How to Easily Move WordPress to a New Domain (Without Losing SEO)

Do you want to move your WordPress site to a new domain? Changing your website’s domain name can significantly impact your SEO rankings, so it’s a process that needs to be done very carefully.

While you cannot avoid temporary SEO fluctuations when migrating your website to a new domain, you can definitely minimize the impact and quickly regain your search traffic and rankings.

In this guide, we will show you the proper way to move WordPress to a new domain without losing SEO.

Here’s the 5 step process that we’ll cover to help you migrate your WordPress site to a new domain name:

1. Create a Duplicator package of your WordPress site
2. Create a database for your new domain name
3. Unpack WordPress on the new domain
4. Setup permanent 301 redirects
5. Notify Google about the change

What to Know Before You Change Domains

Before you start, there are a few things you should know.

The process of transferring to a new domain will temporarily affect your search engine rankings, since Google and other search engines will need to adjust to the changes.

Yes, this will also temporarily affect your search traffic as well. Please keep in mind that this is normal, and it happens to all websites that switch to a new domain.

However, you can dramatically decrease the SEO impact by following this guide. We will show you the right way of moving your WordPress site to a new domain name, setting up proper 301 redirects, and notifying search engines.

Please note that this guide is not for moving WordPress site to a new host. This is for switching a domain name only. While the process is similar, there are a few extra steps involved in this process. These extra steps will help you to protect your SEO rankings and traffic.

Lastly, if your old website is on WordPress.com, then you need to follow the instructions in our guide on how to move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org instead.

Pre-Steps: What You Need to Get Started

In this guide, we are assuming that you have your WordPress website setup on oldsite.com, and you are trying to migrate it to newsite.com.

We are also assuming that you already have a WordPress hosting account, and you are familiar with your web hosting control panel.

You’ll also need to know how to use an FTP client like FileZilla, or how to edit files using the File Manager app available under your hosting account dashboard.

In case you don’t have a web hosting provider or are looking to switch to a new one, we recommend using Bluehost (great for small sites + comes with a free domain) and either SiteGround or WP Engine (great for larger sites or online stores).

Once you have those things in place, you’re ready to start the process!

Step 1: Create a Duplicator Package of Your WordPress Site

The first thing you need to do is create a full backup of your WordPress site. We’ll use this backup to create a duplicate of your website, so you can set up the redirects properly from your old domain to the new one.

While there are many WordPress backup plugins available, we’ll be using Duplicator which is a free backup and migration plugin.

Let’s start by installing and activating the Duplicator plugin on your old domain name. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Once activated, the plugin will add a Duplicator menu item in your WordPress admin. You need to click on the Duplicator menu, and then click on the ‘Create New’ button to create a new package, or copy of your WordPress site.

After that, you will be asked to click on the Next button to continue.

Duplicator will now run the website duplicator wizard. First, it will run some tests to see if everything is in order. If the plugin finds an issue, then you will see a warning with instructions.

If all items are marked ‘Good’, then click on the ‘Build’ button.

The plugin will now start creating a duplicator package of your website files. This process may take a few minutes depending on the size of your site.

Once finished, you’ll see download options for the Installer and the Archive package. You need to click on the ‘One-click download’ link to download both files to your computer.

The archive file is a complete copy of your WordPress files. It includes your WordPress themes, permalinks settings, plugins, uploads, and any other files created by WordPress plugins.

The installer script is a PHP file that will automate and run the WordPress migration by unpacking the archive file.

Step 2. Create a Database for Your New Domain Name

Before you can move your WordPress site to the new domain, you’ll need a new SQL database to unpack WordPress on your new domain name.

If you have already created a database, then you can skip this step.

To create a database, you need to visit your hosting account’s cPanel dashboard, scroll down to the ‘Databases’ section, and then click on the ‘MySQL Databases’ icon.

Note: Your hosting control panel may look slightly different than the screenshots. However, you should still be able to find a Databases section with an option to create a new database.

Simply provide a name for your database and then click on the ‘Create Database’ button.

cPanel will now create a new database for you. After that, you need to scroll down to the MySQL Users section.

Next, provide a username and password for your new user and click on the ‘Create a user’ button. Make sure to note the username and password in a safe place.

The new user you just created still does not have permission to work on the database. Let’s change that.

Scroll down to the ‘Add User to Database’ section. First select the database user you created from the dropdown menu next to the ‘User’ field. Then select the new database you just created and click on the Add button.

Your database is now ready to be used for moving WordPress to the new domain name. Make sure to note down the database name, username, and password. You’ll need this information in the next step.

Step 3. Unpack WordPress on Your New Domain Name

Now you need to upload the Duplicator files you downloaded earlier to your new domain name.

The Duplicator package includes your WordPress installation as well. This means you don’t need to install WordPress on your new domain.

First, connect to your domain name using an FTP client. Once connected, make sure that the root directory of your website is completely empty.

After that, you can upload the archive and installer files to the root directory (usually it is public_html).

Once both files have finished uploading, you are now ready to unpack WordPress.

Open a new browser tab and go to the following URL:

https://ift.tt/2JKPycc

Don’t forget to replace example.com with your new domain name. This will launch the Duplicator migration wizard.

The installer will look for the archive file. You need to check the terms checkbox and click on the Next button to continue.

Now, the installer will ask you to configure your WordPress database information.

Your host will likely be localhost. After that, you will enter the details of the database you created for your new domain name in the earlier step.

Once done, click on the next button to continue.

Duplicator will now unpack your WordPress database backup from the archive into your new database.

Next, it will ask you to update the site URL or Path. You shouldn’t have to change anything since it automatically detects the new URL of your domain name and its path.

If it doesn’t, then you can change the URL to your new domain name. After that, click on the next button to continue.

Duplicator will now finish the migration.

You can click on the ‘Admin Login’ button to enter the WordPress admin area of your website on the new domain name.

Step 4. Set Up Permanent 301 Redirects

The next step is to point users arriving on your old domain name to the new domain. This is done by setting up 301 redirects.

301 redirects are very important for SEO and user experience. Adding them will allow you to automatically redirect users and search engines to your new domain name.

In other words, whenever someone lands on a post or page on your old domain, they will be automatically redirected to the same post or page on your new domain, instead of seeing a 404 error.

To keep your redirects in place, you’ll need to keep your old WordPress installation active so it can continue to redirect to the new one you just created.

There are two ways to set up the redirects. The first method is easy and just takes a few clicks. The second method requires you to edit files manually.

Method 1. Set Up 301 Redirects With All in One SEO

For this method, we’ll be using All in One SEO (AIOSEO). It is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market and allows you to easily optimize your WordPress website for SEO.

First, you need to install and activate the All in One SEO plugin on your old domain. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: You’ll need at least the Pro version of the plugin to access redirect manager addon. You can also set up AIOSEO on your new WordPress site to boost your search engine rankings and traffic even more.

Upon activation on your old domain, you need to visit All in One SEO » Redirects page and click on the Activate Redirects button.

Next, you need to switch to the ‘Full Site Redirect’ tab and turn on the ‘Relocate Site’ toggle. After that, you need to enter your new domain name next to ‘Relocate to domain’ option.

Don’t forget to click on the Save Changes button to store your settings.

Method 2. Manually Set Up Redirects to New Domain

This method requires you to edit the WordPress .htaccess file on your old domain name.

First, you need to connect to your old site using FTP and edit the .htaccess file.

This will be located in the same directory as your wp-includes or wp-admin folder. Open the .htaccess file and paste the following lines of code at the very top:

#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Note: Replace newsite.com with your new domain in the above code.

Once you have applied these changes, then visit your old domain name. It should automatically redirect you to the new domain.

If it doesn’t, then it means the redirection is not setup properly, and your server likely doesn’t support redirect rules. You need to contact the support team at your web hosting company to get RewriteEngine turned on.

Step 5. Notify Google About Your New Domain

Now that you have moved WordPress to a new domain name and set up redirects, it is time to notify Google about your change of address. This will help Google find your new website domain quickly and start showing it in search results.

First you need to make sure that both your new and old domain are added to the Google Search Console as two different properties. See step 1 in our Google Search Console guide for instructions.

Next, you need to select the old domain name as the active property in your Google Search Console account dashboard.

After that, click on the Settings menu from the left column and then click on the ‘Change of Address’ tool.

Now you need to select your new domain under the Update Google section, and then click on the ‘Validate & Update’ button.

That’s all, Google will now validate that your old domain is redirecting to the new domain and save your changes.

On the next screen, Google Search Console will show you a step by step wizard to submit your change of address request.

Notify Your Users About the New Domain Name

While the 301 redirects do their job, it is always good to make a public announcement about the migration.

You can do this by simply writing a blog post on your new site and sharing it on your social media accounts.

If you have an email newsletter or push notification subscribers, then you should send out an announcement to them, too.

This can be helpful in a lot of ways.

First and foremost, your users are more likely to remember the new domain once they read about it.

Second, you can ask your users to let you know if they see any bugs. You alone cannot test your site in every different type of browsers or system environment. It’s always helpful to have a fresh pair of eyes looking at it.

We hope that this tutorial helped you move your WordPress site to a new domain name. You may also want to see our guide on how to get a free email domain, or see our expert pick of the best business phone services.

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 Move WordPress to a New Domain (Without Losing SEO) appeared first on WPBeginner.

September 27, 2021 at 03:00PM

8 Best Help Desk Software for Small Business 2021 (Compared)

Are you looking for the best help desk software for your business?

Using help desk software can help you improve your customer support workflow, better manage requests, and improve your customer relationships.

In this article, we’ve hand picked some of the best help desk software you can use along with your WordPress site. We’re using these tools across our various businesses to help deliver a great customer experience.

Why Use Help Desk Software?

Help desk software makes it easy to manage customer support requests to serve your customers better.

This leads to happier customers and improved customer retention, which means more money for your business over the long term.

When you’re just getting started online, it can be easy to manage all of your customer support requests yourself through your business email address.

But as your WordPress website continues to grow, it can be challenging to keep up the same quality of customer support.

Using help desk software in your business can elevate the quality of your customer interactions and give you a competitive advantage in your space.

The best help desk software:

• Helps you scale your customer support as your business grows
• Makes it easy to keep track of support requests across multiple channels
• Lets you create detailed customer profiles and better understand your users
• Improves support response time and customer relationships easily

That being said, let’s take a look at some of the best help desk software you can use to help your small business website grow.

1. Help Scout

Help Scout is one of the best all in one help desk software in the market. It has nearly every feature you need to streamline your help desk and customer support process.

We use Help Scout here at WPBeginner and our other businesses for all of our email support needs.

It can help you manage all of your chat and email support requests from one place. That way, your customers can reach out using the method they prefer, and your support team can manage requests from a single queue.

You can speed up support requests by created saved replies, so your team can respond to common questions instantly.

There’s a built-in knowledge base feature, so you can build your own help center. This reduces the total number of support requests since your users can find solutions to their problems.

You’ll also find in depth reporting data, so you can see where your team is doing great and what needs to be improved.

The time tracking report lets you see where your support team is spending the most time, so you can improve your product workflows.

A live chat feature, also known as Beacon, is available if you want to add an additional support channel.

It recommends articles to help solve your users solve problems. If they can’t find a solution, then they can chat with your team.

Pricing: The Basic plan starts at $20 per user per month and includes 3 mailboxes, live chat, and more. The Plus plan starts at $35 per user per month if you have a bigger team.

2. HelpDesk.com

HelpDesk is a very easy to use help desk tool and ticketing software. It’s very intuitive and a simple way to keep all your messages in one place.

Any requests from contact forms, incoming emails, live chat, and more will come to a single dashboard, and a ticket will be created.

There are advanced ticketing, sorting, and tagging features, so you can prioritize the most important messages.

Plus, there are useful team collaboration tools like multiple mailboxes, agent groups, and private notes for support tickets to help your entire support team become more effective.

You can use the automation features like automated task assignments, canned responses, and custom automated workflows to optimize your response time.

Those running IT help desks can use the specialized IT service teams features to create groups of agents responsible for certain areas like subscriptions, signs up process, end-users, and more.

You can even create an IT support help desk for internal teams to help employees get up to speed on your software and processes.

There’s also an integration with LiveChat, so you can manage help desk tickets and solve customer issues in live chat all in one place.

You’ll find additional integrations like Hubspot, Salesforce, Zapier, Slack, and more that you can use to improve your support workflow.

Pricing: For teams, pricing starts at $19 per agent per month and includes a ticketing system, 60-day chat history, and more.

3. Hubspot

Hubspot offers business owners a wide range of customer management tools to help improve customer satisfaction and relationships.

It includes easy to use help desk software and a ticketing system to keep track of long term customer service requests.

They offer one of the best CRMs for small businesses that easily integrates with the customer service management software.

The service desk software and ticketing system organizes all of your support requests into a single dashboard that your entire team can access.

You can keep track of important support metrics like ticket volume, agent response time, and more. This helps you see if you’re hitting your goals and meeting your customer service level agreements (SLAs).

You’ll find additional features like knowledge base software to help your customers resolve their own issues and routing and automation to help save you time.

Plus, there’s bundled live chat and chatbot functionality, so you can communicate in real time with your customers.

Pricing: There’s a free plan for all users. Paid plans start at $45 per month and give you access to additional automation tools and support for more team members.

4. FreshDesk

FreshDesk is another popular help desk provider for businesses. It’s very user friendly, while still offering plenty of advanced features.

The help desk system has a shared inbox for easy and fast team collaboration, escalation, and issue management. You can even route tasks based on team member availability.

Beyond help desk features, you’ll find chatbots, live chat, modern messaging, automation features, omnichannel support, and more.

There’s built in reporting and data, so you can refine your support processes over multiple communication channels. You can even use the social media integration to convert messages and brand mentions into tickets and respond.

It also includes various tools to help create your own self service portal like forum support, FAQ creation, a help widget, and more.

Pricing: The basic version of the software starts at $15 per month. While full omnichannel support plans start at $79 per month when billed per year.

There is a free version of the support software that supports an unlimited number of agents. But, it only includes ticketing and knowledge base features.

5. Nextiva

Nextiva is the best business phone service for small businesses. Beyond phone support, they offer a complete multichannel support solution.

The integrated help desk solution lets you communicate across many different channels from a single app including, phone, email, and team messaging.

No matter where your customers reach you from, you can respond from one place.

The ticket management system is straightforward to use, and you can set priorities, send reminders, message your team, and more.

If you’re using other Nextiva services like Nextiva business VoIP or the sales CRM, then these will instantly integrate.

You’ll find other useful features like call routing, canned responses, a mobile app, and a self-service knowledge base.

We use Nextiva at WPBeginner for all of our phone support needs. It’s the best option available if you need to offer phone support.

There are all kinds of powerful features to help your phone support team including, call forwarding, custom greetings, virtual business phone number, analytics, and more.

Nextiva works great for small business owners as well as large call centers who want to automate sales and customer support.

Pricing: Nextiva starts at $18.95 per month for between 20-99 users. If you want support for SMS and more integrations, then the Pro plan starts at $22.95 per month.

6. LiveChat

LiveChat is the best live chat software in the market. It lets you quickly add live chat support to your website, so you can instantly respond to customer’s requests.

The LiveChat apps are easy to use and work on mobile, desktop, and tablet devices across Android and iOS. So, your support team can answer requests without logging into the WordPress dashboard.

Plus, there’s a WordPress plugin that makes it easy to integrate with your website.

You can set up LiveChat to work during your non-work hours, so all live chat requests will go directly to your help desk management system.

We use LiveChat across all of our eCommerce businesses to support our pre-sales staff.

The chat window is very easy to customize to match your website’s branding.

One really great feature of this tool is the speed. The chat window loads faster than other providers and works across every device.

It integrates easily with other customer support and marketing tools you’re already using, like HelpDesk, HubSpot, and Google Analytics.

You’ll also find additional support tools to help improve the quality of your support, like visitor tracking, a smart API that integrates with your knowledge base, and more.

Pricing: There are plans for businesses of all sizes. The starter plan begins at $16 per agent per month when paid yearly. Plus, there’s a 14 day free trial to test out the service.

7. Chatbot.com

Chatbot.com is the best AI chatbot software in the market today. This tool makes it easy for small businesses to create their own AI chatbot and improve customer service.

You can use the drag and drop builder to create a customer support chatbot quickly.

There’s also a library of industry specific templates you can use. These will help you develop your unique chatbot based on user questions and scenarios.

It integrates easily with both WordPress and WooCommerce. Plus, your live chat and customer service software of choice.

We use ChatBot.com in several of our SaaS businesses to handle pre-sales questions and forward users to our live support team if necessary.

This process can make your customer service workflow more effective, and free up time for your support staff.

Pricing: It starts at $50 per month billed monthly for up to 1,000 monthly chats, and goes up from there.

There’s a 14-day free trial included in every plan, so you can see if chatbots work for your business.

8. WPForms

WPForms is the best contact form plugin for WordPress used by over 4 million websites. It’s packed with features, while still being incredibly easy to use.

We use WPForms here on WPBeginner and across all of our other websites.

You can use the drag and drop builder to create a customer support form quickly, so your users can submit a support request to your team.

The free version of the plugin lets you build a basic contact form and includes spam protection, email notifications, and more.

The pro version of the plugin takes these features even further and turns it into a useful service desk tool. It lets you create more advanced forms with conditional logic, form abandonment functionality, geo-location, and more.

Every form submission goes directly to your WordPress dashboard, so you can quickly respond to customer queries. You can also set up instant form notifications that automatically send you an email when a user submits a form.

You can notify yourself or your team members in charge of customer support.

There’s also a user journey addon that lets you see what your visitor did on your website before submitting a form. This makes it easy to see where your user got stuck, so you can resolve their issue faster.

Plus, there are over 3000 different software integrations, including service desk, HR software, project management tools, marketing automation tools, and more.

Pricing: The Basic plan starts at $39.59 per year and has features for simple form creation, but to get access to user journey reports, advanced integrations, and more, the Pro plan is $199.50 per year.

What is the Best Help Desk Software (Expert Pick)?

In our expert opinion, there are several different help desk software solutions that can be the perfect choice for your business.

If you’re looking for the best email help desk that brings all of your customer support channels together, then Help Scout is the best option.

If you need a great all in one help desk tool that integrates perfectly with LiveChat, then HelpDesk is perfect.

If you want a customer help desk that also includes a business phone system, then Nextiva is a great choice.

Regardless of which help desk software you use, you’d want to use WPForms since it helps you forward the message from your website to the right help desk software.

Aside from the top help desk software on our list, we also looked at other providers like Zoho Desk, Jira, LiveAgent, FreshService, HappyFox, Zendesk support, and more.

However, we decided not to list them to help you avoid choice paralysis, so you can quickly find the best help desk software for you.

We hope this article helped you find the best help desk software for your business. You may also want to see our picks of the best email marketing services for small businesses and our guide on how to choose the best web design software.

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 8 Best Help Desk Software for Small Business 2021 (Compared) appeared first on WPBeginner.

September 24, 2021 at 04:00PM

What To Do When You Are Locked Out of WordPress Admin (wp-admin)

Are you having trouble logging into your WordPress admin area?

This can be caused by a lot of different reasons, which makes it tricky for beginners to troubleshoot.

In this article, we will show you what to do when you are locked out of WordPress admin (wp-admin) so you can regain access to your site.

Why Are You Locked Out of Your Own WordPress Site?

We often hear from users who are locked out of the WordPress admin area. This is frustrating and can bring your productivity to a standstill. You can’t write posts, respond to comments, or do any work on your WordPress website.

If you’re having trouble logging in to someone else’s site, then you should contact the site owner or admin to let them know. They can explain why you don’t have access, or work with you to solve the problem.

If you are the site owner, then you can follow our troubleshooting steps below.

There are few reasons why you could be locked out of WordPress admin, so let’s take a look at each of them one by one. Hopefully, through this process of elimination, you will be able to figure out the solution to your problem.

You can also refer to our WordPress troubleshooting guide to find out what’s causing the issue and how to fix it. You might also find a solution in our list of the 50 most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.

With that being said, let’s have a look at some steps you can take when you are locked out of WordPress admin. You can use the links below to quickly navigate to the error message you see.

• Error Establishing Database Connection
• 500 Internal Server Error
• 404 ‘Not Found’ Error
• 403 Forbidden Error
• 401 Unauthorized Error
• Limited Logins
• White Screen of Death
• Incorrect Password Issue
• Problems with Plugins
• Lost Admin Privileges
• Hacked WordPress Site
• Login Page Refreshing and Redirecting
• ‘This Has Been Disabled’ Error
• ‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance’ Error
• PHP Syntax Errors

Error Establishing Database Connection

Are you seeing the ‘Error establishing database connection’ warning on every page of your site? This message is shown for various reasons, such as a corrupt database or issues with your web hosting server.

If you’re seeing this error when trying to log in, then please refer to our guide on how to fix the error establishing a database connection in WordPress.

500 Internal Server Error

Another WordPress error that a beginner may come across is “Internal Server Error”, or sometimes “500 Internal Server Error”. This error is displayed when there is something wrong but the server is unable to identify where the problem is.

If you see this message when trying to log in to WordPress, then follow the steps in our guide on how to fix the 500 internal server error in WordPress.

404 ‘Not Found’ Error

Sometimes users make a mistake when changing the WordPress address and site address in their WordPress settings. The next time they try to log in to their admin area, they get the error ‘Error 404 – Not Found’.

If this is happening to you, then check our guide on how to change your WordPress site URLs. You won’t be able to use Method 1 because you can’t log in, but the other methods should get you out of trouble.

Note: If you can log in to your site but see the 404 error when viewing one of your posts, then you have a different problem. You can learn how to fix the issue in our guide on how to fix WordPress posts returning 404 error.

403 Forbidden Error

Some users report seeing the “HTTP Error 403 – Forbidden” error when trying to log in to wp-admin. This error can be caused by incorrect file permissions, poorly coded security plugins, or your server configuration.

If you’re seeing this error, then our guide on how to fix the 403 Forbidden Error in WordPress will help you track down and fix the problem.

401 Unauthorized Error

Another message you can see when you’re locked out of your WordPress site is the 401 error. This error is sometimes accompanied by a message ‘Access is denied due to invalid credentials’ or ‘Authorization required’.

You can see this message if you’ve password-protected your WordPress admin folder. It can also be caused by a WordPress security plugin or security measures taken by your hosting company.

Please refer to our guide on how to fix the 401 Error in WordPress to learn six solutions that will help you regain access to your website.

Limited Logins

By default, WordPress allows users to enter passwords as many times as they want. Hackers may try to exploit this by using scripts that enter different combinations until your website cracks.

To prevent this, we recommend that you limit the number of failed login attempts per user. However, this might mean that you find yourself locked out of your own website when you enter the wrong password too many times.

If you’re in that situation, then you should follow the steps in our guide on how to unblock Limit Login Attempts in WordPress.

White Screen of Death

Are you seeing a white screen on your WordPress admin? This issue is often referred to as the WordPress white screen of death.

This happens when you exhaust the memory limit. It could be caused by a poorly coded plugin or theme, or by unreliable web hosting.

If you are seeing this error, then please refer to our guide on how to fix the WordPress white screen of death.

Incorrect Password Issue

There’s nothing more frustrating than being told you’ve used the wrong password when you’re sure you haven’t, and you even checked that your caps lock isn’t on.

This can happen if you were a victim of a hack, or you might just be making an honest mistake.

Worse still, when you try to change your password, you never receive the email because it goes to an address you no longer have access to.

Luckily, there’s another way, and you can reset your WordPress password from phpMyAdmin. This method can be a bit overwhelming for new users, but it’s your best hope for regaining access to your admin area.

Problems with Plugins

You may be locked out of your WordPress site due to a faulty plugin or theme. This may be the case if you can’t log in to WordPress admin after installing a new plugin, or if the error message mentions ‘wp-content/plugins/’.

To regain access to your site you’ll have to temporarily disable your plugins. You can do that using FTP or phpMyAdmin by following our step by step guide on how to deactivate all plugins when not able to access wp-admin.

Lost Admin Privileges

Sometimes, you may be able to login to your WordPress admin, but you don’t see any of the admin functionality. For example, you don’t have access to your themes or plugins.

This can happen if your user permissions were modified. It could be that hackers have infected your site and then deleted your admin privileges.

In this case, you should add an admin user to the WordPress database via MySQL (phpMyAdmin).

Hacked WordPress Site

If you do suspect that your site has been hacked, then there are other steps you may need to take.

A hacked website may look different, display different content, or automatically play music or other media. Worse still, it may be infecting your visitors with viruses, so you need to act quickly.

Start with our beginner’s guide on how to fix your hacked WordPress site. We’ll show you how to identify the hack, restore your site from a backup, and remove any malware.

After that, you should protect your site from future attacks. We show you how to do that in our ultimate WordPress security guide .

Login Page Refreshing and Redirecting

Another type of login error is when your WordPress login page keeps refreshing and redirecting it back to the login screen.

This can happen because of incorrect values for the site URL and home URL fields in the WordPress options table. It can also be caused by poorly configured permalink settings or redirects setup in the .htaccess file.

To fix this problem, check our guide on how to fix WordPress Login Page refreshing and redirecting issue.

‘This Has Been Disabled’ Error

When you try to log into your WordPress admin area, do you see the error ‘This has been disabled’? This message is displayed when you have gone to the wrong admin address.

A common WordPress security practice is to change the default admin login URL (domain.com/wp-admin) to something custom. This can help prevent hackers and bots from hammering your login URL trying to gain access.

If you forget that the URL has been changed and go to the old one, then you’ll see this error message. If you’ve forgotten the correct address, then you should check our beginner’s guide on how to find your WordPress Login URL.

‘Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance’ Error

Are you seeing the ‘Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance’ error in WordPress? This error usually appears while updating WordPress core, plugins, or themes.

But if your WordPress site fails to finish the update, then you are left stuck in maintenance mode.

To fix the problem, you should check our guide on how to fix the Briefly Unavailable for Scheduled Maintenance error in WordPress. The guide will also explain why the error happens and how to avoid it in the future.

PHP Syntax Errors

PHP errors can happen after you paste a code snippet from a WordPress tutorial or website. The wrong code can stop your website from working properly so that you can’t log in.

Often beginners use the built-in WordPress editor from their dashboard. That feature is handy, but can lead to disaster if you don’t know what you are doing.

That’s why we wrote our beginner’s guide to pasting snippets from the web into WordPress.

If you’re locked out of your WordPress admin because of a code snippet, then you’ll have to fix the problem manually using an FTP program to access your files. If you’re not familiar with FTP, then check our beginner’s guide on FTP.

After you connect to your WordPress site using the FTP software, you should follow our guide on how to fix syntax errors in WordPress to correct or remove the code that you added.

We hope this tutorial helped you log into your WordPress admin area. You may also want to learn how to choose the best WordPress hosting, or check out list of must have plugins to grow your website.

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

The post What To Do When You Are Locked Out of WordPress Admin (wp-admin) appeared first on WPBeginner.

September 23, 2021 at 02:30PM

Welcome Easy Digital Downloads, WP Simple Pay, AffiliateWP, and More to the WPBeginner Family of Products

Today, I’m extremely excited to share that all Sandhills Development products are joining Awesome Motive, and they’re now part of the WPBeginner family of products.

This includes several popular WordPress plugins including Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP, WP Simple Pay, Sugar Calendar, and many more.

These brands are very close to my heart because when I first started selling premium plugins in 2013, we used Easy Digital Downloads, and we still use EDD to power our eCommerce.

This is one of those rare life moments where things have come full circle, and I honestly feel like I’m living in a dream.

Introduction – Quick Overview of the Plugins

Unlike our other investments, this is an acquisition of a large portfolio of plugins, so I’ll give a quick overview of what each of them do.

Easy Digital Downloads makes it easy for you to sell digital products online such as eBooks, digital art, premium software, and just about any type of digital files.

We use EDD to manage and sell our popular premium plugins because it makes it easy for us to collect recurring subscription payments on our website, manage software licensing, protect premium file access (so only members can access it), and more.

AffiliateWP is the leading affiliate management software for WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, MemberPress, and other popular WordPress platforms. Simply put, it makes it easy for you to launch an affiliate program for your online store.

WP Simple Pay is a Stripe payment plugin that makes it easy for you to accept one-time or recurring payments on your website without setting up a shopping cart. It comes with a payment form builder and all the tools for you to securely accept payments on your site.

Sugar Calendar is a simple events calendar plugin for WordPress. It makes it easy to do event management, ticketing, and everything you need to manage / run an event. It also seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce, Stripe, and other solutions so you can sell event tickets and accept payments on your site.

Aside from that, as part of this deal, we’re also acquiring several free open source plugins such as the popular Transients Manager plugin that’s very helpful in debugging WordPress errors.

Background Story

In 2013, when I launched OptinMonster, I needed a solution that made it easy for me to sell the premium plugin (digital download), restrict access & updates to only paying members, and most importantly accept recurring payments.

We ended up using Easy Digital Downloads because it helped us do all of that and more.

As we built more premium plugins like MonsterInsights, WPForms, etc they all used EDD.

Even the popular WordPress plugins we later acquired / invested in through the WPBeginner Growth Fund like Smash Balloon, SearchWP, Uncanny Automator, Formidable Forms, etc all used Easy Digital Downloads.

I can easily say that after WordPress, Easy Digital Downloads has a single largest impact on my online success.

This is why it has always had a special place in my heart.

Over the years, I became good friends with EDD / Sandhills Development founder, Pippin Williamson.

We first talked about joining forces back in 2015, but the timing wasn’t right.

After our acquisition of SearchWP in July, Pippin reached out, and we restarted the conversation.

After a few calls, we agreed that Awesome Motive will be the perfect home for Easy Digital Downloads and other Sandhills products given our vast experience in the WordPress industry.

I’m truly honored to have this opportunity to serve over 100,000+ users who use Sandhills Products to grow their online business.

What’s Coming Next?

Our work is just starting.

We will be leveraging the scale and knowledge of the Awesome Motive team to build more innovative solutions to help you grow your online business.

We have built a lot of internal tools to grow our eCommerce / digital product business that I’m really looking forward to sharing with the WordPress community.

We will be combining my vision + the vast knowledge of the Sandhills team to bring even more powerful features to you.

If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in EDD, AffiliateWP, WP Simple Pay, or any of Sandhills plugin, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.

As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner. We look forward to bringing you more amazing solutions to help you grow your business.

Yours Truly,

Syed Balkhi
Founder of WPBeginner

P.S. Want to join our team and work alongside me in helping small businesses grow and compete with the big guys? We’re hiring.

We’re a fully remote team of over 200+ amazingly talented team members across 36 countries.

The post Welcome Easy Digital Downloads, WP Simple Pay, AffiliateWP, and More to the WPBeginner Family of Products appeared first on WPBeginner.

September 22, 2021 at 06:40PM

How to Set Up Business Call Forwarding From Your Website

Do you want to set up business call forwarding from your website?

For many small businesses, calls from potential customers generate significant sales and revenue. This is why it’s important to properly set up business call forwarding from your website.

In this article, we will share a step by step guide on how to easily set up business call forwarding from your WordPress site.

What Do You Need to Set Up Business Call Forwarding from Your Website?

Normally, you can just add a phone number to your WordPress website or online store. Your website visitors can use the phone number to make a call.

However, regular phone services don’t come with advanced features like call forwarding, business hours, call waiting, etc. Plus, they cost a lot more even for even basic features like basic call forwarding.

For proper business call forwarding, you’ll need a smart business phone service provider.

We recommend using Nextiva. It is the best business phone service on the market and allows you to easily manage your business calls at much lower costs than landline or mobile phone services.

Note: We use Nextiva at WPBeginner for our business phone number.

Nextiva provides VoIP phone service, which means instead of landlines it uses the internet to make and receive phone calls.

Using VoIP allows you to reduce costs and take advantage of advanced features like call forwarding, call recordings, voicemail, call waiting, and more. Plus, you can choose a number in any location or get a toll-free number.

More importantly, you can manage calls on your existing mobile phone, computers, or even a desk phone too.

You can even share one number with multiple team member which is great for remote teams like ours.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to set up business call forwarding from your website.

Setting Up Business Call Forwarding

First, you need to sign up for a Nextiva account. During sign up, you’ll be allowed to choose a business phone number, and you can also connect your existing phone number as well.

Once you have set up your account, you can make and receive calls from your business phone number on whatever device you choose.

After that, you can set up call forwarding for your website.

Simply head over to Users » Actions » Voice Settings page and select Forwarding from the left menu.

From here, you can enter any phone number under the ‘Call forward (selective)’ section.

Below that, you can choose when to forward a call by clicking on the Forwarding Conditions. You can add conditions based on schedule, by phone number, and more.

Apart from selective call forwarding, you can also set up always-on call forwarding, busy call forwarding, or forward calls when unanswered.

Once you have set up call forwarding, don’t forget to test it out before adding it to your website.

Adding a Click to Call Option in WordPress

Now that you have enabled business call forwarding, you may want to add click to call buttons to your website.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the WP Call Button plugin on your site. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » WP Call Button page to configure plugin settings.

The plugin comes with a sticky button that floats on-screen across your website. You can hide or show it on certain posts or pages. You can also choose to show it only on mobile devices.

If you would like to display the button manually, then you can switch to the Static Call Button tab. From here, you can choose button settings and copy a shortcode.

Once you are finished with settings, you can also add a sticky call button in your posts and pages using a block or a widget.

In the block settings, you can choose colors, text size, alignment, and show or hide the phone icon.

Once you are finished, you can save your changes and visit your website to see your call now button in action.

For more ways to add a clickable phone number in WordPress, see our tutorial on how to add a click to call button in WordPress.

Your users can now click to call your phone number and their calls will be forwarded based on your call forwarding settings.

We always recommend website owners to provide more than one way for customers to contact your business. Along with phone, it’s a good idea to have a contact form and if possible offer a live chat or chatbot solution on your site.

We hope this article helped you learn how to set up business call forwarding from your website. You may also want to see our see our guide on how to track button clicks in WordPress, and our expert comparison of the best email marketing services.

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 Set Up Business Call Forwarding From Your Website appeared first on WPBeginner.

September 21, 2021 at 03:30PM