Wordpress

April 12, 2018 Wordpress

How to Choose Simple WordPress Theme for your Blog

While starting a new website, choosing the right theme for your website is very crucial. It plays an important role in deciding what your visitors experience while visiting your website. How your website will look is decided by the theme. Since your blog is going to be the medium of communication between you and your visitors. If your website will not look good you will definitely lose your potential visitors.

In this article I will explain you the guidelines you should follow while choosing a simple WordPress theme for your website.

Free themes vs. Premium themes

The first thing to consider is whether you should go for free or paid theme? There are thousands of free and paid themes available. You can easily download the free one and customize it according to your need.

We often tend to choose free themes instead of paid ones to save money. It seems a good idea for you at the start but you will slowly realize the disadvantages of it. There are many problems with free themes –

They are not updated regularly.
You will not get support for most of them.
They are not SEO optimized.
They may have encrypted footers and are poorly coded.

Encrypted footers generally contains paid links which is not good for SEO.

You will get limited and fewer features than any paid one.
You will not get theme panel option in most of them.

Note: If you are new to WordPress, you must be unaware of the term theme panel. Theme panel is a custom admin page and it allows you to change your layout of the theme from the given available options in one click without the need to touch the code.

So only advantage that free theme will give you that it is totally free.

On the other hand for premium themes, you will get full support, time to time update, more features and even security of your blog. You will many advantages over free themes –

You will get full support, since they are sold by companies and they don’t want unsatisfied customers.
You will get many options for customizing the design according to your requirement.
They are easy to handle and have many features that can be implemented by anyone.
They are updated regularly and are always compatible with latest WordPress version.
They are SEO optimized.
Footers are not encrypted

Things that you should keep in mind while selecting any theme for your website

Your theme should fit according to your purpose of your blog –

Before selecting your theme first think about these questions about your blog

What is the purpose of your blog and what the content will be like?

How do you want your blog to look?

Do you want your blog to look simple and elegant or complex and loud?

There are some of the questions that matter while looking for the design of your theme. Your theme will decide how your blog will look. So it is very important to choose a theme that suits according to your business requirement and contents.

Go for a theme that has clean layout, good color combination, awesome fonts and that pleases you in every way and appeals your customers.

Responsive Design –

Responsive design simply means your website will look perfect on any device whether it be a laptop, a mobile phone or a tab. There are many themes that are not responsive in nature. You can’t compromise with this feature of the theme.

You can read our article on “Why you should choose Responsive web design from the beginning”.

A responsive design plays an important role in SEO of your blog also. Read this article “Top 9 SEO Benefits of Responsive Web Design”. You will get to know how it plays an important role in SEO.

Features and customization –

In WordPress features are handled by plugins. But there are many themes which have inbuilt functionalities, so choose a theme according to your required functionalities. Then you don’t have to bother about installing a lot of plugins for every required feature.

For example – If you want to build an e-Commerce website then choose a theme that is made particularly for it. It will give you the advantage of having functionalities related to it.

Highly customizable theme is selected so that you will have many options for your layout. You can easily customize your site yourself. Since the same theme is going to be used by many customers so it is very important that your theme is highly customizable so that you can change your look of the website to differentiate from others.

Security and Performance –

Don’t compromise with the speed and security of your blog. This is often neglected by many. Choose a theme which loads faster and is secure.

Now How will you know whether the theme is secure or not? Buy your theme only from the trusted theme shops and look for the customer ratings and reviews before deciding it.

Browsers Compatibility –

Since your visitors will be using different browsers so it is very important that your theme looks perfect on every browser.

Test your theme for how it looks on every browser before selecting it.

Support of the plugins –

Make sure that your theme supports all the popular plugins since plugins are the second most important thing after theme. You can’t simply do anything without it. Every functionalities of your website requires a plugin. ( Unless you can code your own functionalities ).

Multilingual property –

Choose a theme which support translation into multiple languages. You users may want to read your blog in other language than English, so it plays a very important if your target audience are from other countries.

SEO friendly –

Your theme should be optimised for SEO otherwise this could affect your site’s performance on search engines.

Page Builder –

Page Builders are WordPress plugins that is used to make the layout of the page by just simply drag and drop mechanism. It is very easy to create pages using page builders.

Many themes come with pre-installed page builders. So choose a theme which already uses the popular page builder plugins. Some popular page builders among them are Visual Builder, Divi Page Builder, Beaver Builder, Elementor etc.

You can also purchase these builders individually and use it on your website.

This is all about the steps that you should follow before choosing a simple wordpress theme for your blog.

If you still have any doubt or query do comment below and let us know. We will be happy to help you. Do Subscribe our Newsletter here and keep yourself updated with Weboftwo for more such interesting articles 🙂 .

Keep Reading
Read About: How to Install WordPress using FileZilla
Read About: Why WordPress should be your first choice for starting a blog

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January 27, 2018 Web Development

How to Install WordPress using FileZilla

Installing anything via FileZilla or using FileZilla always seems difficult to everyone. But it’s not so difficult as it seems like. In this article I will show you how to install wordpress using filezilla.

Let’s me quickly brief you the process –

What is FileZilla –

In simple words FileZilla is free open-source software used for uploading and downloading files from your web hosting server. It is a cross-platform FTP application, consisting of FileZilla Client and FileZilla Server. It supports FTP, SFTP, and FTPS protocols. It makes easy for you to edit files and save changes without downloading it and then uploading it.

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What is FTP –

FTP stand for File Transfer Protocol. It is an standard internet protocol used for transferring files between client and server on a computer network. It is used basically for uploading and managing files of your website.

Like when you have to transfer your locally created website to your web server to publish it online then FTP is the standard choice.

Now I will show you how to install wordpress using FileZilla for launching your first website. There are many ways you can install wordpress. Many hosting companies provide control panel from where you can easily install wordpress in just one click. But when you need to install it by yourself, there are many ways to do it.

You can read our article on full guide to manually install wordpress on any web hosting using cpanel.

You can also install wordpress locally and then transfer your files online using FTP. Read here step by step guide to install wordpress locally.

For installing WordPress using FileZilla you will need these things –

1) FileZilla installed on your system.

For this go to FileZilla Project Website and download FileZilla FTP client for your system.

After downloading it install it on your system. It is very easy to install it. Just follow the onscreen guide and it will be up and running within 1-2 minutes.

2) Latest version of wordpress downloaded on your system.

You can download latest version of wordpress form here. After downloading, unzip the files.

3) FTP login details of your web server.

FTP Hostname
FTP Username
FTP Password

Now you may be wondering how to get ftp login details of your web server. I recommend you to create a new one. You can also choose name of your website by creating a new folder of same name.

Here are the steps to create new ftp details using your cpanel –

Login into your Cpanel provided by your hosting company.
Go to FTP Accounts under FILES section.

FILES > FTP Accounts

It will open an interface something like this image to add new FTP account.

Fill the details as below –

Log In – Enter any name of the ftp user. The username will automatically have your domain added to the end.

Example: username@www.weboftwo.com

Domain – It’s primarily pre-filled, but if you have multiple domains in your server, you can choose from the available dropdown.

Password – Choose a password of your choice

Directory – Choose the directory you would like the FTP account to have access to. It will be automatically filled by pre-assuming according to the username you created.

Quota – You can choose the maximum amount of bandwidth the ftp user can use.

Now click on the “Create FTP Account” button and you are done.

4) Your database login details.

database name
database username
database password
database host

( If you don’t have these, don’t worry I will shortly explain you how to get these. )

Now we will now install wordpress on our web server-

1) First open fileZilla program on your system. (I am using Windows here for showing further procedures.)

2) Go to File menu at the top most side of the window and then to Site Manager.

File > Site Manager

3) Now it will open a dialogue box. Click on “New Site”.

4) Enter the login details for the webspace where you are hosting your site in “General” tab.

Host : Your FTP hostname (usually domain-name.com)
Port : 21 (you can also leave it blank)
Server Type : FTP – File Transfer Protocol
Encryption : Use Plain FTP
Logon Type : Normal
User : Your FTP username
Password : Your FTP password
Account : Leave it blank

5) Configure your local file settings to tell fileZilla where your local files are located.

Click on “Advanced” tab in Site Manager Dialog box.

Server Type : Default
Bypass Proxy : Unticked
Default Local Directory : Click on the “Browse” button and select your local folder where you save your unzipped WordPress folder.

After filling the details click on “Connect” button. FileZilla will now connect to your webspace via FTP.

You may get an unknown certificate error. Click ok and proceed.

After connection established your will see the interface of fileZilla program something like this (image below).

If you are unable to connect to your web server due to any error, do comment below. We will be happy to help you to solve your problem.

Now you will see your local directory on the left hand side and your webspace on your right hand side.

6) For uploading your wordpress file on your webspace, all you need to do is to drag and drop the unzipped wordpress files from left hand side to right hand side.

For this first select all the files in the wordpress directory by clicking ctrl + a and simply drag it to the white space on the right side.

It will take some few minutes to upload.

Now when your files will be uploaded to your web server it will look something like this.

7) Since your files are uploaded on your web server now you have to install wordpress.

Steps to install WordPress

Step 1 – Create Database and its user :

This is the only technical step in which you will struggle if you are not used to handling technical stuff, but don’t worry, I will make it as easy as possible for you 🙂 .

cPanel is provided by almost all hosting providers and cPanel contains MySql database wizard which makes it easier to create database and its user.

So First Login to your hosting cPanel account and click on MySql database wizard under Database menu category and create a Database by giving it a preferred name.

Select next step and provide a username and password to your newly created database. Though you can set password to anything but my personal suggestion will be to use password generator provided there to create a strong and complex password which will be hard to guess.

Now click on “Create user”, and in the next step provide privilege to the user. On the next page, click on “All Privileges” checkbox option and click on next step.

That’s it , you just have created a database and its user for your new WordPress installation. Just make sure you have noted down your Database name, username and its password as we will soon require it during WordPress installation in the next step.

Step 2-

Now open the url http://domain-name.com/wp-admin/install.php ( where “domain-name” will be replaced by your purchased domain name, for example in www.weboftwo.com, “weboftwo” is the domain name).

First select the language of WordPress installation.

Now, fill the Database name, username and password which you noted down earlier while creating database.

Database host usually is “localhost” in most shared hosting companies like Inmotion, Godaddy etc. Click on save changes after filling all the details.

On the next screen, Provide username and password for your WordPress installation. Avoid giving admin as username and always make it a habit of using complex password for making your website secure . Now submit changes and once everything is finished, you will be able to login to your wordpress admin dashboard by visiting the following link. Replace domain-name with actual domain name:

http://domain-name.com/wp-admin ( where “domain-name” will be replaced by your purchased domain name, for example in www.weboftwo.com, “weboftwo” is the domain name).

Congratulations! Your WordPress website is installed.

So this is the full step by step guide for

how to install wordpress using filezilla

. Don’t forget to bookmark our WordPress Installation guide, which will come in handy whenever you require it.

In case, you can’t successfully install WordPress using the above explained steps, feel free to comment or contact us at contact@www.weboftwo.com.

Always Happy to help you.

Hope your journey in starting your WordPress website be fruitful for you. Do Subscribe our Newsletter here and keep yourself updated with Weboftwo for more such interesting and informative articles 🙂 .

Keep Reading
Read About: How To Manually Install WordPress Blog on any Web-Hosting
Read About: How to Install XAMPP and WordPress Locally on Windows
Read About: Get Started with Web Development

Want to start Freelancing? Register and start getting Clients on Freelancer or Upwork.

January 5, 2018 Web Development

How to Install XAMPP and WordPress Locally on Windows

In our previous article, you learned how to install WordPress manually on any web-hosting. Do you know you can also run WordPress on your computer locally? Having WordPress installed on your localhost will make work easy for you. You can easily install and test themes and plugins on locally installed WordPress website without affecting your main website online. Working locally also increases the speed of your work as you are working on your computer rather than using the internet. The most important advantage is that you don’t need to have any domain name or web server to run any WordPress site. Today I will guide you How to install xampp and WordPress locally on Windows.

Note: For running any website online you need to have a domain name and web server.

Localhost is nothing but the computer you are using. When you connect to the internet and enter some URL in your browser you are connecting to a host computer server somewhere in the world. This is similar when you type localhost in the browser to connect, means you are connecting to the computer you are using, which is your own computer.

Local websites are only visible on our own computer. I prefer working on localhost because my website loads faster here and also I don’t have to worry about changes affecting the main website in case of any mishappenings. I can try different plugins and themes and check it whether it is working fine or not. I update it afterward on my main website. I can also debug errors in my environment easily.

In this article, I will explain step by step process to install WordPress on localhost.

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As I have told you to run any website online you need to have a web server, similarly, for working on localhost you need to have a server. For this, you need a software which has a pre-built local server in it.

For Windows you have WAMP, For Linux – LAMP, For Mac – MAMP, and XAMPP is used for any operating system.

Read Here: Difference between LAMP, WAMP, MAMP and XAMPP

Running WordPress locally also needs PHP (a programming language) and MYSQL (database management software). Installing both of them individually is difficult. This is what XAMPP/WAMP/LAMP/MAMP will do easily. Everything is inbuilt inside them.

I will use XAMPP here. XAMPP stands for Cross-Platform, Apache, MariaDB, PHP and Perl. Since it is a cross-platform, it can also work on Mac as well as on Linux. Here I will show you how to install xampp it in Windows.

So let’s get started –

1. First learn how to install XAMPP on your computer

For downloading XAMPP go to Apache Friends website and download XAMPP for windows.

After downloading it, run the downloaded file to launch the installer. If you have any antivirus software then you might get a warning. Click yes and continue.

You might also get a prompt of User Account Control (UAC) warning. UAC helps to prevent malware from damaging your PC and helps to deploy better managed desktop. Click OK and proceed.

After everything you will get the installation screen.

Click Next to continue.

It will then ask you to select the software and packages you want to install. You can go for default settings also. But for running WordPress you just need MySQL and PHPMyAdmin.

After selecting click Next.

Now it will ask for selecting the folder where you want to install XAMPP on your machine. You can leave it default also. Then click ‘Next’ button.

Then you will get a prompt asking you to install Bitnami for XAMPP. You can go for default settings. But you don’t need this for installing XAMPP and WordPress so you can also uncheck it.

Now It will show that your setup is ready to begin installing. Click ‘Next’ button and proceed.

After clicking Next, it will run the installation wizard and start the installation.

It might take a few minutes.

After that finish wizard will be displayed.

Check ‘start the control panel’ option now and click Finish. It will launch XAMPP control panel.

Now in the control panel click on the start button next to Apache and MySQL. It will now start the Apache and MySQL.

Now you will get a window security alert showing Window Firewall notification. Click ‘Allow Access’ button and Continue.

You will now see the status of Apache and MySQL to be highlighted in green. It means both have started.

Now you can test it by going to any web browser and open http://localhost .

If you will be able to see this then congrats you have completed the installation of XAMPP successfully. Now it is time to install WordPress and create a website locally.

2. Creating a WordPress website locally using XAMPP

Adding WordPress files

If you have read our post on how to manually install WordPress on any web-hosting. Then the further steps will be easier for you.

First you need to download latest version of WordPress from its official website https://wordpress.org/ .

After downloading WordPress extract the files.

Now go to the XAMPP folder which you have already installed. For me it is C:\xampp . Then go to htdocs sub folder.

Now create a sub folder inside htdocs folder. You can name this folder whatever you want to give. This will be the name of your website.

I am giving it ‘weboftwo’ so I will access my site by going to http://localhost/weboftwo

Similarly you can access your site by going to http://localhost/{your-folder-name}

Now copy the extracted files of WordPress inside this folder. You will get something like this.

Creating database for WordPress

You will need database name, database username, password and host name to go further.

Now we will create a MySQL database for installing WordPress.

For this we will launch PHPMyAdmin from XAMPP control panel. Click on the admin action of MySQL.

This will open a tab in browser http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ . You can also do this by directly going to your browser and visiting this address. This will launch PHPMySQL app which is pre-installed in XAMPP. You can easily create and manage database using it.

Then click on the Databases.

Now by giving any name to your database, click on create button.

I am giving database name as weboftwo_database.

Running WordPress Installer

Now open your browser and visit your website http://localhost/weboftwo (In my case it is weboftwo).

Choose English and click ‘Continue’ button.

Then click on the ‘Let’s Go’ button.

Now it will ask you for database name, database username, password, and host information. Further steps will be similar to the installation of WordPress on any web hosting. The only difference is for the details of database.

For database name – Enter the name of the database that you have created earlier (in my case it is weboftwo_database).

For Username – root

For Password – leave blank

Fill the details as shown in screenshot below and click ‘Submit’ button to continue.

Now click on ‘Run the Installation’ and you are ready to go.

After that WordPress will ask some details about your website. First you need to fill the title of the site. You can give it anything you want.

Next you need to enter username, password and email address for creating admin account.

In my case I am giving these details : Site Title – weboftwo_site , username – Nisha, password – 123abc , email address – contact@www.weboftwo.com .

Enter the details as shown in screenshot below and click ‘Install WordPress’ button.

Now click on ‘Log In’ button and login to your account.

You can login to your account by giving your username and password that you entered during installation of wordpress.

Once everything is completed and you are logged in, you will see a new WordPress website running. This is the admin panel of the WordPress.

Congratulations you have successfully installed your first WordPress website on localhost.

Don’t forget to bookmark our WordPress Installation guide, which will come in handy whenever you require it.

In case, you can’t successfully install WordPress using the above-explained steps, feel free to comment or contact us at contact@www.weboftwo.com.

Always Happy to help you.

Keep Reading
Read About: Why WordPress should be your first choice for starting a blog
Read About: How to Manually Install WordPress on any web hosting.
Read About: Get Started with Web Development

December 23, 2017 Web Development

How To Manually Install WordPress Blog on any Web-Hosting

You must probably be here to start a blog or a business based website using WordPress. WordPress installation is a very easy and takes only 2-3 minutes of your time. Hosting service providers offers services like Fantastico and Simple script which offers one click installation of WordPress. So are you ready to install WordPress?

I will teach you how to manually install WordPress either in your localhost (In your Personal Computer) or in your Hosting account. Its always beneficial to learn it Due to the following reasons:

Manual installation is more secure.
Installation using Fantastico and Simple script may impose limitation like uploading data limit may be set to only 2mb.
If you are providing web hosting or development services like in Freelancer.com, learning this will help you in your journey.
Read About: Why I chose Freelancing?
Read About: Complete Guide to Freelancing and getting your First Client.

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Now lets dive into the steps required to install WordPress.

Requirements :

There are few things you will require while installing WordPress. Be ready with these to speed up the process.

Download WordPress file from its official site. Download it here.

You will require to create a ftp account and access files of your hosting account through Ftp client such as Filezilla. ( optional )
You will need access to Cpanel of your Hosting account to create Database and its Username. (explained below) ( I am using Inmotion Hosting as an example for this).

Steps to install WordPress

Step 1 -Create Database and its user :

This is the only technical step in which you will struggle if you are not used to handling technical stuff, but don’t worry, I will make it as easy as possible for you 🙂 .

cPanel is provided by almost all hosting providers and cPanel contains MySql database wizard which makes it easier to create database and its user.

So First Login to your hosting cPanel account and click on MySql database wizard under Database menu category and create a Database by giving it a preferred name.

Now click on “Create user”, and in the next step provide privilege to the user. On the next page, click on “All Privileges” checkbox option and click on next step.

Complete WordPress manual Installation Tutorial:

Now, I assume you have successfully completed the above steps. Now we have three options ahead of us:

Installing wordpress via ftp
Installing wordpress via Web Hosting cPanel File Manager

I am going to cover the 2nd way as its the most easiest step for beginners.

Step 2-

Open Files > File manager from cPanel menu and open public_html directory.

Step 3-

While you are in public_html folder click the upload icon and when a new window opens browser and select your downloaded wordpress file ( explained in the above steps ).

Now extract the zip file by right clicking on the zip file and selecting the extract option.

Note– If you intend to install wordpress on an add on domain, extract the files to the directory or folder which you have allocated to the add-on domain. Usually public_html/add-on-domain name.

For the general case I am extracting/unzipping all contents under directory named public_html.

Usually, all the files extracted will be in a folder called “WordPress”. Since we want our site to open like www.domain-name.com and not like www.domain-name.com/wordpress, so we will open the wordpress folder and select all files and move files by clicking “Select all” and then “Move” option from the top. Set the location to public_html and click ‘move’.

Step 4-

First select the language of WordPress installation.

Now, fill the Database name, username and password which you noted down earlier while creating database.

Database host usually is “localhost” in most shared hosting companies like Inmotion, Godaddy etc. Click on save changes after filling all the details.

http://domain-name.com/wp-admin ( where “domain-name” will be replaced by your purchased domain name, for example in www.weboftwo.com, “weboftwo” is the domain name).

Congratulations! Your WordPress website is installed.

Don’t forget to bookmark our WordPress Installation guide, which will come in handy whenever you require it.

As some Web hosting companies like iPage don’t offer cPanel (Which is very disappointing! ), so in that situation you can follow this guide to manually install WordPress.

In case, you can’t successfully install WordPress using the above explained steps, feel free to comment or contact us at contact@www.weboftwo.com.

Always Happy to help you.

Keep Reading
Read About: Why WordPress should be your first choice for starting a blog
Read About: Complete Guide to Freelancing and getting your First Client.
Read About: Get Started with Web Development

Want to start Freelancing? Register and start getting Clients on Freelancer or Upwork.

Wordpress

How to Choose Simple WordPress Theme for your Blog

How to Install WordPress using FileZilla

What is FileZilla –

What is FTP –

For installing WordPress using FileZilla you will need these things –

Now we will now install wordpress on our web server-

Steps to install WordPress

how to install wordpress using filezilla

How to Install XAMPP and WordPress Locally on Windows

1. First learn how to install XAMPP on your computer

2. Creating a WordPress website locally using XAMPP

Adding WordPress files

Running WordPress Installer

How To Manually Install WordPress Blog on any Web-Hosting

Requirements :

Steps to install WordPress

Complete WordPress manual Installation Tutorial:

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Wordpress

What is FileZilla –

What is FTP –

For installing WordPress using FileZilla you will need these things –

Now we will now install wordpress on our web server-

Steps to install WordPress

how to install wordpress using filezilla

1. First learn how to install XAMPP on your computer

2. Creating a WordPress website locally using XAMPP

Adding WordPress files

Running WordPress Installer

Requirements :

Steps to install WordPress

Complete WordPress manual Installation Tutorial:

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