Success breeds success. It’s an adage, but recent scientific studies have shown that once you achieve some success, more is apt to follow. That’s also true of WordPress, the premier website and blog creating platform.
WordPress’s popularity continues to grow. More web design entrepreneurs and companies are turning out more themes and plugins. WordPress happily supports these.
You might even be tempted to say that WordPress has become too successful. This can happen when you realize there are thousands of themes and plugins to choose from. Some are better suited to your needs than others, but you really don’t have the time or patience to try them all.
We’ve chosen 9 of the best on the market to help you out. Pick one, two, or all nine. Be prepared to be amazed at the design features you can easily incorporate into your website.
The data management tasks involved in building a well-structured, easy-to-comprehend table or chart can be formidable. This is especially so when you’re dealing with large amounts of complex data. You not only need to know what data to present, and how to present it, but how to come up with a result that is precisely what users need and are looking for.
wpDataTables is a best-selling WordPress plugin that does all the difficult work for you and does so in minutes instead of hours or even days. You should be prepared to be amazed at the power and flexibility this premier plugin brings to the table. wpDataTables accepts data from a variety of sources and in a variety of formats, and produces colorful, responsive, and easily maintainable tables and charts without any need for coding on your part.
This is a must-have plugin if you work with large amounts of statistical, scientific, or financial data, if you have a product inventory or catalog to manage, or if you simply have large amounts of data you need to keep organized.
LayerSlider is a premium multi-purpose animation platform that can do much more than simply add pleasing slider effects to your websites or blogs. With this versatile plugin, you cannot only create sliders from a variety of different layouts, but you can generate slideshows, animated popups and page blocks, image galleries, and even landing pages and complete websites.
LayerSlider is device friendly, so your image galleries, sliders, slideshows, etc., will be displayed correctly on desktops, tablets, and smartphones alike. Insofar as slide layouts are concerned, you can choose among full width, full size, hero scene, and OS native fullscreen.
Thanks to the visual drag and drop editor, neither coding nor special technical skills are needed to put into play everything LayerSlider offers. You can expect excellent support, extensively-detailed documentation, and regular updates over the product’s lifetime. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the typical tasks almost each site creator eventually needs to solve is a requirement to display huge amounts of data to the site visitors in a readable and interactive manner. A classic solution is organising the data in a table.
If you deal with data management on your website, you should know about wpDataTables. This is the number one WordPress plugin for tables and charts. wpDataTables takes any amount of data and organizes it on your website. It does so quickly and efficiently so you can avoid five major issues.
Major Issue #1: Wasting time organizing data
Putting together a price list or product catalog on your site can be time-consuming. You will sometimes need to manually craft a table or chart. Then, you might need to align it to fit the page, and then to pour in all the data to form neatly organized columns. This process can be a giant waste of time.
Solution: wpDataTables will spare you a lot of time as well as frustration! It will manage your data for you in a matter of minutes.
For example, you might already have a table in Excel, Google Spreadsheet or MySQL. In this case, you can create a table on your WordPress site with wpDataTables in a couple of clicks.
Or, by clicking Add New you can have a new table in two seconds flat. After that, all that is left is organizing your data and optimizing your design with just a few clicks.
Here is exactly what you can do.
Use any type of input source. This can be MySQL, Excel, CSV, Google Spreadsheet, XML, JSON or Serialized PHP array
Upload files, no matter how complex or massive it is
Copy, save to Excel or save to CSV (Table tools feature)
Sort your tables (Enable sorting feature)
Limit the table’s width (Limit table layout feature)
Define how many entries are displayed on a page (Display length feature)
Calculating the sum, average, maximum or minimum of all values in numeric columns (Calculation functions feature)
Use foreign keys for MySQL-based tables.
Preview your table to make sure the structure is flawless (Preview feature)
Major Issue #2: Needing five different plugins
Typically, you would need multiple plugins when you work with complex data. That means time spent learning how each and everyone works.
It might be hard to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of different plugins. What is more, merging them is a huge headache. Some plugins may cause conflicts when installed on same WordPress installation.
Solution: Using wpDataTables you can create and organize your information anyway you want.
You can also use the built-in Chart Creation Wizard to turn your data into a graph or chart. It only takes a few clicks.
Three render engines can be used; Google Charts, Highcharts, and Chart.js. Also, you can easily insert a form on your website. To do this, you can take advantage of a wpDataTables add-on that integrates Gravity Forms.
Here are some of the most appreciated features of the Gravity Forms integration add-on.
Show any form fields as table columns.
Display all the entry’s additional information (IP, DateTime, User ID) in a table.
Configure the output (display all records, only last XX records etc)
Show or hide deleted entries.
Use all of wpDataTables power once you create the form – sort, search, filter, and navigate through Gravity forms data as through any other wpDataTable.
Major Issue #3: Ruining the design of your website
Adding a major amount of data can compromise the design of your site. The design is the first thing to go when organizing a large quantity of data. Often you risk a well-organized, but an ugly-looking table that takes over your site.
Solution: wpDataTables allows you to adjust the table design to your liking.
You can do a lot with wpDataTables for matching your style. This includes quick colors, font size, editing columns to its appropriate type.
Major Issue #4: Having a hard time navigating the data
The most important thing in data management is easy navigation.
You want any visitor to your website to be able to find the precise thing they are looking for. Even if you have millions of rows.
Solution: wpDataTables has put extra effort into the filtering features. This allows creating an easy and intuitive navigation experience.
What you can do with the plugin:
Display a filter below each column (Advanced filtering feature)
Create a filter within the form (Filter in the form feature)
If you wish for an even better navigation and filtering experience you can use Powerful Filters. A multifunctional addon. It will extend default functionalities in several ways.
Cascade Filtering – filter values in order from left to right. Selection in each filter will enable next one and narrow down the options in it.
Independent Cascade Filtering. Lose the restriction to define filter values from left to right. Any filter narrows down all others.
Hide Table before filtering – keep the table hidden until a selection is made in the filter.
Search Button – make the table apply filters only when the Search button is clicked.
Major Issue #5: Taking forever to load a page due to the massive amount of data
The trouble is that loading a page with a large amount of data can take forever. All your efforts to organize your massive data will be for nothing if it takes a long time to load. No one wants to wait longer than a few seconds before they move on from your page.
Solution: wpDataTables automatically creates responsive mega tables.
Here’s what you can do, even with a huge amount of data:
Display your table differently on various devices. (Responsive feature)
Hide table until full page is loaded. (Optional feature)
Scroll the table horizontally (Scrollable feature)
Do you think wpDataTables is for you?
With wpDataTables, you never have to worry about writing code. 16,000 people have chosen this plugin because of its time-saving functionality. Even without tech skills, it is rated high as an easy to use the plugin. So, if you need to gather and publish data in all its forms, you can easily use wpDataTables to manage them.
You can use the plugin to create and organize:
Price lists
Product catalogues
Product/price comparisons
Event rundowns
Data collection
Inventories
Why waste time with messy, ugly charts when you can use this simple plugin and addons? All the headache causing tech issues can be removed from your day.
wpDataTables relieves the struggle of displaying massive amounts of data. There will be no need to compromise load speed, navigation or design. You can have the website of your dreams with less mess and fuss.
There is one thing web designers like about multipurpose WordPress themes. It is that they can be used to build virtually any type of website. It can be for a creative type, a small business, a corporation, or a cause. A counter-argument is that multipurpose is a “jack of all trades, master of noneâ€.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Multipurpose themes are more than capable of handling any web design task. The 15 described here can yield results you and your clients will be more than proud of.
The widespread popularity of these 2018 themes enjoy more than proves the point.
BeTheme is big. It’s big in terms of its selection of pre-built websites (more than 320), the number of core features you have access to (40 or so), and the number of satisfied users (thousands). The only small number associated with this premium multipurpose theme might be its ThemeForest best-seller ranking (it’s in the top 5).
Be’s large number of customizable pre-built websites is a blessing if you land a client that operates a business that could best be described as rather uncommon if not unique. You’ll feel doubly blessed if your work involves clients from a range of business type and niches.
Locating a pre-built website that’s a great match for a given client’s needs typically takes minutes, rather than consuming hours of your valuable time.
Be’s Muffin Builder and Options Panel, together with its impressive array of shortcodes will do most of the heavy lifting for you. It’s not uncommon to be able to have a completed website up and running and ready for delivery in roughly 4 hours.
Use the Total drag and drop front-end visual page builder and the WordPress Customizer to create your website, monetize it, and you’re ready to set up shop. While you can create any type of website for virtually any purpose, Total really shines when used in the design and creation of eCommerce sites.
Total is fully compatible with and supports the WooCommerce plugin and is bbPress compatible as well.
Total is delightfully easy for WordPress users to work with. You can view the demos on the WordPress dashboard and click to install any demo you intend to use. At the same time, you’ll be prompted to install any plugins that may be required. Then it’s simply a matter of putting your website or eCommerce shop together.
Total is one of the few multipurpose themes that takes developers’ needs into account. All the hooks, snippets, and filters developers look for are built it. Read the rest of this entry »
Beautiful web pages aren’t always enough to keep a visitor engaged. In fact, if a site’s UI and UX aren’t carefully designed, visitors aren’t apt to stay around for long.
Consequently, there’s a huge and ever-growing demand for UX designers. Salaries that are in keeping with the demand make the thought of diving into UX an attractive one.
If you’ve already gone this route, you need to understand the importance of having the proper UX tools. You need to know what they are, and what they do. These tools include support collaboration, prototyping, interactive design, and user testing.
User flow diagrams make up an important piece of the puzzle. So does the ability to tweak specific design elements. These can be changed during the design phase and after product deployment.
Here are 7Â top UX tools, any one of which can make your work life a lot easier.
Mason’s simple visual interface enables you to design real digital and software features without having to resort to building mockups or prototypes, and the overhead expenses they sometimes entail when handed over to engineering for comments and feedback.
Mason allows you implement your design exactly as you built it, all without a single line of code. The QA process involved in ensuring that the final product matches the design is eliminated, and you can make edits and changes immediately via the Mason platform, and watch them go live in real-time.
This is a radically different way to build, modify, deploy, and maintain desktop and mobile features. Radically doesn’t mean complex or difficult either. Mason’s creators have followed the best design practices and solutions. Mason’s feature-building process is straightforward, and you’ll realize significant savings in time and overhead expenses, and the team collaboration process will be smoother and more efficient and effective.
Another of Mason’s benefits is that it doesn’t lock you into specific platforms or hosting environments. You can simply work with a tech stack that makes the most sense to you.
Most of you would agree that designers find it difficult to tell a story with their designs, and to communicate their design thinking process to convey the message they want. Not anymore. Overflow is the first-ever user flow diagramming tool created specifically for designers.
It gives designers and product managers the flexibility to present their ideas in an impactful way, by navigating between their screen designs comfortably and focusing on the details when needed. Overflow is a cross-platform tool that integrates seamlessly with the most popular design tools, allowing designers to design, present, share & print their user flows, all in one place.
So in other words, Overflow makes designers look good and keeps their audience captivated so that they can follow the story throughout the entire user journey.
Overflow is currently available in private beta. Check out the above link for early access. Read the rest of this entry »
Finding just the right WordPress website builder to fit you needs can take time. First, you must determine what it is you want. Then you must take the time to research what’s available. Your research may require the skills of a Sherlock Holmes since you often need to read between the lines or request a trial offer to determine what a website builder is genuinely capable of.
Even then, you may have to settle for a compromise. The product may be of superior quality but is lacking in one or more important features; or it may be loaded down with features (including many you may never use), but you’ll have to sit through six hours of tutorials before you can even get it operational.
You can avoid all the searching, researching, free trials, and trying to live without certain features by going with #1 – Elementor.
1. Why Choose Elementor?
Elementor makes website building painless and effortless, but it does so without placing any design constraints on its users. It does what you tell it to without ever begging for a line of code to help get the job done.
This #1 WordPress website builder gives you all the design flexibility you’ll ever need. Whether you come across a client who has no idea what to ask for, or a very demanding, fabulously- creative client, neither one will be a problem for you.
You have full control over customizing your layouts, full access to the necessary design elements and features, you do your design work on the frontend, and you can see the results of your efforts instantly and in real time.
Elementor 2.0 is even better! 2.0 will be released incrementally over the remainder of 2018 with some great surprises in store. Elementor’s 600,000+ customer base is expected to increase dramatically. Read the rest of this entry »
Keeping a small business running is hard work. You have projects to negotiate, emails to answer, and deadlines to meet. You have to find the time to explore new trends and methods. Sometimes, you have to take whatever time it takes to learn how to use new tools of your trade effectively.
When you add accounting to the mix, you may begin to feel as if your sanity is hanging in the balance.
Sending invoices and chasing down and collecting payments might not be easy. Also, tracking income and expenses and preparing tax returns all take time. This is where FreshBooks comes in.
1. What is FreshBooks and What Does It Do?
FreshBooks is a software accounting solution that makes billing a quick, painless process. You will have the time you save by being able to avoid having to handle billing manually. It can better be devoted to the work you enjoy doing.
FreshBooks is a creation of Mike McDerment. Mike is a web designer. He realized the billing process was time-consuming. Once he realized how much, be decided to do something about it. Mike also wanted to avoid mistakes, large or small, that could get him into trouble.
He set about building a simple software application that can solve this problem. His app that relieves freelancers and small business owners of these tedious tasks. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, over 10 million people are using FreshBooks. They are managing their invoicing, payments, and time tracking tasks. Read the rest of this entry »
The longer you can keep a visitor tuned into your website the better. But the time needed to fully engage a visitor is quite short.
If your website UX isn’t up to snuff, you’ll be fortunate if a visitor sticks around more than 5 seconds. That isn’t much time to sell a product or service, or even get your message across.
You might have the skills and tools to create a UX you can be proud of. Yet, your efforts can come to naught if you make any of the 5 mistakes described in this article.
Avoid them at all costs.
For Continued Success in 2018, Avoid These 5 UX Mistakes Like the Plague
UX Mistake #1 – Practicing Diversity in Your Online Presence Rather than Consistency
Do not show your visitors all the different styles you can use when you design web pages. Web users prefer consistency. They like to know that page 4 belongs to the same website as does page 1.
Stick to the same color scheme throughout your web, mobile, social media presence. The same applies to fonts. Keep the number and sizes of fonts to 2 or less and 4 or less, respectively; as shown in this BeDecor example.
You should also avoid using unnecessary or superfluous font weights. They contribute little if anything and can slow page loading down. As illustrated in BeYoga2, readability is best when the line height is the same. The good use of white space is also important.
UX Mistake #2 – Giving Speed a Higher Priority than UX
Your typical user generally has a quite short attention span. That’s one reason to avoid slow loading pages. But, it’s more important for a site to feature a UX that attracts and engages visitors and keeps them engaged. BeCompany is an excellent example of such a website.
Speed won’t help much either if a website is cluttered. This tends to distract a visitor or make the experience downright unpleasant. You might be uncertain as for how best to balance speed with UX. In this case, start your project with a pre-built website like BeBirthday. It’s already optimized for speed and UX, so you won’t have to worry about the issue. Read the rest of this entry »
Whenever one needs to spend excessive time juggling tasks, deadlines, etc., it’s time wasted. This is irrespective of the professional activity. The same goes for any team leader or a freelance designer.
There are better ways to go about managing these tasks. These ways that are faster, more efficient, and far less prone to error.
Project management and team collaboration areas have seen technology come to the rescue. The help comes in time and task tracking, reminders, or to-do list management. This is beside numerous other tools.
You can always hire someone to help you stay organized, meet deadlines, and track expenses. Thereby, you can free up more design time and free time for you.
But, that comes at a significant cost.
A better approach is to invest in a tool that automates everything for a very affordable price. Just like one or more of the following.
monday.com is a team management tool that initially targeted startups and tech companies and was designed to accommodate teams of any size from a pair of freelancers collaborating with one another to thousands collaborating around the globe.
Because of its reputation for ease of use, transparency, and communication and collaborative features, it was quickly discovered by non-tech companies. Today this team management tool, which was until recently marketed under the dapulse brand, serves more than 22,000 teams across 200 different verticals, of which 70% lie outside the tech sector.
monday.com makes it easy to build and manage workflows that are customized to fit your exact needs; so, you’ll never have to adjust your workflows to satisfy the tool. It’s “cheetah fast†so you never have to wait no matter how complex the project or how many projects you are tracking, and if you and your team like colorful visuals that make it ever so easy to understand what’s happening, what has happened, and what’s in store, monday.com is spot on. Read the rest of this entry »
If this headline caught your eye, it likely means you’re in the hunt for the best available website builder. Finding “the Best†is not an easy task. There are plenty of good website design tools available, many of which lay claim to being “the bestâ€. So, which one do you choose?
We’ve made it easy by presenting what we believe are the most advanced site-building tools on the market. These site-building tools offer perfect solutions for designers and small-business clients. If you are on the low budget, these tools are also for you.
The next step is up to you. All you need to do is select the tool that best suits your needs. Do that, and you will have found “the best†of the best.
Download the Mobirise Website Builder and use if to create your personal website or one for a client without having to deal with any restrictions. Mobirise is free to use for both personal and commercial projects.
The Mobirise Website Builder offers numerous themes and Bootstrap 4 templates featuring everything from sliders, galleries (with lightbox), and full-screen intros, to counters, countdowns, progress bars and data tables.
What you’ll really like about this website builder are the flexible, pre-made website blocks that you can combine in many ways to build your tables. Just drop these blocks and other design elements onto your page, add your content, and make any necessary adjustments to style the page as you like. Visit the website and download Mobirise for Windows or MacOS.
No technical skills are required on your part, nor do you have to worry about coding. You don’t have to worry about how your pages will appear on mobile devices. Mobirise-designed websites adapt automatically and are 100% mobile friendly. Read the rest of this entry »
Creating a website that gives its visitors exactly what they are looking for is not that easy. It often involves a certain amount of trial and error, the use of analytics, and other approaches.
Sometimes, the difficulties you experience in your work to please visitors are not what you think. It happens that they are not based on the website’s content and functionality. These difficulties might be based on content and/or functionality that isn’t there.
That’s where these 10 Top WordPress Plugins come in. As far as adding important information or functionality is concerned, they deliver. They make the “difficult or nearly impossible†easy. They enable you to provide an outstanding UX, as opposed to a UX that is just “OKâ€. Moreover, they can save you hours of head-scratching, coding, and trial and error as well.
Picking one or more will be money well spent (some are free, others offer free trial periods). This is a win-win situation for you and your website visitors.
There are more than a few things to like about wpDataTables, but they can be summed up in a few words. This WordPress plugin makes it possible to create charts and tables from large amounts of complex data in a short period of time. The charts and tables are easy to understand, easy to update and maintain, responsive, and colorful when color can serve a useful and practical purpose.
wpDataTables has become so widely used, and so popular, that web designers have been known to make the switch to WordPress just so they can use this plugin in their design work.
You can of course, create simple charts and tables based on small amounts of data as well since wpDataTables is meant for anyone who is looking for a better way to create this content. You will find this plugin particularly useful when you have a need to build a chart or table based on volumes of statistical, financial, or scientific data, or data related to large parts inventories or product catalogs. Read the rest of this entry »
