2020’s Most Popular and Best WordPress Themes (Expert Pick)

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes of 2020?

With thousands of free and premium WordPress themes available, it is very hard for beginners to choose the best WordPress theme for their need.

In this article, we will share our experts’ pick of the best and most popular WordPress themes in 2020.

Note: Some of these themes are even older than 2019, but they have remained highly popular due to their incredible design, features, and updates.

The Most Common Traits of All Popular and Best WordPress Themes

WordPress themes are either niche-based or multipurpose in terms of features and options.

You can use a niche-based theme for your industry (for example, a restaurant theme). Alternately, you can choose a multipurpose theme that’s designed to be flexible and works for any kind of website.

Regardless of the type, all the best WordPress themes have the following features and traits:

Mobile-responsive design: The theme designs are responsive and retina-ready, so your WordPress website looks great on all screen sizes and devices.

SEO optimization: The theme follows the best SEO practices, so your website can rank higher in search results.

Page builder support: The theme is compatible with popular WordPress drag and drop page builders. It helps you create custom landing pages whenever you need them.

Speed and performance: Your theme plays an important role in the speed and performance of your website. You should look for the theme with faster page loads and an optimized user experience.

These are the essential features that you should look into a theme before selecting it for your website. Every theme in our list comes with many other useful features aside from the main ones that we mentioned above, and you can read about it in their descriptions.

Now that we have discussed the common traits of all popular themes, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best themes of 2020.

Note: Looking to start a new website, blog or online store? Follow our step by step guide on how to start a blog, how to create a website, or how to start an online store.

You can even have our team setup your blog for free with our free blog setup service.

1. Divi Theme

Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes and an ultimate page builder. It has multiple visual elements and modules that help you create a beautiful website.

The theme comes with hundreds of free ready-made layouts for multiple industries and niches. It allows you to import a website layout with the 1-click demo importer which helps you quickly get started.

With the built-in drag and drop page builder, you can move elements, save and manage custom designs, and use global styles on all website pages.

Divi gives you complete control of the layout design, inline text editing, and custom CSS. It is highly flexible and easy to use.

Get the Divi theme today!

2. Astra WordPress Theme

Astra is a modern WordPress theme designed to create any website. It works with all the popular drag and drop page builders seamlessly.

The theme comes with several starter sites that you can use to launch a website quickly. These ready-made websites are perfect for small businesses, blogs, and WooCommerce stores.

It has tons of amazing features, including page headers, mega menu, multiple layout choices, Google Fonts, unlimited color options, separate blog page layouts, and custom widgets.

Astra theme also offers powerful integration with the WooCommerce plugin to create an online store. Their WooCommerce theme features infinite scrolling, quick product view, shop page, product gallery, and cart options.

It also integrates with popular learning management systems like LearnDash. Astra has built-in SEO optimization to help rank your website in the search engines.

Get the Astra WordPress Theme today!

3. Themify Ultra

Themify Ultra is a powerful WordPress multipurpose theme built to help you easily make a website. It comes with dozens of ready-made sites for lifestyle, magazine, restaurant, photography, fashion, and more.

It also includes the Themify page builder that you can use for customization. It has several builder addons to add advanced elements like progress bars, counters, pricing tables, audio player, and more.

Other notable features include smart layout options, color choices, crisp typography, section-based scrolling, image filters, and portfolio options.

Themify Ultra is also an ideal theme to start a WooCommerce store. It is easy to set up and customize with the live WordPress customizer.

Get the Themify Ultra theme today!

4. OceanWP

OceanWP is a free WordPress multipurpose theme. It comes with a 1-click demo content importer and hundreds of ready-made sites to launch a website instantly.

The theme has multiple extensions to add features to your website like a login popup, an Instagram feed, a sticky footer, a featured posts slider, and more. It is translation ready to create a multilingual website.

The OceanWP theme supports WooCommerce out of the box. It has built-in SEO features to help in improving your website rankings.

Get the OceanWP theme today!

5. Breakthrough Pro

Breakthrough Pro is a minimalist WordPress theme. It is built on top of the Genesis Theme Framework by StudioPress which makes it powerful and robust.

The theme is ideal for any business website. It comes with 9 custom widgets, 3 layout options, landing page templates, and a custom header. It works with the Gutenberg block editor to customize posts and pages smoothly.

StudioPress is now part of WP Engine, the most popular managed WordPress hosting company. You can get this theme and all 35+ other StudioPress themes if you sign up for WP Engine hosting to build your website.

Bonus: WPBeginner users also get an additional 20% OFF. Get started with WP Engine today!

Get the Breakthrough Pro theme today!

6. Hestia Pro

Hestia Pro is a modern WordPress multipurpose theme. It comes in a one-page and multi-page layouts to make any website.

With a slick material design, you can showcase your business and services professionally. It integrates with popular page builders like Beaver Builder, Elementor, Visual Composer, etc.

The theme is fully compatible with WooCommerce, and it allows you to create beautiful products and shop pages easily. It also ships with multiple starter sites for eCommerce stores and other business niches.

Get the Hestia Pro theme today!

7. Nozama

Nozama is a WordPress WooCommerce theme built to start an online store quickly. It is highly customizable to display your featured products on the homepage.

It comes with a built-in storefront to create product filters, custom product layouts, and more. Other features include social network integrations, color customization, and header visibility.

Get the Nozama theme today!

8. Alpha

Alpha is an advanced WordPress magazine theme. It is well-suited for newspapers, online magazines, personal blogs, and authors.

The theme comes with 2 different layout designs, a featured slideshow, a video widget, a breaking news ticker, ad placement spaces, and more. It is beginner-friendly and easy to set up.

You should also check out our article on the best WordPress magazine themes.

Get the Alpha theme today!

9. Zelle Pro

Zelle Pro is a premium one-page WordPress theme. It offers a minimal layout with a custom logo, a fullwidth header, and call-to-action buttons.

The theme features custom backgrounds, unlimited color choices, and mega menus. It has built-in SEO and speed optimization for better performance.

Get the Zelle Pro theme today!

10. Sydney Pro

Sydney Pro is a fantastic WordPress multipurpose theme. It uses the custom Elementor blocks for carousel slider, pricing tables, and timeline.

Other notable features include page templates, header choices, customizer options, and a video header. The theme is translation ready and allows you to create a multilingual website easily.

Get the Sydney Pro theme today!

11. Storefront

Storefront is a popular WordPress WooCommerce theme. It comes with an intuitive and flexible layout to create an online store.

It works with all WooCommerce extensions seamlessly. The theme is fully customizable for background, colors, and font using the WordPress customizer with live preview.

Get the Storefront theme today!

Bonus: see our guide on the best WooCommerce plugins to grow your store.

12. Inspiro

Inspiro is a stylish WordPress theme. It comes with a fullscreen video background slideshow that supports YouTube, Vimeo, and custom videos.

The theme is perfect for a portfolio, a small business, or an eCommerce website. It ships with a gallery module to display your images, videos, and work portfolio beautifully.

Don’t miss our article on the best portfolio WordPress themes.

Get the Inspiro theme today!

13. Neve

Neve is a modern WordPress multipurpose theme designed to create all kinds of websites easily. It is highly flexible and easy to use.

This theme is compatible with popular page builders, including Divi Builder, Beaver Builder, and more. Neve also supports the Gutenberg editor to customize your pages and posts.

Get the Neve theme today!

14. Authority Pro

Authority Pro is a powerful WordPress theme. It is built with a multipurpose approach to make any professional business website and online store.

The theme is highly scalable and works equally great for small to large business websites. It supports the WPForms plugin to create a contact form or any other form quickly.

Get the Authority Pro theme today!

15. News Portal

News Portal is a free WordPress magazine theme. It has a widgetized layout and multiple ready-made magazine templates to launch your online magazine instantly.

It comes with multiple color schemes, category color options, background colors, and more. The theme is easy to set up and manage with the WordPress live customizer.

Get the News Portal theme today!

16. Shoptimizer

Shoptimizer is a fast WordPress WooCommerce theme. It comes with multiple features to set up and grow your eCommerce store quickly.

The theme has a beautiful layout, custom header, featured content section, cart options, a wishlist, and more. It is optimized for SEO and speed performance.

Related: You should check out our article on the best WooCommerce WordPress themes.

Get the Shoptimizer theme today!

17. Gema

Gema is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for photographers, personal bloggers, authors, lifestyle, and fashion websites.

It comes with a custom logo, a classical navigation menu, buttons, post layouts, and a style manager. The Gema theme is beginner-friendly and easy to set up.

Get the Gema theme today!

18. Tusant

Tusant is a unique WordPress podcast theme well-suited for musicians, bands, podcasters, vlogs, and any audio or video streaming website.

It allows you to embed audio and videos from multiple sources. The theme has several layout choices, crisp typography, and custom background color. You can also use the drag and drop page builders for customization.

Note: If you want to check out other options, then take a look at our handpicked list of the best WordPress themes for podcasters.

Get the Tusant theme today!

19. Saved

Saved is a WordPress church theme ideally built for non-profits, churches, and fundraising websites. It comes with a built-in homepage builder to set up your website’s homepage quickly.

It is packed with a Church Content plugin that helps you add sermons, staff profiles, events, and locations. Other notable features include custom page templates, sticky menu, font choices, color schemes, and more.

Get the Saved theme today!

20. Didi

Didi is a WordPress fashion blogging theme designed specifically for lifestyle, fashion, wellness, and magazine-style blogs. It comes with a white background that makes your content standout.

It offers multiple layout choices, custom page templates, sidebar layouts, and video support. The Didi theme is compatible with WPML to create a multilingual website.

Get the Didi theme today!

21. Travel Way

Travel Way is a modern WordPress theme ideally built for travelers, travel bloggers, travel photographers, mountain trekkers, and adventure tourism companies.

It features a fullscreen custom header background with call-to-action buttons, social icons, logo, navigation menu, and other details. The theme has multiple sections to display your favorite locations beautifully.

You should also check out our article on the best WordPress themes for travel blogs.

Get the Travel Way theme today!

22. Fitness

Fitness is an elegant WordPress theme beautifully crafted for personal trainers, gyms, yoga instructors, and any health-related business.

It allows you to create custom pages for trainers and classes. With 1-click demo content importer, you can import a ready-made website and get started quickly.

Looking for more options? Check out our experts’ pick of the best WordPress themes for crossfit and gym.

Get the Fitness theme today!

23. Moroseta

Moroseta is a versatile WordPress multipurpose theme. It uses light colors that make your content highly readable to users.

The theme features include a separate blog page, multiple sidebar positions, featured content slider, a promo box, and more. It is fully compatible with drag and drop page builders to design custom landing pages.

Get the Moroseta theme today!

24. Foodica

Foodica is a new-fashioned WordPress theme for food bloggers, food critiques, chefs, and food recipe websites. It comes with a minimal layout and 10 color schemes.

On the homepage, it has a beautiful featured slider, featured recipes section, multiple ad placement spaces, and more. The theme integrates with WooCommerce to start an online food delivery service quickly.

You should also check out our article on the best WordPress restaurant themes.

Get the Foodica theme today!

25. Kale Pro

Kale Pro is a premium WordPress food blog theme. It has a beautiful layout that you can also use to create a lifestyle blog, a fashion website, or an online magazine.

It features a recipe index templates to showcase your recipes stylishly. Other features include a sticky navigation menu, an image slider, custom fonts, color schemes, and a background image.

Get the Kale Pro theme today!

26. Kea

Kea is a WordPress hotel theme designed beautifully for hotels, resorts, BnBs, and accommodation businesses. It offers a fullscreen image background on the homepage.

It allows you to integrate a reservation and booking service to manage your online bookings easily. The theme supports a fullscreen video or carousel slideshow to display your hotel rooms, lobby, and services.

Get the Kea theme today!

27. Elite

Elite is a creative WordPress fullscreen theme packed with tons of features that you can use to launch a powerful eCommerce store. It allows you to showcase your products in beautiful image galleries and increase your sales.

It comes with image and video galleries, custom logo, Google Fonts, page layouts, and more. The Elite theme is easy to set up using the WordPress customizer with a live preview.

Get the Elite theme today!

28. Daylight

Daylight is a bright-colored WordPress multipurpose theme. It is a perfect choice for small businesses, digital agencies, social media marketers, and skilled professionals.

The theme offers a one-page and a multi-page layout to let you select the best option that matches your business requirements. It has built-in page load speed optimization to outrank the other WordPress business themes.

Get the Daylight theme today!

29. Essence Pro

Essence Pro is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for health, wellness, and lifestyle niches. It features an eye-catching fullwidth custom header image to create a powerful first impression.

The theme is built on top of the Genesis Framework, which makes it rock solid and robust. It ships with the Atomic Blocks and WPForms plugin to help you get started quickly.

Other notable features include 6 layout options, custom widget areas, landing pages, and more. It’s translation ready and supports WooCommerce out of the box.

Get the Essence Pro theme today!

30. Panoramic

Panoramic is a free WordPress multipurpose theme to create any website. It has a minimal layout with a simple and clean design that attracts users in the first look.

The theme integrates seamlessly with popular WordPress plugins like WPForms, SiteOrigin, and WooCommerce. It comes with a homepage slider and flexible theme options that you can manage using the WordPress live customizer.

Get the Panoramic theme today!

31. Agama

Agama is a free WordPress theme designed specifically for digital agencies, corporate businesses, photographers, and portfolio websites.

It has a white background with beautiful color selection for font, links, and buttons. The theme is SEO-ready and compatible with the WPML plugin to translate your website easily.

Get the Agama theme today!

32. Silk

Silk is a modern WordPress fashion blog theme. It comes with an attractive layout and a featured content slider on the homepage.

With this theme, you get an Instagram feed display, social tools, custom post layouts, an image slider, and a mega menu. It has color choices, animations, fonts, and custom backgrounds.

Also, check out our complete article on how to start a fashion blog and make money.

Get the Silk theme today!

33. Blockchain

Blockchain is a crypto business WordPress theme. It is ideally built for financial traders, investors, advisors, and consultants.

The theme includes cryptocurrency exchange tables, post types, unlimited color schemes, custom widgets, and more. It fully supports drag and drop page builders and WordPress WooCommerce plugin.

Get the Blockchain theme today!

We hope this article helped you find the best and most popular WordPress themes. You may also want to see our handpicked list of the must have best WordPress plugins for all 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 2020’s Most Popular and Best WordPress Themes (Expert Pick) appeared first on WPBeginner.

January 03, 2020 at 05:16PM

How to Fix Your Connection is Not Private Error (Site Owners Guide)

Are you seeing ‘Your connection is not private’ error on your WordPress website? This is the error message you’ll see on Google Chrome.

The same error will be displayed on all modern browsers with slightly different messages, and it can be a bit confusing for beginners to troubleshoot.

In this site owner’s guide, we’ll show you how to easily fix ‘Your connection is not private’ error on your website. We’ll also talk about why this error appears, and how you can avoid it in the future.

What is ‘Your Connection is Not Private’ Error?

‘Your connection is not private’ error appears on websites using the SSL / HTTPs protocol when your browser is unable to validate the SSL certificate issued by the website.

Basically, any website using SSL / HTTPs protocol sends a security certificate information to users browsers upon each visit. Browsers then try to validate the certificate using the public key accompanying the certificate.

If it checks out, then users browser encrypts the data using the private key sent by your website. This encryption secures the data transfer between a user’s browser and your website.

However, if the browser is unable to validate the certificate, then it cannot transfer the data securely and displays the error that your connection to the website is not private.

This is a common SSL error and appears on all modern browsers with slightly different error messages.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome will show this error as ‘Your connection is not private’.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox would show this error as ‘Your connection is not secure’.

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge browser displays it with the ‘Your connection isn’t private’ or ‘This site isn’t secure’ error message.

Safari, Brave, and other browsers will display similar messages.

Why This Error Message Occurs?

Now you may be wondering, what caused ‘Your connection is not private’ error to appear on your website. This error is peculiar because in many cases it may show up without you making any changes to your website.

It can be caused by several reasons. For instance, if a user’s computer clock is out of sync, then it may show the certificate as expired.

Another scenario is that a certificate previously issued by your website is stored in user’s browser. The private key sent by your website does not match the old certificate and the browser fails to validate the secure connection.

Last but not least, the most obvious reason you’d see this error is if the SSL certificate on the website has expired.

The following are the steps you can take to fix the ‘Your connection is not private’ error. You can also try these steps even when the error is appearing on other websites as well.

1. Force Reload a Page

The first step is to try turning it on and off method. Start by simply shutting down the browser app and then reopening it.

After that, try to visit the website. If you can still see the error then try force reloading the page. Use Command + R keyboard shortcut on Mac or CTRL + Reload button on Windows.

This will force the browser to ignore the cached version of the page and load the latest version.

2. Check with Multiple Browsers

If you are only checking it with one browser on the same machine, then try visiting the website using any other browser app.

This step will eliminate the possibility that the issue is limited to a specific browser. If it is, then reinstalling that browser would fix the issue.

Otherwise, you can move on to try the next steps in this guide.

3. Clear Your Browser Cache

You may have heard this as the first advice for many internet and website-related issues. It is true in this case too. Your browser may be loading files from an older version of your website which may be triggering the issue.

We have a complete guide on how to clear browser cache for all major browsers with step by step instructions.

Once you have cleared the cache, try visiting the website again to see if the issue has resolved. If it hasn’t, then continue reading.

4. Check Your Computer’s Clock

Normally, your computer syncs its date and time settings automatically. However, if your computer has incorrect date/time settings, then this may cause your browser to think that a website’s SSL certificate is invalid.

Sync Date / Time on Windows Computers

If you are using a Windows computer, then simply right click on the taskbar and select ‘Adjust Date and Time settings’.

This will open date and time section in the Windows Settings app. Make sure that your computer’s date and time is correct and ‘Set time automatically’ option is checked.

Sync Date / Time on Mac Computers

If you are using a Mac computer, then open the ‘Settings’ app and click on the ‘Date & Time’ icon.

Next, switch to the Date & Time tab and make sure that the option next to the ‘Set date and time automatically’ option is checked. If it is not checked, then click on the padlock icon at the bottom left corner of the window to enable this option.

5. Turn off Antivirus and VPN Apps

If you are using any antivirus programs on your computer or a VPN service, then you may want to temporarily turn them off.

This would allow you to verify that these apps are not blocking the SSL certificate and forcing your browser to show the ‘Your connection is not private’ error.

If you discover that one of these apps was causing the problem, then you can reach out to their support team for help.

6. Check Your SSL Certificate Expiration

Another common reason for this error is expired SSL certificates. These certificates are issued for a specific period and expire when they reach the end of that period.

You can check your certificate’s expiration date by clicking on the padlock icon next to your website and selecting the certificate option.

This will bring up your SSL certificate details. You can clearly see certificate expiration date in the window.

Most domain registrars and SSL certificate providers will automatically notify you when your SSL certificate needs to be renewed.

If you are using a free SSL certificate, then most WordPress hosting companies have scripts in place that automatically renew them upon expiration.

However, those mechanisms may fail and your SSL certificate may expire. Don’t worry, you can easily fix that by simply replacing your SSL certificate.

Instructions to do that may vary depending on your certificate provider and hosting company. In fact, many hosting companies will update it for you upon request.

7. Test Your SSL Server

If you have been setting up your SSL certificate manually by yourself, then you may want to make sure that all configuration settings are working properly.

To do that you can run an SSL server test. This test allows you to check the complete SSL set up of your website.

This includes TLS protocol, cross-browser testing, and SSL/HTTPs set up checks. The scanner will also provide you detailed information about each test.

8. Check Certificate Domain Name

You can set up your SSL certificate to work for different variations of a domain name. For example, www and non-www URLs.

If your certificate is only set up for one variation of your domain name, and you access the website using another variation, then this would result in ‘Your connection is not private’ error. Google Chrome will show the error code as SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN.

This error could also appear if you have recently moved your website to a new domain name or server.

One easy solution is to issue a free SSL certificate for both variations of your domain name. You can request your hosting provider to do that for you.

Another solution is to redirect your website visitors to the correct variation of your domain name. See our article, on how to set up redirects in WordPress for more details.

We hope this article helped you learn how to fix ‘Your connection is not private’ error in WordPress. You may also want to bookmark our guide on fixing the most common WordPress errors.

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 Fix Your Connection is Not Private Error (Site Owners Guide) appeared first on WPBeginner.

January 02, 2020 at 07:01PM

How to Add Special Characters in WordPress Posts

Ever wondered how popular sites add trademark ™, copyright ©, registered ®, or currency characters into their articles?

Recently one of our users asked us if there was an easy way to add special characters into WordPress posts and pages. These characters are not found on an average keyboard which makes it difficult for beginners to use them.

In this article, we will show you multiple ways to easily add special characters in WordPress posts. You can choose an approach that best suits your workflow.

Add Special Characters in WordPress Block Editor

WordPress block editor does not come with a special block or menu button in the paragraph formatting options.

However there are two ways you can use to add special characters in WordPress block editor. Let’s take a look at both of them, so you can decide which one is easier for you.

1. Add Special Characters using HTML Entity Code

When you write a blog post, WordPress automatically formats it into HTML. It is the markup language used by almost all websites.

HTML comes with a list of HTML entities. These are special codes that you can use inside HTML to display characters, symbols, arrows, and more.

This allows you to add special characters in HTML that are not normally found in keyboard layouts.

For example, if you wanted to add a trademark ™ symbol, then you can use the HTML entity code ™ to display it.

Similarly, if you wanted to add a copyright © symbol, then you can use © code in your article.

Notice how each HTML entity code begins with an ampersand sign and ends with a semicolon.

After you add an HTML entity code in the post editor, it will not immediately convert into the corresponding character. However, when you publish or preview your post, then you will see it automatically display the special character instead of the HTML entity code.

There is a whole range of characters available as HTML entities, including special characters, latin characters, mathematical symbols, currencies, scientific measurement symbols, and more.

For the complete reference, check out W3.org’s HTML character entity reference chart.

Method 2. Add Special Characters in WordPress using a Plugin

If you need to add special characters on a regular basis, then you would be better off using a plugin instead of checking the HTML entity reference chart each time.

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

Upon activation, simply edit the post or page where you want to add special characters. Inside the paragraph block, click on the drop-down arrow in the block toolbar and select the ‘Special characters’ option.

This will bring up a popup displaying special characters. Simply locate the special character you want to add and then click to insert it into the editor.

Adding Special Characters in Old WordPress Editor

If you are still using the old classic editor in WordPress, then here is how you can easily add special characters while writing blog posts.

First, you need to click on the kitchen sink button. This will expand the second row of formatting options where you should see the Special Characters button.

Clicking on the special characters button will bring up a pop-up window showing some commonly used special characters. It has currency symbols, trademark, copyright, registered signs, mathematical symbols and signs.

Remember, this method would only work if you are using the old editor in WYSIWYG mode.

If you are using it in the text mode, then you’ll either need to switch to the Visual editor or use the HTML entities method described above.

You simply need to just click on the symbol or character you want to use, and it will be added in your post.

We hope this article helped you learn how to add special characters in WordPress posts and pages. You may also want to see our complete guide on mastering the WordPress block editor.

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 Special Characters in WordPress Posts appeared first on WPBeginner.

January 01, 2020 at 05:00PM

Best of Best WordPress Tutorials of 2019 on WPBeginner

Another year is about to end and it is time to take a look back at 2019 to gain some perspective and reflect upon the progress.

It was a particularly fantastic year for WPBeginner, WordPress community, and many of our new users who started new websites and businesses this year.

We want to thank all of you for your continued support that keeps us motivated and energized.

To keep up with our tradition, in this article we will share our staff-pick of the best of best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner. We’ll also share an overview of 2019 from our CEO.

WPBeginner Recap 2019 by Syed Balkhi

Like every year, 2019 has been the best year ever for me both personally and professionally.

This year, WPBeginner turned 10 years old. It still feels quite unreal to say that.

I’m truly grateful for all the support from WPBeginner readers and the larger WordPress community, and I’m more motivated than ever to continue our mission to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys.

After a lot of requests from the community, we finally launched a free Facebook group called WPBeginner Engage that’s focused on helping beginners and non-techy users do more with WordPress. In less than 6 months, we have over 22,000+ members, and I’m really proud of the discussions and knowledge-sharing that’s happening there.

I have been doing exclusive Facebook Lives, recording training videos, our teams of WordPress experts have been answering user questions, and the best part is that it’s 100% free. Go ahead and join now!

Our community on YouTube has also been growing stronger. WPBeginner YouTube channel passed over 150,000 subscribers (currently at 157k subscribers). This was one of my goals for 2019, and I’m very glad that we met it.

We have been creating original YouTube content series to help you get more traffic, grow your email list, and make money blogging. Check out our playlists.

We invested in Rymera Web, parent company of Wholesale Suite, Advanced Coupons, and Inventoroo through our WPBeginner Growth Fund.

We are in the final stages of wrapping up few more growth fund investments that will be announced in the new year.

2019 was a great year for WPBeginner’s family of products.

WPForms

WPForms passed over 3 million active installs, and it’s now one of the top 15 most popular WordPress plugins of all time. Considering that we only launched it in 2016, it’s amazing to see how far we have come.

We added a lot of powerful features in WPForms including: form landing pages, conversational forms, Google AMP support, smart phone and email fields, complete language translations in popular languages, and a whole lot more.

WPForms is the most beginner friendly WordPress form plugin, and that’s why it has continued to maintain a 4.9 out of 5 star rating average with over 5000+ five star ratings (read WPForms user reviews).

Not using WPForms yet? You can try the free version and then upgrade to Pro when you’re ready.

RafflePress

We launched a brand new WordPress giveaway plugin called RafflePress. This is a tool that I have been wanting to build for the last 5 years, and I’m so glad that we did. It is by far the best contest plugin for WordPress in the market.

I successfully used it on many of our websites and blogs to grow our traffic, sales, and subscribers. I’m really excited to do more giveaways in 2020 because they just work!

If you’re serious about growing your website in 2020, then definitely give RafflePress a try.

WP Mail SMTP

We also launched a pro version of our popular free WP Mail SMTP plugin. After our acquisition, the plugin grew from 600k to over 1 million active installs. In the pro version, we added a lot of highly requested features such as Amazon SES integration, Email Logs for WordPress, and more.

This is a plugin that I recommend installing on all website because it helps fix WordPress not sending email issue.

MonsterInsights

As I promised in last year’s update, our WordPress analytics plugin, MonsterInsights saw major improvements.

We completely redesigned the plugin, added a brand new setup wizard, improved affiliate tracking, enabled automatic scroll tracking, added front-end page insights, and launched integrations with MemberPress, LifterLMS, and other popular plugins.

MonsterInsights is my most favorite plugins because it helps me grow our business with confidence. I sincerely believe that it’s easy to double your traffic and sales when you know exactly how people find and use your website. You can start with free version here.

OptinMonster & TrustPulse

Last but not least, our flagship product, OptinMonster, continued to push the limits in 2019. OptinMonster helps you get more subscribers and sales from your existing website traffic. Simply put, it’s the #1 conversion optimization software in the market.

In 2019, we added gamified spin a wheel optins, chatbot integrations for Facebook Messenger, tons of new personalization and targeting rules, mobile-specific templates, improved WooCommerce integration, attention activation feature, improved native analytics, brand new dashboard, and integrations with tons of third-party services like Zapier, Jilt, Bronto, etc.

OptinMonster team also launched a powerful social-proof plugin called TrustPulse that helps you boost site conversions with real-time social proof notifications.

As for personal life, 2019 was a great year for my family. My son, Solomon, turned 3 years old. He now tries to imitate my work habits on his mini computer. It’s quite funny to watch that.

We traveled to 8 countries this year. Solomon attended 1 WordCamp in 2019 (WordCamp US) and he went to few other conferences with me as well.

Below is a picture of our family, since I know many of you often ask for it.

If you want to see more of my personal journey, then please visit my personal blog and subscribe. I will be doing a detailed writeup there in the next few days. It will contain everything that happened to me in 2019 both personally & professionally along with lessons that I learned, and my goals for 2020.

With that said, let’s take a look at the best of WPBeginner in 2019.

January

Gutenberg vs page builders – What’s the real difference – 2018 ended with the release of WordPress 5.0. So we spent early months of 2019 helping our users learn and adapt to the new WordPress editor called Gutenberg. In this article, we explained the difference between the new WordPress editor and page builder plugins.

How to create a free business email address in 5 minutes (step by step) – Having a business email address makes your business look more trustworthy and legit. In this guide, we showed you how to get a free business email address with step by step instructions.

Cover Image vs. Featured Image in WordPress Block Editor (Beginner’s Guide) – The new WordPress block editor introduced a new feature called cover image. In this article, we explained how to use the cover image feature and how it is different than the featured image in WordPress.

How to Choose the Best Products to Sell Online (Beginner’s Guide) – A lot of our users want to start their online store using WooCommerce and WordPress. In this article, we tried to answer one of their most frequently asked question which is how to choose the best products to sell online.

Common Gutenberg questions answers (WordPress 5.0. FAQs) – In this article, we answered the most frequently asked questions about Gutenberg editor in WordPress 5.0.

February

How to setup a professional email address with Gmail and G Suite – In this article, we showed you how to setup a professional business email address with G Suite. It is Google’s productivity suite for businesses and professionals that allows you to use the same Google apps (Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and more) with your own domain name.

How to build an Amazon affiliate store using WordPress – In this guide, we showed you how to easily make an Amazon affiliate store using WordPress. Basically, you promote products on Amazon’s website to earn an affiliate commission on each sale.

How to easily create a quiz in WordPress – Quizzes are fun and can help you build an engaged audience on your website. In this guide, we showed you how to easily create a quiz in WordPress.

March

How to create a custom WordPress theme (without any code) – Do you want to create a completely custom WordPress theme of your own but don’t want to learn coding? In this guide, we showed you how to easily create a custom WordPress theme without writing any code.

How to create an online marketplace using WordPress – An online marketplace website allows users to buy and sell items by setting up their own mini-stores within your eCommerce platform. In this guide, we showed you how to easily create your own online marketplace using WordPress to make money on the side.

How to create conversational forms in WordPress (Typeform Alternative) – Conversational forms make your forms interactive and a fun experience for your users. In this article, we showed you how to easily create conversational forms in WordPress without using a third-party service.

What is a blog and how is it different from a website? (Explained) – Many users asked us about the difference between a blog and a website and which one they should start. In this beginner’s guide, we explained the difference between a blog and a website.

April

How to add Google Maps store locator in WordPress – In this guide, we showed you how to easily add a Google Maps store locator to your WordPress website and provide your customers directions to your store location.

Beginner’s guide to image SEO – Optimize images for search engines – In this guide, we walked you through the image SEO and how to properly optimize your images to get more traffic from search engines.

How to easily create a staging site for WordPress (step by step) – A WordPress staging site is a test site that you can use to “safely” make plugin updates and other changes before going live. In this guide, we showed you how to easily set up a WordPress staging site with just a few clicks.

How to do basic image editing in WordPress (Crop, rotate, scale, flip) – In this guide, we showed you how to do some basic image editing in WordPress without leaving the admin area.

May

How to create a web directory in WordPress – In this step by step guide, we showed how to easily create a web directory in WordPress.

BigCommerce vs WooCommerce – Which one is better? – We compared WooCommerce and BigCommerce side by side to weigh the pros and cons of both platforms and find out which one is better.

Beginner’s guide to WordPress template hierarchy (cheat sheet) – In this guide, we broke down the WordPress template hierarchy and what each template does in WordPress themes. Must read for any users getting started in WordPress theme development.

How to create an email newsletter (step by step) – In this step by step tutorial we showed you how to easily create an email newsletter and start building an email list.

85+ most useful time-saving WordPress keyboard shortcuts – In this beginner’s guide, we compiled an ultimate cheat sheet of all the useful WordPress keyboard shortcuts that would allow you to work faster on your websites.

June

How to add nofollow links in WordPress (Beginner’s guide) – Adding nofollow to external links is important for SEO. In this guide, we showed you how to easily add nofollow links in WordPress.

how to add scroll depth tracking in WordPress with Google Analytics – Want to learn how much users scroll on your website? In this guide, we showed you how to easily track users’ scroll depth activity on your WordPress site with Google Analytics.

Tips for mastering the WordPress content editor – We updated our ultimate guide on using the WordPress content editor with new tips and techniques.

How to host a website (Simple guide for beginners) – We have been often asked by beginners about how they can host a website. In this beginner’s guide, we showed how to easily host a website.

Best Beaver Builder themes and templates – We compiled our expert pick of the best Beaver Builder compatible themes and templates that you can use.

July

How to choose the best business VoIP provider (Compared) – In this guide, we explained how to choose the best business VoIP service provider and listed our pick of the best business phone companies.

Dropshipping made simple – A step by step guide for WordPress – We prepared a complete dropshipping guide for WordPress users who want to start their own dropshipping business.

Best SMTP service providers with high deliverability – We compared the top SMTP service providers to help users pick the best email delivery service for their WordPress websites.

How to create an online course with WordPress (The right way) – Our complete step by step guide on how to easily create an online course with WordPress.

Best WooCommerce dropshipping plugins (Compared) – We compared all the top dropshipping plugins for WooCommerce to help users pick the best option to start their dropshipping business.

August

How to use FOMO on your WordPress site to increase conversions – FOMO or fear of missing out is a psychological phenomenon used by marketers to encourage sales. In this article, we showed you how to easily use FOMO on your WordPress site to increase conversions.

Best Mailchimp alternatives (Better features and fair pricing) – We were asked by users to suggest Mailchimp alternatives. In this article, we picked the best Mailchimp alternatives with much better features and reasonable pricing.

How to add a click-to-call button in WordPress – In this tutorial, we showed you how to easily add a click-to-call button to your WordPress website or WooCommerce store.

How to run a giveaway / contest in WordPress with RafflePress – In this guide, we showed you how to easily run a viral giveaway /contest in WordPress with RafflePress.

How to add infinite scroll to your WordPress site – Speed is a dominant factor in improving time users spend on a website. In this guide, we showed how to easily add infinite scroll to your WordPress website and improve performance.

September

Wordfence vs Sucuri – Which one is better? (Compared) – Wordfence and Sucuri are the most popular WordPress security and firewall plugins. In this guide, we compared Sucuri vs Wordfence side by side in terms of features, pricing, and ease of use.

WooCommerce made simple: A step-by-step tutorial [+ Resources] We made a complete beginner’s guide to WooCommerce with step by step instructions to setup an online store. We also added resources to help you grow your business like a total pro.

Best WordPress giveaway and contest plugins compared – In this article, we compared the top WordPress giveaway and contest plugins. We analyzed them for features, ease of use, and which one of them is more suitable to grow your business with viral contests and giveaway.

How much do eCommerce websites cost (real numbers) – In this beginner’s guide we compared how much it costs to start eCommerce websites with real numbers. We analyzed the costs of plaforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, and BigCommerce with additional costs of addons and online payments.

October

Best affiliate marketing tools and plugins for WordPress – In this article, we shared our pick of the top affiliate marketing tools and plugins for WordPress that will help boost your affiliate earnings.

Best podcast hosting compared (most are free) – In this guide, we compared all the best podcast hosting options with both free and paid plans. You may also want to see our complete guide on how to start a podcast with WordPress.

How to get a free email domain (5 quick and easy methods) – Looking for a domain to use for your professional email address? In this guide, we showed 5 quick and easy methods to get a free email domain.

How to stop and prevent a DDoS attack on WordPress – DDoS attacks can take any website down or disrupt its performance. In this tutorial, we showed how you to stop and prevent DDoS attacks on your WordPress website.

November

How to properly install and set up WP Rocket in WordPress – WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin on the market. In this article, we showed you how to easily install and setup WP Rocket in WordPress to instantly boost your website speed and performance.

How to setup email logs in WordPress and WooCommerce – A typical WordPress website or WooCommerce store sends emails for various functions like password reset, customer orders, new user registrations, etc. In this guide, we showed you how to easily keep email logs on your WordPress site or WooCommerce store to keep an eye on all email activity.

how to add a Facebook giveaway in WordPress to boost engagement – Facebook has a massive userbase but it limits your reach based on how users engage with your posts. In this guide, we showed you how to boost user engagement by running a Facebook giveaway in WordPress.

Ways to get a 800 toll-free number for your business – A lot of our users wanted to get a toll-free number for their business. In this article, we showed you all the best ways to get an 800 toll-free number for your business.

How to create a photo contest in WordPress – Another great way to build user engagement and loyalty is by running a photo contest. In this tutorial, we showed you how to easily run a photo contest in WordPress to boost user engagement and gain new users.

December

How much does a domain name really cost? – In this article, we answered your questions about how much does a domain name really cost. We explained different scenarios and ways to get free, cheap, premium, and exclusive domain names.

How to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console – We wrote step by step instructions on how to easily add your WordPress site to Google Search Console. Don’t forget to check out our companion article on tips on using Google Search Console to grow your traffic.

How to create a WooCommerce contest – One of the quickest ways to get users to spend time and bring new users to your site is by running a contest. In this guide, we showed you how to easily create a WooCommerce contest to boost loyalty and engagement.

How to track link and button clicks in WordPress – Users interact with your website by clicking on links and buttons but how do you measure where they are clicking and how often? In this guide, we showed you how to easily track link and button clicks in WordPress.

These were some of the best WordPress tutorials on WPBeginner in 2019. We hope that you found them helpful.

We want to thank all WPBeginner users, who visited our website, offered feedback, left comments, and shared it with others. We truly appreciate you.

We look forward to adding even more useful WordPress tutorials in 2020. Have a Happy New Year.

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 Best of Best WordPress Tutorials of 2019 on WPBeginner appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 31, 2019 at 08:25PM

How to Add a Forum in WordPress with bbPress

Bulletin boards and forums are good old reliable tools to build online communities.

While there are plenty of open-source forum software, integrating a third-party forum with WordPress can be a mess. That’s where bbPress comes in.

In this article, we will show you how to easily add a forum in WordPress with bbPress.

What is bbPress?

bbPress is a forum software built the WordPress way. It runs on top of WordPress, which is the best website builder in the world.

Just like WordPress, bbPress is extensible, and you can install add-on plugins to add more functionality to your forums. It is also very light-weight and faster than other popular open-source forum software.

What You Need to Make an Online Forum with bbPress?

If you already have a WordPress website where you want to add a forum, then you can skip this section. On the other hand, if you are just getting started then continue reading.

First, you’ll need to sign up for a web hosting account. This is where you will store all the files for your online forum.

You’ll also need a domain name. This will be your website’s address on the internet and what users will type in their browsers to find your online forum.

Normally, website hosting costs $7.99 per month and domain name would cost you around $14.99 per year.

This is a lot of money if you are just getting started.

Luckily, Bluehost has agreed to offer WPBeginner users a discount on hosting with a free domain name. Basically, you’ll be able to get started for just $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

Bluehost is one of the biggest WordPress hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.

Once you have signed up for hosting, you can follow our guide on how to make a website for complete installation instructions.

After setting up WordPress, you will be ready to install bbPress and start your own online community.

How to Install bbPress

bbPress is available as a WordPress plugin. You can install it like you would install any WordPress plugin.

Simply log in to your WordPress admin area and go to Plugins » Add New . Search for bbPress and then select bbPress from results.

Install and activate the plugin. Upon activation, you will see the welcome screen for bbPress.

Creating a Forum with bbPress in WordPress

Once installed, bbPress adds Forums, Topics and Replies menu items in your WordPress admin.

First, you need to click on Forums » Add New link from the menu. This will take you to a screen similar to the WordPress post edit area.

Provide a title for your forum and enter a little description of it. Then press the publish button.

You can create as many forums as you need for different discussions and topics.

Displaying bbPress Forum in the Front End of WordPress

Now that you have created a few forums, it is time to display those forums on the front end of your WordPress website.

Create a new WordPress page. Give this page a title, like Forum, Community, Support Forums, etc.

After that, simply paste the following shortcode in your page:

[bbp-forum-index]

Don’t forget to click on the publish button to save your changes and make your forum page visible on your website.

You can now visit the page in a web browser to see a preview of your forums.

Next, you need to help users find the forum on your website. To do that, let’s put a link to your forum page on top navigation menu.

Go to Appearance » Menus and add the forum page to your navigation menu.

Users can now access the forum index page by clicking on the link in the main menu.

Integrating bbPress with your WordPress Theme

In most cases, you would probably want to open your forum for new registrations. To do that, you need to open your website for registrations.

Simply go to Settings » General, and check the box next to “Any one can register” to allow registrations on your website.

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

Now that your website is open for registration, the first thing that your forum participants would look for is a registration page.

Let’s make one.

Simply create a WordPress page, and give it a title, e.g. Register. Add shortcode [bbp-register] and publish the page.

You can now preview this page. It will show a user registration form to all non-logged in users.

Another page your users would need is the lost password recovery page. This is where they will be recover their lost passwords.

Create another WordPress page and give it a title e.g. Lost Password. After that, add this shortcode [bbp-lost-pass] and publish the page.

Finally, you need to add a login form to your website so that forum users can easily login from anywhere on your website.

bbPress comes with a handful of widgets and one of them is a login form widget.

Go to Appearance » Widgets and simply drag and drop Login Widget to your sidebar or any other widget area.

You will be asked to provide the URLs for the registration and lost password pages you created earlier. After entering them you need to click on the Save button to store your widget settings.

Now a login form with links to registration and lost password recovery pages will appear in your sidebar. Logged in users would see their usernames and a logout link instead of the form.

Managing bbPress Forum Settings

Unlike other popular forum software, bbPress has a very simplified configuration page. To manage settings for your bbPress forums, go to Settings » Forums page.

The default options on this page would work for most forum websites. We’ll take a look at all of them, just in case you want to change anything.

The first option you would see here is to ‘Automatically give registered visitors the participant forum role’. You can select a user role or uncheck the option to manually assign user roles to each user when they register.

The next option adds a 10-second delay between subsequent forum posts to prevent forum flooding and spam. You can increase or decrease the delay period here.

The Editing option allows users to edit their forum posts 5 minutes after they publish them. You can uncheck this option but that would prevent your users from correcting spelling errors or edit their posts if they missed something.

After that, you’ll find the forum features section. From here, you can turn forum features on and off.

Below that, you’ll see forum display features. From here, you can select a bbPress template, number of posts and topics to display on forum pages and inside the forum RSS feed.

Finally, you’ll see options to select URL slugs for different sections and forum pages. Slugs are the SEO friendly URL names used by WordPress.

The default URL slugs are meaningful and SEO friendly out of the box but if you need to change them, then you can do so here.

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

User Roles in bbPress

WordPress comes with its own user role management system which allows you to assign users roles with different permissions.

bbPress extends the WordPress user roles by adding its own five pre-defined user roles with different capabilities.

1. Keymaster – The website owner or the WordPress administrator is automatically assigned the Keymaster role when they install bbPress. A Keymaster can delete and create forums, can create, edit, delete all posts, topics, forums.

2. Moderators – Users with moderator user role have access to moderation tools, which they can use to moderate forums, topics, and posts.

3. Participants – This is the default user role, participants can create and edit their own topics and posts, they can favorite and subscribe to topics.

4. Spectators – Spectators have a read-only access to public forums, topics, and posts.

5. Blocked – When a user is blocked all their capabilities are blocked. They can still read publicly viewable topics and posts, but can not participate in the forums.

Extending and Promoting Your bbPress Forum

Now that your bbPress forum is all set up and running. It is time to learn how to extend and promote it.

Let’s start with the appearance first. bbPress works with any WordPress theme and themes can also add custom styles to bbPress.

All top WordPress themes come with custom bbPress styles to make your forum look beautiful.

For more choices, see our pick of the best WordPress themes for bbPress.

Next, you would want to add new features to your forum so that you can quickly get new members and grow your online community.

The following are some of the plugins that will help you grow your online forum much quickly.

1. RafflePress

RafflePress allows you to create viral giveaways and contests in WordPress. These interactive contests and giveaways are a sure-fire way to instantly get a ton of new users to your online forum.

See our guide on how to create a viral giveaway contest for more information.

2. MemberPress

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin. It allows you to make money online from your forum by adding subscription layers to your online community.

For more information, take a look at our guide on how to make a membership website.

3. MonsterInsights

Want to know which forum topics and discussions are more popular on your website? MonsterInsights helps you easily track all your website traffic using Google Analytics.

4. WPForms

WPForms is the best WordPress contact form plugin. It allows you to easily create beautiful forms for your website. You can also use it to create custom login page, user registration page, or to add surveys and polls to your bbPress forum.

We hope that this article helped you learn how to add a forum in WordPress and how to install and configure bbPress. You may also want to see our complete WordPress SEO guide to help you get even more traffic.

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 a Forum in WordPress with bbPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

December 30, 2019 at 02:00PM