All posts by Deepak

About Deepak

Deepak is a professional Blogger Template developer & Wordpress Theme developer associated with ChickThemes. he is a passionate blogger who enjoys experimenting with various web techniques in web development.

Header Design Inspiration

10 Great Examples of Header Designs for Inspiration

Website header is one of the most noticeable and valuable areas in the entire web page design. The header section runs across the top of page and is viewable on every page of the website. The only motive behind having an enticing website header design is attracting more number of prospects for online business.

For website designers looking to incorporating the trendiest header designs in their website, this list of 10 great examples of header designs will definitely prove to be a helping hand

Header Design Inspiration Examples

Blamo

 

blamo Toys

Blamo toys showcases its brand’s logo in the header section. Incorporating the latest web designing trends, Blamo places its logo in the centre, clicking on which redirects the user back to the home page. This is one of the sophisticated, professional and trendiest designing trends that not only strengthens brand value but also makes the navigation smooth, structured and quick.

So, if you want to emphasize on your brand logo, you should center it in the header and also add some white space around to make the nearby elements prominent.

 

Wild & Wolf

wild & wolf

 

Considering the search bar as the most important element in website design, Wild & Wolf places its search bar in the top left. Allowing shoppers to interact with the search bar means increasing chances of purchase. In order to incorporate such header design, you can make the search bar larger, add contrasting colors and add more white space.

 

HTMLPanda

HTMLPanda

HTMLPanda’s header takes up a valuable space but still looks great and leaves a positive impact in the eyes of visitors. All the elements are neatly placed and separated from the content.

The layout is intuitive and uses the pattern in an inspiring way.

 

Netflix
Netflix

The header design in this website is quite structured. Everything on the header page is synced so as to give visitors the clear idea of what the site is actually about. There is no such distraction element which keeps the visitors hindered from not clicking the CTA button that says, “Join free for a month”.

 

Hollister Co.

Hollister

With a simple and effective header, Hollister comprises primary, secondary navigation along with highlighted offers which are altogether centered around the logo design.

 

Haven

Haven

It has one of the cleanest header design with a no-nonsense display. Each and every element has been placed down with utmost efficiency. The search bar also has the maximum of white space for clarity.

The use of red and black color in contrast adds a nice touch. Similarly, the presence of drop down menus makes the navigation process flawless.

 

Sietedefebrero

sietedefebrero

Featuring a clean, elegant, simple and structured header design, the website stays at its best to captivate user attention with a smooth and friendly navigation. The use of text, white space, images has been brilliantly planned so as to acquire increased traffic.

 

Howhost

Howhost

The website showcases a perfect mix of bright and dark colors which, when used in combination adds to the elegance of website. The header section of Howhost steals the show with its eye-captivating functionality. The overall emphasis has been given to the header design and logo design.

 

Art, Copy & Code

Art Copy & Code

Bringing a whole new experience to the website design, the website features the latest video background design that creates heavy contrast between the video and page text. The video content accommodates nicely to the layout.

 

Plata Fashion

Plata

The presence of customized and flexible header design in this website gives the full opportunity to developers to drag element, tweak content position and dynamically change the height of header section by simply dragging it up and down.

This website design also makes use of video backgrounds to incorporate an exciting user experience and introduce life to the content.
Conclusion:

Taking the idea from such interesting header designs, businesses can introduce an element of fun, interactivity, and engagement to their website. This kind of design directly communicates with the visitors and also brings in increased volume of sales. You can also hire a web designer to take assistance for such trendsetting ideas in the latest website design of your upcoming venture.

ideas for new blog

5 Ideas For Your New Blog

If you want to start a blog, you have a lot of things to consider. You’ll have to choose a platform, figure out how to get started, compile content, and work on design, and each of those steps usually takes a little longer than you might expect! But before you even get to any of that, you have to make the most crucial decision of all: what are you actually going to be blogging about?

You may already know the answer to this question, if the idea was what inspired you to start a site in the first place. But if you’re merely curious about the idea of running a blog, or you’re looking to practice your writing or design skills, or even if you’re looking for a little bit of side income, you might be in need of an idea. There are innumerable options, but here are a few specific concepts that might get your wheels turning.

Just Start Writing

wordpress post dashboard

Sometimes the material comes before a concrete idea. That might make your blog a little bit disorganized at first, but you may ultimately discover that you stumble on a regular subject, or find your niche. A lot of blogs start off almost like personal journals and wind up settling into more specific focal points, either because an audience responded to a given idea or opinion, or because the writer just happens to zero in on something. It’s not the most concrete idea, but sometimes you really are best off if you just start writing.

Review What You Know

Some of the best blogs out there are those that turn writers’ personal opinions into expert takes for audiences. Film is one common example that comes to mind. There are lots of film blogs out there, run by everyone from freelance contributors to professional critics. And if you feel like you know movies well enough to comment on them, there may be room for you in this genre. The same can be said of books, music, comic books, or even political speeches. The trick here is finding an angle that isn’t being done yet. For instance, you could see if anyone out there is reviewing movies in 300 words or less, or gear each review toward answering a specific question like “is it a date movie?” or “is this how you should spend your Friday night?”

Review What You Try

You can also start a blog simply commenting on things you try, like products, businesses, professional services, etc. We live in a time in which consumers actually depend quite heavily on the opinions of others when making purchases. Just think of all the Yelp and Amazon reviews you’ve probably sifted through in your time. It can be a little difficult to gain a following as a reliable critical voice, but reviewing things you try can be surprisingly fun, and can definitely keep you busy. If you go about it in a professional manner (but with some personal touch) and grow your blog strategically, you may just gain a following.

Latch Onto A Booming Business

If you have the knowledge and capability to write about a new or popular business that’s already capturing people’s attention, it can be a great way to start a blog. One that comes to mind from recent years is daily fantasy sports, or “DFS” sites. The DFS industry has undergone scrutiny from government and lawmakers regarding its legality, but it’s persevered to the point that it now appears ready to last. And everyone wants DFS advice. If you can comment regularly and intelligently, you can have a successful blog on your hands. The same holds true for any number of other new businesses. Think Bitcoin exchanges, virtual reality headsets, mobile game developers, and anything else trendy these days.

Document A Journey

In one very thorough write-up of different types of popular blogs, it was suggested that “The Guide” is among the better options. The idea here is to guide readers through an aspect of their lives, be it a fitness routine, spiritual journey, or whatever else may come to mind. People enjoy reading about progress, and in many cases use it for inspiration. Documenting anything from a weight loss effort to a quest to travel around the world can capture people’s interest and earn you a following that few other subjects are worthy of.

how speed affects website

How Speed Affects Website & Search Rankings [Infographic]

When was the last time you bought something online? Or at least window shopped? There are many advantages in browsing items on your laptop instead of going from store to store searching for what you need. Moreover, you can have the goods delivered to your door, and this means lots of precious time and energy saved.

But how many times have you bought from a website that took more than 5 seconds to load? If you’re a typical customer, not even once. If you did buy, it means your tolerance levels are a lot higher than the usual online shopper.

Leaving kidding aside, 79% of customers who were discontent with the speed of a website never bought it again. In other terms, the number of sales closed by a website is proportional to its loading time. For example, after Bing has dealt with a 2 seconds’ increase in its waiting time, the revenue loss per visitor was 4.3%, and there were 3.75% fewer clicks on the page.

In case these percentages are a bit foggy, here’s another example, in financial terms: if Amazon loaded 1 second more slowly, it could lose $1.6 billion every year. Thinking of what can happen in a second…

On the same note, after Smart Furniture improved its speed, the organic traffic has increased by 20%, and the pageviews by 14%.

But your website’s speed also has a major impact on the search engine rankings. Whether you’re using SEO tools or not, if the visitors have to wait more than 4 seconds for a page to load, you’re more likely to be on the bottom of the list at a Google search. And this applies to the mobile version of a site. If we’re talking about the desktop version, the loading time cuts to 2 seconds.

Basically, To improve your SEO score in search ranking you need to work on your page speed, and here’s how you can optimize your WordPress website/blog for speed and performance, other than that you can more improve using these on-page optimization SEO tools.

So how about you? How many seconds do you usually wait for a page to load until you click away from a website?

How Speed Affects Website & Search Rankings [Infographic]


Presented by Skilled.co

wordpress or blogger

Which CMS is better WordPress or Blogger?

In today’s world, there is no business that can survive without its official website. Especially talking about the newer or the small scale businesses. A website will act as a medium for creating awareness about the different products and services among the visitors.

There are a number of web building platforms that are available for creating a website. These platforms will offer you a number of tools that will enable you to edit, modify and publish the content of a website. Two of the most common CMSs that are widely in use nowadays are WordPress and the Blogger.

Which CMS is better WordPress or Blogger?

Uncomplicated and Intriguing Interface

wordpress dashboard

If you are well versed with WordPress, then you would have read enough blogs about the ease of usage that the platform provides to its users. Any user can quickly familiarize himself to WordPress and start using it as compared to Blogger. Talking about the interface WordPress’s dashboard is much better than that of the Blogger.

Where Blogger is a mere blog posting platform, WordPress is an all in one solution for publishing a blog and developing websites. Among all the CMSs that are available for building a website, WordPress stands apart from all of them.

You Own Your Website, not Google

6 Reasons WordPress Is the Best Platform for Your Website

As WordPress is a third party application, you get to have a complete authority over your website. But with Blogger this is not the case. As Blogger is owned by Google, your website can be suspended in a situation where you do not follow or violate any of the policies drafted by Google.

You will receive a mail regarding the suspension of your website from Google. Usage of any kind of content that is duplicate is also against the policies of Google and will result in your website getting shut down.

Plethora of Design Options

In the WordPress Vs Blogger battle, one aspect where no other CMS, be it Blogger or any other can defeat WordPress, is the wide range of design options that it has on offer. With WordPress, you will get thousands of themes that will help you in designing your website and fulfil your requirements. Some of the themes will fit perfectly in the design of your website. This will save a lot of your time that you would have otherwise invested on customizing it.

However, with Blogger you only get a few number of themes and customization options. In terms of the overall look and feel the themes offered by Blogger are no way near with that offered by WordPress.

Better Search Engine Optimized

wordpress-seo-friendly

With respect to SEO, the websites that are built using WordPress are better optimized when compared with that of Blogger. WordPress will enable you to make use of the numerous plugins like W3 cache, Yoast SEO for keeping a track on the SEO status of a website.

With Blogger, you are all by your own while managing the SEO of your website. You don’t have the ease of using any plugins that will do the analysis for you. Therefore, optimizing your Blogger website is not that easy as it is in the case of WP.

Extend The Functionality of Website

wordpress post dashboard

In WordPress, you will get a plugin for basically any feature or enhancement that you want to add to your website. There are plugins for sharing your content over the social media, translate the language of the content, enhance the security of your website and much more.

You get to choose from a wide range of more than 40k plugins in WordPress. With plugins, you will be able to develop your website even if you are poor in coding. There are some simple copy paste functions that you need to do for designing your website.

Self-Host Your Website

WordPress gives you an option to self-host your blogs and websites. You don’t have to pay additional money for this. You have to pay the fees only for the hosting services. WordPress, when compared with Blogger, provides a much better option for long term purposes.

At an initial level Blogger is a good option but not in the long run. However, the lack of features and the urge to make your website stand apart from your competitors will persuade you to migrate your Blogger website to WP. Due to the number of options and features available in WordPress, it proves to be the best CMS platform.

WordPress Website Loads Faster

wordpress speed

A website developed in WordPress will tend to load much faster when compared with that of Blogger. There are certain plugins in WordPress like WP Super Cache which make sure that the factors that reduce loading speed like images are compressed that will allow your website to load quickly and smoothly.

A Blogger website makes use of a single HTML template for making any kind of desired changes. Due to this, there is a significant increase in the load times of a website. It also has a negative impact from the point of view of SEO.

Sell Your Website Easily

One of the major drawbacks of using a Blogger website is that you won’t be able to sell it. As such, there is no option for selling and Google will penalize you if you try to do so. So, down the line, if you feel that you would sell your website then WordPress would be the better choice. Blogger is a product of Google, you will have no control over it.

Google strictly follows its policies and will directly suspend your website or blog if you don’t adhere to them. However, WordPress is a self-hosted platform so you can easily sell your website whenever you want to do so.

In The End

Above points highlight the benefits of using WordPress as a CMS platform. Apart from these points, there are many other benefits that WordPress will offer you. Due to its ever growing list of features and attributes, most of the people are converting their existing website created in other CMSs to WordPress.

free iphone mockup psd

Free Iphone Mockup PSD – 4K Resolution

Whether you’re building an Amazing Mobile App, or stunning responsive website, demonstrating your design in an awesome Free iPhone Mockup PSD is always helpful. We all know how relevant a good presentation can be in promoting the app or website design to the audience or users.

This Free iPhone Mockup PSD Template allows you to showcase your own design in multiple views and perspectives. This freebie comes in 9 PSD which requires Adobe photoshop and available at 4K resolution and, each mockup is built with smart objects so users can easily replace the screen with just a couple of mouse clicks.

Check out other IPHONE 7 & 7 PLUS FREE PSD MOCKUP COLLECTION

Free Iphone Mockup PSD Demo

iphone-clay-mockup-01-580x438

iphone-clay-mockup-05-580x438

 

Free PSD Mockup Template Tutorial

    1. Just Open the file in Photoshop.
    2. In right hand side you’ll see smart object thumbnail.

Smart Object Psd Image

  1. Double Click on this layer 1 and it will open new window.
  2. Paste your Design there, which you would like to show in devices.
  3. Save your design.

Format: Layered PSD
Smart Objects: Yes
Minimum Photoshop Version: CS3
Size: 28 Mb


[sociallocker][/sociallocker]

6 Reasons WordPress Is the Best Platform for Your Website

6 Reasons WordPress Is the Best CMS Platform for Your Website

While having your own business website is bound to be the irreplaceable first step to ensuring a digital footprint, you need to ensure a look and feel that represents your brand well. It is because often a brand is judged by its website and any shortcoming on that score can easily undermine your brand value. So, any business brand before anything else needs to ensure a classy and sophisticated look and feel for their website. The irony is the cost of building a dynamic website is not negligible if you decide to develop it from scratch.

This is where WordPress as a content management platform comes as an invaluable solution for any business including startups and small local businesses. You can create a highly professional looking website with minimum effort and cost. Most important of all, you do not need to compromise on the features, design elements, user experience and loading time. This versatility and strength of WordPress made it the most preferred CMS for websites of all types and sizes. Let us introduce here 6 key reasons to choose WordPress for your business website.

Why WordPress Is Best CMS Platform

1. You do not have coding knowledge, it’s ok

wordpress post dashboard

For a business, especially a startup it is often beyond the financial capability to hire a professional web development company. This is precisely why many businesses prefer building their own websites by taking guidance from the online community. At the initial stage, it is not altogether a bad idea. The only constraint is probably your lack of coding knowledge. Well, it’s not a problem at all since a CMS platform like WordPress allows you building a sophisticated website just with a theme and a whole array of plugins to add features and functionalities.

You need to choose a theme that goes perfectly with your brand and business objectives.
There are thousands of paid and free themes to give your website ideal look and feel.
There are thousands of free and paid plugins to allow you give your website the features and functionalities of your preference.
Lastly, to help you utilize the theme and plugins there is a robust community help. WordPress developer community spread across the world offers answers to every critical question concerning development and technical difficulties.

2. WordPress is SEO friendly

wordpress-seo-friendly

The principal reason for businesses to have their own website is to become discoverable and build an audience for their business brand. WordPress, unlike most other CMS platforms, offers a clean and highly user-optimized interface. This help Google and other search engines list pages from WordPress websites easily. Here are some key aspects that make WordPress SEO friendly.

The clean interface makes it easier for search engines to crawl a WordPress website.
WordPress is highly mobile friendly which is a crucial criterion for search engine ranks.
WordPress is fast loading across devices. Quick loading time is a big criterion for search engine rank.

3. WordPress is highly customizable

Many business websites prefer WordPress as their platform simply because it is highly customizable and versatile. From the ease of custom designing your website to giving your website a bevy of sophisticated features, WordPress allows you an unmatched scope of customization.

You have thousands of WordPress themes for every business type and niche.
You can further tweak the theme to customize the look and feel even more.
There are hundreds of plugins and add-ons that allow you creating custom feature and functionality.
WordPress is a modern CMS which allow a variety of contents including images and rich media files to give your website a visually optimized feel.

4. WordPress allow better control and manageability

A business website should be built in a way so that it can be managed by different people within an organization easily. Moreover, it should be easy to update easily. A business website needs to bring changes from time to time and the CMS should ensure that ease. WordPress offers a business website exceptional ease incorporate changes and manage while allowing optimum ease of control for all actions.

WordPress offers different roles such as an administrator, editor, author, contributor, and subscriber. All these roles have a different level of control.
To bring any changes to a WordPress site you do no need to bring changes in the code. Without any coding knowledge, you can bring in changes to a WordPress website.
There are ready in hand options and tools to do changes in your WordPress website from time to time.

5. WordPress is built to deliver security

web security

Irrespective of the nature of your business and type of your website, you never can compromise on the security aspects of your website. In fact, the core of WordPress is designed to ensure optimum security for any website. WordPress is built to protect your site information and prevent any malicious act taking a toll on your website. What are the key elements that make security elements of WordPress awesome? Let’s have a look at them.

WordPress releases security updates from time o time to address all the latest security threats and concerns.
You can always strengthen your security with any of the hundreds of security plugins to ensure more safety.
Every subsequent version of WordPress comes loaded with more advanced security features.

6. Unmatched support and community help

wordpress plugin directory

Finally, WordPress stands unparalleled with its support mechanism. Having been there for more than one and half decade WordPress has a global community of developers who can come to your aid in building or managing a website all the time.
Here are some of the avenues and tools to avail support and help for your WordPress website.

The biggest reserve of support comes from official WordPress information database and support forums.

You have an array of online tutorials and courses including both free and premium ones.
Every theme and plugin have its separate forum for support.
Search Google for any WordPress difficulty and question and it is very unlikely that the search results will not offer several helpful answers for the respective queries.

With so much of resources and with so little to bear as a cost, WordPress comes as a natural choice for any small business website including startups. With WordPress powering your website you can build a modern feature rich website without spending a fortune.

wordpress widgets to boost blog visibility

7 Free Widgets to Boost your Startup WordPress Blog’s Visibility

WordPress widget is basically a small block which is designed to perform a unique function. You can easily add such widgets in sidebars of your web page. These areas are available for widgets.

The widgets on WordPress were designed basically to provide a user-friendly and interactive way of giving total control to structure and design of your WordPress theme. You can easily drag and drop the widgets in a specific area. All you need to go to Appearance > Widgets section to check the list of widgets available and widget area in WordPress dashboard.

With the help of widgets in WordPress, you can easily add features and content in the widget areas of the theme that is generally sidebar. But these widget areas can be found in the footer, header, sidebar, or below the content, or any area in the theme. The widget areas available in your theme may vary according to the specific theme.

Most of the wordpress themes are widget ready and they are likely to have several widget areas. Themes are generally not needed to have areas for the widget. If widget areas are not found in your theme, it is sure that the theme doesn’t support widgets.

You can find several kinds of widgets available. By default, WordPress has several widgets, such as tag cloud, categories, calendar, navigation menu, recent posts, search etc. If recent post widget is dragged into the widget area, it can have the recent posts listed.

Generally, widgets are separate areas which contain codes to perform a specific and predefined function. Plugins also add their signature widgets to provide added the control to the user over the display of its functions. For example, OIO Publisher is a plugin widget which lets users add a separate banner ad area in the widget areas.

In this guide, I am going to introduce you to seven WordPress widgets that are quite useful and can help increase the visibility of your site in different ways.

1. Recent Posts Widget with Thumbnails

Recent Posts Widget with Thumbnails

WordPress features a recent posts widget by default. It showcases a simple list of recent posts. With the help of Recent Posts Widget with Thumbnails, you can easily show recent posts in your blog with thumbnails. For a thumbnail, it adds the first image in your post or a featured image. From the settings screen of widget, you can easily adjust the width and height of the image.

It is a simple and light widget that comes with plenty of options. It is based on the widely used default widget on WordPress “Recent Posts”. But it is extended to show more details on the posts like excerpts, thumbnails, and assigned categories.

It will add thumbnails from featured image or from the first image of the content on WordPress blog. If you don’t have a content image or featured image, it can let you show a default thumbnail. You can easily set its alignment. The thumbnail basically is aligned left to the post titles if they are featured in left-to-right languages. Otherwise, it will be aligned on right side.

2. Category Posts

Category Posts wordpress widget

As the name implies, this widget does nothing but simply shows recent posts from the category you select. It can also let you show post titles in the list or show thumbnail and excerpt. When it is used with Display Widgets, you can easily see the hidden widgets on specific WordPress pages.

With the help of Category Posts widget, you can easily place the list of posts linked from the same category in widget area or sidebar. You should activate “Williams Category Post Widgets” to use Category Posts widget.

Here are some of the most common uses of Category Posts widget –

  • You can make a menu-like widget in the sidebar in which posts are linked in a category.
  • Add thumbnail images and display a random post from any category you choose.
  • Show dates on time-based elements like News & Latest Announcements.

Here are some of the Common Features –

  • Change all Short Code options easily in customizer
  • Supports several short codes
  • Added option to use multiple widgets one after another for post offset
  • In order to edit shortcode, it can add customizer link on admin bar with just one click
  • Insert Shortcode buttons added to editor
  • Lets users to set dimensions and show post thumbnail by height and width.
  • Responsive Layouts with fluid images
  • Set hover effects for thumbnail
  • Enable excerpt filters from plugins and themes
  • Supports “Social Buttons on Posts” of Jetpack
  • Added option to activate excerpt filters from plugins and themes
  • Thumbnail can be set as default thumbnail
  • Change posts ordering.
  • Disable banner, social buttons in excerpt.

3. Simple Social Icons

Simple Social Icons

This widget is really very easy to add social icons to the sidebars. The widget’s settings include all the configuration options. You can pick the social media icon to link and add URLs of your profile. The icon can also be modified by choosing icon font color and background. By far, it is the best widget to add social icons. It is a customizable, user-friendly way to show icons with which visitors can be linked to several social profiles. By using it, one can easily customize size and color of icons, profiles to link to, and you can also align them to center, left or right from the widget form.

4. Google Maps Widget

Google Maps Widget

Fed up of slow and lagging Google Maps default plugins that take forever to install? The Google Maps widget gives the ideal map with a light-box and thumbnail that can be set up in minutes.

Google Maps Widget is the shortest and easiest way to integrate a map on the sidebar of your WordPress site. You can easily display Google Map in the empty area with this simple widget. So, when someone clicks on the map, it will open a lightbox popup to display a larger view of the map. To display location and address of your business, it is the best WordPress widget.

5. Testimonials Widget

Testimonials Widget

With the help of Testimonials Widget, you can randomly list or slide selected quotes, portfolios, texts, or reviews with videos or images on your blog. You can simply add testimonials through theme functions, shortcode, or widgets with tag and category selections and have several options to display, including specific or random ordering. For improved search results, Review Schema is also inbuilt.

The Testimonials Widget can easily add social proofing to the website. It can help you slide or list reviews through short-codes, functions or widgets. All in all, it is more than a typical Testimonials slider.

Key Features

  • Fade, carousel and slide transitions
  • Random display
  • Filter slideshow content through tags, categories or post ID of WordPress
  • Responsive Image Slideshow
  • Styled well for adapting easy theme
  • Slide content which is rendered with short-codes and compatible with shortcodes, such as Gravity Forms and WordPress galleries.
  • Slide text which is vital to rotate testimonials
  • Slide images which conduct responsive slideshow
  • Shortcode and widget ready
  • Performs video slideshows

 

6. Image Widget

Image Widget

Without writing HTML in a text widget, you cannot add an image to the sidebar. But it causes issues for the beginners who don’t know HTML and are unable to style image. But this problem is fixed with Image Widget. Users can easily add an image with WordPress media uploader. It also provides a user interface to add alt text, caption, and choose the image size. It is a simple widget which uses the default media manager of WordPress to add an image to your site.

Key Features

  • Manages image alignment and resizing
  • MU supported
  • Description & Title
  • Link image
  • It has given all fields optional.
  • Link to External Image, upload, or choose an image from media storage with the in-built Thickbox browser.
  • Responsive
  • You can override template for the theme

7. YouTube Channel Gallery

YouTube Channel Gallery

With the help of this widget, you can easily show latest videos on your blog from your YouTube channel directly. All the videos will be arranged perfectly in a grid layout which is also space efficient and makes it look more appealing. First of all, you have to setup and activate YouTube Channel Gallery plugin. Once the plugin is activated, display latest videos through “Appearance> Widgets” in a sidebar widget. Just drag and drop this widget to the sidebar.

This widget is very configurable. So, you have to install it. First of all, you have to provide a playlist ID or user ID in widget’s feed tab. To set thumbnail and player sizes, click on thumbnails and player tabs. Save changes once everything is done. YouTube can also work as HTML5 Player for mobile devices by using IFrame Player API of YouTube.

Summary

We hope you liked this post and it would help you pick the best WordPress widget to improve your site ranking and visibility as per your needs. By using the above widgets, you can easily improve your website’s overall presence and make it as lightweight as possible to attract visitors.

Instagram Maximize User Engagement

Instagram Tips To Maximize User Engagement

The Instagram social network has an average of 4.2 billion image likes every day and this can only increase as the platform continues to grow in popularity. If you are marketing a business, brand or website, it’s imperative that you include Instagram in the mix.

As with any marketing campaign, when you create visual content for your brand on Instagram you should focus on your target audience as much as possible. According to data compiled for a new infographic by website builder, more than 80% of the users live outside the United States and this includes several non-English speaking countries. About 19.22% of Instagram users are from the USA. For an international brand, this is, of course, a benefit. The fact that images are also the focus, helps break any language barriers you might face with other types of advertising.

Research suggests that if you can attract the right audience, at least 5% of them will take action to visit the website, share the post or shop for products, depending on your call to action.

Instagram Tips To Maximize User Engagement

Here are 5 tips to help you get started:

#1 Always use relevant hashtags

Without an easy way to find your post, your marketing efforts will go unnoticed. This is where the hashtags become useful. When you use popular hashtags relevant to your business, your post will be found by those who search for hashtags. A single hashtag in a post can increase the engagement by 12.6%. When you use hashtags, you can use 5-10 per post, but don’t go overboard as this will cloud your caption and might come across as spammy.

#2 Use the best images in every post

instagram best image

On Instagram, the appeal is purely visual and you should never ignore its importance. Even the best image can become useless if you don’t understand how your image is scaled by the app. Instagram now allows high-resolution pictures, but it scales down the images to 612 x 612 pixels. Brighter pictures garner 592% more likes and cool colors are widely preferred.

#3 Create contests on Instagram

50% of users follow at least one business and customers always enjoy free giveaways. Holding contests and giving away prizes is one of the tried and tested methods to improve engagement. When you create a contest campaign, you should be specific about what you expect the customer to do and what they will get in return. You can use these contests to increase likes, shares, and tags. Your contest should always contain a specific hashtag that is easy to share and remember.

#4 Use stories to establish brand personality

Recently, Instagram launched a snap chat-like feature, allowing you to create Instagram stories. You can write over unfiltered images and videos and post them as stories. These will be shown for 24 hours and it is a great way to increase engagement. The users can also create their own stories and videos using your content and this will engage them even more. Use these stories to define the personality of your brand. You can also provide time-limited offers exclusively for Instagram users using these stories.

#5 Cross promote on different platforms

On top of Instagram, your business should at least have a Facebook and Twitter account. These social media platforms allow cross-promotion which is useful for keeping your audience within your network. You can use the engagement features of other platforms to drive traffic to your Instagram posts and vice versa.

first wordpress blog

Shout out Loud With your First WordPress Blog

Whether you are 20 years old or 60 years old, expressing your thoughts, views and opinions is your birthright. While there are various mediums to spread your words out, it takes time and efforts to get your write-ups published in print (newspaper, magazines).

So, how the heck you can express yourself? Well, in today’s time, when everything is accessed digitally, blogs are an ideal way to say and share whatever you want. And trust us, it is the easiest, most convenient, and affordable way to do so.
Create your blog in less than 30 minutes and just kick start!
Out of the many blogging platforms available out there, WordPress is believed to be the most preferred and reliable, even among the top-notch bloggers.

Why??

  • WordPress is Free and open source.
  • It is reliable and secure.
  • It is easily customizable

Convinced? So, let’s begin with our step-by-step guide to creating your first blog for free with WordPress.

Step 1 – Setup Your Blog

wordpress.com Setup

Setting up your blog relates to the domain name and web hosting.

According to Wikipedia, a domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control within the Internet. In short, it’s your website’s address on the internet. For instance, in www.wordpress.com, wordpress is the domain name.

Web hosting is the business of offering storage space and access rights for websites. Simply, it is where your website resides.

In general, a domain name typically costs $14.99 per year, whereas web hosting costs $7.99 / month. That’s why people find its affordable to create blogs online.

You can buy your domain name and web hosting services from any reliable and popular domain name provider and web hosting service provider like GoDaddy and Bluehost, respectively. Choose the hosting plan according to your need and budget.

Step 2 – Install WordPress

Install WordPress

Go to WordPress.com and click the Get started here button. Choose a name or subdomain for your blog. Pick a username and leave an e-mail address. Once you are done with the login process, you’ll be redirected to the Dashboard, which is the admin area of every WordPress blog. You’ve successfully installed WordPress on your system.

Step 3 – Select Your WordPress Theme

wordpress Theme Selection

If you want to magnetize your readers to your blog, you should give it an eye-catching look. WordPress theme allows you to play with the visual appearance of your WordPress blog.

WordPress offers thousands of pre-built themes that you can choose for your blog. You’ll get both free as well as paid theme options. But if you want to customize your blog then you’ll need Custom WordPress theme you can get it our wordpress theme shop.

  • Go to the WordPress
  • Click on Appearance and select the Themes option from it.
  • Click on Add New You’ll be redirected to a page where yo can see over 4100 free themes.
  • You can Filter your search for picking a theme from a specific category – industry, layout, etc.  This will simplify your theme search task.
  • Once you’ve chosen the theme of your choice, simply hover your mouse over it and click the Install In a few minutes, the theme will get installed on your WordPress.
  • Click on the Activate button to set it as your WordPress blog theme. You can always change them later by clicking the Customize button under the Appearance

Step 4 – Kick Start your First Blog

wordpress Post

Once you’re done with your blog customization, it’s time for you to write your first blog. Simply, click on the Posts » Add New button in your WordPress dashboard. A new window will pop-up on the screen. This is known as the “Editor” area. Use this area to write your blog. You can also add images, videos to your blog from the Add Media tab.

Once you’re done with writing your blog, click on the ‘Publish’ button to share your first blog with the world. You can also take a preview of your blog to check how it’d look after getting live on the internet by clicking the Preview option. If you need to revise your work to pour in some more ideas, save it as a Draft to publish later.

Note : Custom wordpress blog theme will only work in wordpress.org

Conclusion

Hope this article would help you get through starting your WordPress Blog easily. Feel free to share your feedback with us. If you get stuck somewhere, write your issues in the comment box below and we’ll be happy to resolve them. All the best!

Hentges Free TypeFace Font

Hentges Free TypeFace Font

Hentges Free TypeFace Font, A lovely font style with a soft and elegant look. The Clear and crisp style would look good on any of your graphic projects. whether it’s a Logo For your Website or your graphic design for any commercial project you can use it without any restrictions.

Hentges Free TypeFace Font Demo

hentges typeface style

We have provided several beautiful fonts, So if you are looking for a light weight handwriting font script then you should also take a look at Kadisoka Font. Playlist font & Hammock Vintage Font can also be a good choice if you’re more like into vintage fonts with brush effect.

The font is specially Designed by Paula Hentges and font is available for both personal and commercial use.

hentges-typeface thanks image


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