How many course creators create their online course content even before they know they have an audience or not? The answer is too many! So many course creators spend hours and hours developing their content, then spend days and sometimes months recording and editing high-production quality videos. Only to find out later that they don’t have an audience to sell to. I made this mistake not once but two times. I created my course on how to build a website. Although this course has a huge audience the problem was I didn’t have any audience. I spent literally two months just recording the course. Then I created an online course on how to build funnels. Same mistake this time as well. The only good thing about this course was I spent just a couple of weekends on it. But then I found the real secret sauce for creating and selling the course. In this article, I will give you a step-by-step process to launch your course even if you don’t have an audience. What will be our process to launch an online course? Before I break down the steps, I would like to summarise what we are going to do here. We will conduct a short training session online through Zoom. We are going to promote this training through Facebook ads. At the end of the training, you are going to share the details of your flagship program and present attendees with a sales page. People who register for your flagship program will be added to your Facebook group and then you are going to deliver your course live, one day each week. So, let’s get started. Condense your content for the webinar You must have an idea about your course in your mind. If you convert your idea into videos, it can be a six-hour-long training or even more. But for the webinar, you need to condense it to just one hour. Call it a webinar, a training, a masterclass or whatever you want. Make sure you cover your process or your framework in this one-hour training. You don’t want to give everything and at the same time, it should not be too thin. At the end of the training, your attendees should feel that they have learned something. At no point, they should feel they have wasted one hour on nothing. Read more about mapping your course in my other article. Prepare the presentation Once you have mapped out your course, you need to bring it to some visual medium. It’s better to create a presentation using any of the tools you are comfortable with. It can be Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, Canva, Google Slides or something else. Your presentation should have only one point on one slide. If there is too much information on the slides, people will tend to read the slides rather than listen to you. Now, this presentation is not just an informational presentation. But it’s a sales presentation. At the end of the presentation, you are going to pitch your course. So be ready for a pitch. Even if you are uncomfortable doing a sales pitch, buckle up and do it. And don’t think what the attendees are going to say. If they are pissed off they will leave. It doesn’t matter. Those who will stay may buy your course. You will be providing the link to your sales page. Here are a few tips for the sales pitch Include bonuses. People like relevant bonuses, please don’t add crappy ones. Give timelimit. Although I am against putting a lot of sales pressure, give your audience time to buy the course. You can keep a one-week deadline. Create a sales page and webinar registration page In the last point, we talked about the sales page. But how to create one? Where to host it? For this, we are going to use Systeme. Systeme is a sales funnel builder along with the ability to host courses. The best point about Systeme is it’s FREE. You don’t have to spend a dime to create your sales page. But, which design to choose? If you will go to Systeme, you will find there are so many ready-to-use templates available that you don’t have to build anything from scratch. Also, you will need a sign-up page to register for the webinar. This page also can be created with Systeme. And not even that but you can also send reminder emails through Systeme. All you need to do is set up email automation. Remarkably this also is part of their free plan. Make sure you’ve registered on Stripe or Paypal to collect the payments. Run Facebook ads Now our basic infrastructure is ready. The sales page is done. And the presentation is done. Now, it’s time to bring people to your event. For this, you could do organic promotions, like posting on your Facebook page and group. Or collaborating with someone. However, the best way is to run Facebook ads. You can start with something as little as $10 per day. You can run a traffic-type Facebook ad and send traffic to the sign-up page you have created on Systeme. You can even run a lead-gen ad or a conversion ad but that’s out of the scope of this article. I will suggest you read up more on Facebook ads. Conduct your webinar Now it’s time to conduct your training. You can conduct this training over Zoom. However, make sure you have sent your Zoom invite via automated emails through Systeme. Make sure the following things are working Internet connection Laptop battery Webcam Mic (if you’re using an external one) Keep a disaster management plan in place. What if something stops working? What can I use to replace it? Don’t forget to record the training, because you then use it later on for evergreen webinars. Remember at the end of the webinar you have to share the link to the sales page. Create a secret Facebook group for your students Once people have registered for your online course.  You can send them an invite to your private Facebook group. This will be good because you can interact with your students. Give them updates on when new lectures are being released and clear their doubts. Deliver your course Now, this is the real deal. Once you have your students inside your course, you are going to deliver them lectures of your online course every week.  This could be once a week or twice a week. It completely depends on you. And I will suggest you deliver them live. You understand more about your audience through live interactions than recorded ones. And of course, you will be recording these live lectures, because then you can use them later on and at the same time the students who could not come live will be able to watch the videos. So, this is the 7-step process you are going to follow. Conclusion The best part about this process of building an online course empire is you build your audience and then sell. Instead of creating first and then searching for the audience. So, go ahead and follow this process and launch your online course. I am sure you will be successful.

This is the collection of the 77 best WordPress themes for Fashion & Lifestyle and Travel niche. In the following table you will find the name of the theme, whether it’s available for free and its price. Just click on the theme and you will be taken to the respective theme page. If you want to read the review of the theme, just scroll down, all the theme reviews are sorted alphabetically for your convenience. Allure Allure is specifically made for the fashion niche. This theme is developed with the fashion niche in the mind. The theme features an elegant slider and uses bold typography. You will find several ready-to-use templates in this theme. Features of Allure Responsive and retina design One-click import Instagram feed Readymade templates Visual Composer page builder included Customizable header and footer Check demo and pricing Amalie Amalie’s layout can be easily used for a fashion blog. The theme features a fixed menu on the left side and uses a lot of imagery in its structure. My personal opinion is that the theme wastes a lot of real estates and is not modern looking. But if you like a minimalist design and are fond of side-navigation, then this theme might be for you. The best thing about this theme is a clean layout and makes use of Elementor. So, even if you don’t like the pre-made templates, you can always edit them with Elementor. Features of Amalie Responsive design Carefully picked typography Uses Elementor. So that’s a +1 for me Check demo and pricing Aquarella Aquarella makes use of clean and feminine elements in its design. The theme doesn’t have many installs on the Mojo Marketplace and has currently only one review of a single star. The theme makes use of bold typography and bold colours. And this could be a good thing for a fashion blog. I liked the layout of this theme, but you should speak with the theme author before purchasing. Features of Aquarella Fully responsive Uses Bootstrap Instagram widget Compatible with Contact Form 7 600+ Google Fonts included Check demo and pricing Audrey Audrey is an excellent theme for the fashion niche. The layout is elegant and is perfect for a fashion blog. Theme features a vast set of ready templates. And all these templates have impeccable design and a certain boldness to them.  It has good reviews and a good rating on ThemeForest. Audrey makes use of the Visual Composer page builder, which is what the majority of the themes on ThemeForest use. The theme has been sold 500 times as of today. Features of Audrey A large collection of templates Responsive and Retina Ready Extensive typography options Twitter feed and much more Check demo and pricing Balance Balance is a feature-rich and multipurpose theme. It uses whitespaces perfectly and elegantly. Although the theme is not exactly built for the fashion niche in mind, due to its design and layout, it can be easily adapted for a fashion blog. The theme comes with a drag-and-drop builder, and you can customize the header and the footer easily. And features a visual customizer for easy editing. Like other themes, it also provides a lot of ready-to-use templates and straightforward customization options. Features of Balance Drag and drop page builder WooCommerce-ready Pre-built templates 6 Colour schemes and customizations. Multiple blog layouts Check demo and pricing Brixton Brixton is an excellent theme for blogging. There is an elegant edge to this theme, and it looks quite premium. A great feature to have if you are building a fashion blog. The theme is uncluttered, and although the whitespaces are not much, they are used strategically. The typography is elegant and beautiful.  If you are looking for a minimalist yet elegant theme, then Brixton is the way to go. It’s one of the most selling themes available on ThemeForest. Features of Brixton Responsive design A magazine-style layout Revolution Slider included in the price A clean and minimalist look Check demo and pricing Byanca Byanca is a perfect theme for a clothing shop. And if you are running a fashion store, then this theme is right for you. A combination of whitespaces and black colour looks great in this theme. This theme may not be right for you if you are looking for a blog rather than a store because this theme focusses more on the store part than the blog part. The header and footer blend nicely with the overall theme. Features of Byanca Powerful admin interface Responsive layout One-click import Multiple layouts WooCommerce support Check demo and pricing CheerUp This theme is great for a minimalist blog and magazine-style website. The theme is light-weight and has a lot of layout options to choose from. The theme page says there are more than one thousand combinations of different styles you can achieve with CheerUp. The theme has been sold more than seven thousand times on ThemeForest. One of the pre-made layouts is specifically for the fashion industry. If you are looking for an elegant theme with a lot of whitespaces, then this is for you. Features of CheerUp Responsive Light-weight Drag and drop page builder Gutenberg-ready AMP support Check demo and pricing Cressida Cressida is a free theme available on the WordPress repository. The theme is specifically designed for fashion bloggers. The theme is responsive, but the only issue for me is that it’s not updated for two years now. Last update was in 2018. And as a rule of thumb, you should not be using a theme or a plugin that is not updated regularly. That just opens the door for security troubles. But, if you are just starting and don’t want to invest much on a theme, then this theme is for you. Check demo and pricing Didi Didi is designed for the fashion industry in mind. The theme is responsive and uses a nice layout, and the layout consists of various boxes. So, if you are a fan of boxes, then this theme is for you. I am not a great fan of the typography used on the website. It looks like something a tech company would use but not a fashion blog. You will find all the features like page builders and customization options in Didi too. Features of Didi: Page Builder support Easy to use customizer WooCommerce support Responsive design Check demo and pricing Elegant Like the name, the theme is elegant. The theme features prominent elements and serif typography. You can use the Themify drag-and-drop page builder to build your pages quickly. Like other themes, Elegant features various pre-made layouts that you can use directly. The theme is not exactly built for fashion, but the overall theme is suitable for fashion blogs. Themify develops the elegant theme, and there are good themes under the umbrella of Themify. Features of Elegant: Responsive design WooCommerce compatible Customizer panel Easy demo import SEO optimized Check demo and pricing Fashion Fashion theme is part of Neve theme designed by Themeisle. You can download and use the free version of Neve, but for additional customization and support, you need to purchase the paid version. Fashion theme as the name suggests is built for the fashion industry. Bold typography, strategic use of the whitespaces gives this theme an elegant look. This theme is compatible with various page builders like Elementor and Beaver Builder, taking the design possibilities to a new height. Features of Fashion A clean layout WooCommerce ready Light-weight Compatible with various page builders. Check demo and pricing Fashionbuzz Fashionbuzz uses a dark colour palette. It’s developed for fashion, photography and such lifestyle blogging niches and you can download the theme from WordPress repository for free. But the theme also comes with a paid flavour.  The theme uses the Bootstrap framework under the hood. Fashionbuzz has only 300+ installs. At the outset, Fashionbuzz looks elegant and clean. Check demo and pricing Gallery Pro Gallery Pro is developed by StudioPress, a renowned name in WordPress themes for building themes that are fast and adhering to all the coding standards. You will never go wrong by choosing a StudioPress theme. And Gallery Pro is not an exception to this rule. Excellent use of whitespace and beautiful typography makes this theme a perfect option for a fashion blog. The only downside of StudioPress themes is their high cost. Features of Gallery Pro Responsive and retina ready Gutenberg ready Optimized for fast loading and SEO Ready-to-use page templates Check demo and pricing Gioia If you are running a fashion shop, then this theme is your best bet. With built-in WooCommerce support, Gioia is an excellent theme for a fashion blog and store. Big, bold image slider is a prominent feature of Gioia. The parallax background images give this theme an edge. The only thing that bothered me while testing the page speed that it was slow to slow. But, I will update this once I recheck it on the speed testing tools. Features of Gioia WooCommerce support Visual composer Responsive and retina-ready A plethora of templates to select Check demo and pricing Girly As the name suggests, Girly has a feminine vibe about it. While the theme is designed for fashion blogs specifically, the bold photographs, the typography and the colour scheme make this theme a perfect fit for a fashion blog. With the page builder support like Elementor, Girly has limitless customization options. Girly also supports WooCommerce out of the box. Features of Girly Responsive design Elementor support Feminine touch Bold imagery SEO optimized Check demo and pricing Glam Pro StudioPress develops Glam Pro. Like Girly theme, Glam Pro has a feminine vibe to it, and a premium looks to it. It’s a perfect theme for both the blog and shop alike as it provides WooCommerce support. Unlike other themes which offer a considerable number of templates to choose from, Glam Pro has three layouts. If you are looking for a theme that will be either suitable for your fashion blog or fashion store, Glam Pro will satisfy your requirements. Features of Gallery Pro Responsive and retina ready Gutenberg ready Optimized for fast loading and SEO Ready-to-use page templates Check demo and pricing Glossy A theme made for a fashion blog. There are some ready-to-use templates available in Glossy. I didn’t like the layout as much, I think the header section is too big, and there’s clutter in the body. But, you can check out the demo yourself and take the decision. For me, the theme didn’t stand out much from the crowd. Also, there is no mention of the page builder used. So, we have to assume there is no page builder used. Features of Glossy Fashion niche-specific Bold typography Multiple layouts available Uses Foundation 6 framework Check demo and pricing Gucherry Gucherry is modern-looking Gutenberg compatible theme made for bloggers. It’s available in both a free and paid version. Although the theme looks elegant at the outset, the typography used for heading and the body doesn’t blend. Particularly the line height and letter spacing for body text is a bit weird. But that’s my personal opinion. Gucherry features a big header and a big footer. Pro version has more customization options than the free version. Features of Gucherry Designed for bloggers Multiple blog layouts Multiple header layouts Compatible with Gutenberg Check demo and pricing Grosso Gross is a modern WooCommerce theme for the fashion industry. The theme features a mega menu, AJAX search of products, big sliders and a clean layout nonetheless. The theme focusses more on the shop part than the blog part. So, if you are looking for a theme that is suitable for a fashion shop, then this theme is perfect. You get the Visual Composer page builder and the Revolution slider along with this theme. Features of Grosso Elegant look Responsive design WooCommerce support Visual composer Check demo and pricing Indigo Artisan themes have developed indigo theme. The theme is perfect for a fashion blog, as the design is elegant and bold. I think the typography could have been better as it looks a bit dated. The cost of themes by Artisan themes are on the higher side, but the quality of the theme is excellent. You won’t go wrong if you decide to go with Indigo theme for your fashion blog. Features of Indigo Modular design Gutenberg-ready Compatibility with WooCommerce Can use Google as well as Typekit fonts Comes with a 30-days money-back guarantee Check demo and pricing inFashion inFashion is excellent if you want to run a personal fashion blog. Theme features a different kind of header with a slider of images in the header. The typography is excellent, and font of the header and the body blends well together. But, one thing I didn’t like about body typography is the font size. But with the customization options, you can easily change the font size.  Not a lot of customization is possible with this theme, but it gets the job done. If you are looking for something minimalist, then this theme is your best bet. Features of inFashion Nice layout Different kind of header Responsive design Different post formats Check demo and pricing Kloe Kloe is designed for fashion and lifestyle websites. The theme provides you with multiple layouts that you can easily use. Kloe features bold typography and imagery. One thing I didn’t like about this website is the congested layout. There is not much white space to play around. Although that should not be a problem as the theme bundles Visual Composer with it, so you can create your whitespaces. The icons used are sleek and perfectly matched with the whole look and feel of the website. Features of Kloe Responsive design Multiple ready-to-use layouts One-click demo import Visual composer included with the theme Check demo and pricing Kustrix Kustrix is a fashion blog theme available on TemplateMonster. The theme is based on Bootstrap framework and looks sleek. The header, the slider and the body below it blend well together. The theme is excellent for a personal blog, as well. So, if you would like to start your fashion blog, then this theme is a good option for you. Kustrix has a feminine touch which improves the overall look and feel of the theme. Features of Kustrix Responsive design Different post formats Live customizer Check demo and pricing Look ‘Look’ is a magazine theme, which you can easily use for your fashion blog. It uses a drag and drops page builder for easy editing. Theme features a minimalist look and uses whitespaces to the significant effect. The typography is perfect for a magazine website and improves the readability of the website to a great extent. It uses Ruby page builder, which honestly I haven’t used so I can’t comment on its functionality. Features of Look Responsive design Uses page builder Clean and minimalist 100+ customization options Check demo and pricing Metz Metz is a magazine-style editorial theme. Metz features a grid-style layout, where all the posts are arranged in a grid giving it a magazine-type look. The typography used for headings is a bit weird, and I didn’t like it, but anyway you can change it as per your requirement. Different types of headers and post types are included in the theme. Features of Metz Lof of customization options SEO optimized Multiple widgets areas Check demo and pricing Neto Neto is an e-commerce theme. So, if you are looking for a fashion store website, then Neto will be a good fit for you. The layout, typography and use of whitespace are pitch-perfect. CSSIgniter has developed Neto. The theme uses Visual Composer for building the pages. Also, the theme is compatible with WooCommerce. The advantage of Neto is you can even use Elementor, Beaver Builder and Divi for creating the pages which give you additional benefits. Features of Neto Can use Elementor, Divi and Beaver builder WooCommerce compatible SEO optimized Check demo and pricing Oggi Oggi is a fashion store theme. So, naturally, the focus is on the e-commerce part than the blogging part. Theme features a great design and is perfect for a fashion store. Bold designs make this theme look apart from the rest. Even the typography is perfect and blends well with the design. The theme features a lot of pre-made templates you directly use in your website. Features of Oggi Responsive design One-click import WooCommerce support Visual composer included with the theme Check demo and pricing Olivie Olivie theme has a feminine touch without being too girly. The colours and typography used is exquisite and matches perfectly with the look and feel of the theme. Due to its design, Olivie is a perfect theme for the fashion and lifestyle niche, particularly if you want to run a personal fashion blog. I like the way the theme is designed. Olivie also supports WooCommerce, which makes it easy for you to run your store as well. All in all, a recommendation for Olivie from me. Features of Olivie Responsive design WooCommerce support Extensive documentation Check demo and pricing Olsen CSSIgniter has developed Olsen. The theme is designed for fashion and lifestyle bloggers. Although the theme supports WooCommerce, it doesn’t look like a fit for e-commerce stores. The primary focus is on blogging. The default typography is not that good according to me, but as always you can change the fonts to suit your requirements. The good thing about Olsen is there’s a free version available too. It’s called Olsen light. So, if you want to try out Olsen without paying anything, then you can go ahead with Olsen light. Features of Olsen Made for fashion and lifestyle bloggers Responsive design Multiple templates Instagram integration Check demo and pricing Pepper+ Pepper+ is another theme from the den of Artisan Themes who are known to develop sleek pieces. Pepper+ is a perfect theme for lifestyle and fashion blogs. There are readymade layouts that you can easily use. The typography and the colour scheme is perfect for a fashion blog. The theme focuses on both the blog and the shop. So, if you want to run either of them, you won’t go wrong. The theme is Gutenberg, WooCommerce and Typekit ready. Features of Pepper+ Responsive and retina ready WooCommerce compatible Multiple header options Gutenberg ready Check demo and pricing Pinmaister Pinmaister is a Pinterest-like theme suitable for fashion, lifestyle and photography blogs. The best feature is there’s a functionality to add the pins from the frontend so that users can submit their pins. As with other CSSIgniter themes, this theme is also compatible with Elementor, Beaver Builder and Divi. A lot of customization options are available in Pinmaister like typography and colours. When you purchase the theme, you will also get support from them. Features of Pinmaister Responsive design Compatibility with various page builders Focusses on imagery Great support Check demo and pricing Refined Lingerie Refined Lingerie is designed explicitly for a Lingerie related blog. Of course, you can use it for any other type of lifestyle blog. I didn’t like the typography and overall layout. There are a lot of whitespaces, yet the design looks a bit cluttered. The last comment on this theme was in 2015, so not sure whether this theme is updated or not. Features of Refined Lingerie Uses Motopress editor Bootstrap CSS framework used under the hood Check demo and pricing Roslyn Roslyn is a fashion and lifestyle theme developed for magazines and blogs. Revolution Slider and Visual Composer are included in the theme, and there are multiple ready-to-use layouts available in this theme. The theme looks perfect for fashion and lifestyle blogs; the design is exquisite and blends perfectly with the typography and colours. And there is support for WooCommerce too so that you can use this for your store. I will recommend this theme to fashion bloggers. Features of Roslyn Responsive design Supports Visual Composer WooCommerce support Multiple ready-to-use layouts Check demo and pricing Shoppe Shoppe comes from Themify. It’s a general-purpose theme for an e-commerce store.  But the design makes it a perfect candidate for a fashion store.  There’s even a ready template that you can use for your fashion store. An immaculate layout combined with a serif font for headings and sans-serif for the body makes Shoppe a perfect theme for fashion. The strategic use of whitespaces is excellent and improves the readability a lot. And as other e-commerce themes, Shoppe is compatible with WooCommerce. Features of Shoppe Drag and drop page builder WooCommerce support Multiple layouts for header, footer and the body AJAX cart Product image zoom Check demo and pricing Silk Silk is a theme designed specifically for a fashion blog. Pixelgrade has developed this theme.  Typography is pitch-perfect for a fashion blog. Theme features a prominent header and uses bold imagery. The theme is compatible with the Gutenberg editor and provides you with numerous customization options. I think the theme is perfect for the fashion bloggers, and with the purchase of this theme, you will get their support too. Features of Silk Responsive design Gutenberg ready Made for the fashion blog Check demo and pricing Sitka Sitka is an excellent theme for food, fashion, lifestyle and travel. One-click demos are available for you to import and create your blog quickly. The theme uses serif fonts for the headings and sans-serif for the body.  Perfect use of whitespaces gives this theme an exquisite look. You won’t go wrong with this theme for your fashion blog. Sitka leans towards a bit feminine look.  The theme is compatible with WooCommerce, so if you want to run a store, this theme will be suitable for you. Features of Sitka 100% Responsive design WooCommerce support Gutenberg ready SEO optimized Check demo and pricing Stack Stack uses the Windows Metro style tile design. So, if you are a fan of tiles, then this theme is for you. Stack comes from Themify. This theme is not exactly designed for a fashion blog, but as the theme focuses on imagery, it could be an excellent fit for you, if you want to showcase your work in the form of images. The menu is on the left-hand side and is fixed on the website. This theme supports WooCommerce too although I am not sure how the tile-look would be suitable for a store. Features of Stack Tile layout WooCommerce support Check demo and pricing Ultra Ultra is another theme from Themify. And it has a pre-made layout for a fashion website. I think the theme is immaculate and whitespaces are used very nicely. Even the typography is perfect. Although the focus is on the store part of the website and not much on the blog part, so, if you want a theme for your store, then this theme would be suitable for you. There is a massive collection of headers and footers.  Features of Ultra Comes with a page builder One-click demo import WooCommerce compatible Responsive design Check demo and pricing Velure Velure is a theme developed by WPZoom. The theme is designed specifically for the fashion niche. The theme uses feminine typography and colour scheme, which looks very lovely and is perfect for a fashion website. Although the whitespaces are not significant, the theme doesn’t look cluttered at all. Additionally, there is WooCommerce support provided by this theme. The theme also comes with a visual customizer. Velure comes with an Instagram feed widget and other such unique widgets. Features of Velure 100% Responsive design SEO optimized WooCommerce support Multiple layouts Check demo and pricing Voux Voux is a magazine theme with a feminine touch. The theme has been sold more than seven thousand times on ThemeForest. There are many beautifully designed pre-made layouts that you can use for your website. Voux has support for WooCommerce too. And it takes a balanced approach and is neither leaning towards blog nor store. So, you can use for both a blog and a store. The serif typography used for the headings is perfect for a fashion website. It comes with Visual composer. Features of Voux Responsive design WooCommerce support Stylish layouts Built for speed Check demo and pricing Travel Blossom Travel Blossom Travel is a feminine theme for different niches like Travel, photography and lifestyle. This theme is available for free and is excellent for a personal blog. Although the fonts selected are right, especially the font for headings, I am not happy with the typography for the body. The bold font doesn’t quite blend with the design. The feminine colours add a nice touch. Extensive documentation is available for the theme so that you can configure it easily. Features of Blossom Travel Responsive design SEO optimized Modular homepage design Check demo and pricing CheerUp This theme is great for a minimalist blog and magazine-style website. The theme is light-weight and has a lot of layout options to choose from. The theme page says there are more than one thousand combinations of different styles you can achieve with CheerUp. The theme has been sold more than seven thousand times on ThemeForest. One of the pre-made layouts is specifically for the fashion industry. If you are looking for an elegant theme with a lot of whitespaces, then this is for you. Features of CheerUp Responsive Light-weight Drag and drop page builder Gutenberg-ready AMP support Check demo and pricing Courtyard Courtyard theme comes in two versions, one is free, and the other is a paid version. The paid version is called Courtyard Pro. Usually, the themes developed for the Travel industry feature bold imagery. Same goes for Courtyard theme. The theme is clean and uses whitespaces strategically. The only issue I have with this theme is the typography. I think it could have been a lot better. The theme leans on the minimalist side, so, if you want to use a minimalist theme for your website, then Courtyard is the way to go. Features of Courtyard Responsive design Multiple layouts available Check demo and pricing EightyDays EightyDays is a good theme for your travel blog. The emphasis is on both the imagery and the whitespaces. Serif fonts are used for this theme which looks good on this theme. If you aim to start a travel blog then, EightyDays is a perfect fit for you. The theme provides you with customization options.  Features of EightyDays Responsive design Instagram widget in the footer One-click demo import Check demo and pricing El Greco CSSIgniter has developed El Greco theme. The theme uses a boxed layout, which is quite rare these days, as most of the themes use a full-width layout. But, the theme looks good and is excellent for a personal travel blog. Unline other travel themes, El Greco, is minimalist and focusses on less on imagery and more on the textual part. The serif typography looks very lovely on the theme. If you are looking for a minimalist travel blog theme, then this is for you. As with other CSSIgniter themes, El Greco is compatible with other page builders like Elementor, Beaver Builder and Divi. Features of El Greco Responsive design Can create custom post types with Pods Compatible with other page builders Easy customization Check demo and pricing Essence Pro StudioPress has developed Essence Pro theme. This theme is excellent for travel, lifestyle, and a personal blog. With a focus on large images in the header, the theme provides you with a unique look. Essence Pro comes with extensive documentation, that will help you create your website similar to the demo in no time. Plus, there is a one-click theme setup. Essence Pro is AMP enabled. With StudioPress themes, you get speed, ease of building with the only downside of the high cost. Features of Essence Pro Gutenberg-ready One-click setup Theme customizer Check demo and pricing Explorer Anariel Design has developed the Explorer theme. It’s a youthful theme developed for travel and fashion bloggers and it focusses on grid-style design and images. So, if you want to focus more on the images part of your blog, then Explorer is an excellent theme for you. The typography is perfect for a travel blog and blends very well with the design. Even the colour scheme, while sober, looks nice on the theme. Explorer theme is compatible with WooCommerce as well. So, if you want to run some kind of travel store, then this theme would be suitable for that too. Features of Explorer Responsive design One-click import SEO-ready WooCommerce compatible Check demo and pricing Felt Felt is a magazine-style WordPress theme. PixelGrade develops it. Even though it’s a general-purpose magazine theme, the look and feel of the theme make it quite suitable for a travel magazine or a travel blog. The full-screen header along with the typography and the colours, make the theme a cohesive looking website. Felt is compatible with WooCommerce as well making it a good option for a travel store. Features of Felt Good customization tool SEO-ready Responsive design WooCommerce compatible Gutenberg-ready Check demo and pricing Gillion Gillion is a multipurpose magazine-style WordPress theme. Even though it’s a general-purpose theme, they have developed a layout specifically for the travel industry.  The theme uses Visual Composer page builder for building the pages. Gillion features a grid-style layout for the homepage below the header. There a lot of whitespaces used in the theme but I didn’t like it very much. I think it could have been used in a better way. Rather than increasing the readability, it gives an empty look to the theme. Features of Gillian Use of Visual Composer for page building Various pre-made layouts Easy to use theme panel Responsive design Check demo and pricing Grand Tour Grand Tour is a theme for travel agencies. This theme is visually appealing and will dazzle your audience with its look and feel. The booking/search form in the header improves the functionality of the website.  The theme is clean, and the use of typography and colours is perfect for a travel agency website. Grand Tour has been cold more than 2000 times on ThemeForest. There are a lot of customization options provided by this theme. Features of Grand Tour Perfect for a travel agency A plethora of ready-to-use templates Responsive design White-labelled customization panel Check demo and pricing Insight Insight theme is from the WPZoom Foundry. The theme is developed for magazine-style WordPress websites. This theme features a big header and the grid of posts, and it’s perfect for a magazine. Due to its design, the theme is perfectly suitable for a travel website, in particular travel blogs. The theme uses visual customizer for the customizations, and the layout is available in both the gird and the list format. Features of Insight Magazine-style layout Responsive design Grid and list layout available Live customizer Check demo and pricing Neve Neve comes from the foundry of Themeisle. It’s one of the most versatile themes available in the market with a lot of pre-made layouts available. It comes in both the free version and the paid version. As per Themeisle, Nevel loads within one second and is built for speed. Although the theme is not precisely made for the travel industry, due to its versatility, you can use it for almost any niche. Neve is mobile-ready and AMP-compatible. And it’s compatible with all the reputed page builders available in the market. Features of Neve Responsive design Compatible with page builders SEO-ready Fast loading Check demo and pricing Nova Nova is another magazine-style theme. It’s perfect for niches like lifestyle, fashion and Travel. Nova comes bundled with 18 ready-to-use demos depending on your niche. The demo developed for Travel has a boxed-style layout. The default typography used for travel layout is not that great in my personal opinion. But with the customization options available you can always edit it. Features of Nova Lof of header and footer layouts 18 ready-to-use demos Live AJAX search WooCommerce compatible Visual Composer used as a page builder Check demo and pricing Passenger Passenger is a WordPress theme built for travellers. The theme is minimalist and focusses a lot on the text and the readability rather than images. That doesn’t mean, pictures are entirely ignored.  The theme is compatible with WooCommerce too. But, I didn’t like the shop layout that much. Passenger is perfect for a blog not so much for the shop. If you want to start your travel blog, then go with Passenger without even blinking an eyelid. Features of Passenger Responsive design WooCommerce compatible Soliloquy slider plugin Ready-to-use page templates Check demo and pricing Prevalent Prevalent is a free WordPress theme for your travel website. There is a Pro version of Prevalent which will cost you USD 29. The theme looks good with its layout. But, I have issues with the typography, I think it could have been elegant; also the colours used are a bit stronger than they should be—still, a good alternative for your travel website. You can use Prevalent for other types of websites as well, but it’s predominantly meant for the travel professionals. Check demo and pricing The Traveller The Traveller is a theme meant for travel bloggers. It uses a grid-based layout. All of your posts will be shown in a grid. You can quickly bring your Instagram feed on the website using the built-in integration with Instagram. You can customize your appearance using the Customizer. Features of The Traveller Responsive design Grid layout Customizer Check demo and pricing TourPress TourPress is a travel booking WordPress theme. TourPress features an exquisite design and makes sure that the core functionality of travel booking is focussed. The search form is embedded in the hero section of the website, making it easy for the user to search for various travelling options.  Clean design, strategic use of whitespaces, grid layout, are some of the features of TourPress, which makes it a perfect theme for travel booking websites. TourPress is compatible with WooCommerce too. The use of typography and colours is perfect and blends well with the design. Features of TourPress Perfect for travel booking Responsive design WooCommerce compatible Search filters Check demo and pricing Travel Blog Travel Blog, as the name suggests, is developed for a travel blog. It uses a grid-style layout for the posts. The theme is colourful and is perfect for a travel website. The serif font used for the body is right, but I think the line-height could have been more and a little lighter. Nonetheless, the theme is suitable for a travel blog. Features of Travel Blog SEO optimized Responsive design Optimized for AMP Check demo and pricing Travel Diaries Travel diaries come in two versions. One is paid, and the other one is free. As the name suggests, the theme is suitable for a travel blogger. A perfect balance between the images and the textual part is achieved in this theme. The grid-style layout is perfect for a travel blog. The typography and the usage of colours are excellent. I think for a free theme, you can always give this theme a try. Check demo and pricing Travel Eye Travel Eye also comes in two versions. A paid one and a free version. This theme can also be used as a booking website. The search box is provided on the hero section of the website. The layout of this theme is perfect for a travel website.  The grid-style layout of the website is good, and there is matching typography and the colour scheme used. You can build pages using the Site Origin page builder. Features of Travel Eye SiteOrigin page builder Responsive design Ready to use widgets WooCommerce-ready Check demo and pricing Travel Log Like Travel Eye; the same company, WEN Solutions, develop travel Log. This theme is suitable for a travel agency and is compatible with WP Travel plugin so that you can use it for bookings.  Unfortunately, I could not look at the complete demo of the theme, as they have uploaded only the screenshot of the theme. Check demo and pricing Travelog Travelog is a WordPress theme for travel bloggers. The theme looks sleek, and with the map in the header, Travelog seems different from other travel blog themes. It provides you with multiple post types, blog listings, and header styles. The highlight of this theme is the typography. It blends perfectly with the look and feel of the website. Even though the focus is on the images, nowhere, you will feel that the text part is compromised. Features of Travelog Responsive design Multiple header types Flat design Instagram widgets Check demo and pricing Travel Stories Travel Stories is a free theme. The posts are displayed in the grid format. Also, the design includes a full-width slider. As the theme is designed for a travel blog, it uses big featured images. But a right balance between the images and the text is managed. Check demo and pricing Travel Way Travel Way is available for free, and there is one paid version as well. It’s built for a travel booking website. All the available tours are shown in a grid format, which is a common feature of almost all the WordPress themes developed for a travel website. You can use Page Builder by Site Origin with this theme, making it easier for you to create and edit the pages. Features of Travel Way Multiple headers and footer options Multiple layouts Responsive design Compatible with page builder Check demo and pricing Travelbiz Travelbiz is available for free as well as there’s a paid version. The Gutenberg-ready theme is great for tours and travel business. The design of the theme is excellent. Perfect typography, exquisite design of the widgets and usage of images is right on the money. The search form in the hero section is excellent, given that the theme is built for the travel booking. If you are looking for a free travel booking site, then Travelbiz is a superb option. And if you like the free version, you can upgrade to the paid version. Features of Travelbiz Responsive design Gutenberg ready SEO optimized Check demo and pricing Travelgo Travelgo is a WordPress theme developed by Cyberchimps. Both the free and paid versions of the theme are available. This theme is compatible with WooCommerce making it easier for you to create your travel store. Travelgo looks clean, and the usage of whitespace is strategic. I think the theme falls a little short on the design aspect, but an excellent option for a travel blog. The theme is translation ready. Features of Travelgo Pre-made layouts WooCommerce compatible Discount coupons Responsive design One-click import Drag and drop editor Check demo and pricing Travelify Travelify is a free WordPress theme for travel bloggers. The theme features a boxed layout. While the theme looks simple, which is not bad for a personal blog, it seems bit 2010. The dull colours and very oldish menu gives this theme an archaic look. But, still, if you are a fan of the simple and minimalistic blog, then this theme is for you. Check demo and pricing Travelista Travelista is designed for travel bloggers. The greenish shade to the theme makes it a perfect option for a personal travel blog. The typography for the headings is good, but the serif font used for the body isn’t attractive enough for a travel blog.  But again you can easily change the fonts. The image on-hover animation, WooCommerce support are some of the features Travelista.  There are eight different layouts available for the blog, giving you ample options for providing a different look to your blog. Features of Travelista Responsive design SEO Optimized Retina ready Author page Colour and font customization Check demo and pricing Travelmatic Travelmatic is a perfect theme for your travel blog. With a clean layout, excellent usage of whitespaces, Travelmatic becomes one of the premium blog themes for a travelling blog. The default fonts used on the website are perfect and match very nicely with the theme. The map in the header makes Travelmatic one of the best and unique themes for your travel blog. The map drawing tool is included with the theme and even the blog layout is perfect. The fullscreen header image gives a royal look to the blog. Features of Travelmatic Multiple variations of homepage Responsive theme Google Maps integration Custom map styles Check demo and pricing Travelogue Travelogue is a modern WordPress theme for a travel blog. The theme is stylish and contemporary, yet there is a simplicity about this theme. The theme features multiple pre-made layouts that you can easily use on your website. A lot of customization options are available with Travelogue. You can change the colours, fonts and designs easily with the customization options. You won’t go wrong with this theme for your travel blog. Features of Travelogue Responsive design Google fonts integration SEO optimized Check demo and pricing Trawell Trawell is a good WordPress theme for a travel blog. The theme uses bold fonts and typography in the theme. The one thing that I didn’t like about this theme is its cluttered layout of the homepage. I think they could have used whitespaces in a better way. But, the inner pages are outstanding and use whitespaces effectively. There are multiple header options for Trawell theme, making it a versatile theme. The typography and colour scheme is perfect and blends nicely with the overall theme. Features of Trawell Responsive design Google maps integration Multiple header and footer layouts Check demo and pricing Triptastic If you are looking for a travel blog theme, then Triptastic is for you. The theme uses bold images and large font size to significant effect. The clean layout of the theme is excellent, giving readability a considerable boost. As with other premium themes, Triptastic comes with multiple headers and footer styles giving you the flexibility to make the layout as per your taste. The typography is fantastic and soothing for the eyes. If you are looking for a clean and minimalist theme for your travel blog, then this theme is for you. Features of Triptastic Responsive design Multiple headers and footer options Extensive documentation Check demo and pricing Tropicana Tropicana is available for free, but you can purchase a paid version which gives you more customization options. The theme is suitable for Travel, food and other lifestyle blogs because of its elegant design options. Although, I am not impressed with the bit tight layout. The block could have added spaces in a better way making the theme more readable. The header is also bit clumsy. Tropicana is compatible with Elementor, so above mentioned drawbacks can easily be removed. And if you want to start your travel store, you can easily do so as the theme is compatible with WooCommerce. Features of Tropicana Responsive design Compatible with Elementor Compatible with WooCommerce Check demo and pricing Wanderers Wanderers is an adventure travel and tourism website theme for your WordPress site. The theme has got a premium feel about it. And you won’t go wrong if you select Wanderers for your travel site. Clean layout, big images, exquisite typography and masonry layout, make this theme a perfect option for you. The theme even supports WooCommerce if you want to use it for your travel store. The theme has achieved a perfect balance between the textual matter and imagery. Features of Wanderers Responsive design Pre-made layouts Customizable header and footer Check demo and pricing WPVoyager This is a perfect theme for your travel blog. Map in the header makes it one of the unique themes available for the travel website. The homepage layout focusses more on the images, but internal pages have a focus on the text.  The readability of the theme is perfect because of the typography used. WPVoyager features support for Google Maps and KML. If you want to start your blog, then this theme is perfect for you. Features of WPVoyager Responsive design KML and Google Maps support A lot of customization options Check demo and pricing

If you are running your website, chances are you have already heard about the tracking scripts like Google Analytics, Hotjar, Facebook Pixel or Heap Analytics because you want to track the visitors on your website or blog. But if you don’t know what these scripts do, then not a problem. Let me give you a brief about Google Analytics first. What is Google Analytics, and how to track visitors using it? What are visitors doing on your pages? Which pages are they visiting? How much time are they spending on your pages? From which geographical location they are coming? From which channel they are coming? These are some of the critical metrics for any website. More crucial if your whole business model works on your online presence. Google Analytics provides all this data. And it doesn’t just give the data of a visitor after the site visit, but it also provides the real-time data. All in all, Google Analytics is a must-have for your website. How to install Google Analytics on your website? 1. Create an account on Google Analytics We need to get our unique tracking script from Google Analytics before we can install it on our website. For that, you can go to analytics.google.com  and register yourself first. You can signup using a free Gmail id or a G Suite id. If you don’t have one, you can get it for free. By the way, Google Analytics does provide both a free account and a paid premium account. But a free account will be more than enough for us. 2. Create a property in Google Analytics Once you click signup, enter the relevant information like your website URL. The account name and website name are for just identification purpose and does not affect tracking. Once done, click Get Tracking ID. Agree with the data collection terms and conditions. You need to accept them to move forward. Google will give you a unique tracking id. We are going to use this id for tracking. 3. Install the tracking id on the WordPress website Now the critical part. There are a couple of methods using which you can install the Google Analytics tracking script on your website. One involves directly copy-pasting the tracking script in the header of the website. The simple approach, though, is using the plugin. And as usual, there are hundreds of plugins for this. We are going to use Analytify . Analytify comes in two flavours, one is free, and the other one paid. Right now, we will go ahead with the free version of the plugin. First, go to the WordPress plugins page and search for Analytify. Click Install Now and then click Activate. Then click on the Analytify in the left-hand side menu in the WordPress admin. For the tracking to work, the plugin should know what the tracking code provided by Google is? On this screen, you can either click ‘Allow and Continue’, or you can choose to click skip this step. Again this step doesn’t affect tracking. On this screen, you need to click Log in with your Google Analytics Account. Here you need to select the account which you used while creating the Google Analytics account. Click allow here, so that Analytify will have access to your Google Analytics account. After allowing Analytify access to your Google Analytics account, Analytify fetches the details of your account. And you will get the following screen. On this screen, you have to select the Profile for posts. In the dropdown menu, you will see the property you had created in Google Analytics. You can choose not to choose the Profile to the dashboard. But there is no restriction on selecting the same property. However, we are going to be the sole user of the dashboard or probably your team members. And there is a high chance that you don’t want to track yourself or your team members. The most important thing, make sure you toggle Install Google Analytics tracking code to Yes.  This will make sure that the plugin is adding the tracking script to your website. Otherwise, you will have to do it manually. But then the whole purpose of installing the plugin is defeated. Now you can see the visitor analytics either by clicking the ‘Analytify dashboard’ inside the WordPress admin, or you can visit analytics.google.com. Hotjar The next script we are going to use is Hotjar. While Google Analytics track how visitors came? From where they came? How much time did they spend on each page? Etc; it doesn’t give information on what they did on that page. To track the on-page activity of users, we will be using Hotjar. Hotjar does have a free version, just like Google Analytics. However, it is a bit limited. But for now, it will be more than enough. So what exactly do Hotjar tracks? Hotjar is good tracking visitor movement on your website. But the important things are heatmaps, and the other one is video recording.  Yes, that’s right, Hotjar records the video of what the user does on a particular page. What are heat maps? Let me show you the image. That will be easier to understand. Heatmaps show you what the hot areas are and what are the cold regions. Hot areas are where the visitors have clicked the most, whereas the cold parts are the least accessible areas on a particular webpage. Heatmaps are an excellent research tool; you can get the data regarding what’s popular and what’s not. The above screenshot shows the  click heatmap.  But there are multiple types of heatmaps. Click Heatmap Scroll Heatmap Move Heatmap Scroll Heatmap  shows what the hot areas where most users are scrolling and where they are ignoring the content. Scroll heatmaps show us how good is your content position. Let’s say there is one crucial CTA on the webpage, but it is in the cold region. So probably you can move it to a different place to get the desired attention. So all in all, Hotjar happens to be a great tracking tool as well as a research tool. There are other tools as well to track the visitors but to start with; you should install at least these two tools. For more such information do read the articles in my blog .

With every piece of software or tool, some terms are associated. For example, if you are using Windows, you know what Start Menu means, if you are using Mac, you know what Finder means. The same way there are WordPress terms. And while it is not essential to know the inner working of WordPress, knowing specific terms helps in the long-term. So let’s see what different terms mean? 1. Dashboard/Backend/Admin The page that you access with the URL, www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin is called as an admin. Here you can configure your website, add new themes, plugins, create new pages, add new blog posts etc. Alternatively, some people call this admin as backend  or  admin dashboard. 2. Posts Posts are the articles, blog posts, tutorials, in short, the written content on your website. However, since you can embed videos and podcast episodes on the posts, they can be audio-visual content too. But at the database level, the text is saved. Now, posts again have some terms associated with it. Let’s see what are those. – Category Every post has its category. For example, you are writing a food blog. Then you can have categories like continental foods, Chinese foods, Japanese food etc. Sometimes a post can have more than one category. There can be categories in the category. Simple called as a subcategory. – Tags Although users can categorise the posts into different categories, sometimes there are many focus points and topics that one blog post covers. For example, on your food blog, you may be writing on a healthy Mexican snack for kids. Then the tags would be, let’s say, kids, lunch, Mexican, fit etc. So with the help of tags, you tell readers different topics associated with the article. – Featured image Every post on your WordPress website will have a featured image. The featured image accompanies your blog post. It is usually the graphic representation of your blog post. Many WordPress themes, while showing the list of blog posts, show the featured image along with the title and excerpt of the post. – Excerpt An excerpt is a short description of your blog post. Excerpt accompanies your blog title. – Author A WordPress website can have multiple people contributing to it. Therefore the author determines who has provided a piece of content. By default, the logged-in user who is the author. 3. Media Whatever files you upload in your WordPress media library is called media. Media can be an image, a video or a document. You, however, cannot upload all types of files in your library. There are certain restrictions on it. 4. Pages A page is a static piece of content. Usually, the content on these pages doesn’t change that frequently, and they do have a specific structure. For example, contact page, about page. Like posts, pages have a set of terms associated with it. These are featured image, author and excerpt. Tags and category don’t apply to the pages. However, there is one more term that is only applicable to the pages. And it is – Parent A page can have a parent. For example, page ‘Web Development’ can have a parent page called ‘Services’. 5. Comments As the name suggests, comments are the opinions, critique, suggestions or something written that people can write on your blog post or even a page. 6. Widgets There are some content blocks that we often use on the pages or posts or sometimes in a header to a footer. For example, a menu is a widget; a set of social media icons is a widget. Another term associated with widgets is widget areas – Widget Area Your WordPress theme defines certain areas on your website, where you can add the content blocks (widgets). These areas are called widget areas. For example, a footer is a widget area. 7. Shortcode Usually, non-techies use WordPress. Therefore it provides us with a shortened piece of code which when inserted in our posts or pages or widgets gets converted into a code which then appears as some content. A shortcode is like an inflatable bag. It is in collapsed form when you type it in your post or page, but then WordPress pumps the air into it, and you see a complete content block on the actual page. These are some of the essential WordPress terms. There are a lot more terms than the ones mentioned here. However, these are oft-used. If you want to know some more WordPress terminologies, do let me know in the comments.

Whenever you speak about WordPress, you invariably talk about the plugins. Plugins extend the functionality of your website and in most cases, without expecting any technical know-how from you. There are so many varieties of plugins and so many use cases that there are more than 50000 plugins available for usage. Not all of them are useful to your site, and in some cases, the plugins have a security vulnerability or they slow down your website. Hence it is imperative to use the plugins carefully and judiciously. I have curated a list of commonly used plugins having great functionality and will add value to your website. All the plugins listed here are free of cost or at least there is some sort of a free version. 1. Contact Form 7 https://wordpress.org/plugins/contact-form-7/ I have used this plugin on all of my websites. By using this plugin, you can create various contact forms, inquiry forms, subscription forms or any other kind of form. You can add the fields to the form as per your requirement and design the emails that will be delivered to you and the person who fills up the form. More importantly, this plugin does not expect any technical knowledge from you. Although, if you need to change the look and feel of the form from its default one, then you will have to use CSS. This plugin has more than 5 million installations at the moment. So you can see how useful and easy to use this plugin is. A vital point while, selecting a plugin is how often the developer of the plugin is updating it? Because WordPress is constantly is upgrading its core. And sometimes the update causes the plugin to fail. But if the plugin developer is active, they will keep their plugin updated with the latest version of WordPress. 2. Yoast SEO https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/ A website without SEO (Search Engine Optimization), is like having a home without the door. SEO helps you in ranking your website organically on various search engines like Google, Bing and Yandex. This plugin takes out all the technical aspect of SEO and provides a very simple to use interface for you to implement SEO. Similar to Contact Form 7; this plugin also has more than 5 million active installations. This plugin has a premium version as well; however, in most cases, a free version is more than enough. 3. WooCommerce https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/ WooCommerce converts your website into an e-commerce store. Setting up WooCommerce is like a breeze. After using this plugin, you will feel like, ‘Did I just created an e-commerce store that easily!’ WooCommerce also has a huge installation base with more than 4 million active installations. WooCommerce provides integration for payment gateway PayPal out of the box. However, almost every payment processor has a plugin that integrates perfectly with WooCommerce. Setting up product variations, prices, discounts, coupons and almost everything is straightforward with WooCommerce. Some stores use WooCommerce for more than 10000 products, although you will need a good website hosting if you want to use those many products. Being an e-commerce plugin, it is highly critical that it is very secure. Hence updates are necessary from the developer. And they do not fall behind their updates! 4. EWWW Image Optimizer https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/ Many times we upload images to our WordPress site that are big (storage wise). And big images tend to slow down the site quite significantly. EWWW Image Optimizer compresses the images while maintaining the image quality with indiscernible quality degradation. Not only images, but this plugin compresses the pdf files as well. This plugin has more than half a million installations. And the developer is actively involved with the updates of the plugin. 5. Really Simple SSL https://wordpress.org/plugins/really-simple-ssl/ Security is of paramount importance these days, and the SSL certificate is one of the ways to make sure that your site secure for the users. However, when you or your web hosting provider install SSL on your WordPress installation, the chances are that some of the URLs are still using an unsecured connection. And because of that, the visitor on your website will get a warning of unsecured content on the website. To avoid this and seamlessly set up SSL on your WordPress site, this plugin is handy. This plugin is another of those actively updated plugin with more than 1 million active installations. 6. Elementor Page Builder https://wordpress.org/plugins/elementor/ If you want to design your website, with the ease and simplicity like a Lego set, then this is the plugin to use. With this page builder, you can design the pages, the style them, and make sure they look the way you want them to. There are a free version and a premium version of this builder. The premium version has more functionality than the free one. But you can start with the free version, and if you feel like you need those additional functionalities, then you can go for the premium version. This plugin is must-have for people who want to build their website but lack the technical know-how. 7. WP Mail SMTP by WPForms https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-mail-smtp/ Plugins like Contact Form 7 or WooCommerce send emails as order received, subscription received or payment related emails. But these emails are sent by either PHP’s mail function or WordPress’ email function. Problem with these emails is that a valid server does not sign them and there is a high likelihood that they will end up in spam. What this plugin does, is it uses the proper SMTP server like SendGrid, Gmail or some other server to send the emails. When an email comes from an SMTP server, the chances of delivery are very high and without any issue. Hence using this plugin is advised. This plugin is actively maintained and has almost 1 million installations.

WordPress has been on the block for some time now. And when it comes to ease and flexibility of usage, it beats other CMS hands down. It is time-tested, cost-effective and easy to use. A bucket load of websites available on the internet are made using WordPress. But the new kids like Squarespace , Wix and Weebly are gaining a lot of popularity these days. Why are these tools giving a tough fight to WordPress? 1.  However easy it is to use WordPress; it still requires some dabbling in tech. WordPress has matured a lot from the point it started. The plugin developers have developed smart plugins like page builders, e-commerce store creator, landing page builders and what not. There is anything you can do with a WordPress site with the number of plugins available. But still, it is not tech-free. You have to install it manually on the server (unless you are using managed WordPress hosting, which is costly), install the theme, find out which plugins you require, then install these plugins. But with hosting companies coming with better solutions, managing WordPress has become a lot comfortable for non-techies. 2.  Updates WordPress, the theme and the plugins get regular updates. More often than not, you have to update them manually. There are a few services which update them automatically. But what if the update breaks the website. What if the plugin you updated just now isn’t compatible with the theme you are using? Scary! ???? 3.  Backup and restore You have to take backups, in case of the failure you have to restore them yourself. And it’s not only that you have to decide what should be the backup frequency, then you have to purge the old backups because you don’t have an unlimited space to store these backups. You have to take the backup of both the application files and the database. Either one goes missing, and your backup is useless. Plus storing them on your hard drive or the server itself won’t help. What if the hard drive fails? What if the server fails? So you have to use service like Amazon S3, G Drive, Dropbox etc. So there are a lot of moving parts here. You may not feel entirely comfortable here. And these are the points where tools like Squarespace, Wix and Weebly score higher than WordPress. You don’t have to take the backups; they are managed by these services. You can select and install the theme by just a click. The overall interface is far more comfortable than the WordPress backend. Ability to navigate smoothly between the options and ability to create pages without much fuss are the key features of these tools. And people love these things. Specifically, if you hate tech, you are going to hate WordPress and enjoy these tools. But still, I am not comfortable using these tools. And even you should use WordPress. Just a little effort and you are good to go with WordPress. Let me tell you why? WordPress is Open Source! And this is the most significant advantage for me. 1.  WordPress is not maintained by a single person or a single company. WordPress is continuously developed and maintained by various people some of whom are volunteers. Practically anyone can contribute to the development of WordPress. So even if the current set of developers give up on the development, the project itself won’t be dead. There will be people to carry the project further. Well, we cannot say the same thing about these other companies. They may decide to discontinue their product, or they may simply wind up. I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen, but yes, that’s a possibility. In that case, you have to shift to some other platform. And that makes me a hell lot of uncomfortable. This is the single biggest reason why I am comfortable using WordPress. 2.  Higher cost At a bare minimum, you need only a hosting and domain name to purchase to develop a website using WordPress. You can choose to use a free theme and free plugins. And decent hosting costs around $50 per year. And a domain will cost around $10 per year. But the basic plan of Squarespace will cost you $12 per month (if you pay annually), that is $144 per year or $16 if you decide to pay monthly, which comes out to $192 per year. But this comparison would be unfair since all other platforms come with page builders. So, we have to consider a page builder in the cost of WordPress development. So, we will add Elementor page builder in the cost, which is $49 per year and theme usually cost $59. Theme cost here is not annual. So the initial cost is $168, and the recurring charge is $109 per year. In the cost mentioned above, we can build an e-commerce store without spending an additional dime. But if you have to develop an e-commerce store using Squarespace, it costs $216 per year if paid annually and $312 per year if paid monthly. Conclusion If you have a budget and you hate the tech then go for Squarespace, Wix or Weebly. Preferably Squarespace. But if you are willing to let go of the fear of tech just a little bit, go for WordPress. Trust me; you will be more comfortable using WordPress than anything else.

Website security; something that you don’t pay attention to unless some creepy malware or malicious code harms your website.  With so many malware and malicious scripts running around the internet, it’s critical to remain vigilant and secure your website. And when you are using WordPress, you have to be extra cautious simply because there are so many websites running on WordPress around the globe, making it a favourite choice of the notorious people. Another thing that falls in favour of these people is, most of the people using WordPress are not tech-savvy and don’t secure their website. So, what are the things you need to do to make sure your WordPress site is secure? Username and Password Let us start with something straightforward but useful nonetheless. While installing WordPress, enter the username and password; now don’t be lazy here. Provide a strong password and never  keep the username  admin. Don’t make it easy for hackers. It is not that hard to think of a different username. Also, keep changing the passwords every six months or so. Install only trusted plugins and themes Hackers find it very to place malicious scripts in theme and plugin files. Now, if you download them from WordPress repository or ThemeForest or the reputed vendors, then you don’t have to worry about installing the infected themes and plugins (they may get affected later on due to lax security). There are a lot of sites providing premium assets for free. These include the places taking advantage of open source licence of WordPress, and also the usual suspect, the torrent sites. Although not all of them will have a malicious script in them but are you going to take that risk and lose all the data to a few bucks. Not to mention the ethical issues in using paid assets for free. So, don’t fall for the temptation and use the themes and plugins only from the trusted sources. You can check whether the theme you are using is ship-shape using Theme Authenticity Checker plugins. This plugin checks for malicious and unwanted scripts and code blocks in your theme. Updates Developers of themes, plugins and WordPress provide updates regularly. Of course, if you have installed a pirated copy, then you may not get the updates. Now, these updates do not add new functionalities, they address old bugs, and more importantly, they fix security issues if any. That’s why updating themes, plugins and WordPress is critical and goes a long way in protecting your website. But, make sure, you are taking the backup of your website when updating a theme or a plugin or WordPress to a major release. There is a likelihood that major releases will bring major changes. Updating to major version may break your website since the plugins and themes may not play well with each other. So, however irritating and annoying it is to take backups, make sure you take them because we have to update everything. There are a few plugins to take a backup of your WordPress based website. Some cost money, and some are free. I will list them in next week’s articles. But check with your hosting partner too. Because they also provide backup services. Now let us move on to some different techniques to secure your WordPress installation. Hide your login link Since you are using WordPress, you know the default link to logging to the WordPress admin is the same for all WordPress sites by default. Now, this is like advertising your house address to everyone. But there are some excellent plugins which change the login and admin links from the default. One such plugin is WPS Hide Login. Reduce the number of failed attempts at login One can log in to your WordPress website using brute force. Using a nifty algorithm hacker can try every possible permutation and combination of password till they get it right to enter your site. Therefore it is imperative to limit the number of failed attempts. Again for this, there is a plugin by the same developers. You can download WPS Limit Login from this link . Check the integrity of your site. To make sure all the assets on your WordPress installation are clean and do not contain anything unsavoury, you need to install the Sucuri Security plugin. This plugin checks the integrity of the WordPress site and will alert you the anomalies. The premium version of this plugin provides a firewall, but at least you should install the free version of the plugin. Install SSL certificate SSL certificates enable an encrypted connection. That way, when your site is sending and receiving the data, it is passed through an encrypted channel. The DV SSL certificates are low-cost ones. You can get it for as low as $5 per year. There are some free certificates as well, like Let’s Encrypt. And hosts like SiteGround provide them inside the hosting dashboard. And you can install these with just a click. SSL certificates instil confidence in your visitors that the site is safe to use. So, these are a few simple and mostly free techniques to secure your site. Do make sure you are treating security with great importance. Because cleaning an infected site is not easy and not cheap.

2020 is here, and it’s time to start your e-commerce store. Although the year has not started well for any of us, it’s the right time to plan your e-commerce store now. And I am here to help you with this. Many platforms are using which you can build your store like Magento, Shopify, OpenCart, WordPress etc. While all these solutions are fantastic. WordPress and WooCommerce rocks. By the way, if you don’t know WooCommerce, don’t worry. WooCommerce is a plugin that converts your WordPress website to an e-store. Frameworks like Magento and OpenCart are built for e-commerce, but there are a built difficult as far as DIY website building is considered. And WordPress at its core is not made for an e-commerce store, WooCommerce is a game-changer and brings the simplicity in building an e-commerce store. It’s DIY-friendly. So what are the things that you need to build your e-commerce store? Domain You will need a nice domain name to start with. There are many places where you can buy a domain name. I prefer to purchase the domains from Namecheap . Make sure you are buying a domain name that is clear, precise and doesn’t give any other meaning. There are multiple kinds (TLDs) of domain names available like ‘.com’, ‘.net’, ‘.org’, ‘.co’ etc. However, if you can get your hands on ‘.com.’ then nothing like it. Event though domains like ‘.store’, ‘.website’ are getting popular; people still have faith on the traditional ones like ‘.com’, ‘.net’, ‘.org’. The good idea is to buy two-three variations of the domain names. Domains are anyway dirt cheap (as long as they are not premium or not being sold at a very high cost). So, it makes sense to buy a few domain names. Hosting I have said this in my earlier posts, and I will repeat it. Don’t cheap out on hosting. Not that I am saying go for premium hostings like WP Engine or Kinsta . But don’t lookout for a most inexpensive hosting. When you want to start an e-commerce store, it is always a good idea to have a decent hosting. And even the decent ones are not that costly. You get hosting from SiteGround at just $3.95 per month. That’s not costly! $48 investment per year is quite affordable, even if you are tight on a budget. There are other hosting companies, too—GoDaddy, InMotion, 1&1, Hostgator, Bluehost etc. All these companies offer WordPress hosting too. These hosting have WordPress already installed on them. You can compare the different hosting and buy one for yourself. I have used all these hosting, and I feel SiteGround offers a sweet deal. The cost isn’t high, the server capacity is decent, and the support is incredible. WordPress Once you have a domain and hosting in place, we need to install WordPress on this hosting unless of course, you have purchased a WordPress hosting. In that case, you don’t need to install WordPress separately. Your hosting company takes this care. You can refer to this guide on how to install WordPress. But this is just a core. All you can do with this installation of WordPress is to add new pages and posts. You need themes are plugins to convert this site into an e-store. Themes There are thousands of WordPress themes available on the market. Some cost money, some are free, and some are freemium. An important point to remember here is not all themes are of good quality. Not all of them support WooCommerce, which we require to create an e-store. Therefore you have to be choosy in selecting a theme. Mind you, WordPress themes are a long-term investment. So, make sure you are choosing a theme that is not full of features but a theme that is functional and provides a great user experience. You can read more about theme selection here . I will suggest you go with Astra  theme. Astra is not just a free theme, but it integrates so seamlessly with WooCommerce and page builders that it’s a pleasure to work with it. The theme is fast loading, SEO friendly and provides an excellent user experience. I will strongly suggest not to go with the feature-rich themes. Those themes look quite remarkable on the outside. No doubt, they look fantastic. But more the features, more difficult it is to get the theme to work. WooCommerce Plugins extend the functionality of WordPress. In this case, we want to convert our website into an e-store, and for that purpose, we need a few plugins. WooCommerce is a free plugin developed by WooThemes. WooCommerce provides us with a simple interface to configure our store. Adding products, setting the price, setting coupons and promotional rates, adding taxes and shipping methods and most importantly setting up payment gateways. Many payment processors across the globe integrate seamlessly with WooCommerce. PayPal and Stripe support come out of the box, while other payment processors may need an additional plugin. But that again is a pretty easy task. And all these things are possible without touching a single line of code. More importantly, the plugin incorporates industry-standard security measures, and the plugin is updated regularly to fix the bugs. Payment Gateway Parallel to the website development, you need to register with the payment processor. PayPal and Stripe are popular choices, but Stripe is not available in all countries. You can register with the payment processor available at your location. Make sure you start this process early because some processors take time to approve. And some even require a ready website before they accept. But always a good idea to get in touch with them early. Also, make sure they have the WooCommerce integration available. So that’s it! These are the only things you require to start your e-commerce store. Trust me; it is straightforward to create it yourself. The hard part is the business side. When you go for WooCommerce based solution at least the technical part is made easy. So, you can focus on the business side. Also, you can add a few more plugins for cart abandonment, live chat, tracking etc. But to begin with, these things are sufficient. So, best of luck and start an e-commerce store soon. 🙂

Let us see the cost to develop and maintain a WordPress Every website project has two aspects, one is developing the website, and second is maintaining it. Maintenance includes uploading fresh content, refreshing the old one, updating the server and the software to avoid any security issues. Many people misunderstand that since WordPress is free, the cost of developing a website using WordPress would also be nil. But that’s not the case. And we will see how. Before we find the cost to develop and maintain a WordPress, let us make some assumptions. Assumptions The website will have a maximum of 10000 visitors per month. The website is simple and doesn’t require custom plugins and custom themes. If the website is an e-commerce one, then there are not more than 50 products on the site. We will be discussing wordpress.org and not wordpress.com. WordPress.com is an entirely different beast. First, let us consider the development costs. Development Hosting WordPress depends on three critical things. First is the hosting. Hosting houses the files required by the WordPress application. The server does much more than just housing the data. But let’s not go into the functions of the server. WordPress runs very well on a Linux hosting , rather than a Windows hosting . And we suggest SiteGround as the preferred hosting for WordPress. Since the website doesn’t have more than 10000 visitors per month, we can make do with the basic plan the hosting provider offers. The basic plan is available for approximately $4 per month. That amounts to $48 per year. Now there are specific hostings that are available for as low as $2 per month. But if you genuinely want to build your online business or have a good quality website for your business, then avoid super low-cost hosting. They are a lot costlier in the long term. Apart from SiteGround, there are other good quality hostings like BlueHost, A2 Hosting and even GoDaddy. Now, these hostings are low to mid-range ones. I will not consider the hostings that are high-end like WP Engine  or Kinsta . When you need headache-free hosting, go for managed hosting. To round off, let’s say hosting cost is  $50 per year . Domain Domain names are an identity of your business. Having the right domain name goes a long way. Domains are available for more or less the same price on all the sites. I prefer to buy the domains from Namecheap . Some domains are premium domains, and they are very costly. But for this calculation, I won’t consider the premium domains. If we talk about the regular domains, they are available in the range of $5 to $15. Pricing of the domain names is per year. Let’s assume the domain cost to be $10 per year. Domain names do not affect your WordPress site, but since they are required, I have considered them. Theme How your website will look is dependant on the theme used. WordPress boast’s of literally thousands of themes. Now, some themes cost money, some are entirely free, and some are freemium. Some businesses have made millions just by developing good quality themes. The WordPress site does not require more than one theme. While selecting themes, free themes are quite tempting. But they don’t have many features available with them ( to be honest, it’s a good thing. ) Sometimes they are too constrained, and there are basic things you can do with free themes. Additionally, you don’t know the quality of the code used to develop the theme. Having a website with good quality code is required because then the theme doesn’t slow down or have security glitches. Paid themes are available on multiple websites like ThemeForest, StudioPress and Mojo Themes. There are several marketplaces for WordPress themes, but these are the popular ones. WordPress theme costs between $30 to $150. However, the vast majority of them are available at $59. Themes are generally one-off buys. And rarely have per year costing. So, for the calculation purpose, the cost of the theme is $60 . Plugins The last important thing required for a WordPress site is plugins. Unlike themes, you can use any number of plugins. ( Don’t make blatant use of the plugins.   Use too many of them, and the site will take an eternity to load.) WordPress on its own doesn’t provide much functionality. So, to have the desired website with its features, one has to use plugins. Similar to themes; plugins are available in three flavours; free, paid and freemium. We can very quickly build a website without using a single paid plugin. The quality of even free plugins is quite high. Plenty of the websites that I have built don’t have any paid plugin used and still have all the required functionalities. Since most of the hostings provide backup and restore option, I will not consider backup plugins too. Maintenance The hosting provider manages the server upgrades. You can update the plugin and theme inside the WordPress admin. It’s when you hire somebody else to do the maintenance; you have to shell out the money. So for maintenance too, I am not going to consider any cost. As the traffic to your website grows the price increases too. And some high-end WordPress website sot thousands of dollars. But that’s not the part of the discussion here. We are talking only about the first website. If you need some help with developing a WordPress website, head over to this link. I hope now you have the idea regarding the cost to develop and maintain a WordPress. Have a happy WordPress journey 🙂

When we want to add a new blog post or an article, we create a new post. We then write the content, assign the category and add a featured image to the post. The problem arises when we have multiple kinds of posts. Say, we have case studies, tutorials or podcast show notes along with its audio player. Now, adding all these content types under posts is not a good idea. It is a management nightmare. Once you have more than a hundred content items of different types, then managing all these posts, is going to be a tedious task. That’s why WordPress provides us with functionality, using which we can add custom post types. That means you can add a case study under the case study section; you can add show notes under the podcast section. Advantages of using custom post types Ease of management Can add categories specific to the content type. So that you don’t have to use the same categories you use for the blog posts. As you can from the screenshot below, my website has multiple post types like Podcast, Courses, Lessons and Sections. So, how to add a custom post type? There are two ways you can add a custom post type to your WordPress website. One is through adding code in your functions.php file, which is not very intuitive if you are not a developer or have some experience with programming. function create_post_type() { register_post_type( 'acme_product', array( 'labels' => array( 'name' => __( 'Products' ), 'singular_name' => __( 'Product' ) ), 'public' => true, 'has_archive' => true, ) ); } add_action( 'init', 'create_post_type' ); This code is taken from the WordPress documentation. As you can see, this is gibberish if you don’t have a development background. This code will add a custom post type called Product in your WordPress site. But that’s ok! As they say, whenever there is a problem, there is a WordPress plugin 😀 Now, multiple good quality plugins help us in creating a new post type. But the best one I feel and I use whenever I need a custom post type is  Pods . Pods plugin provides us with an interface that makes it super easy to add a new custom type. So, follow these step by step instructions to create a new custom post type. Search for Pods to add new plugin interface in WordPress Click on Install Now and once installed click Activate. Once activated, you will find Pods Admin in the left-hand side menu. Click on it. Click on Create New Select the Content-Type as Custom Post Type and type the Singular label and plural label for your post type. Let’s say the custom post type is a project then singular will be ‘project’ and plural will be ‘projects’. In the following example, I will a case study as a custom post type. Click next step once done. Now you can see there’s an additional option in the admin menu ‘Case Studies’ Now if you will click case studies, you will find a similar interface as that of posts. There are multiple options that Pods provide, which helps us in customising the custom post. Some of these options are whether we need an author for the post, does that post have a featured image or does it have a page that enlists all its items (like a page that will show all the case studies). So, create a new post and make sure your content is organised and not laying here and there. If you want to check out the custom post type on my website, head over to podcasts. Best of luck with the custom posts!

You might have read about Occam’s Razor before. Or you may have heard it in some movie or a TV show. It’s an oft-used term in many TV shows where the protagonist is looking for some complicated explanation, but in fact, the reason is quite simple and was present there the whole time. Occam’s Razor is a philosophy which states if there are multiple explanations for an individual event, then the simpler explanation is usually the best explanation. So how does Occam’s razor apply to web designing or websites in general? When it comes to a website, we have an obsession that the site should be very good looking. It should be pretty. But we fail to understand that the website should be such that people should be able to take action on it. Like completing a purchase or downloading a case study or sending an inquiry. We don’t just want them to applaud the beauty of the website and be on their way. We want them to stick on our website because we provide them useful content and not the because of the beauty of the site. Problems with complex websites Websites that have a good looking but complex layouts fail to convert on multiple counts. Difficult to navigate Complex layouts are bad for navigation. Visitors find it difficult to find out the stuff they need. When I say navigation, I don’t mean only the menus but overall ability of the website to present the information that is easy to find. Let’s say you want visitors to download your case studies, then you should show them prominently on your website, instead of hiding them behind some unnecessary graphics element. And however the good website looks, if visitors are not able to find the required information they need quickly then the whole purpose of the site is lost. Slow to load With complex layout comes heavy themes and plugins. And they slow down the website significantly. That is again something that you should avoid. Simple layout means less number of stylesheets and JavaScripts. When the website needs less number of files to render then the speed of the website improves. Fast websites are good for search engine optimisation (SEO) too. Complex websites don’t mean only sites with complex layouts Complexity is also in how you write the copy of your web pages. Goofy, over the top and unclear copy (copy includes headlines, subheadlines and other textual matter) doesn’t communicate your message effectively. It adds to the confusion of the website visitor. I once visited a website that had a headline like ‘Delivering value through innovation’. Now this line may work as the subheadline somewhere. But it doesn’t work as a headline. Because it doesn’t tell me what the website is all about. What products or services am I selling? What are my USPs? You should write in a way that your target audience will understand you Make sure you are writing the copy that will appeal the target audience and entice them to take action and not reach them out to their dictionaries. Using out of place images and photographs Just because a picture is super beautiful, you should not use it. You have to ask yourself, does this photograph or image compliments my website. Does tell enough about the products or services I am talking about. If it doesn’t, then you should avoid using it at all costs. The photographs and images on the website should complement the text you have on the website. Otherwise, there is not much use of using the photos. Prioritise Prioritising the elements on your website will help you keep track of what’s important and what’s not. For example, the message that you are communicating through your website. Now that should be more important how an image should react to when you hover the cursor over it. The effects when you hover over an image are good to look at but ask yourself do they add any value to the visitors. So make a list of what’s important. Prioritise them and then start looking at your website from a different angle altogether. Final Words I have made these mistakes in the past. I wanted my websites to have a complex layout, have outstanding looking images on them, have a gorgeous font. While I don’t suggest that you should develop an ugly website but you should not focus on developing only a good looking site. People will pat you on the back for beautiful design, but apart from boosting your ego, it is not going to help you much. Simple is better. Remember you are developing a website not to satisfy your creative mind, but you are doing it because you want to generate leads, you want people to read and respond to what is there on your website. The functionality of the website should always win against the beauty of the website. So keep that objective in mind and remember  Occam’s Razor.

So you liked an image you found through Google Images; you right-clicked on it and saved it; you used the image on your website or blog. Simple enough to get and use the images, right? Well no! You cannot include any image that is available on the internet on your blog or website. Because some of those images might be copyrighted, some of them might need attribution to the creator, some of them are from the sites like Shutterstock, iStock with licensed images. So many newcomers make the mistake of going to to the Google Images, searching the image they require and using the image that fits the bill, without paying attention to whether you are allowed to use that image or not. And if you use such images, the worst-case scenario is you may receive a legal notice along with the demand to pay the fines. And you do not want that. So what to do? From where to get the images? Okay, so let me tell you from where you can get the images. I will tell you the free options first then move on to the paid options later on and finally, and I will tell you some options where you can create your images. All the images, icons used on this website are from the following websites. Free Options Pixabay Pixabay boasts of having more than 1.6 million images with them. And that too free of cost and without any catch. Usually, the free of cost images available on the internet requires attribution. Attribution means you have to add a line on your website where you credit the artist of that particular asset. While attribution is a nice gesture for the artist, more so when you are getting the asset free, but many website owners don’t like to advertise someone else on their website. Additionally, Pixabay offers the images in various sizes, so you don’t have to download big images if you don’t require them. The images on Pixabay are categorised, and the search provided by them is quite efficient. You will find a vast repository of images involving objects, people and even some technical pictures. However, if you want something very niche, then you may not see those kinds of pictures. You can use the images on Pixabay for your commercial and non-commercial projects. And you are allowed to edit the pictures, but you are not allowed to sell them or portray them as your own. You can read more about their terms on Pixabay website. Unsplash Unsplash is another free repository of images and pictures. It doesn’t offer videos like Pixabay. The photos are categorised in different categories and are searchable. I like the collection available on Unsplash. The images available are fantastic. You can create an account on Unsplash and create your collection. You can also share this collection with others. However, there is no option to download the images in a different size. Like Pixabay; Unsplash doesn’t require attribution. And you can use the images for commercial as well as non-commercial projects. You can read more about the terms on Unsplash’s website. Freemium Option Freepik Freepik provides some of the assets free of cost. But the good quality ones are available for the paying customers. Like the compatriots, Freepik boasts of a vast collection. However, you have to provide for the attribution when you are using the free images on Freepik. The paid version costs. EUR 7.50 per month when paid yearly and costs EUR 9.99 per month when paid monthly. I don’t use Freepik as much as I use Pixabay and Unsplash. Paid Options There are a plethora of paid options for stock photos and images. And all of them offer premium quality images. But the price tag of these providers is hefty for someone new to online business. Let me list out the various options available. iStock Shutterstock Adobe Stock Bigstock I will suggest you to first check out the images on Pixabay and Unsplash. More often than not, you will see the pictures on them. But if you need some niche images regularly and they are available on the premium platforms only then go for the premium options. Otherwise, free options will suffice. Create Your Images If you are not happy with the images available on the internet, then you can create your own. But remember there are some limitations while creating your images, as the options I am going to tell you are there to create images quickly. Don’t compare them with Adobe Photoshop. Also, please note, all these options are  freemium.  You can use some of their features for free and for some you have to pay. Canva Canva is the best option for creating images. These ease of using Canva is simply mindblowing. Once you use it, you simply cannot use another tool; this is my personal experience. I tried switching from Canva a lot of times, but the simplicity and availability of the features even in the free version is astonishing. I will suggest, do go to Canva and start using it for free. You will not regret it. Adobe Spark My personal opinion? I didn’t like it. Even for a seasoned person like me, I found it too troublesome and irritating. The lack of simplicity is frustrating. They also have a free and paid version. But I will suggest not to go for their paid version unless you have used their free version and you are very sure of its capability. Crello Crello is somewhat similar to Canva. Honestly, I have used it once or twice only. I found it to be okay. But, I plan on giving it a long run to understand it in a better way, once I do it, I will update it here. If you know some other provider offering free assets, do let me know them in the comments.