WordPress: The Biggest Web Agency Summit

Atarim is set to launch its biggest annual event in the WordPress space for web agencies and freelancers. Its third annual Web Agency Summit kicks off from April 26th to April 29th, 2022, aimed at helping businesses grow substantially in 2022.

Freelancing is consistently growing worldwide – as individuals realize the flexibility and benefits that lay beyond a successful freelance career. Currently, at 58 million and counting – Upwork Press Release suggests freelancing to become the majority workforce in the U.S. by 2027. This number signifies the growing awareness and adoption of freelancing as a preferable career choice amongst individuals.  

However, running a freelance business and web agency isn’t as easy and requires heavy legwork despite its benefits and profitable returns. 

So, whether you’re a thriving freelancer or struggling to keep up with your agency – the Atarim Web Agency Summit is the perfect opportunity to invest your time in and learn about the uncertainties of running your own business, how best to deal with them, manage stress, and grow your agency to the next level. And this year, Business Bloomer is proud to be one of their media partners to support the Atarim summit in the WordPress space. 

So, if you’re curious about scaling your freelance business or digital web agency, or even about how to start one – here’s all you need to know about the biggest Web Agency Summit and what to expect from it this year.

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WordPress: Growing Your Plugin (Part 1: Website + SEO)

If you build it, they may come – but not in as great a number as they would otherwise. 

I have seen WordPress developers reach as many as 10,000 active installations without spending a single minute on dime marketing. However, on every occasion that I hear such a story, I pause to wonder: how big would this theme or plugin be if the developer behind it thought about distribution?

Maybe their product spawns a company and they become the next YITH or Yoast, toasting after a major acquisition not thought possible in their wildest dreams

The first hurdle to overcome as a developer is the fallacy that your product is tainted by even the slightest speck of marketing, as if it was a glass of unadulterated, pure spring water sourced from the streams of Mount Olympus.

The WordPress ecosystem is not the plains of Dion – it’s more like the dregs of Romulus. More and more, it is guaranteed that you will face competition from the optimates, the big guys who come in the form of hosting providers, prolific WordPress development companies, super plugins, site builders, etc. 

The best themes and plugins don’t always win in the face of superior brands and warchests. In fact, the more disillusioned among us would say that they rarely do these days.

The good news is that the best themes and plugins can win, even if their developers are unknown and resource-constrained. But it all begins by bringing the horse to water. After that, if the product is good enough, the horse will drink. If it does not drink, there is more development to do. 

Continue reading WordPress: Growing Your Plugin (Part 1: Website + SEO)

WordPressopoly: WordPress Acquisitions Are Not a Game Anymore

wordpressopoly

Is there a Monopoly version of WordPress yet?” – Cory Miller.

There is now, Cory, at least in png form. 

The WordPress ecosystem, and the unwalled WooCommerce garden contained within it, is experiencing a wave of consolidation, so much so that a webpage dedicated to tracking acquisitions now exists. 

Yesterday, LiquidWeb/StellarWP acqui-hired LearnDash LMS.

A few days ago, WooCommerce acqui-hired SomewhereWarm, the team behind some of the most popular WooCommerce marketplace plugins.

On September 8, 2021, Jetpack acquired Social Image Generator, which is a WordPress plugin that does what it says on the tin.

On August 30, 2021, Automattic acqui-hired Frontity, to further develop Gutenberg and full site editing.

The list of acquisitions is never-ending. And this wave won’t stop.

So, what’s really happening, and why?

Continue reading WordPressopoly: WordPress Acquisitions Are Not a Game Anymore

WooCommerce: Top 10+ Bookstore Themes

For book enthusiasts, a bookstore is a fantastic business concept. Thanks to technological advancements, you can establish your bookstore online. This implies that your shop will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As a result, you will be able to contact individuals who live outside of your local area. Today we are going to speak about 10+ bookstore WooCommerce themes that might assist you in this challenge.

There are multiple steps to go through before launching a bookstore on the Internet. These include learning more about your target audience, listing your books, choosing fulfillment services, and others. Another aspect that requires special attention is identifying the best eCommerce platform for your goals. Why do we think that WooCommerce can become your incredible helper? Let us find out all the reasons to take advantage of this platform.

Continue reading WooCommerce: Top 10+ Bookstore Themes

WordPress: Which Frontend Framework?

WordPress is the leading content management system CMS platform extensively used in different types of websites worldwide. Effective development and customization of themes and APIs through numerous front-end frameworks like jQuery, Node.JS, ReactJS, Bootstrap, and AngularJS frameworks with the help of different front-end and AngularJS developers make them the best frameworks for WordPress CMS.

The global market size of CMS is projected to reach $123.5 billion by 2026 from just $35.9 billion in 2019 with a whopping growth of over 16.7% CAGR with a leading share of WordPress CMS, according to the Zion Market Research forecast.

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Elementor: How to Make an Online Course Website

Almost any blogger who wants to scale his personal brand (and revenue) is simply obliged to look at online courses. 

The Elementor Page Builder plugin is attractive because it does not require knowledge of the code or additional programming languages.

This article is a brief tutorial on how to create an online courses website using Elementor. We will list the 5 steps required to create a WordPress website for selling online courses.

Thanks to the WooCommerce plugin, you can then easily set up an online store, and use different templates to make this store attractive in terms of design.

So, if you are going to make your online courses website with Elementor, where do you start?

Continue reading Elementor: How to Make an Online Course Website

WordPress: Fix “No Update Required” @ WP Admin

It happened to me today while updating to WordPress 5.3, so I thought of sharing the fix with all the people who are going to have this problem now and in the future.

Honestly, I should have thought about this better – but it’s an early Saturday morning and maybe my brain is still asleep.

I kept getting always the same error, even after 10 refreshes and attempts, even while trying to use /wp-login.php or /my-account to login as opposed to /wp-admin. And when you get the same behavior no matter how many times you refresh or try again… well, it should be easy to understand why!

Continue reading WordPress: Fix “No Update Required” @ WP Admin

WordPress: Create Forms Quickly with Forminator

Adding forms to your WordPress site will make it easy for site visitors to contact you or for you to create polls and quizzes.

It’ll also make your site more secure: instead of publishing your email address and getting loads of spam, you can use a form to control how you receive messages. Even better, you can specify who in your business form submissions will go to, so the right person gets the information they need.

Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t come with forms functionality out of the box. To add forms to your site, you need to install a plugin.

It’s tempting to use a free forms plugin, but there’s a reason they’re free – most of them are frustrating to use, with an interface that leaves a lot to be desired.

So if you want forms that are easy to add, simple to customize and look great on your site, the best option is to pay for a premium forms plugin.

The Forminator Pro plugin is designed for professional WordPress site owners who want form building to be quick and easy. It includes advanced customization and styling options and lets you add not just contact forms, but polls and quizzes too.

It uses a drag and drop interface that means you don’t have to write any code or wade through complicated options to add forms to your site.

So let’s take a look at how it works.

Continue reading WordPress: Create Forms Quickly with Forminator

WordPress: 5 High-Impact Ways to Speed Up Your Website

My name is Emanuel and I am co-founder of Templ.io which is a high performance, managed WordPress host built on Google Cloud. I have 10+ years experience working with WordPress and often help our clients optimize the speed of their sites.

In this article, I have gathered 5 high-impact and sometimes overlooked ways that you can use to speed up your WordPress website.

As you probably already know, having a fast website not only helps to improve the user experience of your visiting your website, but having a fast site also helps convert more of your visitors into customers as well as improve your search engine rankings.

But before we get into the actual tips, I want to share some general guidelines. Understanding the fundamentals To better be able to optimize the speed of a website, it is important that you have a basic understanding of the technical fundamentals of how a website is served to a visitor.

There are basically 4 factors that determines the speed of your website, namely:

  • The size of the page
  • The number of requests
  • Whether it is cached or not
  • If not, how long does it take for the server to generate the page using PHP+MySQL

So, to improve the speed of your website, there are essentially 4 things you can do: reduce page size, reduce the number of requests, enable caching and keep your code simple (read: use as few plugins as possible). Now that we have got that out of the way, let’s get into our 5 tips on how you can make your WordPress site faster.

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WooCommerce: 8 Best Email Marketing Services

Emails are a vital part of a successful eCommerce store. Successful store owners nurture their potential customers using email automation and send them the right information in right time to nudge them towards purchase.

They setup automation to create a relationship with their customers by sending emails (Welcome emails, Discount emails/Upsell Offers, Abandoned cart emails, Order confirmation emails,Post-Purchase Follow Up) based on buyers journey they are in.

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WordPress: 10 Travel Themes to Turn Your Hobby Into a Business

Do you like to travel and share your photos and articles? Writing a travel blog is so in trend nowadays.

The tourism business is growing fast. Many people look for how and where to go to relax. Many want to visit new places. Others want to learn more about exciting and interesting places to visit.

In this article, I included the most impressive travel themes for WordPress that are distinguished by their appearance and functionality. Of course, you will not need any supernatural code knowledge.

Themes from this selection will suit for:

  • travel blogs
  • travel magazines
  • travel agencies
  • hotel reservation

Feel free to take a look at their demos, read their descriptions and the features of those that are worth your attention.

Continue reading WordPress: 10 Travel Themes to Turn Your Hobby Into a Business

WooCommerce: Top 9 Crafts & Handmade Themes

Do you want to sell your handmade items online? Don’t worry, it won’t be that hard with the best handmade and crafts WooCommerce themes. These themes are perfect for beginners thanks to visual builders, extensions and sliders.

WooCommerce is a comprehensive WordPress solution to run an ecommerce website. If you opt for WooCommerce, you’ll experience its simplicity when creating the layouts, managing styles and adding content to your store. What’s more, you’ll get a chance to pick a number of exceptional WordPress plugins that are WooCommerce-compatible.

With WooCommerce you get:

  • Multiple product types: sell not only tangible goods but also digital products, content and even appointments
  • Rich blogging experience: build a strong brand and rank higher on SERPs, thanks to WordPress CMS
  • Compatibility with other popular WordPress plugins
  • Trouble-free integration: easily embed products, checkout and other store functionality in any page of your website
  • Tags, categories and attributes to let users find exactly what they need
  • Prolific product sorting and filtering options
  • Customer ratings and reviews

These themes I’ve chosen have the most attractive designs and modern functionality, and tey let you customize your store in visual mode. Moreover, they feature premium extensions for product filtering, Ajax cart functionality, zoom, product quick view, wish-list, comparisons, etc.

And if you create WooCommerce websites on a regular basis you can get access to 132 unique WooCommerce themes at ONE subscription. But for now, these are my top 10 handmade WooCommerce themes.

Continue reading WooCommerce: Top 9 Crafts & Handmade Themes

WordPress: Top 5 Plugins for Email Automation

You need email marketing to build your connection and generate more and more leads. But email marketing isn’t as easy as people make it out to be. It takes a considerable amount of time, energy, and resources.

In fact, statistic shows that over 68% of companies spend a week (or more) on the production of just one email.

This is a whole lot of time. Do you have this much time on your hands?

And the problems do not end here.

More often than not, people put in so much effort, but don’t see deserved profits, resulting in a measly conversion rate.

This is where automation comes in.

In this article, we will discuss some of the best WordPress plugins for email automation so that you can optimize your email marketing process.

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WooCommerce: 27 SEO Tips (For Non-Techies)

I had the pleasure to speak at WordCamp Milano 2018, and I had a blast! I believe the topic was pretty interesting, so you all deserve a long post recap with actionable tips and screenshots to understand basic WooCommerce SEO (video of the presentation will be available soon).

The following WooCommerce Search Engine Optimization tips are mostly non technical, and are aimed at WordPress and WooCommerce users who never heard of “schema”, “long tail”, “301” and “hreflang” (although if you did, please have a read anyway, make sure to post a comment and contribute to this post with your expertise).

The thing is – SEO is never going to die. Besides, Google & co. constantly improve their website ranking algorithms. This means what you learned 5 years ago in regard to SEO might not work today, and what you learn today might not work in 2 years time… you get the point.

In this blog post, we will analyze and study 27 evergreen SEO factors for WooCommerce websites. These should be applied (or not applied, as there are many “not to do” tips as well) to your ecommerce website at all costs if you believe you deserve better ranking (who doesn’t?). And as they’re evergreen, they’re likely not to go away for a few years at least 🙂

So, let’s get started!

Continue reading WooCommerce: 27 SEO Tips (For Non-Techies)

WordPress: 15 Themes for Bloggers-To-Be

Are you thinking of starting a WordPress blog?

Great – let’s take a look at what we’ve got here: awesome templates for personal portfolios, food and beverages blogs, cooking blogs, fashion blogs, lifestyle blogs, magazines, speakers, book clubs, travel and photography blogs, and so on… there is really a wide choice of topics out there!

But with the content being the number 1 objective for your blog, don’t forget you also need good functionalities and design features. By opting for a professional WordPress theme from the very beginning, for a little investment, you can get everything you need out of the box:

  • Responsive design + cross browser compatibility – very important for mobile browsing
  • Shortcodes to display content blocks in any page / post, which significantly speed up customization
  • Advanced customization settings – you can change typography, logo, navigation, slider, page templates, footer so that every detail is in line with your brand
  • Predefined page templates for various standard pages like customers’ testimonials, about page, contact page. Every page of your blog can look different
  • Compatibility with WordPress Customizer, so that you can view the amendments in real time

There are many, maybe unlimited, professional WordPress themes for personal blogs – so here’s a quick roundup of 10 that might catch your attention. Have fun! Continue reading WordPress: 15 Themes for Bloggers-To-Be

WooCommerce: 10 Best Fashion & Clothing Themes

Maybe this is the right time to update your clothing WooCommerce store and give a more professional look to your fashion business…

Maybe you also want to build custom pages without getting into coding, as default WooCommerce is too “boring”…

Still think your online project requires a fresh hand?

Well, if that’s the case, feel free to keep reading and view my favorite 15 WooCommerce clothing themes. Continue reading WooCommerce: 10 Best Fashion & Clothing Themes

WordPress: MailOptin Forms Plugin Review

For sustainable growth in an online business, one has to pay critical attention to list building. The email list is an essential aspect of every successful business, it is one way of marketing that never goes old. As far as emails continue to exist, people will continue to make use of it for business and communication.

With Email marketing, you can continually reach out to your loyal customers regarding products and services information with minimal effort compared to reaching out to random people every time you need to push out information about your business. The email list ensures that re-targeting an audience doesn’t stress you out.

While re-targeting your customers via a mailing list is key to profitability online, the problem lies in building an email list. As this has become a great challenge for list builders, a lot of developers have tried to create marketing solutions overcome the challenge. Not many have succeeded in the quest, however.

Well, that is not to burst your bubble, there are a couple of email marketing software that has really made list building easy, achievable and cost-effective. If you are really serious about building a profitable email list, you won’t find it on a free-to-use solution. The best features that you can use to improve conversion with action-based messages and understand the behaviour of your visitors are found in premium list building plugins.

In this article, I want to talk extensively about one of such plugins called MailOptin. This WordPress plugins is designed to help you start your list building journey in next to no time. Within a few minutes, you should have your optin form for collecting email addresses from your visitors. One of the things MailOptin lets you do is to decide how you want to grow your list, you can use an aggressive approach; displaying your optin forms on page load or the less intrusive approach; displaying your optin forms only when a visitor is about to leave your site. This whole phenomenon is called Exit Intent, and we are going to delve into it later down this review, but before then, let’s walk through what MailOptin has to offer.

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WooCommerce: 15 Best Food & Restaurant Themes

The most efficient way to turn your restaurant / food business into a money-making machine is to cater to your customer’s needs better than you do now. Supposing you have a modern interior design, tasty food, friendly atmosphere, professional personnel, etc… what else can you do for your business?

You need a bombastic online presence. You need to – maybe – rebuild your restaurant website. Thankfully, if you don’t know much about web design, it’s not a big deal. No need to do anything from scratch nowadays (we entrepreneurs value our time and effort, right?).

If you want to enable online food ordering, sell restaurant gift cards, turn your takeaway into an optimized online booking system, or give online users the freedom to build their custom pizza, it’s time to switch to a WooCommerce theme.

By picking one of the 15 themes described in this article (oh, by the way – here’s the full list of 50+ restaurant WooCommerce themes you can pick), you can immediately take advantage of the most popular ecommerce plugin (WooCommerce) and its free or premium extensions to increase your food business sales and profitability. Continue reading WooCommerce: 15 Best Food & Restaurant Themes