirely block them.

By using the robots.txt file, you are not telling search engines not to index them. It only prompts them not to crawl those pages. Although Google doesn’t crawl these areas of your site, it might still do so, if some other site links to this part of your site.

Where Is the Robots.txt File Located On Your WordPress site?

You can view this file by connecting to your site by using an FTP client. You can also do it by using the cPanel file manager. This file is generally located in your site’s root folder.

You can open this file by using any plain text editor like the Notepad. This is an ordinary file and needs no special editor to be opened.

You don’t need to worry about this file’s existence on your site. WordPress automatically creates a robot.txt file by default for your website.

If you still doubt it, there is a way that will show you that this file exists on your site. Just add “/robots.txt” to the end of your domain name. It will show you the robots.txt file of your website.

In our case, “www.alienwp.com/robots.txt” shows the robots.txt file that we use here.

You cannot alter the existing file that you will have on your site. But if you want to manipulate it, you will have to create a physical one on your server. The existing one is a virtual one that doesn’t accept any alteration.

How To Create A Robots.txt File?

If in case your site doesn’t have the robots.txt file, it is not very difficult to create one. You can easily do it from your admin panel via the Yoast plugin. Yoast is one of the most amazing SEO plugins that every WordPress site should use. If you are still not using this plugin, go install it now to enhance your SEO.

Once Yoast is installed, you will first have to enable the Yoast advanced features. You can do that by going to SEO>Dashboard>Features>Advanced Settings.

Now go to SEO>Tools>>File Editor.

Here Yoast will assume that you do not have a physical Robots.txt file and considering that, it will give you an option to create one.

Click on the create Robots.txt file option.Once you do that, you will be able to edit the content of this file from the same interface.

How To Create Robots.txt File Without A SEO Plugin?

The above process was a way to create this file using an SEO plugin. But you can create it even if you do not use such a plugin. This can be done via SFTP. Doing this is very easy.

For this, you will first have to create an empty file. Name it as Robots.txt and save it.

In the next step, you will have to connect to your site via SFTP. Kinsta has a guide to how to connect to SFTP. Once you are connected, you will have to upload the file to the root folder of your website. If you want to make any modification to this file, you can do it by editing it via SFTP and uploading the new version of it.

How To Use The Robots.txt File To Block Access To A Specific Page?

You can block a specific file or folder of your website, by using the robots.txt file. Suppose you want to block Google from crawling the entire wp-admin folder and the wp-login.php. The following command will help you do that on your site.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Allow: /wp-login.php

What to Put In Your Robot.txt File?

When you are creating a robots.txt file for your website, you generally do it with two major commands.

• User-agent – By using the user-agent you can target a specific bot or search engine in simpler words. So your user-agent is different for different search engines. So the user-agent for Google will not be same for Bing.
• Disallow – With this command, you tell search engines not to access certain areas of your website. So search engines do not reach the areas for which this command is used.

Sometimes you might also see the Allow command being used. This is generally used in niche situations. Even if you do not use this command most part of your site comes under this command. This is set by default on your WordPress site.

The above rules are just the basic ones. There are more rules that you need to know about. Here are a few of them.

• Allow – This command explicitly allows search engines to crawl through an entity on your server
• Sitemap – This command tells crawlers where the sitemaps of your site reside
• Host – The host defines your preferred domain for a site that has multiple mirrors
• Crawl-delay – By using this command you can set the time interval search engines should wait between requests to your server

How To Create Different Rules For Different Bots?

The robots.txt file has its own syntax to define rules which are commonly known as the directives. As we have already mentioned before, different bots have different user-agent command. So what if you want to set your Robots.txt file for different bots?

Well, in that case, you will have to add a set of rules under the user-agent declaration for each bot.

In the following command, we will show you how to make one rule for all bots and another specifically for Bing.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-admin/
User-agent: Bingbot
Disallow: /

By adding the above command you will be able to block all bots from accessing the wp-admin area of your website. The search engine Bing will, however, be blocked from accessing the entire website.

Things To Avoid While Creating Your Robots.txt File

there are certain things that you should avoid doing while creating your Robots.txt file. The first and the most important error committed by many inexperienced web owners is to provide space at the beginning of the command.

The second thing you need to keep in mind is that you cannot and should not change the rules of the commands. The third thing that many people ignore paying attention is the proper use of upper and lower case while writing the command.

Make sure you double check the case of your commands. You cannot write user-Agent or user-agent where it should actually be User-agent. I hope you have figured out the difference in the three terms.

Adding your XML sitemaps To Robots.txt file

If your site is already using an SEO plugin like Yoast, then it will automatically add the commands related to your site’s XML sitemaps to the robots.txt file.

But if your plugin fails to add these commands, you will have to do it manually by yourself. Your plugin will show you the link to your XML Sitemaps. You will have to add it to the robots.txt file yourself.

How To Know That Your Robots.txt File Is Not Affecting Your Content?

Sometimes you may want to check if your content is being affected by your robots.txt file. To check and ensure that no content is affected, you can use the Webmaster Tool called ‘Fetch As Bot Tool’. This tool will allow you to see if your robots.txt file is accessing your content.

For this, you will first have to log in to the Google Webmaster tool. Now go to Diagnostic and Fetch as Google Bot. There you can put your site content and see if you have trouble accessing it.

Final Words

As already mentioned, most WordPress sites have the robots.txt by default. But using the robots.txt file you can have control of the way a specific bot or search engine interacts with a specific part of your website.

It is important you know that the disallow command is not the same as the noindex tag. Search engines might be blocked by using the robots.txt but it cannot stop them from indexing your site. You can manipulate the way search engines interact with your site by adding specific rules.

But it is good that you know which part of your site should be crawled and which part should be denied access. Because Google generally looks at your website as a whole. So if you use these files to block an important part that Google needs to know about, you might just land on some major problems.

For example, if unknowingly you use the robots.txt file to block you styling component. In such a case, Google will consider your site to be of lower quality and might even penalize you.

Mostly the content that you want to put in your robots.txt file depends on your website. These might be your affiliate links, your dashboard area or any other particular area that you think should not be accessed by the bots. You can also do it for your plugins and themes.

We hope this guide was helpful to you. Feel free to leave us a comment below in case you have any further queries. We would love to get back to you.

All your posts, images, your web pages all gone. Your years of hard work, your visitors all wiped away. And all that you can see is some random page on your site with the text “You Have Been Hacked”. This heart-dropping moment when you realize you’ve been hacked changes everything.

While WordPress continues to dominate the world of blogging, it is not safe from the attention of the hackers. Through one way or another, hackers find a way to bypass the security of a site and wreak havoc on it. If you have a website, there is always a possibility of getting hacked. There are various attacks that can completely or partially paralyze your web site. Some of such attacks are:

• Denial of Service
• Local File Inclusion
• Remote File Inclusion
• Phishing
• Cross Site Scripting(XSS)
• Defacement
• Shell Upload

Along with the ones mentioned above, there are new threats and attacks being developed almost daily. So if you want to protect your site against hacking attacks, you need to make sure that the security of your site is always up to date.

Signs That Indicate Your WordPress Site Is Hacked

Sometimes it is a bit difficult to determine whether your site is hacked or not. Hackers try their very best to hide all the traces of their hacking activities and to remain anonymous. A hacker may silently install some malware on your web server and you might not be even aware of it. So it is always advised to keep a suspicious eye on anything unusual that occurs on your site.

In this article, we will take a look at the 12 signs that indicate that your website has been hacked.

If you are worried about hacking on your WordPress website, make sure to read our WordPress security guide and take regular backups.

Your Website is Slow or Unresponsive

This is one of the primary symptoms that you should look out for. If your site takes more than usual time to load or it becomes unresponsive, possibilities are its hacked. This may be caused by a special type of an attack known as Denial of Service. Every website has a good chance of becoming the target of such an attack. This attack involves multiple servers and infected bots, which sends millions of requests to the server, using fake IP addresses. And when the server gets more requests than it can respond, it overloads. Due to this, the server fails to respond to the huge traffic and ultimately crashes.

Another reason could be that the hacker has added some code to your site that it has slowed down, this could be a script which subjects your visitors to malware with the intention of infecting their computer, rogue advertising, nefarious links to the hackers websites and so on.

Defaced HomePage or Change in the layout or design

A sudden change in the layout or design of your site out of nowhere is an indication that your site is hacked. Such changes may be a minor one or a major one.

A minor change such as the disappearance of one or two images may not indicate a hacked site, as some misplaced code or technical error may also be the reason behind it. However, if there are tons of images suddenly disappearing, or if you see weird images on your site then you could have been hacked.

Another thing that indicates a hacked site is a defaced homepage. If your homepage is replaced by some other random page, posted by the hacker then it is a sure-fire indication that your site is hacked.

Unable to access the Admin page

If you are unable to access the admin page of your site, then there is a chance that hackers have found a way to your admin page and changed your login credentials. Once this happens, immediately analyze the situation and start taking security measures. Contact your hosting company to regain control of your site to prevent further damage.

Hackers often change the admin id and password once they are able to get access, locking the admin out of its own account. To make matters worse, they may even delete the entire user account. This poses a greater threat as now there is no way recover the account from its deleted.

Hackers use brute force attacks to guess passwords. And if you have a weak password set for your admin account, it will be easily hacked.

Unknown Files or Scripts on the Server

The presence of unwanted or suspicious looking JavaScript or other scripting files may indicate the presence of some malware on your site. You may be familiar with the various directories inside your web server. However, it may be a bit difficult to look around each and every file to find that malicious script.

Luckily there are tools that automate the task for you. If a hacker has planted some malicious files in your folder, then using tools such as Wordfence or Sucuri you can inspect all your files and activities. This application will alert you if they find anything suspicious on your server.

If you prefer manual searching be sure to look out for malicious files and scripts in the /wp-content/ folder.

Google also gives us a warning message if their crawling bots find something malicious in your code. So the next time, Google raises a warning sign, don’t take it lightly. Your site may be infected by some malware.

Sudden Traffic Drop

If your site is getting unusual dip or spike in its traffic, it may mean that your site is hacked. One reason why this might happen is because some hacker hacked into your site and redirected traffic away from your site, causing a dip in traffic.

There are many Trojans and other malware out there, which can hijack your traffic and redirect it to some malicious, spammy site. So when some user visits your site, they are taken away to some other spammy site, thus causing a dip in the traffic. This could also lead to potential loss of valuable visitors and customers on your site.

Another reason for getting fewer visitors is because Google blacklisted your site. In this case, Google displays a warning message to anyone trying to visit your site, stating that your site is infected with some kind of malware. Now of course, who would visit a site that is infected with a virus?

Bouncing of Emails

One of the worst indications of getting hacked is when your email starts bouncing or users are unable to send or receive emails from your site. This happens when a hacker breaks into your site and installs some malicious scripts that in-turn sends out thousands of spams emails from your site. As a result, people report your site as a spammy site with their email provider and soon you will find your site in the list of spam sites.

So the next time, you are unable to send or receive WordPress emails, there is a chance that your mail server is hacked and is used for sending spam emails.

Unwanted Pop-Up or Ads on your site

If you are seeing unwanted pop-ups on your site, that redirects to some other site being clicked, your site is hacked. These type of attacks are used to divert your traffic to some other illegal or spammy website by showing them attractive pop-ups. This is possible when some hacker has a backdoor installed on your server.

You might even receive a warning in your browser that the site has been hacked, in that case you will need to solve the problem and submit a re-inclusion request with Google.

Suspicious User Accounts

If your site has open registration and along with it if you don’t have any spam protection mechanism installed on your site, then having tons of spam accounts is not something to dread of. This is not a sign of getting hacked and you can simply delete those accounts from your site.

However, if you don’t have open registration yet you find multiple spam or suspicious accounts on your site then it is an indication that your site is hacked.

Take a deeper look at such accounts and try to find its allowed privileges. If such spam accounts have administrative privileges than you can confirm that your site is hacked. To make things even worse, sometimes such accounts are also very difficult to remove as they have got administrative privileges.

High BandWidth Usage

The amount of bandwidth used is determined by the traffic in your site and the number of emails being sent or received, among others. This does not cause a huge spike in your bandwidth. But if you find noticeable changes in your bandwidth, possibilities are that you have been hacked. The main reasons behind such bandwidth spike can be

• Large files added to your site, which increases the amount of data downloaded every time you have a visitor.
• The inclusion of malicious scripts on your server that sends out thousands of spam emails, adding up to your bandwidth usage.
• Also if your site has been added to some network, it can lead to huge spikes in bandwidth.

This can happen very quickly and can even go unnoticed if you don’t keep an eye open for it.

Unusual Activity in your server logs

Server logs are mainly simple text files that keep the log of the various activities that are taking place on your web server. These files keep a record of all the errors that occur in your web server as well as all your internet traffic. These logs are available in your WordPress admin dashboard under Statistics.

If you find some unusual activity on your logs, such as huge traffic from a particular website or your site is making constant connections to some random IP address, it is a sign that your site is hacked or is in the verge of getting hacked.

Suspicious Scheduled Events

In certain cases, a hacker after hacking into your site won’t do any damages instantly. After gaining access to your site, he/she won’t do anything suspicious, rather they will schedule their malicious activities to take place sometime in the future.

In this technique, hackers exploit the CRON to run scheduled tasks on your server. Cron jobs are provided by a web server to allow users to run scheduled tasks like publishing scheduled tasks, deleting old comments from the server and so on.

This is very dangerous from the fact that it will leave an inexperienced web personnel clueless about what happened since the attack was scheduled for the future, long after the hacking took place.

Conclusion

Security is vital, particularly if you store any user information or sensitive data on your website. Most hacking attempts are moments of opportunity, automated, and impersonal. 51% of WordPress websites are hacked because of a theme or plugin, and 8% due to a weak password. The rest are often due to poor hosting security.

You can prevent your average attack by avoiding default credentials, enabling two-factor authentication, using Secure Socket Layers (SSL), and opting for a secure hosting server.

We hope this article was able to provide you with a brief insight on how to detect possible hacking activities. And even if your site is clean, we ask you not to take this for granted. Follow all security protocols to make sure that your site is best protected against any sort of hacking attacks. Remember “Prevention is better than Cure”.

Further Reading:

• WordPress Security Guide
• WordPress Backup Plugins

The Importance of Maintaining a Backup

WordPress has become an essential part of the web world. It’s ease of operation and simplicity has attracted the attention of people from different professions. However, it’s simplicity and ease of use sometimes creates an illusion that nothing can go wrong with a WordPress site. But the fact is, WordPress is vulnerable and if not handled properly it can lead to unexpected results.

And one of the biggest mistakes that website owners make is not maintaining a regular backup of the site. Most people tend to believe that since nothing has gone wrong so far, nothing will go wrong in the future. But unfortunately this is not true.

It only takes one unlucky circumstance for you to completely lose your WordPress site and start all over again from scratch. Fortunately, this can be prevented. And the most obvious solution is to maintain a regular backup of your site. Just like the way we maintain a backup of the important files on our PC or laptop, we should have a foolproof backup strategy lined up for our site too.

Backing up your site is mandatory. People who have been using WordPress for a long time is well aware of the importance of maintaining a backup. However, for the less experienced web owners, they fail to understand the necessity of maintaining a regular backup of the contents on their site.

It is not uncommon for website owners to not take backups seriously until something goes wrong. It is a hard lesson that they never forget. But if you are smart, you will get into the habit of backing up your website from the beginning.

Let’s put some light on the importance of creating a backup…

Server Failures

A server is a machine just like our computers and it can crash just like our computers do. Failure of our computer’s hard disk may not affect thousands of people. But if a web server crashes, it may create drastic situations. Server failures may occur due to various reasons like power loss, hardware malfunction, hacking attacks like DOS and so on. But if we have a backup, a server crash may not pose that much of a serious threat to a site. Whatever data has been lost, can be recovered back from the stored backup.

Protection against hacking

If you are running a website, you are always a target for the hackers. And WordPress, being the most popular CMS platform in the world, has made itself prone to being a target for the hackers and spammers. Now you may argue that your site is safe because you have installed tons of security plugins. But trust me, your site is never 100% safe from hackers. Even a single security loophole on your site can make it vulnerable to hacking attacks.

So the best precaution that you can adopt is to create a regular backup. That way even if some hacker ruins your site along with your database contents, you can always restore it back from the available backup.

Software Issues

This is another issue that is being overlooked. Software issues can became a major threat to a website. Sometimes even a simple faulty code snippet can have devastating effects on your site. For instance, there is a possibility that something might go wrong with the new plugin installation, which may create hindrance in the website’s data. If you already have the latest backup of the content, then you can tackle such issues.

Data Center Issues

No hosting company in the world can offer 100% uptime and reliably. Even the best WordPress hosting companies have had severe problems with their datacenters. The data center might lose network connectivity due to major fiber cuts. Such issues can cause your website to be unavailable for elongated periods of time. This will surely effect your website’s traffic and make your visitors move away to some other site.

Human Error

Human errors are inevitable and even the most experienced web personnel’s can make mistakes from time to time. This could result in implementing wrong changes to your site or even deleting your key files.

A small slip up from your side, say an accidental file deletion, can set you back by weeks or months, and sometimes, can even throw away all that you’ve worked so hard for.

Mistakes are not something that happens every day, but when they do happen, you will be glad of any recent backups you have

Natural Disasters

Natural disasters are unavoidable. A fire break, flood may completely damage your servers and other hardware peripherals. But if you have a recent backup of your files stored on some other location then you can gladly say that your site escaped even a natural disaster.

Your hosting may or may not provide regular backups for your site. Even if they do, here’s why you shouldn’t rely on them –

1. Hosting company backups aren’t specifically designed for WordPress. This means they may not actually help when you need them.
2. The backups may not be regularly scheduled, and they may not be often enough to be useful in case of a disaster.
3. You may not be able to restore a single site from hosting company backups without restoring all sites in your account.
4. You won’t be notified if the backups fail, so you’ll never know if they’ll actually be there if/when you need them.
5. You’ll be at the mercy of your hosting company if you ever need to restore from backup. They probably won’t be as responsive as you think they should be.

Creating Backups

So by now, you must be well aware of the importance of why you should always keep a backup. Butbefore we get started with the manual backup process, it is important to understand the basics of a WordPress database.

WordPress is a simple database driven PHP web application. Therefore, for a complete WordPress backup you need to –

• Backup the WordPress blog and website files which contain the WordPress web application files, WordPress theme files, plugins files and your uploaded content. Typically, all these files arefound in the root of your website.
• Backup the WordPress MySQL database where the content, user information, passwords and privileges, website settings, theme settings, WordPress plugins settings and other similar data is stored. If you are not sure what is your WordPress database name, you can find it in the wp-config.php file, in the root of your WordPress
• Root Configuration Files

Several root folder files must be backed up

1. Wp-config.php, which contains the settings including database connection strings(more details below).
2. .htaccess –the server configuration file
3. Webmaster tool identification file such as googleCODE.html, BingSiteAuth.html
4. Other files you have added

What is the WordPress wp-config.php File?

The WordPress wp-config.php file includes the database connection details and other configurable parameters, such as the WordPress security keys, debug options and more. As such you can live without backing up this file because you can always retrieve the database connection details from other sources, but it is easier and safer to back it up

A standard WordPress database contains 11 tables, all of which are listed below:

• wp_commentmeta
• wp_comments
• wp_links
• wp_options
• wp_postmeta
• wp_posts
• wp_terms
• wp_term_relationships
• wp_term_taxonomy
• wp_usermeta
• wp__users

Why Create Database Backup Manually?

In case of a hacking attempt or after getting hacked, you are thrown out of your own admin area. In these situations, since you cannot access the admin area, it would be very difficult to use a plugin for backup. This is where knowing how to create a backup manually comes handy. It is same as creating a backup using plugin with the only difference that the process is not automated and requires a human intervention.

Here, we will discuss different ways of how we can create a database backup manually.

Backing Up WordPress database manually using phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is an open source software that provides a web based graphical user interface to manage your MySQL database. Most WordPress hosting providers have phpMyAdmin installed in their control panel. This allows users to easily access the database and perform common database management tasks.

First of all, you need to login to your web hosting control panel(also known as cPanel). Upon login, scroll down a bit and click on the phpMyAdmin, which would be under the Database section.

This will launch the phpMyAdmin window. From the left sidebar, make sure that your WordPress database is selected inside the phpMyAdmin. If it is not, then click on your WordPress database name in order to select it.

Also when you click on the database name, you will be able to see the list of tables, the database contains.Tap on the “Export link” from the top menu bar to export/backup the database to a file.

Next, you will be presented with two options for exporting the database – Quick and Custom

Select the Custom option as it gives you more control about what to export and what not. Clicking on Custom will reveal some more options. First of all, it will show a list of all the tables in your WordPress database.

Sometimes WordPress plugins add their own tables to your database. If there are any tables that you would like to exclude from export, then you can deselect them. If you are unsure, then it is better to keep them all selected

Scroll down to the output section and select the “Save output to file” Select utf-8 for “Character set of file”. For compression, you can select the zipped or gzipped option.

Now scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the Go. You will now be presented an option to download the file and based on your selection, you will have a zip or gzip

That’s all you need to do to make a database backup for your WordPress site using phpMyAdmin.

Creating a Manual database backup using cPanel

This is another method for creating a database backup using cPanel. The steps are

Login to your web hosting control panel (cPanel). And under the Filessection, click on the “Backup Wizard”.

On the backup wizard page, click on the backup button

The backup button provides two backups, the full backup and partial backup.

Full backup is used when you are shifting to a different webhost and cannot be used to restore within the same host.

The partial backup is used to restore when your site gets down or is infected by malware and you still are continuing within your webhost.

There are three types of items that need to be backed up under each of the above two.

The home directory: it contains your themes, plugins and site’s content.

The MySQL database: it contains your sites set up that helps your site to store the posts and comments etc.

The email forwarders and filters.

Download all the three and save them on your PC or external hard drive.

Note: you cannot download all the three at a time, you need to download one, go back and download the other one. Rinse and repeat

That’s all there is to creating a backup using cPanel. Store the WordPress database file in a secure place, ideally on a different media.

Note: From this page, you can also generate a full website backup and then download it once the process is completed

Creating WordPress database backup using MySQL command line

If you host your own web server and have access to it via SSH or other protocol, you can make a database backup using a standard MySQL tool called mysqldump. As the name implies, themysqldumptool dumps a MySQL database into a text file which can later be used to restore the WordPress database.

Use the MySQL root user to connect to the MySQL server, select the WordPress database that you want to create a backup for(here wpdatabase) and export it to a text file called wpdb_backup.sql.

Mysqldump –u root –p toor wpdatabase > wpdb_backup.sql

Here –u is used to specify the username that will be used to connect with the database. In the code above, we are using the user “root”.

-p is used to specify the password of the account you are using to connect to the MySQL database server.In our case, the password is “toor”.

Wpdatabase is the name of the database that we want to create a backup for.

Wpdb_backup.sql is the name of the file where the database dump will be stored. If the file does not exist it will be automatically generated by the tool. Once the database is dumped into this file, download it to your computer and store it in a secure location, ideally on a separate media.

Scheduling Automatic Backups using cPanel

Maintaining ascheduled backup of your WordPress MySQL database is the most important thing to do when running your own WordPress website, it is required to restore your blog, it needs to urgently migrate to another host or restore your database from a crashed server.

Login to your cPanel and look for the Cron Job icon

Select the time and frequency to run backup command

Under the command field, copy and paste the following command

mysqldump –opt -Q -u dbusername –password=dbpassword dbname | gzip > /path-to-store-the-backup-file/db_backup.sql.gz

Replace dbusername with the database user

Replace dbpassword with the database user password. In some server, you might need to put a pair of single quote ‘dbpassword’ around the dbpassword for it to work.

Replace dbname with the database that you are backing up

Replace the path-to-store-the-backup-file to the file path in your server where you want to save the backup

Test the cron job to check if it works or not

Restoring your MySQL database from a backup

If you want to restore your WordPress database from a backup, it can be easily done using phpMyAdmin. The steps are listed below –

Log in to your cPanel and click the phpMyAdminicon in the Databases section.

Select the database where you would like to import your backup. This can be done from the menu in the left sidebar.

A new page will be loaded showing the structure of the selected database. To import data inside the database, click the Import tab

On the new page that opens, click the Browse button and select the backup that you want to import from your local computer. You have the option to pick the character set of the file from the drop down-menu just below the upload box. If you are not certain about the character set your database is using just leave the default one. Once ready, click the Go button to perform the import

The import will start and once finished you will be redirected to a page with a confirmation notification that the import was successful.

How many backups should you maintain

Well, when it comes to storing your WordPress backups, you generally want to always have these two things readily available:

1. The most recent backup
2. The most recent backup from before the problem that caused you to need a backup

Although these are often the same, sometimes things happen (sites get hacked, plugins conspire to cross wires, your web host changes some settings on you) and you don’t know about it for a week or two, and by then your most recent backup also contains The Problem.

So if you back up your WordPress site weekly, and you save a month or two of backups, you’re fine

Also, schedule your backups with a frequency that makes sense for your site. If you’re posting every day, you probably want daily or weekly database backups.

Something to Remember

• ALWAYS run a backup! You should backup your site database whenever you change its design & content to avoid losing all files and data when the nasty happens.
• Don’t store all your backups in one single location. Don’t just back up on the server level. In fact, WordPress recommends keeping three different backup copies — all in different mediums (so CD, hard drive, desktop, cloud, etc)
• Besides manual backups there are also various plugins that can do the task for you. They are easy to use and requires minimal user interaction.