9 Best WordPress Migration Plugins (Compared)

Are you looking for the best WordPress migration plugin to move your website?

While it is super-easy to start a new WordPress site, moving an existing website to a new hosting company is not as simple.

You need to move the database, files, plugins, and theme. At the same, you also want to reduce downtime, so your users don’t see a broken website.

Most importantly, you want to preserve your website’s SEO rankings.

To make sure that all these things go smoothly, you’ll need a WordPress migration plugin to easily manage the transfer.

In this article, we will compare the best WordPress migration plugins that allow you to migrate your websites without hiccups.

1. Duplicator Pro

Duplicator Pro is the best WordPress migration plugin on the market. It works like a charm for many different types of migration scenarios without any technical knowledge.

It has a simple step by step wizard that guides you through the migration. First, you create a migration package of your website and download it to your computer along with an installer script.

Next, you upload the installer script and the package to the new location (new server or host) and run the migration wizard. Duplicator unpacks the content of your package and installs them.

In the end, it also allows you to update URLs to make sure that every done runs smoothly after the unpacking.

Pros:

• Migrate WordPress site to a new host, domain name, local server, or live site.
• Easy step by step migration wizard to move your website.
• Can be used to schedule backups and save them on remote storage such as Google Diver, Dropbox, etc.
• Connects with cPanel hosting dashboard to automatically create database and users.
• Supports WordPress multisite migration.

Cons:

• Beginners may need help connecting to the FTP server.
• The upload process can be a bit tedious if you have unreliable internet or a very large website.

Pricing: Paid plans start from $59 / year for 3 websites. It also has a limited free version that would work for most small websites.

2. UpdraftPlus Premium

UpdraftPlus is one of the best WordPress backup plugins. Its premium version comes with a migration tool that allows you to easily migrate your website.

Pros:

• Easy to use process. If you already use it as your backup plugin then you can create a complete backup and import it on any location
• Schedule and store your WordPress backups to remote locations.
• Works with WordPress multisite networks
• Incremental backups allow you to save server resources

Cons:

• To run the migration, you’d need to install WordPress on the destination.

Pricing: You can purchase the Migrator Addon for $30 and use it with the free version of UpdraftPlus. Alternatively, you can buy UpdraftPlus Premium for $70.

3. JetPack

JetPack is a massive WordPress plugin suite that also comes with a powerful backup feature. This feature was previously called VaultPress and was sold as a separate product.

Now it is included as JetPack Backups. It allows you to easily restore your WordPress backups and migrate your website to new servers.

Pros:

• The easiest way to make WordPress backups and easily restore them on a new location
• Incremental backups save server resources
• Easy 1-click site restoration feature makes migrations a breeze
• All your data is stored on the cloud and you don’t need to manually reupload backups during migration
• Includes site security features which makes your backups secure

Cons:

• You will need a JetPack subscription which comes with many other features that you may not even need or use.
• Set up process is a bit complicated for beginners. You will need two separate plugins, JetPack subscription, and a WordPress.com account.

Pricing: Starting from $39 / year.

4. All-in-One WP Migration

All-in-One WP Migration is a popular WordPress migration plugin with a comprehensive set of features. Unlike some other plugins on the list, it is not a backup plugin and specializes in website migrations.

Pros:

• Tested and supports a large number of WordPress hosting providers, operating systems, PHP versions, and more.
• Supports older versions upto WordPress 3.3
• It bypasses your host’s file size limits by importing chunks of data.

Cons:

• The free version limits import size to 512 MB
• You’ll need to manually install WordPress on new location
• For multisite exports you’ll need a separate paid extension

Pricing: The basic plugin is free, but you’ll need the Unlimited extension to remove import size restriction. The Unlimited extension is available at $69 for a lifetime license.

5. Migrate Guru

Migrate Guru is a WordPress migration plugin by the folks behind Blog Vault, a popular WordPress backup solution. It specializes in migrating websites to a new host or server.

Pros:

• Supports almost all popular WordPress hosting providers
• Easy migration wizard where you just need to enter your desitination host’s FTP or cPannel credentials and the plugin takes care of everything else
• Migrates your WordPress database updated URLs and handles serialized data
• Can be used to migrate large websites without affecting server performance

Cons:

• Does not support localhost to live website or live to localhost transfers
• Does not fully support multisite migrations

Pricing: Free

6. BackupBuddy

BackupBuddy is one of the most popular WordPress migration and backup plugin. It has been around since 2010 and has a loyal customer base.

Pros:

• Comes with automated scheduled backups, restore, and migration features in one convenient package
• Set up your backup schedules, choose what to backup, and store them to remote locations such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, and more.
• Easily transfer your website using a complete WordPress backup
• Can be used to deploy a WordPress staging site to live server with 1-click

Cons:

• Does not support WordPress multisite
• Restore and migration features are not as easy to use for beginners as some other plugins on this list

Pricing: Starting from $80 for a single site license.

7. Migrate DB Pro

Migrate DB Pro is a powerful WordPress migration plugin made specifically for moving WordPress database from one install to another. However, it can also easily transfer media files, themes, and plugins with separate addons.

Pros:

• Perfect when you quickly want to copy WordPress database from one site to another
• Powerful features make it an excellent option for developers
• Backup your existing database before replacing it with a new one
• Find and replace any text in your database
• Great for large websites and complex hosting server environments

Cons:

• For complete migrations, you’ll need two addons which are only available under expensive developer license.
• May not be as easy to use for beginners as some other plugins on the list

Price: Starting from $99 for a single site. You’ll need developer license to access media and files addons which will cost you $199.

Bonus Plugins

These WordPress migration plugins work in specific situations and are the best options for beginners.

8. SiteGround Migrator

If you are moving your WordPress site to SiteGround, then this plugin is for you. It is made by SiteGround to help users move their websites to SiteGround hosting servers.

SiteGround is one of the best WordPress hosting companies. They are also an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Note: If you don’t want to use the plugin, then you can simply ask SiteGround support. They offer 1 free website migration with their GrowBig and GoGeek plans.

Pros:

• It works well because it is made for a specific scenario transferring from any hosting company to SiteGround.
• Super-easy to use you just need to enter a token from your hosting control panel and the plugin takes care of the rest.
• If you are not changing the domain name, then it automatically creates a temporary domain for the transferred site. Later you can change the DNS to point your domain name.

Cons:

• Can not be used to transfer from localhost to live site
• Does not support WordPress multisite

Pricing: Free

9. Free WordPress Blog Setup

The plugins mentioned above do not work on WordPress.com websites. See the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

For most beginners, moving from WordPress.com to WordPress.org is not as simple as you’d like it to be. This is where our free blog setup comes in.

Basically, you’ll need to purchase a hosting plan from one of our recommended WordPress hosting providers and we will transfer or set up your WordPress blog.

For more details, see our free blog set up page.

Note: At WPBeginner we believe in transparency. When you sign up for one of our recommended hosting providers, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

We would get this commission for recommending just about any hosting company, but we only recommend products that we use personally use and believe will add value to our readers.

Pros

• Allows you to transfer WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress.org website.
• WPBeginner’s expert team migrates your content and media
• You also get must-have WordPress plugins installed on your site to give you a solid start.

Cons:

• Only migrates WordPress.com blogs
• Due to WordPress.com limitations, it can only migrate your content, comments, images and media.

Pricing: Free

Conclusion: Which is The Best WordPress Migration Plugin?

We believe that Duplicator Pro is the best WordPress migration plugin on the market. Even the free version works like a charm for small WordPress blogs and websites.

We also recommend Duplicator in our WordPress migration guides. See our step by step guides for complete instructions.

• How to move WordPress to new host and server
• How to move WordPress to new domain name
• How to transfer WordPress from localhost to live server
• Transfer WordPress from live server to localhost

WP Migrate DB Pro is a great alternative for migrating large websites specially when you have complex hosting setup with various environment. We use this plugin on our websites, but the reason why it’s not our top choice is because it is not as beginner friendly.

This guide only covers migration plugin that helps you migrate a WordPress site to another server or domain. If you’re looking to switch to WordPress from another platform, then please follow our guides below:

• How to move from Weebly to WordPress
• How to move from Blogger to WordPress
• How to move from Medium to WordPress
• How to move from Wix to WordPress
• How to move from GoDaddy Site builder to WordPress

We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress migration plugin for your website. You may also want to see our guide on the best WordPress plugins and the best email marketing services for small businesses.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 9 Best WordPress Migration Plugins (Compared) appeared first on WPBeginner.

November 07, 2019 at 07:57PM

How to Setup WordPress Email Logs (and WooCommerce Email Logs)

Do you want to set up email logs on your WordPress or WooCommerce website?

Email logs allow you to monitor the emails sent by your WordPress site to the users. This helps you troubleshoot issues and check the status of email notifications sent by your WordPress website.

In this article, we will show you how to easily set up WordPress email logs and WooCommerce email logs.

After following this tutorial, you’ll be able to view the email logs directly from your WordPress admin area in an easy to understand format.

Why Set Up Email Logs in WordPress or WooCommerce?

Whether you are running a small business website using WordPress or a WooCommerce store, WordPress automatically sends certain email notifications to your users.

On a typical WordPress website, these emails include password reset emails, new user notification, password change notification, comments, and WordPress update notifications.

If you are also running an online store, then email becomes even more important. WooCommerce will send out customer receipts, order details, new order notifications, and user account emails on a regular basis.

As you can see, email notifications are crucial for your website to function properly and deliver the best user experience.

You need to make sure that those emails reach users’ inbox and don’t just disappear or end up in spam.

The best way to do this is by using a proper SMTP service provider to ensure email deliverability. For more details, see our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.

You would also want to see which emails are sent and to whom. This allows you to keep a record of email activity which comes in handy in several situations.

Following are just a few of those situations when email log comes in handy:

• Ensure that email notifications are delivered promptly
• Track your WordPress contact form plugin emails
• You can see if emails sent by a plugin are working
• Keep a track of user activity using the email logs
• Track user activity if you run a membership website or sell online courses
• Keep email log of your WooCommerce orders, reciepts, and customer notifications

That being said, let’s see how to easily setup email logs on your WordPress or WooCommerce website.

Setting up Email Logs in WordPress & WooCommerce

For this tutorial, we will be using the WP Mail SMTP plugin. It allows you to send WordPress emails using any SMTP service provider including Gmail, Outlook, SendGrid, Amazon SES, etc.

Step 1. Install and Setup WP Mail SMTP

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Mail SMTP plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit WP Mail SMTP » Settings page to configure the plugin settings.

First, you’ll need to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on WP Mail SMTP website.

Simply, copy and paste your license key and then click on the Verify button.

After that, you need to scroll down to select how you would like to send your WordPress emails under the Mailer section.

WP Mail SMTP works with any SMTP service. It comes with easy configuration options for the most popular SMTP service providers like Gmail, Outlook, Sendinblue, Mailgun, Sendgrid, Amazon SES, or Other SMTP services.

Clicking on the mailer will show you instructions to set it up.

The default option is set to PHP mailer. We don’t recommend using that because it is not reliable. Since most WordPress hosting servers are not properly configured for emails, this option will mean that your WordPress emails may never reach users’ inbox or even spam folder.

We recommend using a provider like SendinBlue or Mailgun that’s optimized for best email deliverability.

If you choose Other SMTP as your mailer option, then you’ll need to provide SMTP settings which you can get from your SMTP service providers website.

• SMTP Host: You smtp host address which usually looks like this smtp.yoursmtpserver.com
• Encryption: Usually it is either SSL or TLS
• SMTP Port: Usually it is 465
• Authentication: Turn on authentication
• Username: Username provided by your SMTP service usually it is your email address.
• Password: Password for your SMTP service

After you have entered your mailer credentials, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Settings’ button to store your settings.

Bonus: It’s important to use a professional business email address to ensure your emails look trustworthy.

Step 2. Enable Email Log Feature

Now that you have set up mailer settings in the WP Mail SMTP plugin. It is time to turn on the email logging feature.

From the plugin’s settings page, switch to the ‘Email Log’ tab and check the box next to ‘Enable log’ option.

The email log option will save general and troubleshooting information about each email message. Including the date and time, subject, email status, email addresses of the sender and recipient, BCC and CC, attachment, etc.

The plugin also allows you to enable complete WordPress email logs. We don’t recommend enabling complete email logs because it would save all contents of the email including private or sensitive information in your WordPress database as plain text.

Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save settings’ button to save your changes.

Step 3. Testing WP Mail SMTP Setup

Now that you have set up the WP Mail SMTP plugin, let’s test it to make sure that everything is working as expected.

WP Mail SMTP makes this step easy. Go to the plugins settings page WP Mail SMTP » Settings page and switch to the ‘Email Test’ tab.

From here, simply enter your email address and click on the ‘Send Email’ button.

The plugin will now send a test email to the address you provided. It will then show you the status of the email delivery on screen.

Step 4. Viewing Your Email Logs in WordPress

You can view your WordPress email logs at any time without leaving the WordPress admin area.

Simply go to WP Mail SMTP » Email Log page. You’ll see the log with a list of entries since you enabled the email log.

To view entry details, take your mouse over it and then click on the ‘View’ link below it. This will open the email log entry with a detailed view.

You can also use the search feature to look for entries by email address, subject & headers, or by content (if you enabled content logging).

You can also delete older entries from your email log. You can use the ‘Delete’ link below any entry to delete a single entry.

You can also select multiple entries and click on the Bulk Actions drop-down menu to select ‘Delete’ and then click on the Apply button.

We hope this article helped you learn how to set up WordPress email logs and WooCommerce email logs. You may also want to see our guide on how to monitor user activity in WordPress with security audit logs.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Setup WordPress Email Logs (and WooCommerce Email Logs) appeared first on WPBeginner.

November 06, 2019 at 06:05PM

WPBeginner Users Get a Free Domain and 62% off HostGator Web Hosting

Do you want to start a blog, make a new website, transfer your blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org, or simply want to switch hosting companies?

If your answer is yes, then let us make it super easy for you.

Our friends over at HostGator are offering an exclusive limited time deal for WPBeginner users.

Basically, you’ll get a 62% discount on your WordPress hosting along with with a free domain name and SSL certificate.

During this limited time offer, you’ll be able to get WordPress hosting for as low as $2.64 per month with a free domain name + free SSL certificate.

→ Claim This Limited Time HostGator Deal ←

Why Choose HostGator to Make Your Website?

HostGator is one of the oldest and most well-known web hosting companies around. They offer affordable hosting plans for businesses of all sizes.

Our founder and CEO, Syed Balkhi, has been a loyal HostGator customer since 2007. In fact, WPBeginner itself started on HostGator’s shared hosting plan.

As our site grew, we upgraded to their VPS hosting plan, then a dedicated server, and now it is hosted on HostGator’s enterprise-level custom made infrastructure.

We can confidently say, that HostGator has been with us every step of the way through out our WordPress journey. They have a helpful support team, rock-solid infrastructure, one-click WordPress install, and a ton of other features.

NOTE: At WPBeginner we believe in transparency. If you sign up with HostGator using our referral link, then we will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you (in fact, you will save money and get a free domain). We would get this commission for recommending just about any WordPress hosting company, but we only recommend products that we personally use and/or believe will add value to our readers.

Who is this offer great for?

Well everyone, but in particular: those users who are thinking about starting a new blog or launching a new website.

This offer is also great for users who want to move their blogs from WordPress.com to self-hosted WordPress.org website. For a detailed comparison of the two platforms, see our guide on the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org.

The following are some of the advantages of moving your site from WordPress.com to WordPress.org:

• You’ll get your own free domain name. For example, wpbeginner.com or mycoolwebsite.com (* Fee domain offer is available with the HostGator deal only)
• You’ll be able to install any WordPress plugin on your website
• You can choose any theme design you want and get even more customization options
• You can create an online store, membership community, or make money online with your blog
• Most importantly, you own and control all your content and do whatever you want with your website.

Basically, you get the full freedom to make any kind of website you want and bring your ideas to life.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to properly move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org.

Still Not Sure How to Proceed? Let Us Help You with That

Many beginners feel a bit reluctant to move their blog or start a new one. This is understandable, especially if you are just starting out with little to no technical knowledge at all.

For those users, we have a special bonus offer:

Our expert team can help you get started. HostGator promised us that if you signup using our referral link, then they will compensate us to do the blog setup for you.

We will even migrate your WordPress.com blog over to self-hosted WordPress. Here’s how to claim this offer:

Step 1: Sign up using our referral link.

Step 2 Fill out the form on this page to get in touch with our experts.

Our team will set up your WordPress blog for you, and you’ll be able to just login to WordPress and start working on growing your business.

Who Shouldn’t Use this Offer?

At WPBeginner, our goal is to help users make the best decisions for their business regardless of whether we get paid or not.

This HostGator offer is great for a lot of use cases, but it does have some catches.

Shared hosting companies are able to offer low-cost hosting plans because they allow several websites to share the same server resources.

Basically, a shared hosting plan is like riding a bus vs driving your own car.

While advertising these plans, each company claims to offer unlimited everything. However, there is no such thing as unlimited, and there are restrictions on your shared hosting plan.

As your website grows ,and you start getting more visitors, then you’ll start hitting those limits.

In simpler terms, if your blog is getting millions of pageviews each month or even 100,000 visitors per month, then this $2.64 is not enough to handle that kind of traffic.

In that case, you’ll need to upgrade your hosting plan to VPS hosting or even managed WordPress hosting.

On the other hand, if you are just starting a new blog or launching a small business website, then you’ll save hundreds of dollars each month by taking advantage of this exclusive offer.

→ Claim This Limited Time HostGator Deal ←

We hope you found this exclusive offer helpful.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post WPBeginner Users Get a Free Domain and 62% off HostGator Web Hosting appeared first on WPBeginner.

November 06, 2019 at 02:00AM

How to Add No Right Click on WordPress Images

Do you want to stop users from stealing images on your WordPress site?

While there is no complete solution to prevent image theft on your website, there are some measures that you can take to make it a bit harder for users to save images from your website.

One such solution is to add no right-click popup to your images. You can do that in WordPress by using plugins that disable right click and make it difficult to download images from your website.

In this article, we’ll show you how to add no right-click on WordPress images and galleries. We’ll also talk about alternative approaches to discourage users from stealing images off your website.

Adding No Right Click on WordPress Images

First, you need to install and activate the No Right Click Images Plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to Settings » No Right Click Images page to configure plugin settings.

The default options would work for most users, but you can still review and change them as needed.

The first option allows logged in WordPress users to right-click on images. ‘Disable Dragging of images’ option prevents users from dragging an image from their browser to their computer.

‘Disable Touch events’ options prevents users from using touch devices like mobile phones to download images. It is the no right-click solution for smart phones and tablets.

You can also disable gestures and context menu on Apple devices.

After reviewing the settings, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save changes’ button to store your changes.

You can now log out of WordPress and then visit your website to see the plugin in action.

Adding No Right Click on Image Galleries

The above solution works for all images on your website. However, a lot of users who want to protect their images are photographers and people sharing their work through galleries.

This is where Envira Gallery comes in. It is one of the best WordPress gallery plugin on the market and comes with a protection addon that disables right-click for your image galleries.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Envira Gallery plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Envira Gallery » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on the Envira Gallery website.

Next, you need to visit Envira Gallery » Addons page. Scroll down to the Protection addon and then click on the Install and Activate button.

Now you can start creating image galleries using the Envira Gallery plugin.

Let’s create your first image gallery and enable no-right-click protection for images in that photo gallery.

First, you need to visit Envira Gallery » Add New page to create a new gallery. Provide a title for your image gallery and then upload the files you want to add to the gallery.

After that, you need to scroll down to the gallery setting section below and click on the Misc tab. From here, go to the image protection settings section.

You need to check the ‘Enable Image Protection’ checkbox to disable right-click for this particular image gallery. Optionally, you can also show a popup notification when users try to use right-click.

You can now click on the publish button to save your image gallery.

Adding Your Gallery to a WordPress Post or Page

Your image gallery is ready, and you can now add it to any WordPress post or page. Simply edit the post or page where you want to add the gallery and add the Envira Gallery block to the editor.

After that, you need to select the image gallery you created earlier from the dropdown menu. Envira Gallery will load your image gallery with a live preview.

You can now save your post and visit your website to see the no right-click feature in action. If you have enabled the popup feature then this is how it would look when a user tries to right-click on an image in the gallery.

Pros and Cons of Disabling Right Click on WordPress Images

The number one reason users want to add no right-click on WordPress images is to prevent website visitors from illegally using those images elsewhere.

Adding no right-click to your images makes it harder for users to download images. It also serves as a reminder to users that the website owner does not want them to download images or reuse them without permission.

However, it does not completely stop users from stealing images from your website.

A user can still download an entire web page which will also include all images on that page.

They can also use the browser’s view source or inspect tool without right-clicking. This will give access to the direct image file which they can download and save on their computer.

On the other hand, adding no right-click on images may also stop several users who may have some genuine reason to save images from your website. Some users may find it annoying and this would affect their user experience on your website.

Alternative Approaches to Discourage Image Theft on Your Website

If you don’t want to affect user experience by adding no-right-click to your WordPress images, then there are a few things you can do to discourage improper use of your work.

1. Add a Copyright Notice Below Your Images

You can add a copyright notice below your images in plain text. This serves as a deterrent without affecting user experience.

You can do this by using Gutenberg blocks. See more details in our Gutenberg tutorial.

2. Give Users a Chance to Ask for Permission

If you want users to be able to reuse your images with your permission and conditions, then you can simply let them know. We recommend using WPForms to create a simple contact form for users to send requests.

3. Add Watermark to Your Images

You can also add watermark to your images. This will affect the quality and aesthetics of your images, but it will definitely discourage users from stealing and reusing those images.

We hope this article helped you add no right-click on WordPress images. You may also want to see our guide on how to optimize your image SEO, and how to optimize images for web performance (without losing quality).

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Add No Right Click on WordPress Images appeared first on WPBeginner.

November 05, 2019 at 07:00PM

How to Properly Install and Setup WP Rocket in WordPress

Do you want to properly install and setup WP Rocket plugin in WordPress?

WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin in the market because it offers the most comprehensive set of tools to help speed up your website.

However, many beginners are not familiar with the techy lingo and may find it difficult to decide which plugin options they should turn on.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to easily install and setup WP Rocket plugin in WordPress. We will walk you through complete WP Rocket plugin settings, so you can get maximum performance benefits.

Why Use WP Rocket?

No one likes slow websites. In fact, a performance study found that a single second delay in page load time costs 7% less conversions, 11% fewer page views, and 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

And it’s not just users, search engines like Google also don’t like slow websites. They give a priority to faster websites in search rankings.

This is where WP Rocket comes in.

It is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market and allows you to quickly improve your WordPress website’s speed and performance.

Here is how it works.

WordPress is a dynamic content management system. Every time a user visits your website, WordPress fetches the content from your database, generate a page on the fly, and send it back to the user.

This process takes up WordPress hosting server resources. If a lot of people visit your website at once, then this would slow down your website.

WP Rocket makes WordPress bypass all this.

It crawls and saves a static copy of your pages in the cache and allows WordPress to show the cached page to the user instead of generating a page on the fly.

This frees up server resources on your website and improves overall page load time throughout your website.

We use WP Rocket on many of our own websites including WPForms, OptinMonster, etc.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily install and set up WP Rocket on your WordPress website.

Step 1. Installing WP Rocket Plugin in WordPress

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Rocket plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

WP Rocket is a premium plugin, but the best part is that all features are included in their lowest plan.

Once installed and activated, the WP Rocket plugin works out of the box, and it will turn on caching with optimal settings for your website.

We ran speed tests on our demo site before and after installing WP Rocket. The performance improvement was incredible with just out of the box settings.

The performance improvement is instantly noticeable because WP Rocket doesn’t wait for user requests to start caching pages. It proactively crawls your website and preloads pages in the cache.

You can see caching status by visiting WP Rocket dashboard located under Settings » WP Rocket page.

Now that you have installed WP Rocket, let’s take a look at other WP Rocket options and how to set them up to further improve your website speed.

Step 2. Set up Caching Options in WP Rocket

Fist, you need to visit Settings » WP Rocket page and click on the ‘Cache’ tab.

WP Rocket has already enabled page caching by default, but you can tweak the settings to further improve your website speed.

1. Mobile Caching

You’ll notice that mobile caching is turned on by default here. However, we recommend you to check the ‘Separate cache files for mobile devices’ option as well.

This option allows WP Rocket to create separate cache files for mobile users. Checking this option ensures that mobile users get the full cached mobile experience.

2. User Cache

If you run a website where users need to login to your website to access certain features, then you need to check this option.

For example, if you run a WooCommerce store or a membership website, then this option will improve user experience for all logged in users.

3. Cache Lifespan

Cache lifespan is the time you want to store the cached files on your website. The default limit is set to 10 hours which would work for most websites.

However, you can set it to a lower value if you run a very busy site. You can also set it to a higher value if you don’t update your website frequently.

After the lifespan time has passed, WP Rocket will delete the cached files. It will also immediately start preloading the cache with updated content.

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

Step 3. Minifying Files using WP Rocket

WP Rocket enables you to minify static files such as JavaScript and CSS stylesheets. You can simply switch to the File Optimization tab and check the boxes for the file types that you want to be minified.

Minifying static content makes those file sizes smaller. In most cases, this difference is too small to make any noticeable impact on your website’s performance.

However if you run a large traffic site, then this can definitely have a big impact in reducing your overall bandwidth usage and saving on hosting costs.

The one caveat is that minifying files can also have unexpected consequences like files not loading or not working as intended.

If you turn this setting on, then please make sure to thoroughly review your website pages to make sure everything is working as intended.

Step 4. Lazy Load Media to Improve Page Load Speed

Images are often the second heaviest item on a page after video. Images take more time to load than text and increase the overall page download size.

Most popular websites now use a technique called lazy loading to delay image downloads.

Instead of loading all your images at once, lazy loading downloads only the images that will be visible on the user’s screen. This not only makes your pages load fast, but it also feels faster to the user.

WP Rocket comes with a built-in lazy loading feature. You can enable lady loading for images by simply switching to the Media tab on the plugin’s settings page. You can also enable lazy loading for embeds like YouTube videos and iframes.

Note: While lazy loading images will help improve perceived website speed, you should always save and optimize images for web to get maximum results. Here’s how to easily optimize images for web performance (step by step).

Step 5. Fine Tune Preloading in WP Rocket

Next, you can review the preloading settings in WP Rocket by switching to the ‘Preloading’ tab. By default, the plugin starts crawling your homepage and follow links to preload cache.

Alternately, you can tell the plugin to use your XML sitemap to build cache.

You can turn off the preloading feature as well, but we do not recommend that.

Turning off preloading will tell WordPress to only cache pages when they are requested by a user. This means the first user to load that specific page will always see a slow website.

Editors note: Please keep preloading on to get maximum performance results.

Step 6. Set up Advanced Caching Rules

WP Rocket gives you full control over caching. You can switch to the Advanced Rules tab on the settings page to exclude pages that you don’t want to be cached.

You can also exclude cookies, user agents (browsers and device types), and automatically rebuild cache when you update specific pages or posts.

The default settings would work for most websites. If you are unsure about these options, then you need to leave them blank.

This settings area is for developers and power users who need custom settings because they likely have a complex website setup.

Also See: 19 types of websites you can build with WordPress.

Step 7. Performing Database Clean up using WP Rocket

WP Rocket also makes it easy to clean up the WordPress database. It has very little to no effect on your website performance, but you can still review these options if you want to.

You need to switch to the Database tab on the plugin settings page. From here you can delete post revisions, drafts, spam, and trash comments.

We don’t recommend deleting post revisions because they can be really useful in undoing changes to your WordPress posts and pages in the future. You also don’t need to delete spam and trashed comments as WordPress automatically clean them up after 30 days.

Step 8. Configure Your CDN to Work with WP Rocket

Next, you need to switch to the CDN tab. If you are using a CDN service for your WordPress site, then you can set it up to work with WP Rocket.

CDN or content delivery network enables you to serve static files from a network of servers spread across the globe.

This speeds up your website because it allows users browser to download files from the server closest to their location. It also reduces your hosting server load and makes your website more responsive.

For more information, see our guide on why you need a CDN service for your WordPress site.

We use MaxCDN by StackPath on our websites. It is one of the best CDN service for WordPress beginners.

Alternately, you can sign up for Sucuri, which is the best WordPress firewall and security plugin. Sucuri’s cloud-based firewall gives you a powerful CDN service to serve your static files.

If you are looking for a free alternative, then Cloudflare would work as well. However, Cloudflare’s free CDN offers limited protection against DDoS attacks, and the free plan is quite limited in terms of features.

WP Rocket has separate addons to easily set up Sucuri and Cloudflare on your website (more on this later).

Step 9. Reducing Heartbeat API Activity in WordPress with WP Rocket

Heartbeat API allows WordPress to send a periodic request to the hosting server in the background. This allows your website to perform scheduled tasks.

For example, when writing blog posts the editor uses heartbeat API to check connectivity and post changes.

You can click on the Heartbeat API tab to control this feature and reduce the heartbeat API frequency.

We don’t recommend deactivating the Heart Beat API because it offers some very useful features. However you can reduce its frequency to improve performance specially for larger sites.

Step 10. WP Rocket Addons

WP Rocket also comes with some ready to deploy features available as Addons. Let’s take a look at currently available addons on this list.

1. Google Analytics Addon

The Google Analytics add-on for WP Rocket allows you to host Google Analytics code on your own server. This does not have any significant performance improvement but some users want it to get a 100% page speed score.

This feature is compatible with popular Google Analytics plugins like MonsterInsights and ExactMetrics.

2. Facebook Pixel

If you are using the Facebook pixel for user tracking, then this addon will host the pixels locally on your server. Again, this will improve your pagespeed score but may not have any actual impact on website speed.

3. Varnish Addon

If your WordPress hosting company uses Varnish cache, then you need to enable this addon. This will ensure that the Varnish cache is cleared when WP Rocket clears its cache.

4. Cloudflare

If you are using Cloudflare CDN, then you need this addon to make it work alongside WP Rocket. Simply enable the addon and click on the ‘Modify options’ button.

After that, you need to enter your account credentials to connect WP Rocket with your Cloudflare account.

5. Sucuri

If you are using Sucuri, then you need to enable this addon and click on the ‘Modify options’ button. After that, enter your Sucuri account’s API key to connect your account.

Step 11. Managing Your WP Rocket Cache

WP Rocket also makes it easy for admins to manage and clear WordPress cache. Simply go to the plugins settings page, and you’ll find the options to clear WP Rocket cache on the Dashboard tab.

You can also start a preloading sequence to rebuild the cache on demand.

The plugin also makes it easier to import and export plugin settings. You can switch to the tools to easily export and import plugin settings. This is helpful when moving WordPress from local server to a live website and/or when moving WordPress to a new domain.

Below that, you’ll find the option to Rollback plugin to an earlier version. This comes in handy if a WP Rocket update didn’t work as expected.

If you want to have the same rollback feature for all your plugins, then see our guide on how to rollback plugins to older version in WordPress.

WP Rocket FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions

As WP Rocket has grown in popularity, we have answered many questions related to the WP Rocket WordPress caching plugin. Here are some of the top WP Rocket questions:

1. Is WP Rocket free? Is there a free version of WP Rocket available?

No, WP Rocket is a premium WordPress caching plugin. There is no free version or free trial available. They do offer a 14 day money back guarantee.

You may find a nulled version of WP Rocket for free, but we strongly recommend against using those because sometimes hackers use nulled version as a bait to hack your website.

See 9 reasons why you should always avoid nulled version of WordPress themes and plugins.

2. Is WP Rocket worth the price?

Yes it is worth every penny. We are paying customers of WP Rocket and use it successfully on many of our websites including WPForms, OptinMonster, and others.

We also have plans to switch to WP Rocket on WPBeginner in the near future as well. We are closely working with their team to get one particular setting included for it to work on our complex multi-server enterprise hosting setup.

Curious to see what WPBeginner hosting setup looks like? Check out the detailed case study here.

3. Do I need to use WP Rocket with managed WordPress hosting platforms?

The short answer is yes. You can and should use WP Rocket in combination with built-in caching offered by your managed hosting company to unlock additional performance improvements.

A lot of managed WordPress hosting companies like WP Engine, SiteGround, Bluehost, etc have their own caching plugins built in.

WP Rocket plays nicely along those built-in caching options provided by your managed hosting provider while helping you get additional performance benefits with features like CDN, minifying files, lazy loading, smart cache preloading, and more.

4. How to check if WP Rocket is working and caching pages?

To check if WP Rocket is working properly, you need to log out of your site or open it in an incognito window.

Next, you need to open the browser’s source view of the page, and scroll to the bottom. At the very end, you should see a text like: “This website is like a rocket …”

If that text is there, then you know WP Rocket is working properly and caching pages.

5. What makes WP Rocket better than other caching plugins?

In our opinion, WP Rocket is better than other WordPress caching plugins like W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, etc because it offers the most comprehensive set of features, and it is regularly updated to keep up with modern browser standards.

This is the #1 reason why we have started switching all of our sites to use WP Rocket, and soon WPBeginner will be using WP Rocket as well.

We hope this guide helped you learn how to install and set up WP Rocket plugin in WordPress. You may also want to see our ultimate guide on how to speed up WordPress, and our list of the must have WordPress plugins.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Properly Install and Setup WP Rocket in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

November 04, 2019 at 07:45PM

7 Best Video Hosting Sites for Bloggers, Marketers, and Businesses

Are you looking for the best video hosting sites for bloggers, marketers, and business websites?

Uploading videos directly to your website requires a lot of server resources. This is why smart business owners use video hosting sites to upload videos and then easily embed those videos in WordPress without affecting performance.

In this article, we will share some of the best video hosting sites for bloggers, marketers, and business owners.

Why Use Video Hosting Sites?

Videos are the most engaging form of content, and they are highly effective for conversions. However, they also take a lot of space and bandwidth.

WordPress allows you to upload videos to your website. However, it is not really optimized to serve videos. This affects video playback and creates a bad user experience.

Apart from that, videos consume more WordPress hosting resources, which slows down your website. If you are on shared hosting, then your hosting provider may even terminate your account to stop it from affecting other sites.

Due to these issues, we recommend using a video hosting site to add videos in WordPress. They have more server resources to serve video files, and you don’t have to worry about WordPress performance.

More importantly, they automatically adjust video quality to provide a better viewing experience based on your visitors’ internet speed.

To learn more, see our guide on why you should never upload videos to WordPress.

WordPress makes it super easy to embed videos on your website. See our guide on how to easily embed videos in WordPress for detailed instructions.

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best video hosting sites that you can use.

1. YouTube

YouTube is the most popular video hosting website on the internet. It allows you to upload videos, create channels, and build a following.

As a marketer and business owner, you would want to capitalize on YouTube’s huge potential. It is also the world’s second most popular search engine and the second biggest social media website with 1.9 billion active users.

You can build a YouTube following with your channel, find a new audience, get featured in video search results, and grow your business.

YouTube has a Partners Program that you can join to earn money online from your videos. This program also offers you more benefits like analytics, longer videos, and video editing tools.

At WPBeginner we use YouTube to upload our WordPress video tutorials. Check out WPBeginner channel on YouTube to see how we use YouTube to get more subscribers and visitors to our website.

2. Vimeo

Vimeo is an excellent video hosting and streaming site for bloggers, marketers, and businesses. It gives you a limited hosting space to upload videos for free. However, the unlimited bandwidth and ad-free display are the key perks for all the videos.

To upload large videos, you’ll need to buy a premium plan which is very affordable ($84 per year). The paid plans also include privacy options, video editing tools, customer support, password protection, related videos, and Google Analytics.

The premium members can also sell or rent videos to earn money online from your Vimeo video.

We use Vimeo to host private videos for our exclusive members only area. If you have a membership site or you want to create and sell online courses, then Vimeo is an excellent option.

3. Jetpack Video

Jetpack is a popular plugin suite which also includes a video hosting feature. Jetpack video is a premium video hosting service and requires a paid Jetpack subscription plan.

It is completely ad-free and does not show related videos from other websites on your videos.

It uses the same content delivery network used by Jetpack photos for faster delivery and streaming experience. It also includes privacy settings, analytics, multiple video formats, and more.

4. Wistia

Wistia is a professional video hosting site for marketers and businesses. The free account has a limit of 3 videos with features like custom thumbnail, Wistia branded video player, password protection, privacy settings, and more.

You’ll need their premium plan to upload more videos. The paid version allows you to remove Wistia’s branding from the video player. It also comes with viewer history, trend graphs, call-to-action buttons, related videos, and annotations.

It has powerful integrations with email marketing services and CRM software like Constant Contact, Drip, AWeber, Hubspot, Google Analytics, and others.

5. Vidyard

Vidyard is a high-end video hosting site for large businesses and professionals. It includes premium content marketing tools to promote your videos.

It comes with multiple video player styles and custom editing options. You can upload videos with call-to-action buttons, and perform A/B test against video thumbnails to see which one works best.

Vidyard offers powerful and detailed analytics, including viewer history, engagement, and more to improve your videos.

6. Dailymotion

Dailymotion is another popular video hosting site that you can use to upload your marketing and business videos. It has a free partner account with features like unlimited bandwidth and storage, featured videos, privacy settings, video player, and more.

It allows you to upload several videos in a day and you can also use the drag and drop feature to upload complete playlists. You can optimize your videos for SEO by adding title, description, and tags.

DailyMotion also offers a monetization program where you can earn money and get more features as a partner.

7. SproutVideo

SproutVideo is a paid video hosting site for bloggers, marketers, and businesses. It has a free trial account where you can test the video player and its features. Though the free version has limited options and you’ll need to upgrade to access all the settings.

Some of the notable features include video themes, layouts, video analytics, social sharing buttons, call-to-action placement, and viewer engagement history.

You will need to get the embed code for each video and use the Custom HTML block to add video code.

We hope this article helped you find the best video hosting sites for your blog or business website. You may also want to see our step by step WordPress SEO guide for beginners, and our expert pick of the best WordPress plugins for business websites.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 7 Best Video Hosting Sites for Bloggers, Marketers, and Businesses appeared first on WPBeginner.

November 01, 2019 at 05:47PM