Category Archives: WordPress Plugins

Weglot Review: Fully Translate Your WordPress Site In Just A Couple Minutes

If you need to translate your WordPress site, there’s a good chance you’ve come across a plugin called Weglot. Having recently passed 20,000 users and €44,000 in monthly revenue, Weglot isn’t really a newcomer to the translation scene anymore. After using Weglot several times, I can see why they’ve been successful – Weglot is definitely ... Read moreWeglot Review: Fully Translate Your WordPress Site In Just A Couple Minutes

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MyCryptoCheckout Review: Accept Cryptocurrency on WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads

Last time I checked in with you all about cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was soaring high at $18,474.10. Prices have dropped a little since then (a moment of silence for my portfolio), but with a market cap of $372 billion, cryptocurrency is still here to stay. And that fact might have you interested in accepting cryptocurrency payments ... Read moreMyCryptoCheckout Review: Accept Cryptocurrency on WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads

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10Web Review: WordPress Site Management + 60 Premium Plugins For One Price

10Web is an intriguing new service that aims to make it a heckuva lot easier to manage a fleet of WordPress websites. It’s: Part all-access theme/plugin club Part website management dashboard for multiple WordPress installs So where do those premium themes and plugins come from? Well, I can’t find anything officially linking the two, but ... Read more10Web Review: WordPress Site Management + 60 Premium Plugins For One Price

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DeliPress Review: Send Newsletters Right From Your WordPress Dashboard

Before I start, let me be clear that this isn’t a review of a plugin that helps you create a website for your deli. No, friends, this is a review of a new‘ish plugin that helps you manage and create newsletters and opt-in forms right from your WordPress dashboard. DeliPress comes with a great-looking drag ... Read moreDeliPress Review: Send Newsletters Right From Your WordPress Dashboard

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How WPML Can Help You To Make Your Business More Successful Internationally

Creating a great website which customers will love is already stressful enough without adding languages. Besides, if you’re a small company as long as it’s in English it should be fine, right? Wrong on both counts. First, regardless of if you are Walmart or the local corner shop down the road, customers want to be ... Read moreHow WPML Can Help You To Make Your Business More Successful Internationally

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Which is the Best WordPress Calendar Plugin?

Are you looking for the best WordPress calendar plugin for your site? WordPress calendar plugins come with a variety of different features. Some are made for simple event management while others are more complex with booking, ticketing, and scheduling features. In this article, we have hand-picked the best WordPress calendar plugins for your site.

Best WordPress calendar plugins

How to Chose a Calendar Plugin for WordPress?

As we mentioned earlier that there are many different kind of WordPress calendar plugins available catering to the needs of different users.

Some calendar plugins are simple allowing you to just display events on a calendar. Others have more advanced features like appointments and bookings, scheduling, ticketing, and integrations with third-party services like Google Calendar.

You need to choose a plugin that fits your requirements. For example, if you want to sell event tickets, then a calendar with just the booking feature may not be good for you.

Let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress calendar plugins that you can try.

1. The Events Calendar

The Events Calendar

The Events Calendar is a powerful event management system for your WordPress site. It is feature-rich but extremely easy to use due to a neat user interface that blends into your WordPress admin area.

The Events Calendar allows you to easily add your events and manage organizers / venues. You can choose to display Google Maps for your venue locations. The plugin’s settings page gives you full control on how you want to manage your events and calendar.

Want to sell tickets for your events? The Event Calendar has paid add-ons to integrate it with WooCommerce, Eventbrite, and more.

2. All in One Event Calendar

All in One Event Calendar

All in One Events Calendar is a powerful event management plugin for WordPress. Its intuitive user interface makes it extremely easy to use even for beginners. You can easily add events, sort them into categories / tags, and choose from three built-in themes for the calendar display. You can also display your event venues using Google Maps right along the event details.

You can tweak the calendar theme by choosing different colors. It also allows you to add events from any other calendar that supports iCal format including Google Calendar. It doesn’t have ticket selling integrations, but you can add URLs to third party ticketing services.

3. My Calendar

My Calendar

My Calendar is another free and powerful event management solution for WordPress. It supports multiple calendars, event groups, categories, and locations. It also comes with a shortcode generator and widgets, so you can easily add calendars to your posts, pages, or sidebars.

This is a highly configurable plugin with an extensive settings page. You can control almost every aspect of how your calendar is displayed on the front-end. It comes with six built-in skins for calendar display.

For advanced users, there is a style editor to upload your own custom CSS. It also supports Google Map display on single event page, and on event popup.

4. Simple Calendar

Simple Calendar

Google Calendar Events brings Google Calendar to your WordPress site. You can create and manage your events through Google Calendar. This plugin simply display those events on your website. All you have to do is provide your Google Calendar feed URL.

The plugin comes with a powerful set of features. You can control the display of your calendar and events using the shortcodes. You can even control the appearance of the calendar using custom stylesheets.

The plugin does not support a ticketing system, but you can still use third party services to sell your event tickets and enter the ticketing page URL right into your event listing on Google Calendar.

5. Booking Calendar

Booking Calendar

As the name suggests, Booking Calendar is a booking management plugin for WordPress. It allows you to add a calendar to the front-end of your website where users can fill in a simple form to submit their booking requests. You can then accept or decline their booking request.

Booking Calendar comes with CAPTCHA support to avoid spam. You can control who can add a booking in the admin area. One downside of the plugin is that you cannot add new input fields for booking form in the free version of the plugin.

It can be used for booking any kind of service. However if you are particularly looking for a hotel booking system, then you should checkout our guide on how to add a hotel room booking system in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you choose the best calendar plugin for your WordPress site. For other plugin recommendations, see our list of the essential WordPress plugins for your website.

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Ads.txt Admin Review: How To Add ads.txt File To WordPress

Need to add an ads.txt file to WordPress? Or, have no idea what an ads.txt file is? If either of those situations applies to you, you should read this Ads.txt Admin review because I’m going to: Explain what ads.txt is and whether or not your WordPress site needs it. Show you how you can use ... Read moreAds.txt Admin Review: How To Add ads.txt File To WordPress

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5 Best WordPress Image Compression Plugins Compared

Are you looking for the best WordPress image compression plugin for your website? Image compression plugins allow you to easily optimize images in WordPress for better speed and performance. In this article, we have compared the best image compression plugins for WordPress.

Best WordPress image compression plugins

When Do You Need a WordPress Image Compression Plugin?

Images are larger in size than plain text which means they take longer to load and can slow down your website.

However you’ve probably heard the saying: “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Images make your content more engaging and interactive.

To improve your WordPress website speed, you need to optimize your images for the web. The best way to do this is by using Photoshop or another image editing software before you upload the image to WordPress. This gives you a lot more control on the quality of images on your website.

However, not all users are comfortable working with image editing program. For some optimizing every single image they upload sounds like a lot of work.

Luckily, there are several WordPress image compression plugins that can help you with that. These plugins optimize your images by automatically compressing them and using the smaller sized version on your website.

That being said, let’s take a look at the best WordPress image compression plugins, and how they stack up in terms of image optimization, performance, and quality.

1. reSmush.it

reSmush.it

reSmush.it is the best WordPress image compression plugin. It allows you to automatically optimize images on upload as well as offer a bulk optimization option for older images.

It uses the reSmush API to optimize images and allows you to choose the optimization level for your uploads. The downside is that it doesn’t have different compression levels. It also limits optimization to uploads lower than 5MB in size. You can exclude individual images from compression in case you need to add an image in full size.

2. EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer

EWWW Image Optimizer is a great option for WordPress image compression plugin. It is easy to use and can automatically optimize images you upload on the fly. It can also compress and optimize your previously uploaded images in bulk.

It performs all compression on your own servers which means you don’t need to sign up for an account to get an API key. It can also optimize images generated by other WordPress plugins and stored outside your media library folders. It doesn’t require an account to use the plugin, but you can sign up for their API to get additional features.

3. Compress JPEG & PNG images

Compress JPEG & PNG images

Compress JPEG & PNG is created by the team behind TinyPNG, and you will need to create an account to use the plugin. You can only optimize 100 images each month with the free account. It can automatically compress images upon upload, and you can also bulk optimize older images.

The plugin settings allow you to choose which image sizes you want to optimize. Additionally, you can also set a maximum size for your original uploads. Images larger than that size will be automatically resized by the plugin.

4. ShortPixel Image Optimizer

ShortPixel

ShortPixel Image Optimizer is another useful WordPress image compression plugin. It requires you to get an API key by providing your email address. The basic free account allows you to compress up to 100 images per month, and you will need to upgrade to their paid plans to increase this limit.

It starts compressing images as soon you as activate plugin and stores your original images in a separate folder. It also allows you to compare the original file with the compressed version to see the quality difference. ShortPixel is packed with advanced features and gives you the ability to choose comparison formats.

5. WP Smush

WP Smush

WP Smush is another popular WordPress image compression plugin. It automatically compresses images on upload and can also be used to compress and optimize your older image files. You can also set maximum image resolution, and your images will scale down to more reasonable sizes while being compressed.

The free version of plugin doesn’t require you to create an account to use their API key. The bulk optimization feature allows you to optimize up to 50 images at a time, and you can rerun the bulk optimizer to compress more images.

The free version of the plugin doesn’t perform that well. See our review of WP Smush with pros and cons.

Comparison Test Scores for Image Compression Plugins

Now that you know about the different WordPress image compression options, let’s take a look at how they compare against each other in terms of performance.

To measure this, we ran test by uploading the same image using each of these plugins.

Testing JPEG Image Compression

We used the following JPEG image for our tests, it is 118 KB in file size.

JPEG test image

We didn’t touch any of the plugin settings and tested the compression with out of the box settings. Here are our test results:

PluginCompressed SizeSaved (%)Method
reSmush.it76 KB30.59%Lossless
EWWW Image Optimizer112 KB5%Lossless
Compress JPEG & PNG images114.7 KB2.8 %Lossy
ShortPixel Image Optimizer69.2 KB41.94%Lossy
WP Smush112 KB5%Lossless

Testing PNG Image Compression

Next we wanted to test a PNG image to see how our contenders optimize it.

We used the following PNG image for the test, and it is 102 KB in file size.

PNG test image

Here are our test results:

PluginCompressed SizeSaved (%)Method
reSmush.it36 KB63.8%Lossless
EWWW Image Optimizer97.5 KB1.9%Lossless
Compress JPEG & PNG images34.364%Lossy
ShortPixel Image Optimizer37 KB63.5%Lossy
WP Smush99 KB2.9%Lossless

Which is The Best Image Compression Plugin for WordPress?

If you are not looking for flexible options in your image compression plugin, then reSmush.it gives you the best results in terms of performance by making the real difference in image file size.

If you are willing to pay for image compression, then you can try ShortPixel which performed really well in our tests.

EWWW Image Optimizer is a great plugin with flexible settings, but you will need their paid API key to get access to compression levels which make the real difference.

We hope you found this comparison of best WordPress image compression plugins useful. You may also want to see our list of common image issues in WordPress and how to fix them.

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.

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How to Create an Interactive Poll in WordPress (Step by Step)

Do you want to create an online poll on your WordPress site?

Polls are an interactive way to engage your audience while getting useful information from them. You can get feedback from your users and find out what they like.

In this article, we will show you how to easily create and add a poll in your WordPress.

How to Create an interactive poll in WordPress

Which Tool to Choose for Adding a Poll in WordPress?

Adding interactive polls to your website is a great way to engage users, as it instantly grabs their attention. You can generate leads using polls and, at the same time, collect valuable feedback from your audience.

That said, there are plenty of plugins and online tools that allow you to embed polls on your WordPress site. Many of them require you to create an account, some store data on their own servers, and others have a terrible user experience.

If you are looking for a good user experience with full control of poll data, then you’ll need WPForms. It is the best WordPress form builder plugin and includes powerful surveys and polls addon.

With WPForms, you’ll be able to do the following:

  • Create polls in WordPress using a drag-and-drop form builder
  • Gather poll results on your own websites
  • Show votes count when user submit their vote
  • Display poll anywhere on your website
  • Show poll results anywhere on your website

With that, let’s look at how to easily create online polls in WordPress using WPForms.

Creating Online Polls in WordPress

The first thing you need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

You will need the WPForms Pro plan because it includes the survey and polls addon. WPBeginner users get an additional discount by using the WPForms coupon code. There is also a WPForms Lite version you can try for free.

Upon activation, you need to visit the WPForms » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find this information in your WPForms account.

Entering the WPForms license key

Next, you need to visit WPForms » Addons page and scroll down to the Surveys and Polls addon.

Go ahead and click on the ‘Install’ addon button.

Install surveys and polls addon

Now you are ready to create an online poll.

You can start by going to WPForms » Add New page to create a new form. First, you need to provide a title for your poll form and then select the ‘Poll Form’ template.

Select the poll form template

This will launch the WPForms drag-and-drop form builder interface.

You will see a pre-made poll form template with example fields already added to the form.

Edit your poll form template

There are options to add new form fields from the left column. All you have to do is drag and drop the field you’d like to add to the form.

Besides that, you can just point and click to edit any field, rearrange them, or remove them.

For example, if you click the poll question in the template, then you will see more options in the menu on your left. Simply rearrange the order, and edit their titles, labels, and more.

Rearrange poll question order

Next, you need to click on the Settings button from the left menu and then go to the ‘Surveys and Polls’ tab. Here you can enable or disable the poll results option.

By default, the WPForms poll template will display poll results to users after they submit their votes. If you disable this option, then users will not see the poll results.

Enable survey and poll results option

On the other hand, you can show users a custom message or redirect them to another page or URL.

Simply go to the ‘Confirmation’ tab. Here, you can choose the Confirmation Type from the dropdown menu.

Go to confirmation settings

Once you have created the poll form, go ahead and click on the ‘Save’ button to store your form settings.

Adding The Poll to Your WordPress Website

WPForms makes it easy to add your online poll anywhere on your website, including posts, pages, custom post types, and sidebar widgets.

You can click the ‘Embed’ button in the form builder to add your poll form. Once you do that, a new popup window will open. You can select an existing page or create a new one to embed your form.

Embed a form in page

Let’s select the ‘Create New Page’ button for this tutorial.

In the next step, you’ll need to enter a name for your page. After that, you can click the ‘Let’s Go’ button.

Enter name for your new page

You should now see your poll form embedded in the WordPress content editor.

Another way of adding your form is by using the WPForms block. Simply click the ‘+’ button to add the WPForms and select your form from the dropdown menu.

Add a WPForms block in wordpress

Next, you’ll see a preview of your form.

You can save or publish your post/page and visit your website to see your poll in action.

View poll form preview

You can also add your poll to a sidebar or widget-ready area.

To do that, you need to go to the Appearance » Widgets page and add the WPForms widget block to a sidebar where you want to display the poll.

Add WPForms widget block

In the WPForms widget block, you need to select the poll form you created earlier.

Don’t forget to click the ‘Update’ button to store your widget settings. You can now visit your website to see your online poll displayed in a sidebar or another widget-ready area.

View poll form in sidebar

Viewing Live Poll Results

If you have enabled poll results, then your users will see the results after submitting their votes.

View your poll results

You can also view poll results at any time without submitting a vote.

Simply visit WPForms » All Forms page and click on the ‘Survey Results’ link below your poll form.

Click the survey results option

This will take you to the poll results page, where you will see poll responses in an interactive chart.

You can change the charge type and export the results in JPEG, PDF, and print formats.

See poll results in dashboard

Embed Poll Results Anywhere in WordPress

WPForms also allows you to easily embed your online poll results anywhere on your website. This is particularly useful if you have disabled poll results and want to share them later.

First, you will need to find out your poll form’s ID. You can do this by going to WPForms » All Forms page and looking for the shortcode next to your poll form.

View form shortcode

In the shortcode, you will find your poll’s ID number. For example, our test poll’s ID is 76, as shown in the screenshot above.

Next, you need to find out the field ID. This is the field in your form for which you want to show the results.

Simply edit your poll form and click on the poll field. You will find the field ID in the left column.

View the field ID

Now that you have both required IDs, you can go ahead and add the poll results shortcode like this:

Don’t forget to replace the form ID and field ID values with your own. You can use this shortcode in WordPress posts, pages, and text widgets.

Here’s a preview of what your poll results will look like:

Preview of form results

We hope this article helped you create an interactive poll in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to start a WordPress blog and 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.

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