13 Best WordPress Footer Design Examples (+ Best Practices)

Are you looking for the best footer design examples to help you get inspired?

The footer is the area at the bottom of your website, and website owners often overlook it. By checking out great website footers, you can get design inspiration and improve your footer.

In this article, we’ll show you some of the best footer design examples and offer best practices and tips to help you take action.

Why Is a Good WordPress Footer Design Important?

The footer is the area of your website that appears at the very bottom of the page. It will normally be on every page of your WordPress website.

Here’s an example of our footer on WPBeginner that millions of readers see every month.

We include links to our free tools and product sites, as well as ways for users to learn about us, find jobs with us, follow us on social media, and more.

Since it’s located at the bottom of the website, most beginners forget to optimize this area.

However, your website footer is an important area of your website. It lets you show important details and final takeaways in one place.

By customizing your footer, you can improve the overall user experience of your website and even optimize your site for WordPress SEO.

Plus, visitors who scroll to the bottom of the page are very engaged, so you can capture their attention with a call to action, email subscribe box, or send them to the most important pages on your website.

That being said, let’s show you some of the best footer design examples and best practices to optimize your WordPress footer.

Best WordPress Footer Design Examples

We’ve rounded up some of the top footer design examples to help you get design inspiration for your own footer area.

1. WPForms

WPForms has a footer with all kinds of useful links. You’ll find links that go to the most helpful company pages, the top features of the plugin, and some useful WordPress links.

This ensures that when the reader gets to the bottom of the page and still has questions, they’ll find the exact resources they need. There’s also a floating alert bar at the bottom of the page with a call to action.

2. OptinMonster

OptinMonster has a footer that offers readers links to important company pages, top features, helpful product links, and much more.

It also has simple social media icons, trust icons, and a company logo for branding purposes.

3. Neil Patel

Neil Patel has a compact and straightforward footer that offers readers quick navigation links. The footer menu is the same as the navigation menu at the top of the site.

Plus, readers have the option to follow Neil Patel on social media as well.

4. Michael Hyatt

Michael Hyatt has another simple and compact footer. It highlights the copyright date, easy social sharing buttons, and links to pages like terms of service and privacy policy.

Directly above the footer, you’ll see a call to action to download a free guide, which can convert a lot of visitors that make it to the bottom of the page.

5. ReddBar

ReddBar is a WooCommerce store with a footer that encourages email sign-ups. Directly above the footer links, there’s a massive sign-up box for readers.

Some of the helpful links include a link to their FAQ page, contact page, wholesale pricing page, and more.

6. Reader’s Digest

The Reader’s Digest footer contains a lot of information for visitors. You’ll find links to their category pages, other company brands, social media sharing buttons, and more.

Plus, there’s an eye-catching email sign-up box to encourage visitors to join their email list.

7. IsItWP

The IsItWP footer has a quick section on what the website is about and links to other sites and company pages.

It also has a unique site links drop-down menu that lets readers click to find the exact type of content they’re looking for.

8. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights has a simple footer that focuses on helping readers find the information they need. There are links to their premium features, company resources, and other brand links.

Plus, there’s a call to action to lead visitors to the pricing page. There are also social icons.

9. Printing New York

Printing New York is an online store that ships worldwide. The footer highlights their address, services, and popular products.

They use the structure of their links to help boost their local SEO and search engine rankings.

10. Nalgene

Nalgene has a clean and well-organized footer section. Directly above the footer, there’s a simple email sign-up box.

After that, there are well-organized links to help visitors find the exact products they’re looking for, along with company-related links.

11. ProBlogger

The ProBlogger footer has links to their most popular posts, top resources, and new jobs posted on their job board.

There’s also a big email sign-up form directly above the footer and a small footer navigation menu with the same menu options as the header navigation.

12. TrustPulse

TrustPulse is the best social proof notifications plugin on the market. Instead of including multiple navigation menus or page links, they feature an email newsletter sign-up box.

Although it’s different from most other brands, a minimalist footer like this can convert well since there are fewer distractions or actions the visitor can take.

13. The Next Web

The Next Web has a footer that stands out from the rest of the website. It has social media sharing buttons, links to important pages, and more.

You’ll see a social proof section directly above the footer where they feature logos from popular brands and websites they’ve been mentioned or featured.

WordPress Footer Design – Tips and Best Practices

There are a lot of ways you can improve your user experience and create a better footer for your WordPress blog.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the best practices to keep in mind as you edit your website footer.

Include Your Business Contact Information

Having contact information listed on your site is essential. You should have a separate contact form page on your website, so your visitors can get in touch.

However, the footer is also an excellent place to include your contact information, especially if you have local customers who will be looking for your physical address.

For local businesses, the more ways you can feature your contact information, address, and even business hours, the better.

Add Links to Important Website Pages

It’s important to have clear navigation across your entire website. That’s why it’s common for websites to include links in their footers.

You can add links for your most important product pages, top blog posts, about pages, and more.

Think about the most valuable pages on your website and what your visitors will find the most useful.

Adding and optimizing your links can also give you an SEO benefit and boost your search engine rankings.

Add Social Proof to Improve Conversions

One thing you may have seen certain websites do in their footer is to add social proof. This can help to earn your customer’s trust and position you as an expert in your space.

It can be as simple as a customer testimonial or a collection of logos of popular websites you’ve been featured on.

Here at WPBeginner, we highlight logos of popular websites where we’ve been featured directly above the website footer.

Add a Call to Action

When your visitors get to the bottom of your website, you’ll want to tell them the exact action they should take and how they should do it.

For some websites, this will be a call to action to sign up for their email newsletter. For others, it will be links to explore popular product features or even a call to action button.

Your footer is the last chance to get your visitors’ attention and encourage them to become subscribers and customers or simply spend more time on your website.

For more optimization tips, see our checklist of ten things to add to your website footer.

We hope this article helped you find some of the best footer examples to help you optimize your website footer. You may also want to see our guide on how to choose the best blogging platform and our picks on the best virtual business phone number apps 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 13 Best WordPress Footer Design Examples (+ Best Practices) first appeared on WPBeginner.

January 12, 2023 at 01:01AM

How to Easily Create a Multilingual Sitemap in WordPress

Are you looking to improve the search engine rankings of your site’s multilingual pages?

Creating a multilingual sitemap helps Google, Bing, and other search engines easily find your content and index it. You can get more international search traffic simply by giving search engines an easy way to find multilingual content on your WordPress site.

In this article, we’ll show you how to create a multilingual sitemap for WordPress.

Why Create a Multilingual Sitemap in WordPress?

A sitemap is a file that contains all the important content on your WordPress website. It is in the XML format and is targeted toward search engines instead of people.

Creating an XML sitemap for your multilingual website helps search engines find and index your content faster. For instance, if you have different domains or subdomains translated into multiple languages, then you’ll need to create a sitemap for each website.

Note: If you’re looking for an easy way to set up a website in different languages, then follow our step-by-step guide on how to easily create a multilingual WordPress site.

A sitemap is extremely important for your WordPress SEO. Let’s say you just created a new multilingual website. Your new site won’t have many backlinks, and it can be hard for search engines to discover your new articles and pages.

The sitemap provides a way for search engines to learn about your new content in another language. This way, your multilingual pages will start to get indexed and appear in search results.

That being said, let’s take a look at how you can create a multilingual sitemap in WordPress.

Creating a Multilingual Sitemap in WordPress

By default, WordPress automatically creates an XML sitemap for new websites. You can add wp-sitemap.xml at the end of the domain, and WordPress will display the default XML sitemap.

However, this feature is fairly limited and not very flexible. You can’t control which content to add or remove from the sitemap.

The best way to create an XML sitemap in WordPress is by using the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin. It is the best WordPress SEO plugin and helps you optimize your site for search engines.

It also automatically creates a sitemap for a multilingual site and gives you more control over which pages and website sections you want to show in the sitemap.

The sitemap feature is available in the AIOSEO Lite version for free. However, if you’re looking for more features like video sitemaps, news sitemaps, redirections manager, and link assistant, then we recommend using the AIOSEO Pro version.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the AIOSEO plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you’ll see the AIOSEO setup wizard. Simply click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button and follow the onscreen instructions. For more details, you can visit our guide on how to set up All in One SEO plugin for WordPress.

After that, you’ll need to go to All in One SEO » Sitemaps from your WordPress dashboard and ensure that the ‘Enable Sitemap’ option is enabled.

AIOSEO will automatically create a sitemap for your multilingual website.

You can click the ‘Open Sitemap’ button to preview it or simply add ‘sitemap.xml’ to your website URL.

Please note that if you’re using WPML to create multilingual sites, then AIOSEO will automatically serve sitemaps across different languages.

For instance, your sitemap URL will be something like /nl/sitemap.xml, /de/sitemap.xml, or /fr/sitemap.xml.

If you’re using TranslatePress to create your WordPress multilingual site, then you will need to install their SEO pack addon which is fully compatible with AIOSEO.

Configuring Additional Multilingual Sitemap Settings

To further customize your multilingual sitemaps, you can scroll down in AIOSEO Sitemaps settings to view more options.

By default, the plugin lets you include all post types and taxonomies in the sitemap. It also gives the option to include date archives and author sitemaps.

However, you can uncheck the ‘Post Types’ and ‘Taxonomies’ options and view more options.

For example, let’s say you have translated content as a custom post type. You can simply check that option to include in the sitemap and exclude other post types.

Besides that, you can also add more pages from your multilingual website to the sitemap.

For example, let’s say you’ve translated a pillar article or an evergreen content into another language. You can add the page URL to the sitemap using AIOSEO and help search engines easily find your content.

Simply scroll down and click the ‘Additional Page’ toggle to enable the option. After that, you can add the page URL, and choose the priority and the frequency.

AIOSEO lets you exclude posts, pages, and specific terms from your WordPress sitemaps.

For instance, you can add different multilingual posts and pages that you don’t to include in the sitemap. These can be contact us page, or terms of service pages translated in another language.

First, you’ll need to enable the ‘Advanced Settings’ option. Then enter the URLs in the ‘Exclude Posts / Posts’ field and the terms in the ‘Exclude Terms’ field.

Submitting Your Multilingual Sitemap to Search Engines

Now that you’ve created a multilingual sitemap, the next step is to submit it to different search engines. This way, Google, Bing, and other search engines can easily find new content.

Submit Multilingual Sitemap to Google

Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that you can use to monitor your site’s performance on search results. It helps you see which keywords people use to find your website and resolve any errors that might prevent you from appearing on Google.

Submitting your multilingual sitemap to the Search Console helps Google quickly discover new content.

You can simply log in to your account and head to the ‘Sitemaps’ option from the menu on your left. Next, enter your multilingual sitemap URL under the ‘Add a new sitemap’ option and click the ‘Submit’ button.

For more details, please see our guide on how to submit your website to search engines.

Submit Multilingual Sitemap to Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo

Similarly, you can submit the sitemap to Bing using the Webmaster Tools. The best part is that, when you submit your site to Bing, it’s also automatically submitted to the Yahoo and DuckDuckGo search engines.

You can see our step-by-step tutorial on how to add your website to Bing Webmaster Tools for more details.

We hope that this article helped you learn how to create a multilingual sitemap in WordPress. You may also want to see our expert SEO tips to optimize your blog posts, and our expert pick of the best keyword research tools to improve your SEO rankings.

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 Easily Create a Multilingual Sitemap in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

January 11, 2023 at 03:31PM

How to Embed Facebook Status Posts in WordPress

Are you looking for a way to embed Facebook status posts in WordPress?

Facebook statuses are an easy way to share important updates and time-sensitive information with your audience. By embedding your Facebook timeline in WordPress, you can get more engagement, let people know what’s happening on your Facebook page or group, and grow your followers.

In this article, we will show you how to embed Facebook status posts in WordPress.

Why Embed Facebook Status in WordPress?

Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the world and has billions of active users. For website owners, Facebook is a powerful way to connect with a new audience and engage with the people who already know about your brand.

Facebook is also perfect for sharing time-sensitive information in real time. In this way, you can use FOMO to create a sense of urgency.

For example, you might post a status about how visitors are running out of time to enter your giveaway in WordPress, or take advantage of your flash sale.

However, people won’t see your Facebook status if they just visit your website. This makes it difficult to grow your Facebook following and build a relationship with your audience.

By embedding your Facebook status posts in WordPress, you can promote your social media page and encourage more people to follow you on Facebook.

As you post new statuses, they’ll appear on your site automatically, so it’s also a great way to keep your website fresh, even for regular visitors.

That being said, let’s see how to embed Facebook status posts in WordPress.

Adding a Facebook Status Plugin to WordPress

The easiest way to embed your Facebook status feed in WordPress is by using the free Smash Balloon Social Post Feed.

This plugin lets you display text and links from your Facebook page or group.

In this guide, we’ll be using the free version of Smash Balloon as it allows you to embed Facebook statuses no matter what your budget. However, there’s Smash Balloon Facebook Feed that lets you embed different kinds of content. For example, you can embed a Facebook video in WordPress, and show images and videos in a lightbox popup on your site.

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Smash Balloon Social Post Feed plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After that, you’ll need to connect Smash Balloon to your Facebook page or group, by going to Facebook Feed » All Feeds. Here, click on ‘Add New.’

Smash Balloon pro lets you show posts from your photo albums, timeline, events, and more.

However, the free version only allows you to embed your Facebook statuses so click on ‘Timeline’ and then select ‘Next.’

Now, you need to select the page or group which you’ll get the Facebook statuses from.

To get started, click on ‘Add New.’

On the next screen, choose whether you want to embed the feed from a Facebook group or Facebook page.

After that, go ahead and click on ‘Connect to Facebook.’

This opens a popup where you can log into your Facebook account and choose the pages or groups which you want to get the status updates from.

As soon as you’ve done that, click on ‘Next.’

Facebook will then show all the information that Smash Balloon will have access to and the actions it can perform.

To restrict Smash Balloon’s access to your Facebook account, just click any of the switches to turn it from ‘Yes’ to ‘No.’ Just be aware that this may affect the content that you can embed on your WordPress blog or website.

With that in mind, it’s a good idea to leave all the switches enabled.

When you’re happy with how your Facebook permissions are set up, click on ‘Done.’

After a few moments, you should see a message confirming that you’ve connected your WordPress website to Facebook. With that done, click on the ‘OK’ button.

Smash Balloon will now take you back to the WordPress dashboard automatically.

How to Embed Facebook Status Posts in WordPress

You will now see a popup with the source you just linked to your website. Simply select the radio button next to your Facebook page or group and then click on the ‘Add’ button.

If you accidentally closed the popup, then don’t worry. You can simply refresh the tab to reopen the popup.

After that, Smash Balloon will take you back to the Facebook Feed » All Feeds page automatically. Just like before, click on the ‘Add New’ button, select ‘Timeline,’ and then click on the ‘Next’ button.

Now, select your Facebook page or group, and click on ‘Next.’

Smash Balloon will now go ahead and create a timeline feed from the Facebook page or group you’ve chosen.

This is a good start, but Smash Balloon has lots of settings that you can use to customize your embedded timeline.

How to Customize Your Embedded Facebook Status Posts

To fine-tune your timeline, go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds in the WordPress dashboard.

Here, find the timeline feed you just created and click on the ‘Edit’ button next to it.

This opens the Smash Balloon feed editor, which shows a preview of your timeline to the right.

On the left-hand side, you’ll see all the different settings you can use to customize how the timeline looks on your site. Most of these settings are self-explanatory, but we’ll quickly cover all the main areas.

To start, you can change how the statuses are displayed by clicking on ‘Feed Layout.’

On this screen, you can switch between list and masonry layouts, as well as change the feed height. As you make changes, the preview will update automatically so you can try different settings to see what looks the best for your website.

You can preview how your status feed will look on desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones using the row of buttons in the upper-right corner.

Mobile devices usually have smaller screens and less processing power, so if you’re not happy with how the feed looks then it’s smart to show fewer statuses on tablets and smartphones.

To make this change, just type a different number into the ‘Mobile’ field in the ‘Number of Posts’ section.

By trying out different layouts you can create a Facebook status feed that looks great across all devices.

By default, Smash Balloon feed shows fewer columns on smartphones and tablets, compared to desktop computers. This helps your Facebook statuses fit comfortably on smaller screens.

After testing the mobile version of your WordPress website, you may want to show fewer columns on smartphones and tablets.

To do this, simply change the numbers under ‘Columns.’

When you’re happy with how the feed looks, click on the ‘Customize’ link.

This will take you back to the main Smash Balloon editor, ready for you to explore the next settings screen, which is ‘Color Scheme.’

Smash Balloon uses a color scheme inherited from your WordPress theme by default, but on this screen, you can switch to a ‘Light’ or ‘Dark’ look.

You can also create your own color scheme by selecting ‘Custom’ and then using the controls to change the text color in WordPress, change the background color, and more.

By default, Smash Balloon adds a header to your feed, which is your Facebook profile picture and the name of the group or page.

To customize this section, click on ‘Header’ in the left-hand menu.

Here, you can change the header size and color, hide your Facebook profile picture, and more.

If you would prefer to remove the header entirely, then click to turn off the ‘Enable’ toggle.

Next, you can change how the individual posts look inside your feed by selecting ‘Post Style’ from the left-hand menu.

After that, click on ‘Post Style’ again.

On this screen, you can choose between a regular and boxed layout.

If you select ‘Boxed’ then you can create a colored background for each Facebook post.

If you choose ‘Regular’ then you can change the thickness and color of the line that separates your different social media posts.

In the following image, we’ve added a thicker line to our Facebook status feed.

You can also customize the individual parts within each status by going back to the main settings screen.

Once again, select ‘Post Style’ but this time choose ‘Edit Individual Elements’ instead.

You will now see a list of all the different content that Smash Balloon includes in each post, such as the date, post author, and event title.

To remove a piece of content from your feed, simply click to uncheck its box.

You can also customize how each type of content looks by clicking on it.

For example, in the following image, you can see settings to change the size and color of the author text.

By default, Smash Balloon doesn’t include the Facebook ‘like’ button in your feed.

This button makes it easier for visitors to follow you on Facebook, so you may want to add it to your status feed by selecting the ‘Like Box’ settings.

After that, simply click on the ‘Enable’ button so that it turns blue.

You can now use the settings to change where the link box appears and the kind of content included in the box, such as your Facebook cover photo and total number of followers.

If you upgrade to Smash Balloon premium, then there are some more settings to explore. This includes a lightbox feature that allows visitors to explore your content in a popup.

Since you’re using the free version of Smash Balloon for now, you can go ahead and click on ‘Save’ to store your changes.

The next step is adding the Facebook status feed to your WordPress website.

How to Embed Facebook Status Posts in WordPress

You can add your Facebook status feed to WordPress using a block, widget, or shortcode.

If you’ve created more than one feed using Smash Balloon, then you’ll need to know the feed’s code if you’re going to add it using a block or widget.

To get this information, simply go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds and then look at the feed="" part of the shortcode. You’ll need to add this code to the block or widget, so make a note of it.

In the following example, we’ll need to use feed="8".

If you want to embed your Facebook statuses in a page or post, then we recommend using the ‘Custom Facebook Feed’ block.

Simply open the page or post where you want to embed the status feed. Then, click on the ‘+’ icon to add a new block and start typing ‘Custom Facebook Feed.’

When the right block appears, click to add it to the post or page.

The block will show one of your Smash Balloon feeds by default. If you want to use a different feed instead, then simply find ‘Shortcode Settings’ in the right-hand menu.

You can now add the feed="" code to this box. Once you’ve done that, click on the ‘Apply Changes’ button.

The block will now show all the status updates from your Facebook page or group. Just publish or update the page to make the feed live.

Another option is to add the feed to any widget-ready area, such as the sidebar or similar section. This allows visitors to see your latest Facebook updates across your entire website.

Simply go to Appearance » Widgets in the WordPress dashboard and then click on the blue ‘+’ button.

Now, start typing ‘Custom Facebook Feed’ into the search bar to find the right widget.

You can now drag it onto the area where you want to show your Facebook status updates. By default, the widget will show one of the feeds you created using Smash Balloon.

To show a different feed instead, type the feed’s code into the ‘Shortcode Settings’ box and then click on ‘Apply Changes.’

You can now click on the ‘Update’ button to make the widget live.

For more information, please see our step-by-step guide on how to add and use widgets.

Finally, you can embed your status on any page, post, or widget-ready area using a shortcode. To get the shortcode, simply go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds and copy the value in the ‘Shortcode’ column.

You can now add this code to your site. For more information, please see our detailed guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you learn how to embed Facebook status posts in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to create an email newsletter and the best WordPress Facebook plugins to grow your blog.

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 Embed Facebook Status Posts in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.

January 11, 2023 at 12:43AM