MemberPress Creators Have Earned over $1 billion dollars (Milestone Update)

It’s always mind blowing for me to see the impact WordPress makes on the global economy.

MemberPress, the leading WordPress membership and course platform, announced today that they have passed the milestone of $1 billion dollars in creator earnings.

This is a conservative estimate and likely MemberPress creators have earned way more than that.

With the digital acceleration from last year, they are estimating that MemberPress site creators are projected to earn over $600 million dollars in 2021 alone.

For those who don’t know, I invested in MemberPress in 2018 as part of our WPBeginner Growth Fund.

It’s been an exciting journey to work alongside with Blair Williams, founder & CEO of MemberPress.

The impact our users (website creators) are making through their online courses and membership sites is truly humbling to watch.

Note: Want to add premium content on your site? See our step by step guide on how to create a membership site, and how to sell online courses in WordPress.

Product Update from MemberPress

Last year, MemberPress launched an easy to use online course builder that works on top of the WordPress block editor. This makes it easy for non-techy website owners to create courses, add lessons, manage access control, and more.

The team also added a Classroom mode to offer a distraction-free learning experience that’s focused on content consumption and course completion rate. This immersive learning mode works with all WordPress themes.

Aside from the huge update on Courses, MemberPress also made it seamless to add premium content protection for various top page builder plugins such as Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder, WP Bakery, etc.

They also made significant improvements to add drip content in WordPress, ability to gift memberships, added PDF invoices, integrations with PushEngage, and more.

I also got a sneak peek of some big features they’re working on, and it’s going to be an exciting 2021.

What Can You Use MemberPress for?

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin and online course platform for many reasons.

Here’s what you can do with MemberPress:

• Create a membership site in WordPress
• Create and sell online courses
• Automatically add Drip content in WordPress
• Sell group membership account for corporate teams
• Sell eBooks or premium file downloads
• Create a paywall for premium content with preview options (similar to NY Times)

Basically if you want to restrict access to any type of premium content in WordPress, then you should use MemberPress.

Final Thoughts on WordPress & Creator Economy

The WordPress economy and indirectly the creator economy is huge. In the State of Word for 2020, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress shared that WooCommerce facilitated over $20 billion in sales in 2020.

Other third-party online course platforms like Teachable reported that course creators earned over $456.7 million in 2020. Thinkific is also estimating their course creators to earn around $550 million in 2021.

MemberPress is estimating that creators using MemberPress will surpass estimated $600 million in sales in 2021, and this is a conservative estimate.

The creator economy has been on the rise since I started WPBeginner in 2009, but it’s never been stronger than right now.

If you have the knowledge and passion for teaching others, then you can start a very successful online business today.

The combination of YouTube, membership platforms, and social networks for building community provide a unique opportunity for anyone who has a desire to succeed.

As a content creator myself, it’s extremely rewarding for me to see others succeed in their online journey.

I want to congratulate Blair and the MemberPress team in their role for building a robust platform that supports thousands of creators find success online.

Here’s to an amazing 2021!

P.S. If you have a WordPress product that’s empowering website owners to succeed online and want to work with us, then I would love to chat with you. Click here to learn more about WPBeginner Growth Fund.

The post MemberPress Creators Have Earned over $1 billion dollars (Milestone Update) appeared first on WPBeginner.

March 09, 2021 at 06:06PM

How to Make a Gaming Website With WordPress in 2021 (Step by Step)

Do you want to learn how to make a gaming website with WordPress?

Gaming has never been more popular. With your own gaming website, you can create a gaming community, start a popular gaming blog, and even earn a side income.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily make a gaming website with WordPress without any technical skills.

What Do You Need to Build a Gaming Website Site Using WordPress?

You will need the following things to make a gaming website with WordPress.

• A domain name (This will be the name of your website that people type to find your site online e.g. wpbeginner.com)
• A web hosting account (This is where your website’s files will be stored)
• A WordPress theme (This will control how your site looks and functions)
• The right WordPress plugins (This is how you will add the specific gaming features you require)
• SSL certificate (You need this if you’re planning on selling products or adding Twitch streams)
• Your undivided attention for 1 hour

Depending on the type of gaming website you’re building, it’s entirely possible to build it in under an hour. We’ll walk you through the entire process, step by step.

In this tutorial, we’ll cover the following:

• Different types of gaming websites you can make
• How to get a free domain name
• How to choose the best website hosting
• How to choose the best WordPress gaming theme
• What WordPress gaming plugins can enhance your site
• Best resources to grow your gaming website

That being said, let’s get started.

Step 0: What Kind of WordPress Gaming Site Will You Make?

If you love video games, then there’s nothing better than being involved in the space.

Gaming blogs and websites cater to the large community of gamers who are looking for articles about the latest games, consoles, hardware, events, and more.

What kind of gaming websites can you make with WordPress?

• A dedicated gaming forum for your favorite game
• A gaming review site and news blog
• A site that hosts simple and fun online games
• A site that sells products to the gaming community

Maybe your new gaming website will be the next IGN, Kotaku, or GamesRadar?

Whatever kind of gaming website you want to make, this tutorial will help you build it using WordPress.

Step 1. Choosing the Right Website Platform

To start, you need to choose the right website builder, and since you’re reading this, you’re on the right track.

You’re going to want to use WordPress. But, there are two types of WordPress software that share the same name, so it’s easy to get confused.

First, you have WordPress.com, which is a blog hosting platform. The second is WordPress.org, which is the self-hosted version of WordPress.

We recommend using the self-hosted WordPress.org version because it gives you more freedom, control, and access to all WordPress features.

For a comparison, see the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

Next, you’ll need a domain name and web hosting. But, you don’t want just any web hosting company. You need a high-quality hosting provider that’ll support your WordPress website as it grows.

A domain name typically costs $14.99 / year, and web hosting starts around $7.99 per month. If you’re just getting started, this can be a big investment.

Fortunately, Bluehost, a hosting provider recommended by WordPress, has agreed to offer our readers a free domain, SSL certificate, and discount on their web hosting.

Basically, you can get started for $2.75 / month.

→ Click Here to Claim This Exclusive Bluehost Offer ←

After you purchase hosting through Bluehost, they will automatically install the WordPress content management system (CMS) for you.

If you prefer, you can install WordPress yourself. For more details, follow our complete WordPress installation tutorial.

Once you have WordPress installed, it’s time to set up the rest of your WordPress gaming website.

You can follow our step by step tutorial on how to make a website for complete setup instructions.

Step 2. Choosing the Perfect WordPress Gaming Theme

The next step after setting up your WordPress is site is to select the perfect WordPress gaming theme.

When you’re searching for the best WordPress gaming theme, you’ll come across several choices that have gaming-related features baked right in.

Even though it may seem like a good idea, you’ll actually want to avoid using these themes.

You don’t need a WordPress theme that’s built for gaming.

Most gaming WordPress themes are bloated and will lock you into using them forever. You could even run into compatibility issues when trying to add new features to your site.

It’s better to choose a flexible, high-quality theme and add more functionality with WordPress plugins. There are all kinds of plugins to help you add the features you’re looking for.

By taking this approach, you have the flexibility to change themes in the future while keeping the same features and not having to hire a WordPress developer.

We have an in-depth article that’ll help you select the perfect WordPress theme.

If you want to shortcut the process, then check out our picks for the best WordPress magazine themes.

A magazine template can be perfect for gaming websites since it models what other large successful sites are doing in the gaming space.

Once you’ve found a theme you like, you can install and activate the theme. If you need help installing the theme, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress theme.

Step 3. Installing the Right WordPress Gaming Plugins

After that, it’s time to add more functionality to your website with WordPress gaming plugins.

Plugins are like apps for your WordPress site. They allow you to add all sort of features to your website. There are over 58,000+ free plugins for WordPress.

What kind of gaming features can you add to WordPress?

• Detailed video game reviews
• A community gaming forum
• Twitch video streaming
• Real-time games visitors can play
• Selling game-related products

Adding Game Reviews to WordPress

If you’re a gaming blogger that’s blogging about games, hardware, and consoles, then you’ll want to add advanced review functionality to your site.

That way, when you’re writing product reviews, you can add starred ratings and improve the appearance of your reviews.

Look how your reviews will stand out in the search engines:

The best way to do this is by using the WP Product Review Lite plugin. It lets you manage and display gaming reviews on your site.

The plugin gives you customization options to add pros and cons, product images, ratings, and more to your reviews.

There’s even a feature to add a sidebar, top products, and wrap-up widgets to your site.

For more details, see our guide on how to create a reviews site with WordPress.

You may also want to use plugins like Pretty Links or ThirstyAffiliates to better monetize your website with affiliate marketing.

Creating a Game-Related Forum in WordPress

Another great feature you may want to add to your site is a forum for your gaming community.

A forum can be a discussion board, a place to share tips about a specific game, or even a question-and-answer platform.

Forums allow your visitors to feel like part of your website. When they participate in the discussion and share with others, they’re more likely to come back to your WordPress blog and engage in other ways.

The best way to add forum functionality is with a WordPress plugin like bbPress or BuddyPress. These are two of the best WordPress forum plugins and will help you easily add forum functionality to your site.

For more details, see our guide on how to add a forum in WordPress with bbPress.

Adding Streaming Functionality to WordPress

If you’re a streamer or want to embed popular Twitch and Esports video streams into your gaming site, you can do that easily.

The best way to add this feature is with a WordPress plugin.

We recommend using the Twitch TV Easy Embed plugin. It lets you embed Twitch.tv streams into WordPress and customize the appearance.

To install the plugin, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

After the plugin is installed and activated simply navigate to Settings » Easy Embed for Twitch TV (Rail).

On this screen you’ll find the ‘Main Settings’ where you can set up the streams you want to display.

Using the free version of the plugin, you can enter the ‘Game’ or ‘Channel’ you want to stream.

Finally, make sure you click ‘Save Channel’ before existing the screen.

Here’s how it will display when adding the Twitch game ‘Hearthstone’.

To add Twitch streams to WordPress you can use the shortcode [getTwitchRail].

Simply copy the shortcode and paste it into any page or post, or even in your sidebar widget.

Just make sure you click the ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button to save your page and make your Twitch stream live.

If you want to add an entire wall of Twitch streams to WordPress, then you can use the Twitch TV Easy Embed (Wall) plugin. It’s created by the same team of web developers and follows the same setup instructions as above.

Adding Simple Fun Games to WordPress

You might be wondering how do you add games to a WordPress website?

Adding games to your site can give your visitors something fun to do and will hopefully leave them with a positive impression.

The best way to add games to your website is with a WordPress gaming plugin.

There are plugins like Dinosaur Game and the Word Search Puzzles Game that let you add simple games to your site.

To install the plugin, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

If you want to turn your WordPress website into an online gaming platform we recommend using MyArcadePlugin. It’s a premium plugin that’s used by over 100,000 WordPress sites.

Selling Game-Related Products in WordPress

Maybe your goal when creating a gaming website is to sell your own gaming guides and gear.

This could be a custom gaming eyewear you’ve created to help reduce eyestrain.

Or, you’re the master at a specific game, and you want to sell courses and walkthrough guides.

WordPress makes it easy to create your very own eCommerce store, selling digital or physical products.

To start selling products with WordPress, you’ll need to use the WooCommerce plugin.

For more details, see our step by step guide on how to start an online store.

For selling courses and exclusive membership content, take a look at our guide on how to create a membership site in WordPress.

Step 4. Taking Your WordPress Gaming Site to the Next Level

WordPress is a powerful and flexible platform that gives you access to thousands of different plugins you can use to grow your gaming website.

The following plugins can help you grow your gaming website today.

WPForms Lite – It’s the best contact for plugin for WordPress and lets you quickly create contact forms using the drag and drop builder.

AIOSEO – It’s the best WordPress SEO plugin and will help you rank higher in the search engines.

MonsterInsights – It allows you to easily install Google Analytics in WordPress, so you can understand where your visitors are coming from and what content on your site is the most valuable.

Smash Balloon – It’s the best social media feeds plugin for WordPress and let’s you add your social network feeds directly into WordPress.

SeedProd Lite – It’s the best page builder plugin that lets you easily customize your website with a drag and drop builder, no HTML needed.

For more plugin recommendations check out our list of 24 must have WordPress plugins for business websites.

Step 5. Mastering WordPress to Grow Your Website

WordPress is easy to use yet extremely powerful. From time to time, you may find yourself looking for some quick answers.

Here are some useful resources that will help you learn WordPress:

• WPBeginner Blog – This is where we publish our WordPress tutorials, how tos, and step by step guides.
• WPBeginner Videos – These step by step videos will help you learn WordPress FAST.
• WPBeginner on YouTube – Need more video instructions? Subscribe to our YouTube channel with more than 230,000 subscribers and 21 Million+ views.
• WPBeginner Dictionary – The best place for beginners to start and familiarize themselves with the WordPress lingo.
• WPBeginner Blueprint – Check out plugins, tools, and services we use on WPBeginner.
• WPBeginner Deals – Exclusive discounts on WordPress products and services for WPBeginner users.

Here are few of our guides that you should bookmark right away. It will save you lots of time and money in the future.

• 25 Most common WordPress errors and how to fix them
• Beginner’s guide to troubleshooting WordPress errors
• The ultimate WordPress security guide (step by step)
• How to increase your blog traffic (proven tips)

Many of our users use Google to find answers on WPBeginner. Simply type keywords for what you are looking for and add wpbeginner.com at the end.

Can’t find an answer? Send your question directly using our contact form and we will try our best to answer.

We hope this article helped you make a gaming website with WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to create an email newsletter and how to add web push notifications to connect with your visitors after they leave your website.

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 Make a Gaming Website With WordPress in 2021 (Step by Step) appeared first on WPBeginner.

March 08, 2021 at 06:00PM

How to Optimize Your WordPress Robots.txt for SEO

Recently one of our readers asked us for tips on how to optimize the robots.txt file to improve SEO.

Robots.txt file tells search engines how to crawl your website which makes it an incredibly powerful SEO tool.

In this article, we will show you how to create a perfect robots.txt file for SEO.

What is robots.txt file?

Robots.txt is a text file that website owners can create to tell search engine bots how to crawl and index pages on their site.

It is typically stored in the root directory, also known as the main folder, of your website. The basic format for a robots.txt file looks like this:

User-agent: [user-agent name]
Disallow: [URL string not to be crawled]

User-agent: [user-agent name]
Allow: [URL string to be crawled]


Sitemap: [URL of your XML Sitemap]

You can have multiple lines of instructions to allow or disallow specific URLs and add multiple sitemaps. If you do not disallow a URL, then search engine bots assume that they are allowed to crawl it.

Here is what a robots.txt example file can look like:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/

Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap_index.xml

In the above robots.txt example, we have allowed search engines to crawl and index files in our WordPress uploads folder.

After that, we have disallowed search bots from crawling and indexing plugins and WordPress admin folders.

Lastly, we have provided the URL of our XML sitemap.

Do You Need a Robots.txt File for Your WordPress Site?

If you don’t have a robots.txt file, then search engines will still crawl and index your website. However, you will not be able to tell search engines which pages or folders they should not crawl.

This will not have much of an impact when you’re first starting a blog and do not have a lot of content.

However as your website grows and you have a lot of content, then you would likely want to have better control over how your website is crawled and indexed.

Here is why.

Search bots have a crawl quota for each website.

This means that they crawl a certain number of pages during a crawl session. If they don’t finish crawling all pages on your site, then they will come back and resume crawl in the next session.

This can slow down your website indexing rate.

You can fix this by disallowing search bots from attempting to crawl unnecessary pages like your WordPress admin pages, plugin files, and themes folder.

By disallowing unnecessary pages, you save your crawl quota. This helps search engines crawl even more pages on your site and index them as quickly as possible.

Another good reason to use robots.txt file is when you want to stop search engines from indexing a post or page on your website.

It is not the safest way to hide content from the general public, but it will help you prevent them from appearing in search results.

What Does an Ideal Robots.txt File Look Like?

Many popular blogs use a very simple robots.txt file. Their content may vary, depending on the needs of the specific site:

User-agent: *
Disallow:
 
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/page-sitemap.xml

This robots.txt file allows all bots to index all content and provides them a link to the website’s XML sitemaps.

For WordPress sites, we recommend the following rules in the robots.txt file:

User-Agent: *
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /readme.html
Disallow: /refer/

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/post-sitemap.xml
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/page-sitemap.xml

This tell search bots to index all WordPress images and files. It disallows search bots from indexing WordPress plugin files, WordPress admin area, the WordPress readme file, and affiliate links.

By adding sitemaps to robots.txt file, you make it easy for Google bots to find all the pages on your site.

Now that you know what an ideal robots.txt file look like, let’s take a look at how you can create a robots.txt file in WordPress.

How to Create a Robots.txt File in WordPress?

There are two ways to create a robots.txt file in WordPress. You can choose the method that works best for you.

Method 1: Editing Robots.txt File Using All in One SEO

All in One SEO also known as AIOSEO is the best WordPress SEO plugin in the market used by over 2 million websites.

It’s easy to use and comes with a robots.txt file generator.

If you don’t have already have the AIOSEO plugin installed, you can see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: Free version of AIOSEO is also available and has this feature.

Once the plugin is installed and activated, you can use it to create and edit your robots.txt file directly from your WordPress admin area.

Simply go to All in One SEO » Tools to edit your robots.txt file.

First, you’ll need to turn on the editing option, by clicking the ‘Enable Custom Robots.txt’ toggle to blue.

With this toggle on, you can create a custom robots.txt file in WordPress.

All in One SEO will show your existing robots.txt file in the ‘Robots.txt Preview’ section at the bottom of your screen.

This version will show the default rules that were added by WordPress.

These default rules tell the search engines not to crawl your core WordPress files, allows the bots to index all content, and provides them a link to your site’s XML sitemaps.

Now, you can add your own custom rules to improve your robots.txt for SEO.

To add a rule, enter a user agent in the ‘User Agent’ field. Using a * will apply the rule to all user agents.

Then, select whether you want to ‘Allow’ or ‘Disallow’ the search engines to crawl.

Next, enter filename or directory path in the ‘Directory Path’ field.

The rule will automatically be applied to your robots.txt. To add another rule clicks the ‘Add Rule’ button.

We recommend adding rules until you create the ideal robots.txt format we shared above.

Your custom rules will look like this.

Once you’re done, don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your changes.

Method 2. Edit Robots.txt file Manually Using FTP

For this method, you will need to use an FTP client to edit robots.txt file.

Simply connect to your WordPress hosting account using an FTP client.

Once inside, you will be able to see the robots.txt file in your website’s root folder.

If you don’t see one, then you likely don’t have a robots.txt file.

In that case, you can just go ahead and create one.

Robots.txt is a plain text file, which means you can download it to your computer and edit it using any plain text editor like Notepad or TextEdit.

After saving your changes, you can upload it back to your website’s root folder.

How to Test Your Robots.txt File?

Once you have created your robots.txt file, it’s always a good idea to test it using a robots.txt tester tool.

There are many robots.txt tester tools out there, but we recommend using the one inside Google Search Console.

First, you’ll need to have your website linked with Google Search Console. If you haven’t done this yet, see our guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

Then, you can use the Google Search Console Robots Testing Tool.

Simply select your property from the dropdown list.

The tool will automatically fetch your website’s robots.txt file and highlight the errors and warnings if it found any.

Final Thoughts

The goal of optimizing your robots.txt file is to prevent search engines from crawling pages that are not publicly available. For example, pages in your wp-plugins folder or pages in your WordPress admin folder.

A common myth among SEO experts is that blocking WordPress category, tags, and archive pages will improve crawl rate and result in faster indexing and higher rankings.

This is not true. It’s also against Google’s webmaster guidelines.

We recommend that you follow the above robots.txt format to create a robots.txt file for your website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to optimize your WordPress robots.txt file for SEO. You may also want to see our ultimate WordPress SEO guide and the best WordPress SEO tools to grow your website.

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 Optimize Your WordPress Robots.txt for SEO appeared first on WPBeginner.

March 06, 2021 at 03:20PM