WordPress loves to be at the center stage of the CMS. And why not? It is the most used CMS out there. However, you might be thinking of moving to other content management system. There are also many content platforms such as Medium that can provide you better value for your content marketing efforts. However, there are many reasons you should stick with WordPress for better content marketing outreach.

Top Advantages of WordPress in 2018

In this article, we will discuss the top advantages of WordPress in 2018 and why you stick to it. So, without any wait, let’s get started.

1. Continuous Updates

WordPress is an old CMS. It has continuously improved from its first inception in 2001 with a major release every three to four months. Also, WordPress open source status helped it grow to new heights. Just like any other open source solution, WordPress is regularly updated with new features and bug fixes. At the time of writing, the latest version of WordPress that you can use is 4.9.4. Major releases are done almost every two or three months.

2. A great ecosystem with new themes to choose from.

WordPress ecosystem is what makes it a great CMS. It has a thriving community aimed to provide excellent themes, both free and paid. The theme collection for WordPress is full of options and surprises. If you have a relatively new business who are looking to build an online presence, WordPress is the best choice. WordPress has a lot of premium business themes to choose from. It also comes with important business plugins such as Contact Form 7, Sliders, and so on. There are also free themes that are available in the market that you can use.

3. The ability to choose new functionality thanks to plugins.

Plugins are also part of the WordPress ecosystem and help you add new functionality to your website. So, if you are looking to add a new feature to your website, you can just check the WordPress plugin repository and install the plugin. If for some reason, you need to add a feature that is unique and you cannot find any related plugin in the free or paid market, you can always hire WordPress plugin developer to built it for you. There are plenty of WordPress related talent available on the market.

4. It is still simple to use

Yes, you read it right. Even with a lot of updates and releases, it is still easy to use for both new and experienced users. Usability is a key factor that should never be ignored. WordPress was always simple to use from its inception, and the developers have kept it that way. It is still very easy to install WordPress and use it.

5. SEO compatible

SEO is important to improve online presence If your site is not SEO compatible, you will find it hard to reach your target audience. WordPress is a great CMS that is SEO compatible. Moreover, it also comes with great SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO that gives you the ability to make your website even more SEO-friendly.

Conclusion

WordPress is one of the best free-to-use and open source content management system. Its online presence is growing every year. The developers behind WordPress also care about the project and ensure that it gets regular updates and bug fixes. All-in-all, WordPress is still a great choice in 2018. It is still easy to use, offers a great ecosystem of themes and plugins, and so on.

So, what do you think about WordPress being relevant in 2018? Comment below and let us know.

Backups are important. It doesn’t matter if it is your computer or your online website, backups can help you stay at peace. WordPress ecosystem works well with backups. You can also do manual backups or ask your website hosting company to provide backups for you.

However, there is one more way you can backup your WordPress website, i.e., by using backup plugins. In this article, we will go through the five best WordPress backup plugins. All the plugins are top-notch and will help you backup your website in the best possible way.

So, without any delay, let’s get started.

5 Best WordPress Backup Plugins

BackUpWordPress

Our first plugin on the list is the BackUpWordPress. With this plugin, you can backup your watch with a simple process. It comes in both free and premium version. The plugin helps you to set proper schedule to backup your website and it is compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

If you are looking for more features, it is advised to go for the PRO version as it will give you more control over the whole backup process.

BackupBuddy

If you are looking for the best possible backup plugin out there, don’t look further than BackupBuddy. So, what makes it so special? Firstly, it doesn’t come with a subscription model, like the other paid plugins. Secondly, it comes with tons of features!

By using BackupBuddy, you can schedule your website backup the way you want. It can be daily, weekly or monthly. It also provides an easy way to monitor your backup using their Stash service. Also, you can save backups to popular online cloud storage services such as Rackspace cloud, Dropbox or Amazon S3. It also supports FTP backup. The plugin has great documentation and regular updates as well.

BackWPUp

BackWPup is easy to use backup plugin. It comes with all features that you would need. Moreover, it is a free plugin. To use the plugin, you just need to set it up once.

The plugin can be used to store backups either in the cloud or your computer. The cloud platforms that are currently supported is Amazon S3, Rackspace, Dropbox, etc. For desktop, it supports email and FTP. You can also schedule backups

UdraftPlus

Just like all the other plugins on the list, UdraftPlus offers both free and paid version. With this plugin, you can easily backup your WordPress powered website. It can also be used to backup on cloud or computer. All you need to do is schedule the backups and set the desired location. You can store backups on Google Drive, Rackspace, Dropbox, and so on.

It also offers backup to work through FTP and SFTP. If your website is not big, you can also try the email backup option. Overall, the plugin is a great pick as it offers excellent features with decent support.

VaultPress

VaultPress is a paid backup service offered by the creator of WordPress itself, Matt Mullenweg. It comes preloaded with one of the most popular WordPress plugin, JetPack. However, it stays disabled by default. To use it, you need to buy subscription plan which starts at just $3.50 per month.

VaultPress provides a one-click backup solution. Monitoring your website is also easy. Overall, VaultPress is a great choice if you want the best possible backup solution. However, it does come with some drawbacks such as limited archive period of 30 days.

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This brings us to the end of our article. Our hosting services come with automatic backups. Still, it is a good idea to backup your website regularly using backup plugins that we have mentioned in the post. Do let us know which plugin you are thinking to use!

Pro Tip: Check out our WordPress hosting plans which already include automatic backups!

If you are operating an online business, you already know how important it is to have a website that reflects your business. Creating one, however, means investing a huge amount of money and time. Thankfully, we have WordPress. WordPress ecosystem is known for offering great themes and plugins.

In this article, we will list the five best WordPress business themes. All these themes are handpicked and offer great features and design. All the themes are apt for promoting your business online and will always give a lasting impression on the audience.

5 Best WordPress Business Themes

Divi

Divi is a complete WordPress theme with a focus on innovation. It is termed as the “Ultimate” theme and also comes with a visual page builder. The biggest selling point of this theme is that it comes with 20+ layout templates. All these templates are customizable to the core, with real time design.

Divi is also an excellent choice for new businesses as it supports drag and drop builder. This means that you don’t have to hire a developer to do all the work. If you can use the builder effectively, you can create a professional website in a span of few hours.

Key Features

• SEO Friendly
• Completely responsive design
• 46 content elements
• Premade layouts

Demo

TheGem

The Gem is an excellent theme that is modern, elegant and offers high performance. The theme is designed for creatives. That’s why the theme offers 70+ creative concepts which can be used by individuals, agencies, hotels, bloggers, business and many more! At the time of writing, the theme is also going for only $39 which is a steal deal in itself.

The Gem is also one of the cleanest theme out there. It offers unlimited creativity with the help of 150+ pre-made creative demo pages. Each demo page can further be adjusted with 250+ styles.

Key Features

• WooCommerce support
• Comes with Visual Composer
• Premium sliders
• SEO friendly and mobile responsive

Demos

ZerifPro

It is common to see one-page layout themes used by businesses. ZerifPro is one such theme that offers one-page layout and flexible interface. It also comes with drag and drop builder so that you can shape your website the way you like.

So, what makes ZerifPro amazing? First, it is compatible with page builders. So, if you like a particular page builder, you can go with it and customize it!

Key Features

• Great support
• Optimized for speed
• Supports Translation and it is RTL ready
• SEO friendly

Demos

Studio8

Studio8 is a premium modern website aimed at Creative Professionals, Photographs, Web Designers, Filmmakers, Agencies, Photographs, and Architects. The theme is visually appealing and offers great features and functionality. Its modern outlook enables business owners to create sites that can appeal a modern audience with a great user experience.

The theme is built on latest WordPress practice and hence have clean code. This also makes it SEO friendly and fast.

Key Features

• WooCommerce support
• Responsive design
• Advance theme options
• Multilingual ready

Demo

X-Theme

X-Theme is one of the most selling themes with over 170,613 copies sold at the time of writing. It is dubbed  as the “last theme you will have to buy.” As you might have guessed by now, it is a fully functional theme with tons of templates, elements and plugins to play with. It also comes with a front-end page builder.  

The theme can be a little bulky and you might want to get rid of extra plugins that you don’t need. However, the theme is SEO friendly and loads fast if done right.

Key Features

• Live editing
• Stacks which help you get started.
• Cornerstone page builder

Conclusion

Business themes make it easy for anyone to set up their online business. So, what do you think about the themes listed above? Comment below and let us know.

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To stay afloat, business needs not only to have a great website but also require a good hosting. At FastWebHost, we understand businesses and their requirements. Get a hosting now according to your budget and make the most out of your online presence.

WordPress is the most popular content management system out there. It is used by 25% of the websites on the web. WordPress is great when it comes to design and functionality. But, it lacks in-built caching capabilities.

So, what exactly is caching?

Caching is the method of storing temporary data to improve website loading time. Caching your website not only improve user experience but also help your website to rank higher on Google.

And you will need to install cache plugin to make sure that your WordPress website is as fast as possible.

The good news is that there are some awesome WordPress cache plugins that you can use to make your site faster. So without any delay, let’s get started with Top 5 WordPress Cache Plugins.

Top 5 WordPress Cache Plugins

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache is one of the most advanced cache plugins out there. The plugin has more than 1+ million active installations. The plugin offers easy customizable options. Moreover, the plugin is free of cost!

To get started, you simply have to install the free version. You can customize the plugin if you know how to do it or you can also use the simple “one-click” setup option. W3 Total Cache uses GZIP compression and file minification to ensure proper caching for your website.

W3 Total Cache also comes with premium extensions which further improve the plugin functionality.

Download

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is yet another popular WordPress cache plugin. Just like W3 Total Cache, it is easy to install and work with. This plugin offers easy to use options. It also comes with mod_rewrite option so that the static pages are delivered faster compared to the legacy caching options. However, if your website doesn’t support mod_rewrite, you can opt to use the legacy aching mode.

Other key features that WP Super Cache comes with are CDN support, HTML and CSS minification, GZIP and good interface. Also, you can use the plugin free of cost!

Download

WP Rocket

If you are looking for a paid cache plugin that comes with all the features from the get-go, then WP Rocket is for you. It is a paid plugin and is worth every single penny you spend on it. It is built with user simplicity in mind. Hence, you will find it easy to install and configure.

The key features that WP Rocket offers are GZIP, cache preloading, HTML, CSS and JavaScript concatenation and minification. It also comes with lazy load image feature which makes images load only when users scroll down. You can also integrate WP Rocket with CloudFare and optimize Google Fonts HTTP requests.

Download

WP Fastest Cache

Our fourth cache plugin is the WP Fastest Cache. It comes in par with the other free plugins on our list. Just like other cache plugins, it aims to deliver fast loading times by using popular cache mechanisms such as static HTML file, GZIP, mod_rewrite, cache for mobile devices and much more.

It also does performance optimization by minifying HTML and CSS, leveraging browser caching, combining CSS and JS.

Download

Comet Cache

Our last plugin is Comet Cache. Comet Cache is a perfect plugin to improve your site speed. It works differently compared to other plugins by taking snapshots of every category, page, post, etc. Once done, it stores the cache and delivers the cache when a user requests the site. If there are new changes, it simply rebuilds the cache.

The plugin is easy to install, and you can access all the features from the dashboard. Furthermore, it offers a PRO version which comes with more features. So, if you like the free version, you should check out the PRO features.

Download

Which one should you get?

Now you must be thinking which plugin should you get? For starters, using a free plugin is always a good idea. They can use WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache as they are not only popular but have a strong community backing up. If you know what you are doing and want the best, it is recommended to go with WP Rocket.

So, which one you decided to choose? Comment below and let us know.

You bought a new hosting. Great! Now, you are ready for the online adventure using WordPress. For starters, using WordPress themes(paid or free) work well as they offer good customization. However, they are not customizable to the core and this is where page builders come in.

In this article, we will review Elementor page builder from Pojo which is a free and open source.

Building a website from scratch requires a lot of work including time and money. Generally, it goes like this. You hire a developer for the work and then he delivers in iterations the final website. Even though customizing your site from the scratch is a good thing. However, it is possible for businesses just starting their online presence.

Elementor page builder gives them the ability to do just that -- all free! You can edit your homepage, contact us page, blog pages, and align according to your business philosophy.

Elementor - Page Builder for WordPress Review

Elementor is a great page builder due to its fluid live editing experience. It enables anyone to design their WordPress site without any coding knowledge. All you need to do use the drag and drop feature and build your site accordingly.

Elementor is a great starting point for anyone who has a limited budget. It’s popular and has already been downloaded more than a million times! You can also get started by download it from their official page.

Elementor Features

So what makes Elementor amazing? Let’s discuss the main features below.

1. Pre-made templates: A blank canvas can be a hard place to get started. That’s why Elementor comes with pre-made page templates so that you can customize it according to your requirement. Right now, it offers more than 35+ templates. Furthermore, you can create templates from the ground up and save them for future use. 

2. Responsive and SEO optimized:  All the pages created using Elementor are responsive and SEO optimized. This is very important for a modern website as being responsive, and SEO optimized are must have for any business out there. Not only it improves user experience but also helps gain Google rankings.
3. Widgets: Elementor comes with a lot of widgets including content locks, text, videos, buttons, dividers, etc. These widgets are amazing when it comes to building pages using drag and drop functionality. Want to add a video? Just use the video widget.

   
   

4. User Interface: Setting up and working with Elementor is a breeze. It is simple, intuitive and powerful at the same time. Even new users will find it easy to use. For those who are having a hard time understanding how it works, there is plenty of good documentation available online.

Pricing

It’s free! Yup.

You can download it from their official website or WordPress repository.

However, there is a PRO version available as well. The PRO version offers more features than the free version. For example, you get Pro widgets such as portfolio, price table, flip box, etc.

The PRO version is available in three packages. You can get personal, business and an unlimited version for $49, $99 and $199 respectively.

Conclusion

Elementor is one of the best free drag and drop plugin in the market. The fact that it is free makes it even better. With it, you need zero coding skills. Support for responsive design makes it compatible with all the modern WordPress themes.

Another aspect that makes Elementor worth is its fast and fluid user experience. The plugin can also be useful for developers who are looking to customize some aspect of their page and don’t want to fiddle with the site's code. Overall, the plugin is highly recommended for anyone who wants to design their page using drag and drop plugin.

You should also look at the PRO version if you are impressed with the free version.

Worried where to get managed WordPress hosting? Check out our managed WordPress hosting packages. You can also get started using our shared hosting services which completely supports WordPress.

This brings us to the end of the review. What do you think about it? Comment below and let us know.