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Monthly Archives: September 2015

There are numerous requisites for any theme to be SEO friendly. The theme needs to be fully customizable so every feature, design element, tag, content, URL and the entire sitemap; all of it can be edited or modified as needed by the user.

From webpage layouts featuring the highlighted posts to every webpage hosting a piece of content with proper headlines, meta descriptions, tags, social media integration and possibly a comments section; SEO friendly WordPress themes have to cater to all. Here are some of the best free SEO friendly WordPress themes.

Optimizer

Optimizer

Optimizer is a multipurpose theme. It is fully customizable and customizing it is effortlessly easy. You don’t need to write a single line of code to customize any of its features. You would get wide and boxed image sliders, logo uploads are easy, there are more than six hundred fonts to choose from and several themes with the quintessential design elements. The theme is responsive so it will be equally relevant for desktops, laptops, tablets and mobiles. The theme is built with CSS3 and HTML5 and is retina ready. From translations of the website content to ecommerce features, you can add any feature you want or leave a few out if they are not that relevant. The Optimizer is ideal for small businesses, just as landing pages, photography websites, portfolios, personal and corporate websites and definite ecommerce stores. Optimizer has been downloaded by almost a hundred thousand users.

Responsive Brix

Responsive Brix

Responsive Brix is one of the fastest loading SEO friendly WordPress themes at the moment. It is obviously responsive but stands out for its bold design. It is extensively customizable and can be configured easily with its sliders and some drag and drop features. There are almost four hundred font icons, custom widgets, pagination and sidebar options. The theme is easy to work with as the instructions, demo and illustrations are very well documented. You wouldn’t be at your wits’ end while working with this theme.

Customizr

Customizr

Customizr has been downloaded by more than a million and two hundred thousand users. That is enough endorsement for you to give it a try. One of the key requisites of SEO friendly WordPress themes is the focus on engaging visitors. It is not always about the technicalities but how a visitor is going to get enticed with the whole presentation of the website. With its ever expansive customization and compatibility with all devices and relevant plug-ins, you may just hit the jackpot with Customizr.

Not all websites have to be overloaded with graphics and animations. There can be minimalist designs with fewer distractions and focus on content. That is what a Metro style WordPress theme primarily tries to achieve. The focus is always on the content and in most cases it is the textual content that is in the spotlight.

The navigation too is facilitated by textual contents and not by graphical or overly visual elements. With content becoming the most consequential factor of website development, you should try to work around or with a few free Metro style WordPress themes. Here are some free Metro style WordPress themes that are substantially popular and worth checking out.

Wrock Metro

Wrock Metro

This is a responsive and optimized theme ideal for virtual magazines that would sport the Metro theme. One look at the interface and you would know the focus is on the content or textual design elements. The home page is busy but sorted and you can have everything put up in an organized manner, from the featured articles to social media plug-ins. This theme works well for blogs, metro style magazines or online publications and for websites catering to fashion, lifestyle, health or even consumer electronics if the focus is more on information. This theme has been downloaded by more than thirty eight thousand WordPress users.

Metro Pirate

Metro Pirate

This is a simple and clean Metro style theme. There is nothing out of place in this design. All the categories can be neatly lined up on the left and featured or popular posts can find their apt place on the homepage. Thereon, a website can have linked articles or link wheels within the website, thus facilitating navigation and an interesting site map will ensure that every visitor spends more time on the website.

Sensitive

Sensitive

This has been downloaded by more than a hundred thirty thousand users. The Metro style accent, the responsive features, the useful custom homepage settings with custom background and search engine friendly design elements make this theme worth a try. This theme will work wonders for companies that need four or five dedicated sections from the homepage and then a blog that can be unending.

Metro CreativeX

Metro CreativeX

This is a colorful theme with enough experimentation but staying loyal to the traditional metro style. The theme is well documented so you can really play with the HTML5 and CSS3 codes. You may also use this responsive theme just as it is.

Most website themes are unisex. They don’t really have a gender or any such distinction. It is the various design elements that make a website more masculine or feminine. The definition of girly WordPress themes itself will vary depending on the perception of what constitutes girlish designs or themes.

Hence, it would be a tad unfair to reject many themes that can qualify as girly WordPress themes but have become more associated with contrarian or different themes and contents. When we look at the following best free girly WordPress themes, it is either via the primary agenda of the theme which is what it was geared up for or through the various ways the theme has been treated and developed. Here are some of the best free girly WordPress themes.

Tickled Pink

Tickled Pink

Tickled Pink takes the traditional or perceived to be the classic feminine route but it doesn’t go all out with pink shades. The fine tinge of palest gray and white highlights the dominant pink theme. It is a nice start to a girly website.

Sugar and Spice

Sugar and Spice

Sugar and Spice is an apt name for a girly theme. This theme is good for wedding blogs, events and any kind of happy and happening content related to the world of girls. The theme is also ideal for bakeries, florists, cupcake shops and photographers.

Adelle

Adelle

Adelle is a minimalist theme that brings in a degree of elegance and is more focused on the content. It is ideal for female bloggers or blogs on topics that matter to the fairer gender.

Bouquet

Bouquet

Bouquet is sweet and simple, colorful and pleasantly attractive. It has almost half a million users which must tell you how popular it is. Other than the primary design of the theme, it is the numerous features, flexibility and customization that make it stand out.

Divina

Divina

Divina is a mobile friendly girly WordPress theme that is ideal for fashion bloggers, photographers, modeling agencies and even for models or anyone who wants to build a portfolio.

Oblique

Oblique

Oblique is a girly theme developed on the masonry elements. It is ideal for any website related to fashion or for female bloggers. The parallax header image, the immersive layout and the responsive design make the theme relevant and flexible.

Bandana

Bandana

Bandana is an otherwise simple theme that has a lot of potential. From custom menus to widgets laden sidebar, custom background to threaded comments, custom header to featured images or compatibility with all browsers to being SEO friendly and ready for translation, Bandana will do everything you want the theme to do.

Having a mobile website is not a choice. It is imperative. Not having a presence on mobile devices, either with a website or an app will be detrimental to any company or individual’s online exposure. Every company or individual may not be in a situation to create one website for traditional browsing platforms and one for the mobile devices.

In any case, one doesn’t have to do that since there are plenty of mobile friendly WordPress themes. Known as responsive designs, these websites can easily fit into any browser and be displayed optimally on any screen size. All features would be equally accessible on different devices and the website will be fully optimized to offer a complete experience to a visitor. Here are some of the best free mobile friendly WordPress themes.

Responsive

Responsive

Responsive is one of the more flexible themes available right now. The theme uses a fluid grid system that can adapt to any display size and browser, thus offering an impeccable viewing experience. Responsive theme comes with several templates, layouts, widgets and varying positions for menus, sidebars and icons of social media integration. The theme is also compatible with ecommerce features and tools, plug-ins, it has language support so it can be multilingual and it is retina ready. From being search engine friendly to the provision of converting the site into more than forty five languages, this theme will be relevant for many. It is no surprise that the theme has been downloaded by almost two million users.

ResponsiveBoat

ResponsiveBoat

ResponsiveBoat is a mobile friendly theme but that is not its only attribute. The theme is colorful, has a full screen layout and pretty animations. The parallax effect is another highlight of this theme. The theme is ideal for designers, studios, product websites, business portfolios and corporate sites.

Twenty Fifteen

TwentyFifteen

Twenty Fifteen is the official default theme. It is one of those themes that are developed with a mobile first approach. Hence, the theme doesn’t take into account responsiveness as an additional feature but it prioritizes the mobile platform and then brings in the features relevant to the

Twenty Fourteen

TwentyFourteen

Twenty Fourteen is the default theme of the year gone by but it was and is one of the most splendid themes. The fact that it is one of the best free mobile friendly WordPress themes is testified to by more than a million and a half users who have downloaded this theme.

Most websites can be transformed with or into a patriotic theme. While there aren’t many free patriotic WordPress themes per se, either namesake or otherwise, but many free themes can become patriotic with a dash of relevant colors, appropriate quotes and certainly images that are manifestations of patriotism. From the national flag to icons of independence, liberty and the glorious past, everything can add that essence of patriotism to just about any theme.

But there are always some sites that work better with such elements because the overall theme is more conducive. You obviously don’t want to mar the spirit of patriotism with design elements that seem out of place or the background and foreground combinations which seem like too disassociated or distant from the nationalistic pride. Here are some of the best free patriotic WordPress themes. You would have very little work to develop these sites just as the way you want.

Charitas Lite

Charitas Lite

This theme has a sense of freshness and novelty that most themes don’t possess. That’s what makes it one of the best free patriotic WordPress themes. The theme is simple, it is extremely professional and although the primary purpose of such a theme is for charities, churches and many types of foundations, it is equally good for political organizations and matters of the nation. If a website is geared towards significant issues that affect people and the country at large, then this theme will be ideal. Whatever message you wish to convey, the minimalist yet engaging design of this theme will drive home the point.

Enlightenment

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is free of any kind of clutter and that’s the highlight of the theme. It is responsive and extremely flexible. If you are a programmer then you may find more creative ways to use this theme. With unlimited layouts, customizable templates and suitable for myriad types of content, Enlightenment will contribute to any patriotic or political theme.

Freedom

Freedom

Freedom has the right fonts, color combinations and a dignified presence that works very well when you wish to host some patriotic content. Clean images without much fuss and content to go along with it; if that’s your purpose then you will certainly find Freedom to be amazing. The theme comes with custom headers, widgets, custom menu and background. You can configure the site logo, colors, layouts, sliders, categories and sidebars among others.

WordPress is the biggest open source content management system and it has become phenomenally popular because it is primarily free and anyone can work on the platform regardless of their skills in programming, coding or designing. Anyone can build a website from scratch using one of the many free WordPress themes and there are enough resources, from a comprehensive control panel to facilitating tools such as plug-ins and widgets.

One doesn’t have to be a programmer to develop a website using WordPress but programmers are equally fascinated with the platform. That is because they can get the foundation and work on it to create something truly unique or original. There are many themes for programmers to work on. Here are some of the best free WordPress themes for programmers.

Fad

fad

Fad is a theme specifically for programmers. It is not for the general users. The theme is rather simple, quite flat but trendy and it champions the minimalist approach. The theme is extremely light, has a responsive CSS framework grid and is compatible with all important plug-ins, widgets or any kind of feature that you may want to put up there. Fad is an ideal theme for programmers and web designers to toy with ideas and to develop something entirely new. Even if you are just learning new languages or design practices, this theme will offer you enough practice to hone your skills.

Gitsta

Gista

Gitsta is a content based theme. The neat design is responsive and the focus is entirely on content. If you are accustomed with GitHub, then you will certainly have a wonderful experience using this theme. Those not accustomed with GitHub may have some trouble getting used to the theme and how it all works. This theme is definitely for programmers. Those who don’t know coding or are just plain bloggers may not find this theme ideal. However, one can always try to use it regardless of programming skills.

Aspen

Aspen

Aspen is a foundation upon which you can build a site exactly the way you want to. There are certain specific purposes of any programmer. It may pertain to some advanced features or working on the basics of a site. Aspen allows programmers to have the foundation in place and then one can work with the advanced features to design a website that is not like any other out there.

What is your WordPress website about? It is centered around a single idea or does it branch off into a number of different sub-topics? While providing a place to have the conversations you find important is central to the success of your WordPress website, being able to organize these people and ideas into groups will save you a lot of hassle. With that in mind, lets take a look at the top WordPress Groups Plugins including the following.

1. Groups Membership And Access Control

Groups Membership And Access Control

Group Membership And Access Control is exactly what it sounds like. Providing group-based user and membership management, content access control and, group-oriented membership, this plugin allows you to more easily organize your users and categorize them according to your needs. The benefit of this is that you can create an unlimited number of groups, automatically add users to groups, create group hierarchies, and much more. With overwhelmingly positive support, more then 10,000 people have incorporated this useful plugin into their WordPress website. Group Membership And Access Control also has solid support and a generally helpful development staff. If you have any questions, check the forum community out.

2. Private Groups

Private Groups is another small plugin that allows for you to create unlimited private forum groups. So as an example, you can have a user selected to different specific user groups and forums based on your designation. In addition, certain parts of what users can see can be set to visible while the greater body of content remains hidden. Great for organizing small selective groups based around discussions, Private Groups has found a small community that it provides excellent support through its plugin. As an important note, Private Groups is created to work with the Forums Plugin Software, BBPress. Check the parent plugin for additional functionality regarding what is and is not supported.

3. Buddypress Group Email Subscription

Buddypress Group E-mail Subscription is a plugin centered around sending information out via e-mail to people who have subscribed to your WordPress. Allowing you to create specific groups and then mail to those groups, the plugin supports 5 e-mail options including no e-mail, weekly summary e-mail, daily digest e-mail, new topics e-mail, and a general all e-mails. With these subscription levels, you can set up your e-mail groups easier then ever before. In addition, with over 6,000+ active users, Buddypress Group E-mail Subscriptions is an amazingly powerful tool.

WordPress-and-Automattic

What makes WordPress such a powerful Website design tool is that pretty much everything is customizable. Do you not like how the style looks? Find a new one! Is there a problem with the widget? Find one that works better for you and never look back. With so much customizability supported by an incredible community, WordPress only gets better with time. This can be seen in searching optimization. Some of the best search plugins for WordPress include:

1. Relevanssi – A Better Search

Relevanssi - A Better Search

Relevanssi – A Better Search, is one of the most frequently used search plugins currently out there. With 80,000+ active users, Relevanssi – A Better Search is designed around amazing customization power. What Relevanssi does is replace the default search features in WordPress with a partial-match search designed to sort results by relevance. Key features include search results appearing because of relevance instead of date, fuzzy matches, allows for single or multiple match terms, can search for phrases, and even search for tags, user responses, and more. With so much going for it, Relevanssi – A Better Search is worth checking out.

2. Daves WordPress Live Search

Daves WordPress Live Search

Dave’s WordPress Live Search makes the search process more interactive. In a typical WordPress search, you add a term and hope that something comes up. With this plugin, every letter you type triggers the database to provide suggestions based on what you have so far typed. Dave’s WordPress Live Search will make it for your users to more quickly and effectively find what they are looking for.

3. WP e-Commerce Predictive Search

WP e-Commerce Predictive Search

WP e-Commerce Predictive Search takes SKU For Woocommerce to the next level by providing a ‘live’ product search result for whatever you are looking for. As an example, if you look on a WordPress e-commerce website for ‘Lawn Mower,’ then an image and product description for every hit will appear in a list below the search box as you are typing it in.

4. SKU For Woocommerce

WooCommerce is an incredible plugin for WordPress that can turn a typical WordPress website into a fully functional e-commerce website. The challenge to this however is that WooCommerce offers little in SKU, or Stock Keeping Unit, optimization regarding searches. Simply put, if a customer is looking for something, it may not come up with any results. SKU For Woocommerce is designed to rectify this by providing a straightforward plugin that meets the needs of Woocommerce plugin users. While relatively niche in its application, it is none-the-less important providing a functional tool.

How to Start Your First WordPress Site

There are countless social media platforms and websites out there. Belonging to them or subscribing will often involve having to create a picture and profile every time. Wouldn’t it be nice if you only had to have create a single avatar? Gravatar, (otherwise known as a globally recognized avatar) is an avatar that follows you around regardless of where you go online.

From your favorite blog to a WordPress hosted website, getting the same avatar image transferred from place to place will help build your recognition. In addition, if you have a WordPress website, supporting gravatars means making it easier for recognizable people to be a part of your conversation. Some of the top WordPress gravatar plugins include.

1. Simple Local Avatars

Simple Local Avatars

Simple Local Avatars is the most widely used gravatar related plugin out there. With more then 80,000+ active users, Simple Local Avatar comes with a range of support specifically designed to fully support gravatars. With this plugin, every person with a gravatar will have their gravatar supported if the user has one. In addition, it allows a rating of avatars and gravatars, as well as providing a simple interface that is easy to use. If you want full gravatar support, then Simple Local Avatars is a good choice.

2. HiDPI Gravatars

HiDPI Gravatars

While Simple Local Avatars will help to display Gravatars on your WordPress website, HiDPI Gravatars takes the next step and makes those Gravatars stand out. HiDPI Gravatars replaces the standard gravatar resolution with HiDPI retina resolution. The end result is a significantly clearer image that is crisp and professional looking. Note, this plugin only works on newer browsers and updated versions of WordPress.

3. Top Authors

Top Authors

Top Authors is a neat plugin created to display the top contributors to your WordPress website or blog. With gravatar support, the Top Authors plugin seamlessly ties in gravatar functionality with a quick loading widget that brings a personal face to the high-quality content being displayed. With a 1,000+ active users, Top Authors has found its niche and continues to be supported.

4. FV Gravatar Cache

FV Gravatar Cache looks to fix a basic problem associated with gravatars. To put it simply, gravatars can take a very long time to load. FV Gravatar Cache removes the need for the gravatar to contact the gravatar server and instead hosts the image locally, making it much easier for pages of comments to load without problems.

History of WordPress

WordPress websites without social media or sharing simply don’t work as effectively. That is why there is a whole host of plugins specifically created to make posting and sharing easier then ever. From share links that go to a range of social media platforms to news feed XML aggregation, sharing is everything. With that in mind, let us go through some excellent WordPress related posts plugins designed to increase your internal traffic by making your users more aware of the content you create. These include the following top plugins.

1. WordPress Related Posts

Manual Related Posts

WordPress Related Posts does just what its name implies. By adding a widget in the footer of your content, individuals will be more likely to click the content and share it with their friends. Along with boosting internal traffic by 10%, WordPress Related Posts has the opportunity to re-engage your reader in other content that he or she may find interesting.

Some of the features that come with WordPress Related Posts include easy to set up widgets for the footer of your WordPress website. Along with having some versatility in the widgets, WordPress Related Posts also provides excellent support and comes with a detailed use and FAQ section. Finally, with over 100,000+ active users, it remains the most popular related posts plugin currently out.

2. Contextual Related Posts

Contextual Related Posts

Where as WordPress Related Posts can be seen as direct and bare bones, Contextual Related Posts is a plugin that promises a lot in terms of its options. The plugin provides numerous opportunities for you to add related posts widgets across your WordPress website. With its very own inbuilt style sheet, the Contextual Related Posts looks great while providing a useful service to the WordPress website owner.

A list of the features that come with Contextual Related Posts include an automatic process that will add and change related posts information when you add general content, a manual install feature that provides you the full range of control in what is added or not, lots of widget options available that change depending on the nature of the theme you are using, algorithm and short code support, caching, exclusions, custom post types, thumbnail support, and much more. In addition, it is the second most actively used related posts plugin with 60,000+ active users. Along with excellent support and a surprising number of positive reviews, it is easy to understand why.

3. Related Posts

Related Posts

A simple name for a straightforward plugin, Related Posts is all about making it easier for your users to discover more of your content when they get to the end of whatever they are reading. Helping to make your content feel more credible and authoritative through design, Related Posts is an excellent source for an out of the box good looking widget design.

Some of the features supported by Related Posts include an easy to install and use design that makes placing the widget at the bottom of your WordPress website simple. There are also in text links available as well to provide a wider range of links in a different format. While not as popular as Contextual Related Posts or WordPress Related Posts, Related Posts still manages to have more then 50,000 active users, making it a well-respected and well kept up plugin.

4. Widget With Thumbnails

Widget With Thumbnails

Widget with thumbnails looks to take some of the versatility seen in the above plugins and apply it to a thumbnail design. With a smaller listing of self made articles displayed as thumbnails wherever you want the Widget to go, Widget with Thumbnails is an interesting idea you may want to take advantage of. That being said, with just over 1,000+ active users, Widget With Thumbnails has an ok following with poor instructions. Again however given its limited functionality, this should not take too much away from the service it provides.

5. Manual Related Posts

Manual Related Posts

Manual Related Posts is all about control. As with the majority of related posts plugins listed so far, these plugins work by finding the information you have created and then displaying it based on a certain set of rules that you have limited choice in changing. With Manual Related Posts you can choose every single link that shows up on every page, making very specific content channels designed by you for maximum efficiency.

Along with being a perfect way to keep people moving through an instructional manual or longer multi-part narrative, Manual Related Posts provides all of the control that is so often lacking when it comes to using WordPress. With over 5,000+ active users, Manual Related Posts is gradually becoming more and more popular. This is helped along by a large number of five star ratings related to actual users, and continuing updates and support designed to help make the use of Manual Related Posts easier for the community.

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