Do you want to track your WordPress widget history to monitor changes made to the widgets on your site?
Widgets are blocks of content that you can add to your website. They allow you to add different elements to your sidebars such as signup forms, images, recent posts, and more. Tracking widget history allows you to easily monitor changes and undo them as needed.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily track your WordPress widget history.
Why Should You Track WordPress Widget History?
By default, WordPress comes with a feature called revisions for content types like posts and pages. Revisions make it easier to what changes were made by which user, and allow you to easily undo those changes if needed.
However, there is no built-in revisions feature for WordPress widgets.
Tracking widget history will allow you to keep track of changes made to widgets on your WordPress website. You can see which user added, removed, or changed a widget, and then you can keep those changes or undo them by editing your widget.
Similarly, if something in a widget has stopped working, then you can pinpoint which changes caused the problem and fix them manually.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily track widget history in WordPress.
How to Easily Track WordPress Widget History
The easiest way to track WordPress widget history is by using the Simple History plugin.
Keep in mind that plugin will only track changes made after the plugin is activated.
After installing the plugin, let’s make a few changes to your WordPress widgets. Simply go to the Appearance » Widgets page and make some changes to your existing widgets.
Don’t forget to click on the Update button to save your widget changes.
After that, you can go to the Dashboard » Simple History page inside WordPress admin area.
You’ll see the changes you made to your widgets appear at the top.
Apart from widget changes, Simple History will also be able to track the following changes and user activity on your website:
theme updates
plugin installation
sidebar widget history
Comments history
user logins
user profiles
If you want to change the settings of the plugin, then you can simply head over to Settings » Simple History from the WordPress admin dashboard.
From here, you can modify the plugin settings according to your needs.
If you want to track the widget history of your WordPress site directly from the dashboard, then you can check the ‘On the dashboard’ option beside the ‘Show History’ option.
This will allow you to access Simple History by simply heading over to Dashboard » Simple History from the WordPress admin panel.
You can also select the number of items you want to show on your log page as well as your dashboard page.
Additionally, you can enable the RSS feed option by checking the box next to it if you want to receive daily log updates about your website.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes button at the bottom once you’re satisfied.
Next, you may want to switch to the Debug tab. From here, you can view all the log events displayed as Loggers.
Plus, you will also be able to see the names of tables that plugin has created in your WordPress database.
The plugin also allowss you to easily downoad the logs file to your computer.
Siply switch to the Export tab on the plugin’s settings page and choose which format you want to use for the export.
You can choose either JSON or CSV format. We recommend using the CSV option as you can open the CSV files in any spreadsheet software like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
After that, click on the Download Export File button and plugin will send a download file to your browser.
Here is how it would look when you open it in a spreadsheet software.
Final Thoughts
Having an activity log is very important as it helps you keep your website safe. Simple History does that for widgets and many other plugins.
Other plugins like WPForms have added revisions to WordPress form building, and WPCode has also added version control for custom code snippets.
Lastly, if you’re looking for a comprehensive activity log solution for WordPress security, then we recommend taking a look at WP Activity Log plugin.
We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to easily track your WordPress widget history. You may also want to check out our guide on how to start a podcast, and our top picks of the best WooCommerce plugins for your store.
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.
Thrive Themes is the company behind some of the most powerful growth tools for WordPress. Over 200,000+ smart website owners use the Thrive premium plugin suite to easily convert website visitors into email subscribers, paying customers, and raving fans.
Introduction to Thrive Themes – Quick Overview
Thrive Themes is a popular brand among business owners because their suite of tools give you everything needed to build and grow your online business at drag & drop speed.
Although the brand name is Thrive Themes, it’s actually an ecosystem of powerful conversion focused WordPress plugins that work seamlessly together to help you start and grow your online business.
Thrive Suite consists of four key areas to help you grow your online business: Build, Convert, Sell, and Engage.
Powerful WordPress Website Building Tools
They offer two powerful drag & drop WordPress design building tools called Thrive Architect and Thrive Theme Builder. They work together to help you build high-converting websites without any coding needed.
Thrive Architect is a visual drag & drop page builder for WordPress that helps you build custom landing pages and blog post designs faster than ever before. It comes with over 350+ conversion focused landing page templates and conversion elements that you can use to build high-converting websites.
Thrive Theme Builder is a marketing centered custom WordPress theme builder that lets you visually build the conversion focused site of your dreams no matter your experience level (all drag & drop). Basically you can launch your site in under 15 minutes, update your brand everywhere in seconds, and everything is professionally designed with conversions in mind.
It comes with hundreds of design and site building elements to improve your workflow, and it integrates with just about every powerful business tool like WooCommerce, email marketing services, CRMs, and more to help save you time.
Don’t take my word, see what the users are saying.
WordPress Lead Generation & Conversion Tools
Thrive Suite is built by marketers for marketers which means there’s a big focus on creating advanced lead generation tools to help you get more email subscribers and grow your sales faster.
Their conversion tools for WordPress include Thrive Leads, Thrive Quiz Builder, Thrive Optimize, Thrive Ovation, and Thrive Ultimatum.
Thrive Leads is a drag and drop builder that allows you to create any type of lead generation form imaginable. It comes with a huge selection of opt-in form templates, or you can create your own custom one within minutes.
You can use it to create popups, sticky ribbons, in-line forms, 2-step optin forms, slide-ins, screen filler overlay, content lock forms, scroll mat, yes / no or multiple choice forms, and more.
The best part is that you get advanced targeting features that lets you display relevant and hyper-targeted offers to visitors based on posts, categories, tags, and more. You also get A/B testing for opt-in forms as well as actionable reports.
Thrive leads integrates with all the popular email marketing services and CRMs.
Thrive Quiz Builder is a WordPress quiz plugin that lets you create highly engaging quizzes to help grow your email list, social shares, while giving you the data you need to grow your business.
It lets you build those viral social media quizzes with branching logic with zero coding. You can also use it to build personalized product recommendation quizzes to help users make a decision on which product they should pick on your website.
The best part is that each answer helps you segment visitors based on their interests, so you can build a hyper-targeted email list and improve your email open rates.
You can also further improve your quiz conversions with A/B testing various quiz stages, and this is basically every marketers dream come true.
Thrive Optimize is a WordPress A/B testing tool that helps you launch tests faster, more often, and for crazy cheap prices compared to SaaS alternatives with no coding needed.
You can use it to create unlimited tests, unlimited variations, setup conversion goals, choose traffic distribution, and everything is done with visual editing (no code). Once the test is done, it automatically chooses your highest converting test as a winner.
Thrive Ovation is a set-and-forget testimonial plugin for WordPress. Studies show that testimonials can boost conversions by 34%, and this is the easiest way to start taking advantage of one of the most underestimated conversion boosters.
It lets you gather testimonials without a hassle where you can transform WordPress comments into testimonials in a single click. You can also automatically convert any social media comment into a beautiful testimonial card.
Lastly, it has a built-in auto-pilot testimonial gathering feature to help you collect more relevant and meaningful testimonials for your business.
Thrive Ultimatum is a powerful scarcity marketing tool for WordPress. You can use it to create both fixed and evergreen countdown timers on your website.
It comes with dozens of countdown timer designs that you can customize to match your style & brand with drag & drop ease. The targeting feature allows you to show the offer to the right audiences.
This is a must have tool for increasing product sales, building a buzz around your launch, and even boost established eCommerce sales.
Sell Online Courses with Results Focused LMS Plugin
Thrive Apprentice lets you create pro-looking courses straight from your WordPress dashboard. It’s a WordPress membership and LMS plugin to build and grow your online business.
It comes with a drag & drop course builder that lets you create modules, chapters, lessons, and more in a well-organized manner.
You get access to advanced drip functionality such as unlocking content at consistent intervals for each student or unlocking new content on specific weekday or day of the month.
You have the option to unlock lessons based on the results of a quiz in Thrive Quiz builder, and you can even add custom tags to each user for personalized communication using Thrive Automator.
Thrive Apprentice lets you protect content based on the user’s membership level, award certificates to those who complete your courses, and so much more.
Last but not least, it gives you detailed insights about your students and courses, so you can get insights like where are students dropping in your course, how many lessons did a particular student complete, overall engagement reports, and so much more.
Boost Your WordPress Engagement with Smart Comments
Thrive Comments help you turn the most overlooked feature on your WordPress website into your most valuable asset.
You can supercharge your WordPress comment area to spur engagement like Reddit and Facebook. It basically adds the most addictive elements of social media and community forms into your WordPress comments.
Users can get satisfaction by seeing likes / upvotes on their comments, unlock achievements through badges, get validation through being featured in comments, and get a chance to have their comments shared on social.
Basically Thrive Comments help you turn your comments into conversions. Based on what the user does, you can show selective actions such as redirecting first time comments to a welcome to community gfit page, or repeat commenters to a share modal, and more.
And unlike third-party comment systems like Disqus, there is no lock-in, and definitely no intrusive ads. This is your comment area and you get to customize it the way you want.
Whether you’re a small business owner or a marketer, I highly recommend adding Thrive Suite to your WordPress toolkit.
And now that you know all about Thrive Themes, I think you’ll find the background story of this acquisition even more interesting.
Background Story – Why Thrive Themes?
In 2009, when I started WPBeginner, I spent hours every day learning and writing about new WordPress plugins, themes, and tools to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys.
In the process, I came across Shane and Paul’s work when they created Hybrid Connect back in 2012. It was a WordPress popup plugin that I tried before I ended up building OptinMonster in 2013.
Ever since then I have closely followed their journey as they launched multiple products and eventually rebranded everything under the Thrive Themes brand.
Over the last 8 years, we have been friendly competitors working on the same mission: helping small businesses grow & compete with the big guys.
What a lot of beginners don’t often see is that WordPress is an open source platform. Unlike other industries, the competition is fair and friendly. Most of us WordPress product owners have great relationships with each other, and we even collaborate at times. This type of competition is known as co-opetition. We have learned from Thrive, and I’m sure Thrive has learnt from our brands.
While there are similarities in few of our existing products, there are also unique differences in our offerings. For example, Thrive has a powerful quiz builder for WordPress, an engaging comments plugin, and a proper A/B testing solution. Whereas the WPBeginner family of brands offered solutions like AIOSEO, WPForms, and MonsterInsights. Between us, we had a lot of mutual customers.
That’s why the brands will continue to operate independently and serve our respective customers (of course with deeper integration with each other)..
Last year, Shane reached out to me through the WPBeginner Growth Fund page because he was looking to move on to the next chapter of his life. But he only wanted to sell the business to someone who will carry his legacy forward while taking care of customers and protecting the team, and they chose us because of our reputation and values.
I was extremely familiar with Thrive Suite and have a lot of respect for what Shane and Paul had built, so it was a no brainer for us.
We worked through the logistics, and outside of the two co-founders, the entire team will be joining Awesome Motive. The team will be led by Brad Stevens, the current General Manager of Thrive Themes.
I will be working closely with him, and I’m super excited about bringing you more powerful solutions to help grow your website.
Note: Want to join our remote team to work on something awesome & make an impact? We’re hiring. Come work alongside me and help shape the future of the web.
What’s Coming Next?
Our work is just starting.
While I have some ideas and features I’d like to add in certain Thrive suite plugins, there is already an amazing feature roadmap in place based on existing customer feedback.
My goal is to do everything I can to help make those features become a reality, as quickly as possible.
I’m really looking forward to doing a deeper dive in some of the conversion tools, especially quizzes because I know they can be a game changer when used properly.
If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in the various Thrive plugins, 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.
Every time I share an announcement like this, I realize that I’m only able to do what I love every day because of you, our amazing readers, and I’m extremely grateful for your support throughout the years.
WPBeginner and Awesome Motive would not be here without YOU, and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you.
And I look forward to continuing serving you, and the larger WordPress / web ecosystem for years to come.
Do you want to build an Etsy-like store with WordPress?
Etsy is an online marketplace for creative folks who want to sell handmade goods, artwork, and other unique items. However, Etsy can be a bit limited in terms of what you can do with your store.
In this article, we will show you how to create an Etsy-like store with WordPress, and how to properly move an existing Etsy store to WordPress.
Etsy vs WordPress – Which one is better?
Etsy is an online marketplace for creative folks. Usually, people use Etsy to sell handicrafts, custom designs, jewelry, clothing, and more. It has become a niche marketplace for such unique items.
However, as an eCommerce platform, Etsy is quite limited in terms of functionality. Plus, it also takes a significant portion of your earnings which reduces the profitability and long-term growth of your business.
On the other hand, WordPress is the world’s most popular website builder. It allows you to create almost any kind of website imaginable, including full-fledged eCommerce stores.
Using WooCommerce on your WordPress website you can sell anything online including handicrafts and other unique handmade items.
You can sell physical goods (that need shipping), as well as digital downloads (spreadsheets, software, music, worksheets, online courses, and memberships).
More importantly, WordPress doesn’t charge you a listing fee or a transaction fee on each item you sell.
Note that there are two different types of WordPress platforms.
WordPress.com which is a hosted platform and WordPress.org which is also called self-hosted WordPress. See the difference in our WordPress.com vs WordPress.org comparison.
Throughout this article, when we say WordPress, we are talking about the more popular, self-hosted WordPress.org platform. We recommend using WordPress.org because it gives you access to all WordPress features out of the box.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily create an Etsy-like store in WordPress. Here is a quick overview of the topics we’ll cover in this article.
Etsy and WordPress both enable you to sell products online but which one you should choose? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of both platforms.
Pros and Cons of Setting up an Etsy Shop
Let’s take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of using Etsy to sell your products online.
Pros of Using Etsy
Ease of Use – Setting up an Etsy store is very easy and does not require any technical skills. Simply upload your product listings, add your payment information, and you are good to go.
Targeted Audience – Etsy has a large customer base of users interested in unique handmade products, gift items, artistic and creative products, and more. Opening up a shop on Etsy gives you access to a marketplace with interested buyers.
Security and Trust – Etsy takes care of payments and ensures product delivery. This has helped them build trust among both buyers and sellers.
Cons of Using Etsy
Higher Fees – Etsy charges $0.20 per listing (renews every four months) and a 6.5% transaction fee on the sale price (not including shipping costs). If you are using PayPal, then there is also a payment processing fee.
Lack of Control – You have no control over the platform, and how your products are featured. Etsy can remove a seller if they feel that the seller’s products don’t meet their policies or the seller fails to satisfy a customer.
Limited Growth Options – As your business grows, you will be paying a lot more to Etsy with limited options to grow your own brand and business.
Pros and Cons of Using WordPress
WordPress is the best platform to build any kind of website. However, it has its own pros and cons that you would want to consider.
Pros of Using WordPress
Complete Control – You have complete ownership and full control of your website.
Unlimited Features – You can add any feature to your website by installing extensions. There are more than 55,000 free WordPress plugins that you can install.
Unlimited Listings – You can add as many items to your shop as you want. There are no listing fees because you own and manage the platform yourself.
Low Costs – There is no commission and no transaction fee on each sale. You will only pay a small fee to your payment gateway.
Cons of Using WordPress
Website Management – You are responsible for managing updates and making backups. There are plugins that help you automate those tasks.
Learning Curve – WordPress is fairly easy to use. However, from time to time you may need some help. There are plenty of WordPress resources to help you out.
To learn more about WordPress, see our complete WordPress review with detailed pros and cons of the platform.
That being said let’s take a look at how to create an Etsy-like store with WordPress.
Requirements for Creating an Etsy-like Store with WordPress?
You’ll need the following things to build your own Etsy-like store with WordPress.
A domain name (This will be your shop’s address on the internet i.e wpbeginner.com)
A website hosting account (This will be the shop’s home and where all your files will be stored)
SSL Certificate (You need this to accept payments)
Your undivided attention for 30 minutes.
Ready? let’s get started.
Getting Started with Your Etsy-Like Shop in WordPress
Normally, a domain name will cost you $14.99 per year, website hosting $7.99 per month, and an SSL certificate around $69.99 per year.
This is a lot of money if you are just getting started.
Thankfully, the folks at Bluehost have agreed to offer WPBeginner users a free domain name + free SSL certificate, and a 60% discount on hosting.
They are also an officially recommended WordPress and WooCommerce hosting provider, and one of the largest hosting companies in the world.
Upon activation, click on ‘Run the setup wizard’ button to quickly set up your WooCommerce store.
The setup wizard will guide you through the basic setup.
During step 4, you need to switch to the ‘Free features’ tab and uncheck ‘Add recommended business features to my site’ feature.
This option installs additional plugins. You can always install these plugins later if needed.
Click on the continue button to select a theme and then finish the setup. Don’t worry, we’ll talk more about theme and store design options later in this article.
Adding Items to Sell in WooCommerce
After setting up WooCommerce, let’s add a few items to sell on your online store.
Simply go to Products » Add New page to add your first item.
First, provide a title for your product and then a detailed description.
On the right-hand column, you can add product categories, tags, and images.
Below the description area, you will see the ‘Product Data’ box.
From here you can set product price, inventory, shipping, and other attributes.
Once you are satisfied with all the product information you have added, you can click on the ‘Publish’ button to make it live on your website.
Repeat the process to add more products as needed.
Importing an existing Etsy Store to WordPress
Do you already have an Etsy store that you want to move to WordPress? In this section, we will show you how to easily import your Etsy shop to WordPress.
Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled ‘Etsy Importer’ to your WordPress admin sidebar. Clicking on it will take you to the plugin’s settings page.
You will be asked to provide your license key. You can find this information under your account on the plugin’s website.
After activation, the settings page will ask you to provide the following information.
Etsy API Key
Etsy Secret Key
Your Etsy Shop Name
To get these API keys, you need to visit the Etsy Developers ‘Apps You’ve Made‘ website.
Once there, click on the ‘Create a new app’ link.
This will bring you to a new page where you will be asked to provide a name for your app.
You need to select that you are creating the app for yourself, and it will not be used for commercial purposes.
After that, click on ‘Read terms and create app’ button.
You will now see your app information page. From here you need to copy the ‘Keystring’ and ‘Shared Secret’ keys.
Now, switch back to the Easy Etsy Importer plugin’s settings page. After entering your API keys, click on the ‘Save & Verify’ button to continue.
This will take you to the Etsy website where you will be asked to allow access to the app. Click on the ‘Allow’ button to continue.
The plugin will now try to connect to your Etsy shop.
Once connected, it will show a success message.
Next, you need to switch to the settings tab.
The default settings will work for most websites, but you can still review and change them as needed.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.
Now you can move to the ‘Import’ tab. The plugin provides you options to selectively import items or import all listings.
The default settings will work for most websites, so you can just go ahead and click on the ‘Import’ button.
The plugin will now start importing your Etsy listings to WooCommerce. Once finished, you will see a success message, and you will be able to see the imported products under Products » All Products page.
Next, you can switch to the reviews tab to import your Etsy reviews to WooCommerce.
Congratulations, you have successfully imported your Etsy store listings to your WooCommerce website.
Choosing an Etsy-like WordPress Theme for Your Store
WordPress gives you access to thousands of free and paid website designs that you can use. These designs are called WordPress themes.
Each WordPress theme contains various template files to give your website a beautiful design.
You don’t need any coding or programming skills to use a theme, and each of them comes with different options that you can use to customize the design to your liking.
Due to such a large variety of WordPress themes available, often users feel overwhelmed by the choices. To make it easier, we have hand-picked the best WooCommerce WordPress themes that you can use on your website.
The list contains both free and paid WordPress themes and all of them are mobile-ready.
You may not find a theme that looks exactly like the Etsy website. However you can find a theme with the same design qualities and then use the theme’s settings to make it look more similar.
Unlike Etsy, you have full control of your WordPress store. You can modify it in any way you want with the help of thousands of WordPress plugins.
Plugins are like apps for your WordPress website. You can install them to add new features to your website like contact forms, Google Analytics, and more.
With more than 55,000 plugins, you can easily find a plugin for almost anything.
Here are some of the plugins that we use on all our websites.
Now that you have a WordPress powered online store, you may want to expand your website by adding new features and growing your business.
WPBeginner is the largest free WordPress resource site in the world. We have tons of articles, videos, and step by step tutorials to help you take your website to the next level.
Here are some of the handy resources you will find on WPBeginner, all of them are completely free.
WPBeginner Blog – This is where we publish our WordPress tutorials, how-tos, and step by step guides.
WPBeginner Videos – These step-by-step videos will help you learn WordPress FAST.
WPBeginner on YouTube – Need more video instructions? Subscribe to our YouTube channel with more than 283,000 subscribers and 40 Million+ views.
WPBeginner Engage – Our Facebook community with more than 90,000 users. Helps you quickly ask questions and get help from users like yourself.
WPBeginner Glossary – The best place for beginners to start and familiarize themselves with the WordPress terms and lingo.
WPBeginner Deals – Exclusive discounts on WordPress products and services for WPBeginner users.
You can also use Google to find tutorials on WPBeginner. Simply add ‘wpbeginner’ next to your search term, and you will find answers to all your WordPress questions.
Do you want to track link clicks and button clicks in WordPress?
Tracking links and button clicks help uncover how users interact with your website. You can use the insights to improve your website and plan your marketing and content strategies accordingly.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to easily track link clicks and button clicks in WordPress.
Why Should You Track Link and Button Clicks in WordPress?
Links and buttons are two of the most common ways users interact with any website on the internet. These elements also lead website visitors to make purchases, sign up, and convert into customers.
Tracking how your users interact with different elements on your WordPress website helps you learn what’s working on your website. More importantly, it helps you understand what’s not working and needs improvement.
For instance, if users are not clicking on the ‘add to cart’ button in your online store, then you can investigate what’s stopping them from doing so. Another great example is your affiliate links. You can track which links your users click more often than others.
These insights can help you make data-driven decisions for the success of your business. Having said that, let’s look at how you can easily track links and button clicks in WordPress.
We have broken down this guide into the following sections, so you can easily follow along.
Tracking Link and Button Clicks in WordPress Using MonsterInsights
The best tool to collect marketing data on your website is Google Analytics. However, despite Google’s best efforts, many beginners and even experienced marketers find it a bit intimidating.
MonsterInsights goes beyond just adding a tracking script in the footer. It automatically adds proper event tracking to all links, buttons, cart areas, and more. Most importantly, it also shows you human-readable reports inside your WordPress dashboard.
MonsterInsights has a free version, but you’ll need at least the Pro plan to take full advantage of all the powerful tracking features it offers.
Upon activation, you’ll see the welcome screen and the setup wizard. Simply click the ‘Launch the Wizard’ button and follow the onscreen instructions to connect your website to Google Analytics.
The MonsterInsights setup wizard automatically configures all the right settings based on the type of your website and also lets you set up a Google Analytics 4 property. It truly is effortless.
Once you have set up MonsterInsights, you can resume this tutorial. Now that everything is running, let’s start setting up click tracking.
Tracking Affiliate Links in WordPress
A lot of web publishers use affiliate marketing to make money online.
As an affiliate marketer, you’ll need to learn how your affiliate links are doing. Obviously, you can track your affiliate earnings from third-party resources, but that does not give you an accurate picture of how users interact with your affiliate links.
Most affiliate marketers use a link-cloaking plugin like ThirstyAffiliates. This allows you to create shorter affiliate links and manage all your links inside WordPress. For example, https://www.example.com/refer/awesomeproduct/.
MonsterInsights makes it easy to set up affiliate link tracking in WordPress.
Simply go to Insights » Settings and switch to the ‘Publisher’ tab. From here, you can add your affiliate link’s unique path to start tracking.
Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
Within a few hours, you will be able to see your affiliate link performance in your Publisher reports located under the Insights » Reports menu in WordPress.
Tracking Outbound Links in WordPress
Outbound links are links pointing to external websites. These could also be uncloaked affiliate links, links to your partner websites, or other websites you own.
MonsterInsights automatically tracks all clicks on those outgoing links. You can view them by visiting the Insights » Reports page under Publishers report.
Pro tip: If you see that you’re sending a lot of clicks to an external website, then you should contact them to work out a strategic partnership. This can be a sponsorship, cross-promotion, affiliate partnership, etc.
If you run an eCommerce business using WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, then you should track which products get the most clicks.
MonsterInsights comes with powerful eCommerce tracking features. Now it’s time to turn on eCommerce tracking on your website.
First, you need to visit your Google Analytics dashboard. From there, you need to switch to the Admin view.
Next, you need to click on the eCommerce settings option.
It will be located under the ‘View’ column.
After that, you will see the options to turn on eCommerce tracking and reporting in Google Analytics.
Go ahead and click the toggles for the ‘Enable Ecommerce’ and ‘Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting’ options.
Now that you have enabled eCommerce in Google Analytics, let’s enable the MonsterInsights eCommerce addon.
First, you need to go to the Insights » Addons page. From here, you need to install the ‘eCommerce’ addon for MonsterInsights.
After that, you need to head over to the Insights » Settings page and switch to the eCommerce tab.
From here, you can turn on enhanced eCommerce tracking. MonsterInsights will automatically detect your eCommerce plugin and turn it on for you.
That’s all you have successfully enabled eCommerce tracking on your website.
The best part is that MonsterInsights shows the performance of your online store in your WordPress dashboard. Simply go to Insights » Reports and switch to the ‘eCommerce’ tab.
On top, you’ll see an overview of your eCommerce conversions. Below, you will find your top referral sources, as well as the exact conversions and revenue for each source.
This information helps you learn which referral sources to maximize and which are not doing well.
If you have a membership site that sells digital downloads or offers downloadable content on your website, then tracking file download buttons will help you find how users interact with those files.
MonsterInsights automatically tracks file downloads for common file types like documents, spreadsheets, presentations, PDFs, and zip files.
You can also add other file types that you may want to track. Simply go to the Insights » Settings page and then switch to the ‘Engagement’ tab.
From here, you’ll need to scroll down to the File Downloads section.
Here, you can add the file type extension you want to track.
You can view file download stats by visiting Insights » Reports and switching to the ‘Publisher’ tab.
After that, scroll down to the ‘Top Download Links’ report to see which files get the most downloads.
Tracking Form Conversions in WordPress
Forms play an important role in the success of any website. You use forms for an email newsletter, shopping cart, purchase and order forms, and all your contact forms.
It is crucial to understand how users interact with your forms, which forms get more conversions, and which forms are not getting enough attention.
Let’s start tracking forms in WordPress using MonsterInsights.
First, you need to head over to the Settings » Addons page. From here, install the ‘Forms’ addon.
Once enabled, MonsterInsights will automatically detect the forms on your website and start gathering interaction data. It works seamlessly with all popular WordPress form plugins like WPForms, Formidable Forms, Gravity Forms, and more.
To view your form reports, you need to go to the Insights » Reports page and switch to the ‘Forms’ tab.
So far, we have discussed how to track links and button clicks across your website automatically. What if you wanted to track a specific link on your WordPress site and create custom reports?
Luckily, MonsterInsights makes this easy as well. It’s called a custom link attribution feature, and here is how you can add that to any link on your website. Simply add your link in the following format:
<a href="https://www.example.com" data-vars-ga-category="Call to action clicks" data-vars-ga-action="CTA link click" data-vars-ga-label="Homepage CTA clicks">My custom link</a>
This link contains three new link attributes:
data-vars-ga-category: Sets a category for your link
data-vars-ga-action: Describes the action this link performs
data-vars-ga-label: A label for your link which helps you identify it
To insert the link in your content, first head to the content editor by editing a post or a page. Next, you’ll need to click the 3 dots to view more options and then select the ‘Edit as HTML’ option.
This will change your text from the visual view to the HTML view.
Now go ahead and add your custom link. Once that is done, simply update or publish your page or post.
MonsterInsights will now start to track your custom links in Google Analytics.
You can find your custom link tracking report in Google Analytics by going to the Behavior » Events » Top Events section.
Do you want to embed Facebook albums in WordPress?
Embedding Facebook albums is a great way to get more engagement on both your WordPress website and your Facebook page. It can also grow your social media following.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily embed Facebook albums in WordPress.
Embedding a Facebook Album in WordPress
Showing albums on your WordPress website can make your pages more engaging.
As you add more photos to Facebook, they’ll appear on your site automatically, so it’s also a great way to keep your website fresh, even for regular visitors.
You can even use embedded albums to promote your Facebook page. If visitors see lots of interesting photos then they’ll want to follow you on Facebook. This can get you some extra followers and more engagement.
WordPress used to come with built-in embed support for Facebook albums. Just like you embed a YouTube video, you could simply copy and paste the URL of any Facebook album and WordPress would display that album automatically.
However, Facebook and Instagram have since made changes to their API. These changes make it impossible for WordPress to continue oEmbed support for Facebook and Instagram.
If you try to embed a link to an album, then WordPress will tell you that ‘Sorry, this content could not be embedded.’
This plugin lets you show Facebook albums, comments, reviews, community posts and more on your site.
It also lets visitors take a closer look at your photos and images without having to visit Facebook, by opening a lightbox popup on your website.
In this guide, we’ll be using the pro version of Smash Balloon as it allows you to embed Facebook albums, display videos, show photos in a custom Facebook feed, and more. However, there’s also a free version that allows you to create a custom Facebook feed for WordPress, no matter what your budget.
Upon activation, you’ll need to go to Facebook Feed » Settings and enter your license key into the ‘License Key’ field.
You’ll find this information under your account on the Smash Balloon website.
After entering the key, click on the ‘Activate’ button.
Connect Your Facebook Page or Group to WordPress
Smash Balloon Custom Facebook Feed allows you to embed albums from your different Facebook pages and groups. You can even show the latest comments in a dropdown box below the photo, along with the like and shares.
To connect your Facebook page or group to WordPress, go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds and then click on ‘Add New.’
Smash Balloon lets you show posts from your photo albums, timeline, events, and more.
To embed your Facebook albums, you’ll need to click on ‘Albums’ and then click on ‘Next.’
Now, you need to select the Facebook page or group where you’ll get the albums from.
To get started, click on ‘Add New.’
On the next screen, choose whether you want to show albums from a page or group.
After that, just click on ‘Connect to Facebook.’
This opens a popup where you can log into your Facebook account and choose the pages or groups where you want to embed albums from.
After making this decision, click on ‘Next.’
Once you’ve done that, Facebook will show all the information that Smash Balloon will have access to, and the actions it can perform.
To restrict Smash Balloon’s access to your Facebook account, just click any of the switches to turn it from ‘Yes’ to ‘No.’ Just be aware that this may affect the albums and photos that you can embed on your WordPress blog or website.
With that being said, we recommend leaving all the switches enabled.
When you’re ready, click on ‘Done.’
After a few moments, you should see a message confirming that you’ve connected your WordPress website to Facebook. With that done, it’s time to click on ‘OK.’
Smash Balloon will now take you back to the WordPress dashboard automatically.
How to Embed Facebook Albums in WordPress
You will now see a popup with the group or page you just linked to your website. Simply select the radio button next to your source and then click on the ‘Add’ button.
If you accidentally closed the popup, then don’t panic. You can simply refresh the tab to reopen the popup.
After that, WordPress will take you back to the Facebook Feed » All Feeds page automatically. Just like before, click on the ‘Add New’ button, select ‘Albums’ and then click on the ‘Next’ button.
Now, select your Facebook page or group, and click on ‘Next.’
On this screen, you can choose the template you’ll use as the starting point for your feed. All of these templates are fully customizable so you can fine-tune the design depending on how you want to show the Facebook albums on your website.
We’re using the ‘Default’ template, but you can choose any template you want.
With that done, click on the ‘Next’ button.
Smash Balloon will now go ahead and create an album feed based on your source and the template you’ve chosen. This is a good start, but you may want to fine-tune how the albums appear on your WordPress website.
How to Customize Your Embedded Facebook Albums
The Smash Balloon Custom Facebook Feed plugin gives you lots of ways to customize how the albums are displayed. With that in mind, it’s worth seeing what changes you can make.
On the Facebook Feed » All Feeds screen, find your album feed and then click on its ‘Edit’ button, which looks like a small pencil.
This opens the Smash Ballon feed editor, which shows a preview of your Facebook albums to the right.
On the left-hand side, you’ll see all the different settings you can use to customize how these albums appear on your site. Most of these settings are self-explanatory, but we’ll quickly cover some key areas.
To start, you can change how the albums are displayed by clicking on ‘Feed Layout.’
On this screen, you can switch between different layouts, such as masonry and grid, and change the feed height. As you make changes, the preview will update automatically so you can try different settings to see what looks the best.
By default, the feed will show the same number of posts on desktop computers and mobile devices such as smartphones.
You can preview how your albums will look on desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones using the row of buttons in the upper-right corner.
Mobile devices usually have smaller screens and less processing power, so you may want to show fewer albums on tablets and smartphones.
To do this, just type a different number into the ‘Mobile’ field under ‘Number of Posts.’
By trying out different layouts you can create a custom feed that looks great, no matter what device the visitor is using.
By default, the Facebook feed shows less columns on smartphones and tablets, compared to desktop computers. This helps all your albums and photos fit comfortably on smaller screens.
After testing the mobile version of your WordPress website, you may be unhappy with how the columns look on smartphones and tablets. If this is the case, then you can show fewer columns by changing the numbers in the ‘Columns’ section.
When you’re happy with the changes you’ve made, click on the ‘Customize’ link.
This will take you back to the main Smash Balloon editor, ready for you to explore the next settings screen, which is ‘Color Scheme.’
By default, Smash Balloon uses a color scheme inherited from your WordPress theme, but this screen allows you to switch to a ‘Light’ or ‘Dark’ look,
By default, Smash Balloon adds a header to your feed, which is your Facebook profile picture and the name of the page or group.
To change how this section looks, click on ‘Header’ in the left-hand menu.
On this screen, you can change the size of the header, its color, hide or show your Facebook profile picture, and more.
If you want to remove the header completely, then click to turn off the ‘Enable’ toggle.
By default, Smash Balloon shows the title of each album. If you want to hide the title, then select ‘Posts’ from the main Smash Balloon editor menu.
Then, click on ‘Post Style.’
Here, you can remove the album titles by clicking on the ‘Show album title’ slider.
This can be useful if your album titles distract attention away from the photos, or they don’t make sense when embedded on your website.
On this screen, you can also choose whether to show how many photos are in each album.
To add this number, simply click on the ‘Number of posts in album’ toggle.
By default, Smash Balloon doesn’t include the Facebook ‘like’ button in your feed. To get more Facebook followers, you may want to add this button by selecting ‘Like Box’ from the editor’s left-hand menu.
After that, simply click on the ‘Enable’ button so that it turns blue.
By default, Smash Balloon adds this button below your embedded photo albums, but you can change this by opening the ‘Position’ dropdown and choosing ‘Top.’
On this screen you can also change how the ‘like’ section looks including adding a custom call to action, showing how many people follow you on Facebook, and more.
When you’re happy with how the ‘like’ button looks, you can move on to the ‘Load More Button’ screen.
The Load More button encourages visitors to scroll through more of your Facebook feed, so Smash Balloon adds it to your embedded photo albums by default.
Since it’s such an important button, you can help Load More stand out by changing its background color, text color, and label.
Another option is to remove the button completely, by clicking the ‘Enable’ toggle.
By default, Smash Balloon allows visitors to look through your Facebook albums without leaving your website.
They can simply click on any album to open a lightbox, as you can see in the following image.
The visitor can then use the arrows to scroll through the album.
If they want to like a photo, leave a comment, or share the image with their Facebook friends, then they can click on the ‘View on Facebook’ link.
There are a few different ways that you can customize the default lightbox.
To see your options, click on ‘Lightbox’ in the left-hand menu.
Here, you can change the color of the lightbox’s text, links, and background colors.
The lightbox feature makes it easy for people to engage with your photos, but it also allows people to scroll through your albums without visiting your Facebook page. If you want to get more visitors to your Facebook page then you can disable the lightbox feature by clicking on the ‘Enable’ toggle.
Now, if a visitor clicks on an album they will be redirected to your Facebook page in a new tab.
When you’re happy with how the photo albums look, don’t forget to click on ‘Save’ to store your changes.
You’re now ready to add these albums to your WordPress website.
How to Add Facebook Albums to WordPress
You can add your Facebook albums to WordPress using a block, widget, or shortcode.
If you’ve created more than one feed using Smash Balloon, then you’ll need to know the feed’s code if you’re going to use a block or widget.
Simply go to Facebook Feed »All Feeds and then look at the feed="" part of the shortcode. You’ll need to add this code to the block or widget, so make a note of it.
In the following image, we’ll need to use feed="4".
If you want to embed your Facebook albums in a page or post, then you’ll typically use the Custom Facebook Feed block.
Simply open the page or post where you want to embed your albums. Then, click on the ‘+’ icon to add a new block and start typing ‘Custom Facebook Feed.’
When the right block appears, click to add it to your page or post.
The block will show one of your Smash Balloon feeds by default. If you want to use a different feed instead, then simply find ‘Shortcode Settings’ in the right-hand menu.
You can now add the feed="" code to this box. After that, click on ‘Apply Changes.’
The block will now show the albums from your Facebook page or group. Just publish or update the page to make the albums live on your website.
Another option is to add the feed to any widget-ready area, such as the sidebar or similar section. This allows visitors to see your Facebook photos from any page of your site.
Simply go to Appearance » Widgets in the WordPress dashboard and then click on the blue ‘+’ button.
Once you’ve done that, find the Custom Facebook Feed widget.
Then, just drag it onto the area where you want to show the feed.
The widget will show one of the feeds you created using Smash Balloon.
To show a different feed instead, type the feed’s code into the ‘Shortcode Settings’ box and then click on ‘Apply Changes.’
You can now click on the ‘Update’ button to make the widget live. For more information, please see our step by step guide on how to add and use widgets in WordPress.
Finally, you can embed your albums on any page, post, or widget-ready are using shortcode.
Simply go to Facebook Feed »All Feeds and copy the code in the ‘Shortcode’ column. You can now add this code to your site.
Smash Balloon also allows you to embed a specific Facebook album anywhere on your WordPress site. This allows you to show your latest or best album to visitors, or to display an album that’s relevant to the rest of the page’s content.
To embed a particular Facebook album, you’ll need to buy and install the Album extension by going to Facebook Feed » Extensions.
Here, find the ‘Album’ extension and click on its ‘Add’ button.
This will open the Smash Ballon website in a new tab, with instructions on how to purchase the extension.
Once you have the extension, you can install it in exactly the same way you install a plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
After activating the plugin, go to Facebook Feed » All Feeds and click on ‘Add New.’
Under ‘Advanced Feed Types,’ select ‘Single Album’ and then click ‘Next.’
You can now choose the page or group that you want to use as your source, and choose a template by following the same process described above.
On the next page, you’ll need to enter the ID of the album that you want to embed.
In a new tab, simply open the Facebook album that you want to display.
You can now copy the numbers after the = symbol, and inbetween the first two periods. For example, in the following image we need to copy 447443907512397.
You can now paste these numbers into the WordPress dashboard.
After that, click on ‘Next’ and Smash Balloon will fetch the album.
After that, you can style the album and add it to your site following the same process described above.
WordPress 2023: Get a glimpse of what’s to come As we continue to push forward with the Gutenberg project, we are excited to announce that we are entering into Phase 3 of development. This phase is all about focusing on the backend and working on the APIs that power our workflows. This means that we [...]
Are you looking for the best sales page WordPress themes for your marketing campaign?
Sales page or landing page WordPress themes help marketers convert visitors into paying customers. Choosing the right theme means you can highlight specific brands or products to avoid distractions and increase sales.
In this article, we will share some of the best sales page WordPress themes for marketers.
Creating a Sales Page Website with WordPress
A good sales page prominently displays call-to-action buttons, along with a breakdown of your product or service’s features and unique selling points.
A domain name is your website’s address on the internet, like google.com or wpbeginner.com. Web hosting is the storage space for your website files. Your web host makes your site available all across the world, 24/7.
We recommend using Bluehost. It’s one of the largest hosting companies in the world and an official WordPress hosting partner.
For WPBeginner users, Bluehost offers a free domain name, a free SSL certificate, and a BIG discount on web hosting.
After signing up for the hosting, just check out our complete guide on how to make a WordPress website. It will take you step by step through the process of creating your site.
Let’s take a look at some of the best sales page WordPress themes for marketers.
Astra is one of the most popular WordPress themes on the market. It lets you create custom landing page designs with over 180+ starter templates.
With fast-loading templates, Astra can be the perfect choice for designing sales pages. It also integrates with WooCommerce to create a full eCommerce website. This lets you collect online payments using Payhip, Stripe, or other payment gateways.
Astra also works seamlessly with tools like OptinMonster if you also plan to use your website for lead generation. This lets you create opt-in popups and forms for your email list and can dramatically boost your conversion rates.
SeedProd is the best WordPress theme and website builder. It’s also the most popular landing page builder on the market, with ready-made sales page templates for marketers and agencies.
With SeedProd, you can create a fully custom website and then add a sales landing page. And you can do everything with a beginner-friendly drag-and-drop builder.
SeedProd seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce and its extensions. This helps set up the best sales page with online payment options and other features without writing code or hiring a professional developer.
Divi is a classic WordPress all-purpose theme and an ultimate page builder plugin. It comes with hundreds of layout templates. If you want to create a sales page from scratch, then it provides a visual editor to add elements, text, and images.
Divi is highly customizable and lets you change colors, fonts, and backgrounds without knowing any CSS code. You have the full range of Google fonts to choose from, plus elements like dividers and call-to-action buttons to help you build the perfect sales page on your website.
Divi is also designed for good WordPress SEO, helping you get search engine traffic to your sales page.
OceanWP is a free WordPress theme designed beautifully to create marketing and sales pages. It offers free and premium ready-made demo templates to set up websites in just a few clicks.
With powerful extensions, you can quickly add fullscreen backgrounds, social media icons, a registration form, sticky navigation, and more. OceanWP supports RTL languages, so you can also create a multilingual website.
Hestia Pro is a fantastic WordPress multipurpose theme for any type of website. It has one-page and multi-page templates for small businesses to provide a great user experience.
It has an attractive layout design that supports video embeds in the background and other widgetized areas. You can use the WordPress live customizer to make changes on the pages easily.
Ultra is a powerful and flexible WordPress theme with a built-in visual drag-and-drop page builder. It also includes several ready-made templates for different niches like agencies, spas, apps, businesses, and so on.
With its easy and powerful page builder, the Ultra theme is ideal for creating beautiful sales pages in just a few minutes. It also comes with portfolios, sliders, image galleries, custom widgets, and more.
Sydney Pro is a stunning sales page WordPress theme that you can easily use on multi-page sites. It’s designed for small businesses, app landing pages, products, or photography websites.
It features a large fullscreen background image on the homepage with a navigation menu and a custom logo at the top. It also comes with homepage layouts, creative header styles, and portfolio templates.
Breakthrough Pro is built on top of the Genesis theme framework and designed to be a single or multiple-page theme. It has a beautiful parallax scrolling effect and a large fullscreen header image with a call-to-action button.
The homepage layout is fully widgetized, so you can drag and drop content blocks to set up your sales page. Other features include full WooCommerce support, custom widgets, page templates, and crisp typography.
Indigo is an elegant WordPress theme that lets you create beautiful sales page layouts. It comes with drag-and-drop modules that let you design unique pages to match your needs.
To make it even easier, Indigo includes demo content and ready-made websites that you can use as a starting point for your projects. It also offers multiple templates, photo galleries, header styles, and unlimited sidebars.
OneEngine is a single-page WordPress theme with a bold and creative design. It has a bright fullscreen header on the top, followed by a navigation menu and then content widgets.
It includes services, team members, a portfolio, and an about section. With the OneEngine theme, it’s easy to create a custom sales page for any product or service.
Angle is an excellent WordPress multipurpose theme with flexible options to create your sales page using drag and drop.
It includes parallax scrolling, image sliders, and a built-in portfolio section. It is easy to set up and customize with multiple homepage layouts and landing page templates.
Struct is designed as a sales page theme for software, apps, and products. It features a clean and modern layout with large header background and prominent call-to-action buttons.
Struct has a fully widgetized homepage layout with several custom widgets to add content and social media features. It also includes services, projects, FAQs, testimonials, and slideshows out of the box.
Digital Download is a premium-like free sales page WordPress theme. As you would expect from its name, you can use this theme to sell digital downloads like PDF documents, tutorials, ebooks, etc.
It integrates with the Easy Digital Downloads plugin to set up an online marketplace in just a few clicks. The theme is fully customizable for colors, font, and layout design.
Balance is a creative WordPress eCommerce sales page theme for online businesses. It includes several user engagement features like a call-to-action button, a subscription form, a contact form, and more.
The theme attractively displays your products on the homepage and other landing pages. It also supports popular page builder plugins that lets you create custom sales page layouts.
Landing is a WordPress sales page theme that comes with a pre-designed layout. It has a drag and drop page builder to edit existing landing pages and create new ones from scratch.
You get multiple header types, so you can design countless sales pages with different styles and layouts. Plus, it includes a portfolio, testimonials, events, and social media integration.
Silk is a WordPress sales page theme for beauty bloggers, cosmetic businesses, fashion agencies, and more. It has a beautifully designed homepage with a layered layout.
Convert is a professional WordPress sales page theme. It has an eye-catching layout with over 30 customizer options for the header section and gives you complete control of the website.
It has multiple global sections that work smoothly with your favorite page builders like Elementor or Visual Composer to build fully custom layouts. You also get built-in templates for one-column and multi-column pages.
The Launcher is a free landing page theme for your upcoming product launch. It’s ideal for a product landing page and can also be used as a regular sales page for your products or services.
The Launcher comes with easy customization options, call-to-action buttons, a sticky navigation menu, a clients section, and a pricing table. Plus, it’s fully responsive so that your website will look great on mobile devices.
Altitude Pro is a WordPress business theme built for sales pages. It comes with a beautiful fullscreen header image and a call-to-action button. If you’re an author, it could make a good book landing page theme for selling ebooks.
Inside, you will find a spacious layout that offers a great user experience. Atmosphere Pro has large featured images and crisp typography. Plus, the theme is optimized for speed and performance.
Beauty Studio is a free WordPress sales page theme for salons, spas, and beauty products. It has a full-width header with dark colors that create a powerful first impression on your users.
Other features include call-to-action buttons, custom sidebar areas, social media integration, an image slider, and more. You also get a featured section to display your top products.
Float is a beautiful WordPress theme optimized for sales and conversion. It ships with a built-in page builder that lets you create or modify page layouts. It includes eye-catching animations to make your sales page more attractive.
It offers parallax scrolling, social media integration, custom backgrounds, unlimited colors, custom widgets, and more.
Screenr is a free one-page WordPress business theme. The homepage has a fullscreen header image, followed by widgetized sections to add your content.
It includes custom widgets, custom page templates, and parallax background effects. It’s easy to change different options about your site using the live WordPress customizer.
Monochrome Pro is a modern WordPress black-and-white theme for apps, digital media, SAAS, and product websites. It features multiple widgetized areas, a large header image, and custom widgets to build your sales page in a few clicks.
It comes with a theme options panel for easy customization. You also get several layout choices, color schemes, and a fully customizable header area.
Monochrome Pro uses a responsive design, so it looks great on all devices and screen sizes. It’s a StudioPress theme, so you can get a great deal on it by signing up for WP Engine’s hosting.
Modules is a well-crafted WordPress theme perfect for creating any kind of sales page. It comes with several ready-to-use elements that you can drag and drop to build custom layouts.
It offers demo websites to set up your sales page quickly. Plus, you get several custom widgets, unlimited sidebars, header styles, video background support, and Google Fonts support.
The Modules theme is also coded with WordPress best practices in mind. This means it’s fully compatible with all popular WordPress plugins to help you build the best landing page.
Solopreneur is a premium WordPress theme to create landing pages that convert and help maximize your revenue. It has a minimalist layout design with a logo, navigation menu, and social icons.
It comes with a widgetized sidebar to add recent posts, a search bar, a comments section, and a newsletter signup form for email marketing. The theme is fully responsive and looks great on all screen sizes and devices.
Do you want to change the default sender name and email address for outgoing WordPress emails?
By default, WordPress uses ‘WordPress’ as the sender name for all outgoing WordPress notification emails. This doesn’t look very professional, and you may want to change that to your business name.
In this article, we will show you how to easily change the default sender name and email address in outgoing WordPress emails.
Why You Should Change the Default Sender Information in WordPress?
WordPress sends several email notifications to the site administrator as well as other users on your website.
This includes important email notifications such as forgot password emails, website error and recovery emails, new user registration, and more.
By default, it uses ‘WordPress’ as the sender’s name and a non-existent email address ([email protected]) as the sender’s email.
Many spam filters block your WordPress emails, believing them to be junk. Sometimes it does not even make it to the spam folder, but is deleted immediately due to filters.
The outgoing email notifications are important, and you should use your own brand and email address. This increases the authenticity of your brand and increases name recognition among your users.
For instance, if you run an online store, then you would want customers to get email notifications with your store name as the sender.
Let’s see how to change the default sender name and email address in outgoing WordPress email notifications.
Method 1. Changing Default Sender Name and Email using WP Mail SMTP
This method is easier and recommended for all WordPress users.
For this method, we’ll be using the WP Mail SMTP Pro plugin. It is the best WordPress SMTP plugin, used by over 3 million website owners.
This plugin allows you to easily change the default sender name and email address for outgoing WordPress emails. It also helps you fix the WordPress email deliverability problem.
Upon activation, you need to visit WP Mail SMTP » Settings to configure plugin settings. Under the Mail section, you can simply enter the email address and the name you want to use to send WordPress emails.
Below, you can find the options to set up an SMTP server to send WordPress emails. By default, the plugin will use the PHP method provided by your WordPress hosting company which is less reliable.
We recommend using any of the listed SMTP services to properly send WordPress emails for higher guaranteed deliverability.
If you choose an SMTP service, then follow the on-screen instructions to connect the plugin with your SMTP service provider.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Settings’ button to save your changes.
Test Your WordPress Emails
WP Mail SMTP Pro also allows you to test your WordPress email settings. Simply go to the WP Mail SMTP » Tools page and switch to the ‘Email Test’ tab.
From here, you just need to provide an email address that you can access and then click on the ‘Send Email’ button.
The plugin will now send a test email to the address you provided. You can check your inbox to make sure that you can receive WordPress emails and that it has the correct sender name and sender email address.
WP Mail SMTP works with all popular WordPress plugins like WooCommerce, WPForms, and more.
Method 2: Changing Default Sender Name and Email using WP Change Email Sender
This method is only recommended if you don’t use an SMTP service or if the first method is not working.
Using this method does not improve your WordPress email deliverability or make it easier to troubleshoot email issues. However, if your WordPress emails are working, then it will allow you to change the sender name and email address.
Upon activation, you need to go to Settings » General in your WordPress admin area. There you’ll find the ‘Email Sender Name’ and ‘Sender Email Address’ fields.
You will need to enter the name and email address you want to be used for outgoing WordPress emails.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save Changes’ button to store your settings.
That’s all. Your WordPress notification emails will now show the name and email address you entered in the plugin settings.
There is no method provided by the plugin to test your email settings. You can do that by performing actions that generate WordPress notification emails, like creating a new user, requesting a password reset, and more.
Method 3: Changing Sender Name and Email Address using WPCode
Another excellent way to change your sender name and email address are by adding a code snippet. And we recommend WPCode, the easiest and safest way to add code to WordPress.
You usually need to add code to your functions.php file, but WPCode makes it simple and easy to add this code snippet with just a few clicks.
Not only that, but WPCode has many other snippets available to help customize your site. Plus, you can easily add your custom snippets.
Next, click on Code Snippets »Add Snippet to your WordPress admin dashboard. Simply type ‘sender’ into the search bar and press the ‘Use snippet’ button under ‘Change Outgoing Email Sender’.
Then you’ll be taken to the Edit Snippet page.
Here you need to update the sender’s email and name in the code snippet.
And then, switch the toggle to ‘Active’ and click on the ‘Update’ button.
One of the benefits of using WPCode is that it comes with a library filled with pre-made snippets. There’s a good chance you can find some to replace other plugins on your site, such as disabling automatic updates, allowing SVG files to be uploaded, or even using the Classic editor instead of the default block editor.
You don’t have to use the library, either. You can also add any other code you ever need by selecting ‘Add Your Custom Code (New Snippet)’ button instead of searching the library.
Then, all you have to do is just paste your own code in and decide where it should run on your site.
For example, you can copy and paste this snippet below into the WPCode’s custom code snippet and customize it to change the sender name and email.
// Please edit the address and name below.
// Change the From address.
add_filter( 'wp_mail_from', function ( $original_email_address ) {
return '[email protected]';
} );
// Change the From name.
add_filter( 'wp_mail_from_name', function ( $original_email_from ) {
return 'Tim Smith';
} );
We hope this article helped you learn how to change the sender’s name and email address in outgoing WordPress emails. You may also want to see our guide on the best bulk email marketing services to bulk send emails to all your users and our comparison of the best WordPress page builder plugins to customize your site without any code.
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.
As a WooCommerce store owner, you can sell your products in different countries worldwide. Thanks to the possibilities created by eCommerce, your customer base is no longer limited to your own region or language. But cross-border customers have their own set of expectations, with an interesting one being that 92% of shoppers prefer to make [...]
Do you want to use AI (artificial intelligence) to write content in WordPress?
Artificial Intelligence tools like ChatGPT and GPT3 can produce well-researched content in natural language. Many users want to explore it to see if it can help with writing content.
In this article, we’ll talk about how to write content using artificial intelligence like ChatGPT and GPT3 in WordPress as well as the pros and cons of it.
What are ChatGPT and GPT3 AI?
ChatGPT is a computer program that uses artificial intelligence to have conversations in a chatbot-like interaction environment.
GPT3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) is a similar artificial intelligence based computer program that is designed to be more generic and broader than ChatGPT.
Both programs use a type of machine learning called Natural Language Processing that allows them to understand and respond to user input.
In simpler words, they learn by going through vast amounts of information publicly available, so they can answer your questions in a well-thought out manner.
You can visit the OpenAI website and try both tools for free. Following are a few examples of what it can do.
Example 1:
You can provide more details in your prompt to adjust the response according to your given parameters.
For instance, here we asked it to write an essay about black holes at a 6th grade reading level, using simple words, and keeping the response between 600-800 words.
This is how it responded.
Example 2:
ChatGPT can also write code, poetry, music, explain mathematical equations, and more.
Are ChatGPT and GPT3 AI Good Enough to Write Content?
ChatGPT and GPT3 are really good at providing detailed responses that are very well written. This leads many users to believe that it can be used to write content for their websites or be used as an autoblogging tool.
However, before you put it to the test on your actual website, the following are a few things that you need to be mindful of.
1. Accuracy of Information
The information provided by ChatGPT could be outdated or sometimes even false. It’s critical that you double-check all the information included in the article.
2. No Recent Events Are Considered
ChatGPT is trained on resources up to the year 2021, so it has limited knowledge of events after that. This may get fixed soon, but if the content you want to generate is time sensitive, then keep this in mind.
3. Doesn’t Give Strong Opinions
ChatGPT is trained to be impartial and unbiased. Unlike a human writer, it lacks the creativity required to argue for a particular opinion, be passionate, and have preferences.
Can ChatGPT AI be Good for SEO?
ChatGPT AI can generate content in a web-friendly format. However, it does not specifically follow any SEO best practices.
Researchers at Google have worked for years to detect content generated by artificial intelligence tools. In the past, they have penalized them for being low quality.
We feel that artificial intelligence tools like GPT3 can be used as writing assistants rather than full writers.
For instance, GPT AI can be used to create an article outline, gather information, and pick up some key research points.
After that, a human writer can work on it to make it more comprehensive, opinionated, factual, and SEO-friendly.
That being said, let’s take a look at how to use ChatGPT AI to create content in WordPress.
Using ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence to Write Content in WordPress
Upon activation, you need to click on the GPT3 AI Content Generator menu from the admin sidebar to view plugin’s settings page.
From here, you need to provide an API key. You can get one by creating a free account on the OpenAI website.
After copying and pasting your API key, don’t forget to click on the Save button to store your plugin settings.
Other default options would work for most users but you can review and change them if needed.
For instance, you may want to change the image size generated by the AI or leave it blank if you would want to generate AI images by yourself or add other images.
Now you are ready to start generating AI content.
Simply create a new post or page, and you will find the GPT 3 Content Generator settings below the text editor.
First, you need to choose a language for your article.
Currently, the plugin supports English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Dutch, Indonesian, Turkish, Polish, Ukrainian, Arabic, Romanian, Greek, Czech, Bulgarian, Swedish and Hungarian.
Below that, you can provide a title for your article. The Pro version of the plugin also allows you to add or exclude keywords.
After that, you can set the number of headings you want to include in your article and which heading tag to be used.
Next, you can choose a writing style and tone for your article. For example, you can choose an informative writing style with a casual writing tone.
Below that, you can add an anchor text and set a link. However, we’ll recommend that you manually enter internal links when you are editing the article.
The plugin also allows you to add a call to action and choose position where you want to display it.
Finally, click on the Generate button to start generating content.
The plugin will then begin generating content using artificial intelligence.
It may take a while depending on your settings and the topic of your article. Once finished, you will see the generated text in the box.
From here, you can simply click on the Save Draft button. The plugin will then load the text inside the WordPress editor wrapped in the Classic block.
This will allow you to edit the text using the block editor. You can convert the text inside the Classic block into regular blocks and start editing.
Tips on Editing AI Generated Content
GPT3 AI content generator will write a comprehensive article covering different aspects of the topic you choose as your article title.
However, it is far from perfect.
It can be easily identified by search engines as AI generated content, and you could get penalized and lose your search rankings.
We recommend only using GPT3 AI content for research and quick outlines. Once you have an outline, you can then thoroughly review, fact check, and edit it by yourself to expand the article further.
Following are a few things you can do to make the article unique and in your own voice:
1. Check All Information for Accuracy
Depending on your topic, GPT3 can make mistakes and may sometimes include information that is incorrect.
2. Create and Use Your Own Images
GPT3 AI Content Generator can generate images using artificial intelligence. However, for most topics these images they do not look very good. Here’s an example image that it generated for us.
GPT3 AI doesn’t know which articles on your website are related to the topic and it cannot automatically generate internal links.
You need to manually add internal and external links to provide more context and make your article more user-friendly.
4. Use Table of Content, FAQs, and Lists
GPT3 is a text generator and does not concern itself with formatting to make the reading experience better.
You need to manually add any table of contents, lists, and FAQs needed make your content more user-friendly.
5. Personalize the article with your expertise & knowledge
As AI-content gain in popularity, it will become more critical for authors to add their own voice, expertise, and experiences. This differentiator will play an important role in determining authentic content vs not.
It’s important to personalize the article with your experience and make it more coherent, so it’s user-focused.
6. Optimize Content for SEO
By default, GPT3 generates easy to read text. However, this text is not exactly optimized for on-page SEO.
This is just the beginning, and there will be many other tools that will come to the market in the coming months and years.
If you don’t want to use an AI content plugin for WordPress, then you can directly go to ChatGPT website and write the prompts there to experience the technology for yourself.
We hope this article helped you learn how to write content using AI in WordPress. You may also want to see our pick of the most useful WordPress plugins, or see our complete WordPress SEO handbook to grow traffic on your website.
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