Tuesday, February 8, 2022

How to Hide Unnecessary Menu Items From WordPress Admin

Do you ever wonder if it was possible to clean up the WordPress admin area for your users?

There are lots of things in the WordPress admin area that your users, authors, or clients don’t need to see or use. Cleaning up the admin area helps to keep them focused on only the options they need, without distracting clutter.

In this article, we will show you how to hide unnecessary items from WordPress admin.

How to hide items from WordPress admin

Why Hide Unnecessary Items for WordPress Admin?

In the WordPress admin area, there are a lot of menus, submenus, options and plugin settings that you can change anytime. Some of these menu items include dashboard widgets, post edit area, plugins, appearance, tools, and more.

However, most of these menus and settings are not used on a daily basis and they end up cluttering the admin area. If you run a multi-author website or have clients visiting the admin area, then it’s a good practice to clean up the WordPress admin panel.

You can only keep menus and options that are useful for your authors and clients, and hide the rest of the submenus.

You may also want to deactivate items based on user roles by creating different admin interfaces for users with different roles and capabilities on your WordPress site.

That said, let’s look at how you can remove and hide unnecessary items from WordPress admin.

Note: This guide is about the admin menu that a registered user on your site sees when they log in. If you’re wanting to customize the navigation menus that all your website visitors see, then you should see our beginner’s guide on navigation menus in WordPress.

Hiding Menu Items from WordPress Admin

The easiest way to hide menus and items from WordPress admin panel is by using the Admin Menu Editor plugin. It’s a free WordPress plugin that lets you change the menu titles, URLs, icons, and more.

You can also hide menu items from the admin area, set user role permissions, and drag and drop menu items to organize your WordPress admin.

First, you’ll need to install and active the Admin Menu Editor plugin. For more details, please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you can head over to Settings » Menu Editor from your WordPress dashboard. Next, you’ll see all your menu and submenu items under the ‘Admin Menu’ tab.

Rearrange admin menu items

You can simply drag and drop your menu items to rearrange their order. There are also options to remove or add new menu items.

Next, go ahead and click the downwards arrow for any menu item to see more options. You can rename the menu title, change the target page, and more.

Change menu item settings

To hide a menu item for specific user, simply click the ‘Extra capability’ dropdown menu. After that, you can choose the user role who can view the menu item from the given options.

For example, let’s say you want to hide the Media menu and its submenus for all user roles except the administrator. To do that, simply click on the Extra capabilities dropdown menu and choose ‘Administrator’ under Roles.

Choose user role to hide menu item

Once you’re done, go ahead and save your changes.

Now the Media menu item will be visible to only the Administrator role and will be hidden to other user roles.

If someone still tries to access the hidden menu item by typing in the URL, then they’ll see the error message ‘You do not have sufficient permissions to access this admin page.’

Restricted error message

You can now repeat these steps for hiding other menu items and plugins from the WordPress admin menu for different users.

We hope this article helped you hide unnecessary items from WordPress admin area. You may also want to check out our guide on how to get a free SSL certificate in WordPress and the best WooCommerce 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 Hide Unnecessary Menu Items From WordPress Admin first appeared on WPBeginner.


February 08, 2022 at 03:00PM

Monday, February 7, 2022

How to Create a Fitness Tracker in WordPress (With Charts)

Do you want to create a fitness tracker in WordPress?

Many health and fitness-related businesses and online communities offer fitness tracking tools for their users. This helps to keep users engaged and grow your business.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create a fitness tracker in WordPress to boost user engagement on your website.

Creating a fitness tracker in WordPress

What is a Fitness Tracker?

A fitness tracker is an online tool that helps users track different aspects of their health and fitness performance.

It could be a weight loss tracker, a BMI calculator, a meal planner, or other type of health tracker. These online tools can be created using no-code WordPress plugins that calculate different values on the fly.

Why You Should Add a Fitness Tracker to Your WordPress Site

If you run a WordPress website for a health and fitness business or an online community, then adding a fitness tracker to your website is an easy way to build user engagement.

This includes websites like:

  • Gym websites
  • Weight loss websites
  • Fitness trainer’s personal site
  • Nutritional site or food blog
  • Health and fitness community
  • Lifestyle communities
  • and more

You can provide your users with actual tools to track their fitness performance, which is more likely to keep them on your site longer.

Improved user engagement leads to higher conversion rates and better customer retention for your business.

Building an Online Fitness Community

One of the easiest ways to monetize a health and fitness website is by using MemberPress. It is the best WordPress membership plugin and allows you to easily sell online courses and subscriptions.

You can create different types of fitness plans, hide members-only content behind a paywall, create online courses, and more.

Users can then use your built-in fitness tracker to measure their performance and progress over time. This helps them spend more time on your website which improves subscription renewals, upsells, and customer retention.

For more details, see our step by step tutorial on how to create a membership website in WordPress.

Creating an Online Fitness Tracker in WordPress

To create an online fitness tracker in WordPress, you’ll need Formidable Forms.

It is the best WordPress calculator plugin on the market that allows you to create advanced forms and calculators for your website. The drag and drop form builder makes it easy to create your fitness tracking forms without having to write any code or hire a developer.

Plus, it works great with other tools that you may already be using like MemberPress, WooCommerce, or your email service provider.

First, you need to install and activate the Formidable Forms plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: There is a limited free version of the plugin called Formidable Lite. However, you’ll need the premium version to unlock more features.

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

Formidable Forms license key

After that, you need to visit the Formidable » Forms page.

Here, simply click on the Add New button to create your fitness tracking form.

Create a new fitness tracking form

Next, you will be asked to choose a template for your form.

There are a bunch of templates that you can use, but for this tutorial we’ll be starting with a blank form.

Choose blank form template

Next, provide a name and description for your form and click on the Create button.

This will launch the Formidable Forms drag and drop builder. In the left column, you’ll see a list of the form fields that you can add.

To your right, you’ll see the form preview. Since our form is blank, there are no fields in the preview column.

Form builder interface

Let’s change that and add the form fields for our weight loss fitness tracker.

For this tracker, we’ll be adding the following form fields.

  1. User ID – This will be automatically filled by Formidable Forms for logged in users so that users can see their own performance.
  2. Date – Users will be able to enter the date they measured their weight.
  3. Number – We’ll rename this field to ‘Weight’ and ask users to enter their weight in lbs or kg.
Add form fields

After adding the fields, you can just click on a field to change its properties.

For instance, we edited the number field to change its label to ‘Weight’ and provided instructions in the description option.

Edit the form field

Once you are finished editing the form, click on the Update button to save your form.

Save your form

Adding Fitness Tracker in a WordPress Post or Page

Next, you would want to add the fitness tracker form to your WordPress website.

If you are using MemberPress, then you can simply edit the Account page. You can also create a new page and restrict it to members-only. This way users will be required to login to enter their fitness data.

On the page edit screen, simply add the Formidable Forms block to your page and choose your Fitness Tracker from the drop down menu.

Formidable Forms block

Formidable Form will now display a preview of your form in the page editor. You can go ahead and save your changes.

You can now go ahead login with a dummy new user account and fill out a few test entries.

Live fitness tracker

Display Fitness Form Tracker Data in WordPress

Formidable Forms makes it super easy to display the data collected by your forms on your WordPress website.

You can choose exactly which fields you want to show and display the data in graphs and charts.

Simply edit the post or page where you want to display the form data. Obviously, if you are using MemberPress then you want to restrict that page so that only logged in users can view their own fitness data.

Next, you will need to add a shortcode to your page in the following format.

[frm-graph fields="22" y_title="Weight" x_axis="21" x_title="Date" type="line" title="Weight tracking" user_id="current" data_type="average"]

This shortcode has the following parameters.

  • Fields – ID for the field you want to use to display data from (in this case, the weight field).
  • y_title – Title for the Y Axis. In this case we will be using Weight.
  • x_axis – ID of the field you want to use in the x_axis. In this case the date field.
  • x_title – Title for x_axis. In this case, we will use Date.
  • user_id – ‘Current’ so that only logged in users can view their own data.

You can find the field ID by simply editing your fitness tracker form. You’ll see the ID for each field in the form preview.

Finding the field ID

After adding the shortcode, don’t forget to save your changes.

Next, you need to login with the dummy user account you used earlier to add test entries, and visit the page you just created.

Here is how it looked on our test website:

Fitness tracker data chart

Creating More Fitness Tracking Tools in WordPress

Formidable Forms is the most advanced tools builder for WordPress.

Apart from the weight-loss tracking form, you can also use it to create several other types of online fitness calculators and tools.

It even comes with built-in templates for a BMI calculator and a Daily Calorie Intake calculator.

Fitness calculator templates

We hope this article helped you learn how to easily add a fitness tracker in WordPress. You may also want to see our expert pick of the best live chat software for small business, or follow our complete WordPress SEO guide to get more free visitors from search engines.

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 a Fitness Tracker in WordPress (With Charts) first appeared on WPBeginner.


February 07, 2022 at 04:00PM

Thursday, February 3, 2022

6 Best Product Review Plugins for WordPress

Are you looking for the best product review plugins for WordPress? 

Product review plugins can help you get more traffic from search engines, boost affiliate link clicks, add user-submitted reviews to your website, and more.

In this article, we’ve hand-picked the best product review plugins for WordPress.

5+ best product review plugins for WordPress

Why Use Product Review Plugins in WordPress?

What do you do when you want to buy something online? If you’re like most people, then you probably check out product reviews to compare different options.

If you have an online store, then allowing your customers to submit reviews is a smart way to add social proof and boost sales.

Even niche review sites where you’re writing all the reviews yourself can use a product review plugin. The right review plugin will help you to optimize your reviews in search results so you can get more clicks and traffic.

WordPress makes it easy to add new blog posts and create important website pages, but writing review content or adding reviews to your website requires additional features offered by WordPress plugins. 

Product review plugins can help you make more sales, let users add reviews to your website, add reviews from third party platforms, and more. 

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best product review plugins you can use on your WordPress site. 

1. WP Review Pro

WP Review Pro

WP Review Pro is the best WordPress product review plugin. It gives you full control over your WordPress product reviews and also makes it easy to create product comparisons and more. 

It includes a library of pre-designed templates you can customize to match the design of your website. There are different types of rating systems you can use, like percentage, star rating, points, and more. 

WP Review point rating example

By creating a custom review box, you can present all the important product information for your visitors, including a link to buy the product. Review schema markup is also automatically included, so you can show star ratings in the search results. 

You can also let your users add their own reviews to your products, rate features, and vote on other user’s comments. 

WP Review Pro user rating example

The plugin also lets you display reviews from third party sources like Facebook, Google Places, and Yelp, so you can easily add social proof to your WordPress website

2. AIOSEO

AIOSEO

All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the best SEO plugin for WordPress in the market used by over 3 million websites. It offers the most beginner friendly and comprehensive SEO toolkit to help you get more traffic from the search engines.

It includes a setup wizard that will automatically help you choose the best SEO settings for your website to help improve your rankings.

Plus, it lets you easily add product review schema to your review blog posts. Schema markup doesn’t appear on your website for visitors to see, but it helps the search engines better understand your content and display your product reviews properly.

Rich snippets will catch potential visitor’s attention and are more likely to get clicks from the search results.

Rich snippets product schema example

When you’re writing your product reviews, AIOSEO will automatically detect the right type of schema based on what you’re writing. 

You also have full control over the product review schema and can enter relevant product information for search engine bots to read.

AIOSEO product schema

You can also add existing customer reviews to improve the search appearance even more.

You’ll find this option below the review schema box in your post editor.

AIOSEO customer reviews box

There is a free version of the plugin available, but you’ll need the pro version of the plugin to access the product review schema feature.

3. WP Customer Reviews

WP Customer Reviews

WP Customer Reviews allows you to collect customers reviews and testimonials as well as create your own product reviews. 

For example, you can create a specific page on your website to showcase your testimonials to help improve your social proof and conversions. 

You have full control over your review forms and the information you want to collect from your users. To display reviews, you can use shortcodes or the included block. 

You can review the reviews in your WordPress dashboard, so you have complete control over the ones that are displayed.

It also has the option to turn any existing WordPress blog post into a product review, and it adds product review schema to improve the search engine appearance of your review. 

4. Site Reviews

Site Reviews

Site Reviews is an easy to use review plugin that lets you collect customer reviews for your products, services, or local business, similar to a site like TripAdvisor or Yelp.

You can even let users review certain parts of your website, like posts, products, pages, and more. 

It comes with a simple settings page that allows you to control how you want to gather reviews and how you want to display them on your website. You can customize the review form and display it anywhere on your site.

You can also pin your best reviews to the top, so your customers will see them first.

Site Reviews sample review

It also integrates with WooCommerce, so you can improve how customers leave reviews on your WooCommerce product pages

You can display your reviews using the included Gutenberg block or shortcode to show specific reviews. 

5. Customer Reviews for WooCommerce

Customer Reviews for WooCommerce

Customer Reviews for WooCommerce lets you easily add more detailed reviews to your store.

This plugin helps to improve your social proof, so when visitors go to your product pages, they’re more likely to make a purchase. 

Your customers can attach pictures and vote on reviews, plus you can add a question and answer section, so your product listings look the same as Amazon.

Improved WooCommerce product page with reviews

There’s also a feature to send automated emails after a customer makes a purchase to help you generate more reviews. You can also send a coupon after a review is left on your product.

6. Schema — All in One Schema Rich Snippets

Schema All in One Schema Rich Snippets

Schema is a simple free plugin that lets you add product schema markup to your reviews, so you can display rich snippets in the search results.

It’s not as in-depth as the AIOSEO schema feature mentioned above, but it’s a solid free option. 

When you select the review schema type, you’ll have additional product details to fill in, like reviewer name, product name, price, star rating, and more. 

It also supports other types of schema markup, including articles, recipes, software, and events. 

Bonus: OptinMonster

OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the best popup plugin for WordPress used by over 1.2 million websites. You can easily create high-converting popup campaigns to grow your email list.

It comes with a library of over 400 templates you can use to quickly create spin to win optins, alert bars, yes/no optins, and many other types of popup campaigns for your website. 

You can use these popups in creative ways. For example, you can create a popup that displays a coupon for the product you’re reviewing in the article. 

OptinMonster affiliate popup example

This is a common way to increase affiliate income and earn more revenue that many of the most successful WordPress blogs use on their product review articles. 

Aside from OptinMonster, the two other plugins that could be useful based on your use case are Smash Balloon and Uncanny Automator.

Smash Balloon is the #1 social media feeds plugin for WordPress. It lets you show user generated content and product reviews from social media on your website without any code.

Uncanny Automator is the best WordPress automation plugin. It lets you automate the process of collecting reviews from customers after they purchase. It also helps you create other automated workflows on your site without any code.

We hope this article helped you find the best product review plugins for WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how much it costs to build a WordPress website and our expert picks of the best business phone services for small businesses. 

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

The post 6 Best Product Review Plugins for WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.


February 04, 2022 at 12:28PM