How to Connect Multiple WordPress Sites Together (3 Ways)

Do you want to connect two or more WordPress websites together?

Having multiple websites is an advantage for your business as you easily segment products and services for different customers and keep your main website secure. However, connecting each site and making them work together can be tricky.

In this article, we’ll show you how to connect multiple WordPress sites together.

Why Connect Multiple WordPress Websites Together?

Let’s say you have multiple websites like a WordPress blog and an online course website. If someone purchases a course from your blog, then you’d have to manually enroll them on to your site that has the learning management system (LMS).

This could take a lot of time, or cost you a lot if you need to hire help to get the job done.

On the other hand, you can automate different tasks and save time by connecting these websites together. When a customer purchases the course, they’re automatically registered and enrolled on a separate membership site. This is good practice to keep your main WordPress site secure.

Many people think of creating a WordPress multisite network when connecting numerous sites together. However, you don’t need to run a multisite network to connect each website together. In fact, that’s usually not the best solution.

We’ll show you 3 simple ways of making different websites work together. You can click the link below to jump ahead to any section you’re interested in:

• Connect Multiple WordPress Sites Together Using a Plugin
• Create a Subdomain to Connect WordPress Websites
• Use Interlinking to Connect WordPress Websites

Method 1: Connect Multiple WordPress Sites Using a Plugin

The best way to connect two websites and make them talk to each other is by using the Uncanny Automator plugin. It’s the best WordPress automation plugin and helps you create automated workflows on your website.

You can think of the plugin as Zapier for WordPress websites. With Uncanny Automator, you can easily create a connection between multiple websites.

For this tutorial, let’s consider a situation where you have a WooCommerce store and a membership website.

We’ll show you how to connect both websites using Uncanny Automator. Our goal is to automatically register customers on your membership website when they buy a course from your store.

Note: Before you start, make sure that you’ve added a product to your WooCommerce store and created different membership levels on your membership site.

Next, you’ll need to install the Uncanny Automator plugin on both of your websites. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll be asked to install the Uncanny Automator free plugin. The lite version offers limited features and is used as a base for the pro version.

After that, you’ll need to go to the Automator » Settings page from your WordPress dashboard and enter your license key. You can find the key in the Uncanny Automator account area.

After entering the key, don’t forget to click the ‘Activate License’ button.

You’ll need to repeat the activation steps for both WordPress websites.

Creating a Recipe for Purchasing a Product on Your WooCommerce Store

Next, you’ll need to create a recipe on your WooCommerce store when customers purchase your product. ‘Recipes’ are automations.

To start, you can head over to Automator » Add New from your WordPress admin panel.

After that, you’ll be asked to select a recipe type. Logged-in recipes are triggered by logged-in users only, while ‘Everyone’ recipes can be triggered by all users.

Go ahead and select the ‘Logged-in users’ as the recipe type, since your customers will be creating an account and logging in to make a purchase. Then click the ‘Confirm’ button.

Next, you can enter a name for your recipe and select ‘WooCommerce’ as the integration. The name is for your reference only, and your users won’t see it.

Then, you’ll need to select a trigger for your recipe.

Simply select the ‘A user completes, pays for, lands on a thank you page for an order with a product’ as the trigger.

Next, you’ll be asked to select the trigger condition.

You can select ‘pays for’ as the condition and click the ‘Save’ button.

After that, Uncanny Automator will ask you to select a product for your recipe.

Go ahead and select the digital product that’s on your WooCommerce store. For example, we’ll choose the WordPress Course: Ultimate Growth Hacking as the product for this tutorial.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button after selecting a product.

Now you’ll need to choose an ‘Action’ for your recipe.

To create the action, you’ll need to select an integration.

You can easily send the customer’s registration data to your membership website using a webhook. A webhook is a bit of code that allows different tools and apps to provide information to other apps in real-time.

Don’t worry, you won’t need to know how to code in order to use it. We’ll walk you through all the steps.

Go ahead and select ‘Webhooks’ as the integration.

In the next step, you can select an action for your chosen integration.

Simply select the ‘Send data to a webhook’ option.

Next, you’ll need to enter your webhook details.

Keep this tab open for now.

To complete the recipe on your WooCommerce store and fill in the webhook details, you need to create a webhook on your membership website.

Creating a Webhook on Your Membership Website

First, you’ll want to open your membership site in a new tab. Then head over to Automator » Add New from your WordPress admin panel on your membership site.

Go ahead and select ‘Everyone’ as the recipe type and click the ‘Confirm’ button.

After that, you will have to enter a name for your recipe and select a trigger integration for your recipe.

Simply click the ‘Webhooks’ as the integration.

In the next step, you’ll need to select a trigger for your integration.

Go ahead and select the ‘Receive data from a webhook’ as the trigger.

Next, the plugin will show the webbook URL. You can note down the URL in a text file, as we’ll need it later on to finish the recipe on your WooCommerce store.

After that, scroll down to the Fields section. Now enter ‘Email’ under the Key field and select ‘Email’ for the Value type.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button.

Next, you can add an action to your recipe by clicking the ‘Add action’ button.

There will be different integrations you can choose for your action. Simply select the membership plugin you used to create the membership site.

In our case, we’ll select MemberPress since we used it to set up the membership site.

After that, you can choose an action for your selected integration.

Since we want our customers to subscribe to a membership automatically, we’ll select the ‘Add the user to a membership’ option.

A popup will now appear showing that the action will require WordPress user data.

Go ahead and click the ‘Set user data’ button.

Next, you’ll need to choose between an Existing User or a New User.

Simply click the ‘New User’ option.

A form will now appear where you can set the user data. You can leave the first name and last name fields blank.

Next, go ahead and click the asterisk icon (*) for the Email field. From the dropdown options, select ‘Field #1 Email’ under Receive data from a webhook.

You can repeat this step for the Username field as well. As for other fields, you can leave them blank.

Now, under the ‘What to do if the user already exists’ option, simply choose ‘Do nothing’ and click the Save button.

Next, you can select the membership plan you want the WooCommerce customer to subscribe to by clicking the Membership dropdown menu.

Besides that, you’ll see more fields for subtotal, tax amount, tax rate, status, gateway, and more. You can leave them to the default setting.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button when you’re done.

If you want, there are more actions you can add to the recipe, like allowing WordPress to send a confirmation email or registering the user to a Zoom webinar.

Next, you can now go ahead and publish your recipe. Simply click the ‘Draft’ toggle on the right side of the page and change it to ‘Live.’

Finishing Your Purchase Recipe in WooCommerce

Now that your recipe is active on the membership website, it’s time to finish up the recipe on your WooCommerce store.

First, go back to your WooCommerce website and open the recipe we created earlier. Next, enter the webhook link we copied in a text file (when creating a recipe on the membership site) under the ‘URL’ field.

Next, you can scroll down and keep the Request Method and Data format to the default setting.

Under the Body section, you can click the asterisk (*) sign for the ‘Key’ field and select ‘Billing email’ as the option. Similarly, you can also select ‘Billing email’ for the Value field.

There’s also an option to send test data to see if your connection is set up correctly.

When you’re done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button.

Next, go ahead and publish your recipe by clicking the Draft toggle and changing it to Live.

That’s it!

Whenever a customer purchases your selected WooCommerce product, they’ll be automatically subscribed to a membership plan on your membership website.

You can use this same method to set up similar automations to connect multiple WordPress sites together.

Method 2: Create a Subdomain to Connect WordPress Websites

Another way you can connect multiple WordPress websites is by creating a subdomain.

However please keep in mind that these websites will not be in sync automatically, and you will have to manually update both of them.

Subdomains are additional parts of your primary domain name and help you organize different sections of your WordPress website. You can use them to separate other functions from your main website.

For example, let’s you want to create an eCommerce store but keep it away from your main domain. In this case, you can create a subdomain for your online store, and your website will look like this:

https://ift.tt/WYH4vkI

Similarly, you can create a subdomain for different locations like uk.yourexamplesite.com or fr.yourexamplesite.com.

At WPBeginner, we also use a subdomain for our video content. You can visit https://ift.tt/dN064gO and get access to numerous video tutorials on WordPress.

You can easily create a subdomain using your WordPress hosting account. For more details, you can see our explanation about subdomains and how to create one.

Then, you can see our guide on how to install WordPress to create another WordPress site on the subdomain.

Method 3: Use Interlinking to Connect Websites

You can also connect multiple WordPress sites together by linking them together. The links will help to boost your WordPress SEO by passing authority (link juice) to each domain.

One common way to do this is by adding a custom link to your main navigation menu.

You can also add a link to your website’s footer.

For example, on WPBeginner, you’ll see that we’ve linked to websites that are part of the WPBeginner family of products along with some site links.

To edit your WordPress footer and add links to another website, please see our guide on how to edit the footer in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to connect multiple WordPress sites together. You can also see our guide on how to start a WordPress podcast and the best 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 Connect Multiple WordPress Sites Together (3 Ways) first appeared on WPBeginner.

July 19, 2022 at 04:07PM

How to Create an Author Website in WordPress (Step by Step)

Do you want to create an author website?

Making an author website allows you to connect with your readers directly and grow your personal brand to sell more books, create online communities, sell premium courses, find more speaking gigs, and more.

In this article, we’ll show you how you can easily create an author’s website in WordPress without hiring a developer.

Following is the list of topics that we’ll cover in this guide.

• Why Build an Author’s Website
• What Do You Need to Build an Author Website
• Getting Started with Your Author Site
• Author Website Examples
• Choosing a Theme for Your Author Site
• Setting Up Your Website Layout and Pages
• Selling Books on Your Author’s Website
• Promoting Your Author Website

Ready? Let’s get started.

Why Build An Author’s Website?

Many authors rely heavily on promoting their works on social media platforms or through their publisher’s website/marketing channels.

However, at the end of the day, you don’t own any social media platform. The social media followers you gather would instantly disappear if your profile gets blocked by those websites.

The best way to promote your books or build a personal brand is by making a website.

First of all, you own your website, so no one can block you from it.

You can still build a social media following, but we highly recommend also building your email list. This way, you can have direct communication with your followers without relying on a third-party platform.

Lastly, having your own website gives you much more flexibility in how you earn an income. You can promote your books and other writings, build an online subscription-based community, and more.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily make an author’s website without any coding knowledge or special technical skills.

What Do You Need to Build an Author Website?

First, you need to choose the right website building platform for creating your author’s website.

We recommend using WordPress.org. It is the best website builder on the market and powers over 43% of all websites on the internet. Countless authors around the world including many #1 New York Times bestseller authors use WordPress for their websites.

Now keep in mind that when we say WordPress, we are talking about WordPress.org and not WordPress.com which is a website hosting company.

For more details, see our guide on the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

To make an author website in WordPress, you’ll need the following items:

1. A domain name (e.g. wpbeginner.com). This will be your website’s address and what your users will type in their browser to reach your website.
2. A website hosting account. This is where all your website files will be stored.

Usually, a domain costs around $14.99 per year, and website hosting plans start at $7.99 per month (often paid annually).

Luckily, the team at Bluehost has agreed to offer WPBeginner users a free domain name with a generous 60% discount on hosting. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

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

If your budget allows you to spend a little more on premium hosting, then you can check out SiteGround or WP Engine.

Need more hosting recommendations? See our comparison of the top WordPress hosting companies.

Getting Started with Your Author Site

Once you have signed up for a WordPress hosting account, the next step is to install WordPress.

Now if you signed up with Bluehost, then they would automatically install WordPress for you.

Simply log in to your hosting account dashboard, and you’ll see a button to log in to WordPress.

For other hosting companies, you can follow our step-by-step guide on how to install WordPress.

After that, you’ll reach your WordPress dashboard. It would look something like this:

Examples of Author Websites (For Inspiration & Ideas)

Before you start working on your own author website, it’s a good idea to set some goals for what you want it to look like and what features you want to add.

The beauty of WordPress is that you can add just about every type of feature on your site since there are over 59,000 free plugins available (more on this later).

Following are a few examples of author websites that we really like. You can take a look at them to get ideas for your own website.

1. James Clear

James Clear is the author of the #1 New York Times best-selling book Atomic Habits.

His website features a clean minimalist design with an email capture form as the main call to action.

2. Lisa Gardner

Popular fiction author Lisa Gardner’s website showcases primarily her work and drives traffic to online retailers where users can purchase more of her books.

It has a slider at the top and also has a prominent email newsletter signup form right below that.

3. Elizabeth Gilbert

This author website example prominently displays Elizabeth Gilbert’s books with links to online retailers where users can buy those books.

On top, it links to different sections neatly highlighted with icons.

4. Simon Sinek

Simon is the author of the popular ‘Start with Why‘ book, and his website has multiple monetization options tied together.

It features books, a podcast, online courses, an online store, and more.

5. Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell’s author website features a minimalist design with the latest book showcased prominently on the front page.

His menu also features a podcast.

Choosing a Theme for Your Author Site

Now that you have some ideas on how you want to structure your author’s website, it is time to choose a design.

Option 1. Choose a WordPress Theme for Authors

WordPress uses themes to control the display of your website. A typical WordPress theme contains several templates for different parts of a website.

There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes available that you can use to build an author’s website. However, this abundance also makes it harder for beginners to figure out which design would work best for them.

To make it easier, we have compiled a list of the best WordPress themes for authors.

We recommend starting with a minimalist theme with a clean layout and lots of empty space. This makes your website looks clean and more professional.

Option 2. Using SeedProd’s Drag and Drop Page Builder

WordPress themes are incredibly easy to use. However, sometimes you may want the ability to just create your custom website design.

This is where SeedProd comes in. It is the best WordPress page builder plugin on the market and allows you to create any kind of layout you need with drag & drop (no coding needed).

SeedProd comes with an intuitive page builder where you can simply point and click to edit any item or drag and drop items to create your own layouts.

It is theme agnostic, which means it works regardless of which WordPress theme you are using.

You can even create a custom WordPress theme without any coding and then edit it using the same easy-to-use interface.

Setting Up Your Website Layout and Pages

WordPress comes with two commonly used content types called posts and pages.

Posts are part of a blog and displayed in reverse chronological order, with most recent posts at the top. On the other hand, pages are used for more static content. You can see other author websites to get an idea about which pages you need to create.

Typically, websites made for authors have the following essential pages:

• Home page – This is the front page that users will see if they enter your domain name.
• Blog page – This is where you can post regular updates, news, articles, and more.
• About / Bio – An about page provides a detailed introduction of the author with biographical information, awards, achievements, and more.
• Contact Page – A simple page with a contact form and other ways to reach out to the author.

There could be other pages as well, depending on how you want to run your author website. For instance, if you have an online store where you sell merchandise, then you may want to add a shop page.

For more details, see our article on important pages for any type of WordPress website.

To create a new page in WordPress, simply head over to Pages » Add New. From here you can provide a title for your page and then add the content.

WordPress comes with a powerful block editor where each content item is added as a block. See our tutorial on how to use the WordPress editor to create beautiful content layouts for your pages.

Alternately, you can also use SeedProd to create custom page layouts for your website.

Once you have added a few pages, you would want to add them to the top navigation bar of your website.

You can simply go to Appearance » Menus page to create a new menu. After that, add the pages you just created from the left column to your menu.

Don’t forget to click on the Save Menu button to store your changes. For more details, see our tutorial on how to add navigation menus in WordPress.

Selling Books on Your Author’s Website

As an author, you would want to prominently showcase your books across your website.

WordPress makes it super easy.

You can simply create a page called Books and add your book cover images with buttons to buy them on Amazon, or any other online store where your books are available.

You can also display your newest book on the front page of your website with a call to action button that take users to an online retailer.

For step-by-step instructions, you can see our guides on how to add and align images and how to add buttons in WordPress.

If you are currently only selling ebooks as digital downloads, then you can check out our tutorial on how to sell ebooks in WordPress.

Promoting Your Author Website

Now that your author website is all set up, the next big step is to promote it.

This not only helps you sell more books but also establishes your author name as a brand.

Following are some essential tips used by almost all authors to promote their websites.

1. Start Your Email Newsletter

Not everyone visiting your website is going to buy your books right away. Plus, most people want to hear the latest news from their favorite authors.

An email newsletter is the easiest way to reach out to your readers and potential readers on a regular basis.

WordPress works with all top email marketing services. We recommend using Constant Contact as the most beginner-friendly email service on the market.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to start your newsletter.

Having a large subscriber base helps you negotiate better book contracts in the future.

2. Grow Your Email List Quickly

Now simply creating a newsletter and adding a plain sign-up form to your website is not enough to grow your email list quickly.

You need to actively promote your newsletter across your website and nudge users to sign up.

The best tool for this is OptinMonster. It is the industry-leading conversion optimization software that allows you to convert website visitors into subscribers and customers.

OptinMonster comes with tools like lightbox popups, slide-in popups, header & footer banners, countdown timers, and more. All of them allow you to capture more emails and grow your newsletter.

Need more tricks? See our tips on quickly growing your email list.

3. Optimize WordPress SEO for Author Website

SEO or search engine optimization helps you bring more free traffic to your website from search engines.

For that, you need All in One SEO for WordPress. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin and allows you to easily optimize your website without any technical knowledge.

The best part is that it comes with schema markup, which tells search engines that your website represents a person with your photo.

Apart from that, All in One SEO will also monitor your site’s SEO score and will make recommendations to improve it.

For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to properly set up All in One SEO for WordPress.

5. Add Contact Forms

Your author website is not only the place to promote your books, it is also the place to generate business opportunities, get reader feedback, and establish your brand.

Adding a contact form to your website is the best way for all these users to quickly send you a message.

For this, you’ll need WPForms. It is the best WordPress contact form plugin on the market and comes with a simple drag and drop form builder.

WPForms comes with features like entry management, user surveys, real-time polls, instant notifications, form templates, and spam protection.

6. Sell Online Courses and Subscriptions

Many authors particularly in self-help, health & nutrition, and business categories are now offering online courses and exclusive members-only content on their websites.

This helps them add another revenue stream apart from selling books.

If you want to add that to your website, then you’ll need to install and activate MemberPress.

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin that allows you to easily sell subscriptions, restrict content to paid users, and sell online courses.

You can easily accept online payments, set up recurring payments, add course content, set up drip content rules, and more.

For complete details, see our guide on how to build a membership website or see our tutorial on selling online courses for beginners.

7. Track User Activity on Your Author Site

Now that you have set up your website and started promoting it, you would want to keep an eye on how your site is performing.

You can easily track your website statistics with MonsterInsights. It is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and helps you easily install Google Analytics.

MonsterInsights shows easy-to-understand reports inside your WordPress dashboard. This gives you a clear picture of where your users are coming from and what they are doing on your website.

It also helps you track conversions for your forms, buttons, eCommerce, and more.

This way you can tweak your website to boost conversions and get more people to sign up for your newsletter, buy books, or join your membership program.

Need more suggestions, see our complete pick of the essential WordPress plugins for all sort of websites.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create an author website in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how much does it cost to build a WordPress website, or see our expert comparison of the best virtual business phone number apps.

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 Create an Author Website in WordPress (Step by Step) first appeared on WPBeginner.

July 18, 2022 at 03:00PM