• You can use this plugin to offer a preview If you are selling audio files from your site
• This audio player can be used to embed the audio files If you do podcasting on WordPress posts or pages
• It doesn’t take a lot of real estate on your webpage so the audio player is very compact
• Audio files embedded with this plugin will play on iOS devices and compatible with HTML5

Screenshot for Audio Player Plugin

The bellow images shows how the audio player looks when it is playing or not playing a music file:

The bellow image is a preview of how the audio player looks when using template 1:

When you click the play button, it will change to a pause button in order to allow users to pause the music playback.

Installation and Usage for Audio Player Plugin 

1. In your WordPress admin area try to go to the ‘Add New’ plugins screen
2. Then click the ‘upload’ tab
3. Try to browse for the plugin file (sc_audio_player.zip)
4.  Activate the plugin after Click ‘Install Now’
5. To embed an audio file anywhere on your site use the following short-code

[sc_embed_player fileurl="URL OF THE MP3 FILE"]

Instance for the short-code:

[sc_embed_player fileurl="http://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/my-music/mysong.mp3"]

Documentation for Additional Usage

Option for using Auto Play

To play the audio file on page load use the “autoplay” parameter in the short-code. Here is an Instance short-code with autoplay option:

[sc_embed_player autoplay=true fileurl="http://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/my-music/mysong.mp3"]

To Specify a Volume Level

To specify a volume level for the audio use the option “volume” parameter in the short-code . You can assign a value between 0 – 100 for the volume level. Here is an Instance short-code usage:

[sc_embed_player volume="50" fileurl="http://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/my-music/mysong.mp3"]

The above short-code will set the volume level of the audio file to 50.

To Loop the Sound

To loop an audio file playback automatically use the “loops” parameter in the audio player short-code . Here is an Instance short-code usage with auto loop:

[sc_embed_player loops="true" fileurl="http://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/my-music/mysong.mp3"]


To Specify Both MP3 and OGG Files for the Audio

Important Note: You may not really need to use this option. You can just use the mp3 option and the plugin to make sure that the file is playable in all devices.

Specifying both files types in the “fileurl” parameter to separate them with a “|” character. Here is an Instance short-code usage that you can specify both the .mp3 and .ogg version of that audio file:

[sc_embed_player loops="true" fileurl="http://www.example.com/my-audio.mp3|http://www.example.com/my-audio.ogg"]

Based on the user’s device the plugin will play the supported file .

To Wrap the Text Around the Audio Player

To wrap some texts around the audio player you can use the following in the “Text” view of the post/page editor:

<p style="display: inline">My Audio: </p>[sc_embed_player fileurl="http://www.example.com/my-music/mysong.mp3"]

Use the following in the “Text” view of the post/page editor (wrap the audio player short-code in another CSS class with float):

Some example text
<div style="float: left;">
[sc_embed_player fileurl="http://www.example.com/my-music/mysong.mp3"]
</div>


Template 1 for Audio Player 

To add a player template that uses a seek bar and volume control. Template 1 Audio player gives you that option:

To embed the audio player, use the following short-code by using template 1:

[sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl="http://www.example.com/wp-content/uploads/my-music/mysong.mp3"]

The above short-code can produce an output like the following preview:

Template1 short-code supports “autoplay” and “loops” parameters too. Here is an Instance:

[sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl="http://www.example.com/my-music/mysong.mp3" autoplay="true" loops="true"]

 Tweaks and Misc Tips

Dot on Black Background/Remove the White Pixels

Using a WordPress theme with black background then you can notice a very small white dot below the audio player. Add the bellow block of CSS code to your theme’s CSS file for getting rid of it:

#sm2-container{
bottom: 0px;
}

How to Add the Audio Player In a Theme’s Template File

Also you can embed the audio player in The theme’s template file. Here is an Instance code that you may add to your template file:

<?php echo do_shortcode('[sc_embed_player fileurl="URL OF THE MP3 FILE"]'); ?>

To Play Audio on Your Home Page Only

Here is an Instance code that you may add to your header.php or footer.php template file then it will autoplay the audio file on your home page:

<?php 
if(is_front_page()){
    echo do_shortcode('[sc_embed_player fileurl="URL OF THE MP3 FILE" autoplay="true"]'); 
}
?>

Template 1  for Changing the Player Background Color 

In theme’s CSS file, Add the following CSS code or change the player background color via the custom CSS plugin. The following example will change the color to red.

.mejs-container, .mejs-embed, .mejs-embed body, .mejs-container .mejs-controls {
    background: red !important;
}

Simultaneously Disable Audio File Playback

Check the “Disable Simultaneous Play” option by going to the settings menu of this plugin to turn off simultaneous audio file playback option. When you use this option, it will stop the audio file automatically when the visitor plays a new file.

If Auto-play is not Working on IOS Devices

IOS devices (iPhone iPad) do not allow you to do auto-play. Apple prevents This  function on its devices. unfortunately Nothing we can do for this plugin.

To Host Your Audio Files

The best choice is to upload your audio files to your site using uploader in WordPress’s media. When you upload the audio file via media uploader, it will show you the URL of the file. You can then use the URL in the short-code of this audio player plugin.

Otherwise, you can host your audio files on Amazon

To Download The Latest Version

Compatibility Plugin 

Works and run with the latest version of WordPress.

Plugin Requirements

Requires the WordPress 4.0 or higher.

have over 1800+ pending comments and most of them are spams in WordPress based blog. How do I delete all (mass delete) the pending comments using sql statements?

You can delete all pending comments from your database. WordPress has wp_comments table. This table can be used to store, retrieve, modify and delete comments.

Procedure to delete all the pending comments from your database

First, login to your remote or local server over the ssh based sesson.

Next, type the following command to login into your mysql database:

Warning: Before you get started with the following commands, it’s a good idea to back up your database. This means if there are any issues you can easily restore your database. See how to backup your database for more information.

mysql -u Your-DB-User-Name-Here -p Your-DB-Name-Here

OR

mysql -u Your-DB-User-Name-Here -h Db-Server-IP-Or-HostName -p Your-DB-Name-Here

In this example, login to db called blog as foo user on localhost:

mysql -u foo -p db

OR

mysql -u foo -h localhost -p db

Once logged in type the following desc wp_comments; command to see wp_comments structure:

mysql> desc wp_comments;

Sample outputs:

+———————-+———————+——+—–+———————+—————-+

| Field                | Type                | Null | Key | Default             | Extra          |

+———————-+———————+——+—–+———————+—————-+

| comment_ID           | bigint(20) unsigned | NO   | PRI | NULL                | auto_increment |

| comment_post_ID      | bigint(20) unsigned | NO   | MUL | 0                   |                |

| comment_author       | tinytext            | NO   |     | NULL                |                |

| comment_author_email | varchar(100)        | NO   |     |                     |                |

| comment_author_url   | varchar(200)        | NO   |     |                     |                |

| comment_author_IP    | varchar(100)        | NO   |     |                     |                |

| comment_date         | datetime            | NO   |     | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 |                |

| comment_date_gmt     | datetime            | NO   | MUL | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 |                |

| comment_content      | text                | NO   |     | NULL                |                |

| comment_karma        | int(11)             | NO   |     | 0                   |                |

| comment_approved     | varchar(20)         | NO   | MUL | 1                   |                |

| comment_agent        | varchar(255)        | NO   |     |                     |                |

| comment_type         | varchar(20)         | NO   |     |                     |                |

| comment_parent       | bigint(20) unsigned | NO   | MUL | 0                   |                |

| user_id              | bigint(20) unsigned | NO   |     | 0                   |                |

+———————-+———————+——+—–+———————+—————-+

15 rows in set (0.00 sec)

To see all the pending comments, type:

mysql> select * from wp_comments where comment_approved =  0 ;

Or better just show all the pending comment count, enter:

mysql> select count(*) from wp_comments where comment_approved =  0 ;

Sample outputs:

+———-+

| count(*) |

+———-+

|       18 |

+———-+

1 row in set (0.01 sec)

Sql statement to delete all pending comments

Type the following command at mysql> prompt>

mysql> delete from wp_comments where comment_approved =  0 ;

Sample outputs:

Query OK, 18 rows affected (0.09 sec)

To quite from mysql session, enter:

mysql> quit;

switched from Apache to Nginx web server. How do I configure permalinks under WordPress blog?

WordPress has the ability capacity to create a custom URL structure for your blog posts and archives. There are three basic types of WordPress permalinks:

Ugly: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/?p=2284

Pretty using mod_rewrite: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-for-loop/

Almost pretty using PHP PATHINFO: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/index.php/bash-for-loop/

In the Settings ? Permalinks panel, you can choose one of the more common permalink structures as follows:

Fig.01: WordPress permalinks: Choosing your permalink structure

How do I use “Pretty” permalinks with Nginx?

Edit your nginx.conf file, run:

$ sudo vi /etc/nginx/site-enabled/cyberciti.biz.conf

Edit/add/append the following location block within the server block:

location / {

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;

}

If your WordPress blog is in /faq/ sub-directory, try:

location /faq/ {

try_files $uri $uri/ /faq/index.php?$args;

}

Save and close the file. Restart/reload your nginx server, run:

$ sudo systemctl reload nginx

OR

$ sudo /usr/sbin/nginx -s reload

Here is my sample config file:

# Upstream to abstract backend connection(s) for PHP.

upstream php {

server unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;

}

server {

server_name www.cyberciti.biz;

root        /var/www/html;

location /faq/ {

try_files $uri $uri/ /faq/index.php?$args;

}

#Add trailing slash to */wp-admin requests.

rewrite /faq/wp-admin$ $scheme://$host$uri/ permanent;

# Directives to send expires headers and turn off 404 error logging.

location ~* ^.+\.(ogg|ogv|svg|svgz|eot|otf|woff|mp4|ttf|rss|atom|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|ppt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf)$ {

access_log off; log_not_found off; expires max;

}

# Pass all .php files onto a php-fpm/php-fcgi server.

index index.php;

location ~ [^/]\.php(/|$) {

fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;

if (!-f $document_root$fastcgi_script_name) {

return 404;

}

# This is a robust solution for path info security issue and works with  cgi.fix_pathinfo = 1  in /etc/php.ini (default)

include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;

fastcgi_index index.php;

fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;

fastcgi_pass php;

}

}

1. Capability Manager Enhanced
2. The concept of user roles was introduced in WordPress 2.0. Each user role is allowed to perform a certain set of tasks called capabilities. This plugins allows you to modify the built-in capabilities of a user role in WordPress.
3. For example, the author user role in WordPress is allowed to add posts and publish them. You can use this plugin to edit this capability and allow users with author user role to add and edit posts but not publish them.
4. You can also create custom user role with a custom set of capabilities. This feature is really useful if you are building CMS for a client or want to add custom user roles on your own site with limited capabilities. To learn more check out our guide on how to add or remove capabilities from user roles in WordPress.
5. ۲٫ Co-Authors Plus
6. When you have a blog that is being run by multiple authors, there are times that more than one person contribute to an article. One way of displaying that is when you show something like we do by claiming post is written by Editorial Staff. Another way of going about this is showing co-authors and linking to their profile individually. Co-Author Plugin lets you do just that.
7. ۳٫ Restrict Author Posting
8. On a multi-author blog, sometimes you may want to assign certain topics to certain authors. Like for example, sports category assigned to your sports blogger. This plugin allows you to assign categories to authors and then limits their access to write only in those categories. To learn more see our guide on how to restrict authors to specific category in WordPress.
9. ۴٫ Revisionary
10. While managing a multi-author blog, the authors usually don’t have permissions to edit an already published post. Revisionary allows you to add a system which makes it possible. Don’t worry, nothing will get past without getting approved by you. However, authors will be able to edit and make changes to an already published post and submit it for your approval. See our guide on how to allow authors to revise published posts in WordPress for more information on how to use this plugin.
11. ۵٫ Simple Local Avatars
12. WordPress uses Gravatar to display user avatars in comments and in user profiles. However, some of your users may not have gravatar setup for their email address, or they may simply want to use some other picture on their author profile. Simple Local Avatars plugin allows users on your WordPress site to upload pictures if they do not wish to use Gravatar.
13. ۶٫ Author Avatars List
14. This simple plugin allows you to display author avatar anywhere on your WordPress site using shortcode. It comes with a widget which you can add to your sidebar to display a list of authors on your site with their avatars. It also works well with simple local avatars plugin. See our guide on how to show authors list with photos in WordPress.
15. ۷٫ Edit Flow
16. Edit Flow is a complete editorial workflow management system for WordPress powered websites. It allows you to leave editorial comments on post drafts visible only in the post editor. You can also add reminders, and create custom post statuses to improve your editorial process. Edit flow also displays your editorial calendar so that you can easily see the posts under progress and manage your publishing schedule. For more information please see our guide on how to improve editorial workflow in WordPress.
17. ۸٫ Author Spotlight (Widget)
18. This plugin detects the author of a post and displays their bio with social links. It is also a great way to display author bio in the sidebar instead of below the post.
19. ۹٫ Post Forking
20. Instead of copying posts to create a new draft, this plugin allows authors to fork an existing post and then edit it. You can choose to use some parts of the fork or the entire post and replace the original post with it. See our guide on how to use post forking for collaborative content curation in WordPress.
21. ۱۰٫ Require Featured Image
22. When managing a multi-author site, sometimes authors may forget to attach a featured image to a post. This simple plugin makes it reminds authors that a post needs featured image when they save a draft. See this tutorial on how to require featured images for posts in WordPress.
23. ۱۱٫ TinyMCE Spellcheck
24. The WordPress post editor does not have a spellcheck button. This simple plugin adds spellchecking into your WordPress post editor, giving authors a chance to proofread their posts inside the editor. Based on the After the Deadline extension of JetPack, this plugin is capable of checking grammar as well as style to improve the readability of posts. See our guide on how to check grammar and spelling mistakes in WordPress.
25. ۱۲٫ Email Users
26. As the name suggests, this simple plugin allows you to send email to all registered users on your WordPress site. It can also be used to send private emails to individual users, or send an email to users with a particular user role. It can also be used to send a new post notification to all registered users on your WordPress blog. All users except users with the subscriber user role can send private messages to other users. If you are having trouble sending email then checkout our guide on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue.
27. ۱۳٫ Adminimize
28. Adminimize gives admins full control on what users can or cannot see inside the admin area. Admins of a multi-author blog can use it to disable user access to unnecessary sections in admin area. Providing a much lean and clutter free area for authors. See our tutorial on how to hide unnecessary items from WordPress admin.
29. ۱۴٫ WP User Frontend
30. Don’t want to give authors access to the admin area? WP User Frontend makes it possible for users to submit their posts directly from the frontend of your website. See our tutorial on how to allow authors to publish directly from WordPress frontend.
31. ۱۵٫ Moderator Role
32. A simple plugin which allows you to add users with the moderator user role. The only capability these users have on your site is the ability to moderate comments. Ideal for newspaper sites where a staff member is assigned to moderate and answer comments.
33. ۱۶٫ Content Progress
34. Content Progress is another editorial plugin which allows you to see the content progress, add flags, and add quick notes to the posts. Flags can be used as the status and offer a visual way to mark posts done, incomplete, in progress, and so on. Take a look at our tutorial to learn how to manage content progress in WordPress.
35. ۱۷٫ Cimy User Extra Fields
36. User profiles in WordPress are very basic and you may want to add extra fields for your authors. Cimy Extra Fields plugin allows you to easily add extra fields to user profiles in WordPress. Check our our guide on how to add additional user profile fields in WordPress.
37. ۱۸٫ User Submitted Posts
38. As the name suggests User Submitted Posts allows your users to submit posts. The good part about this plugin is that the users don’t need to access the backend of your WordPress site. Instead they can submit posts from the front end. The plugin also provides you an option to collect posts from users without creating a user account. See how to allow users to submit posts to your WordPress site.
39. ۱۹٫ Error Notification
40. We all make mistakes but if you run a popular blog like ours, chances are that your users will notify you of that error in their comments. Error notification makes it easier for users to simply select the error in the post and report it to you. To learn more see how to allow users to notify you of errors in WordPress posts.
41. ۲۰٫ User Notes
42. User notes allow you to leave notes but on user profiles. These notes can only be seen by admins. These notes can be very helpful and may serve as a reminder tool. For example, if an author is not following the deadlines you can add a note to remind yourself that this particular author is a bit careless with the deadlines.
43. ۲۱٫ Role Based Help Notes
44. Role Based Help Notes can be used to create a special docs section inside your WordPress admin area for specific user roles. For example, you can enable it for authors and editors. Then switch to an author or editor account and add help notes telling them about your editorial guidelines, using your site, or anything you want. Authors will also be able to add notes which other authors can see.
45. That’s all, we hope these great plugins helped you manage your multi-author WordPress blog more efficiently.
46. If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Google+.

Why Are You Seeing v=XXXX String in Your WordPress URLs?

This string appears on websites running an online store using WooCommerce. It is not a bug or an error, but an actual feature of the plugin.

The purpose of this string is to help WooCommerce calculate tax and shipping based on a user’s geographic location. The string helps make the feature compatible with WordPress caching plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache.

However, if you don’t need to calculate shipping and taxes based on different locations, then you probably accidentally enabled this feature.

Let’s take a look at how to easily disable it and remove the random v=xxxxxx strings from your WordPress URLs.

Removing v=xxxx String from WordPress URLs

First you need to login to your WordPress admin area and head over to the WooCommerce » Settings page.

Under the General tab, you need to scroll down to ‘Default customer location’ option.

It would be set to ‘Geolocate (with page caching support)’. You need to change it to either ‘No location by default’ or ‘Shop base address’.

Don’t forget to click on the save changes button to store your settings.

If you are using a caching plugin, then you will need to clear your WordPress cache. After that you can visit your website, and the geolocation string will disappear from your WordPress URLs.

ِ

How to GeoLocate Default Location Without the URL String?

You can do that by selecting the ‘Geolocate’ option in the ‘Default customer location’ setting.

However, this option is not compatible with static caching plugins, and it will show incorrect shipping and tax information to users due to previously cached page.

Running WooCommerce without caching is not recommended because it will slow down your site’s speed and performance.

If you must use Geolocate to calculate shipping and taxes on the fly, then for the time being you will have to tolerate the ugly v=xxxx string in your WordPress URLs.

We hope this article helped you learn how to remove v=xxxx string from your WordPress URLs. You may also want to see our ultimate list of the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

What Causes Unable to Establish Secure Connection Error in WordPress?

WordPress comes with a built-in system to manage updates. This system regularly checks for updates and show notifications for you to install plugin / theme updates.

However, it needs to connect to the WordPress.org website in order to check for updates or install them. Due to some misconfiguration on your WordPress hosting server, your website may fail to connect with WordPress.org website.

This will result in a secure connection error, and you will see an error message like this:

An unexpected error occurred. Something may be wrong with WordPress.org or this server’s configuration. If you continue to have problems, please try the support forums. (WordPress could not establish a secure connection to WordPress.org. Please contact your server administrator.) in /home/username/public_html/wp-admin/includes/update.php on line 122

That being said, let’s see how to easily fix secure connection error in WordPress.

Fixing Secure Connection Error in WordPress

There are multiple ways to fix the unexpected secure connection error in WordPress. You can try one of the following solutions based on your situation.

Hosting and Server Related Issues

If your shared hosting server is under DDoS attack, then it is likely that the connection to WordPress.org will timeout causing the secure connection error.

In that case, you can wait for a few minutes and try again. If the error persists, then you need to reach out to your web hosting company’s support team.

Cloud or VPS Server Connectivity Issue

If you are on a cloud or VPS hosting, then it is possible that your server is unable to connect to WordPress.org due to some DNS issues.

In that case, you can point your server directly to WordPress.org servers. You will need to connect to your server using SSH.

SSH is short for secure shell which is an encrypted protocol that allows you to connect to your server using command line tools.

Windows users can use a tool called PuTTy whereas Mac / Linux users can use the terminal app.

You will need login credentials for the account with shell access to your hosting account. You can get this information from your hosting account’s cPanel dashboard or ask your web hosting server provider.

In the terminal, you can connect to your server like this:

۱

ssh username@example.com

Don’t forget to replace username with your own username and example.com with your own domain name.

Once connected, you need to run the following command:

۱

sudo nano /etc/hosts

This will open a file, and you will need to add the following code at the bottom of the file:

۱

۶۶٫۱۵۵٫۴۰٫۲۰۲ api.wordpress.org

You can now save your changes and exit the the editor. Visit your website to see if this resolved the error.

Fixing WordPress Secure Connection Error on Localhost

If you are running WordPress on your own computer (localhost), then you may not have cURL extension enabled for PHP. This extension is required to access WordPress.org for updates.

You will need to edit the php.ini file on your computer. This file is usually located in the PHP folder of your Mamp, Xampp, or WAMP folder.

If you are on a Windows computer, then look for the following line:

;extension=php_curl.dll

Mac and Linux users would have to look for this line:

;extension=curl.so

Now you need to remove the semicolon before the text to enable the extension. Don’t forget to save your php.ini file.

Lastly, don’t forget to restart the Apache server for changes to take affect.

Check Open Ports in Firewall

If cURL extension is properly installed on your local server, then the next step is to check your internet connection firewall.

Your computer’s firewall may be blocking outgoing connections from local server to WordPress.org. If you are on Windows, then press the start button and search for Windows Firewall. Mac users can find firewall settings in System Preferences » Security & Privacy

You need to add Apache to your firewall’s allowed programs and allow both incoming and outgoing connections.

You will need to restart Apache for changes to take effect.

We hope this article helped you solve the WordPress secure connection error. You may also want to see our ultimate step by step WordPress security guide for beginners.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Why and When You Should Turn Off PHP Errors in WordPress?

PHP errors that you can see on your WordPress site are usually warnings and notices. These are not like internal server error, syntax errors, or fatal errors, which stop your website from loading.

Notices and warnings are the kind of errors that do not stop WordPress from loading your website. See how WordPress actually works behind the scenes for more details.

The purpose of these errors are to help developers debug issues with their code. Plugin and theme developers need this information to check for compatibility and best practices.

However, if you are not developing a theme, plugin, or a custom website, then these errors should be hidden. Because if they appear on the front-end of your website to all your visitors, it looks extremely unprofessional.

If you see an error like above on on your site, then you may want to inform the respective theme or plugin developer. They may release a fix that would make the error go away. Meanwhile, you can also turn these errors off.

Let’s take a look at how to easily turn off PHP errors, notices, and warnings in WordPress.

Turning off PHP Errors in WordPress

For this part, you will need to edit the wp-config.php file.

Inside your wp-config.php file, look for the following line:

۱

define( WP_DEBUG , true);

It is also possible, that this line is already set to false. In that case, you’ll see the following code:

۱

define( WP_DEBUG , false);

In either case, you need to replace this line with the following code:

۱

۲

۳

۴

ini_set( display_errors , Off );

ini_set( error_reporting , E_ALL );

define( WP_DEBUG , false);

define( WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY , false);

Don’t forget to save your changes and upload your wp-config.php file back to the server.

You can now visit your website to confirm that the PHP errors, notices, and warnings have disappeared from your website.

Turning on PHP Errors in WordPress

If you are working on a website on local server or staging area, then you may want to turn on error reporting. In that case you need to edit your wp-config.php file and replace the code you added earlier with the following code:

۱

۲

define( WP_DEBUG , true);

define( WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY , true);

This code will allow WordPress to start displaying PHP errors, warnings, and notices again.

We hope this article helped you learn how to turn off php errors in WordPress. You may also want to see our list of the most common WordPress errors and how to fix them.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

What does this Plugin do?

It adds a live retweet button which utilizes the Twitter @anywhere live tweet box API and light box effect.

Easy to follow Admin panel

To download this plugin simply visit the official Plugin Page:

Download Retweet Anywhere

By the end of this article, you will have answers to all your questions about building an email list.

What is an Email List and Why is it so Important?

An email list is a list of names and email addresses of people who gave you permission to send them updates and promotions from your business via email.

Why is this so important?

Because these subscribers joined your email list from your website and verified their identity by clicking on a link (double-optin). They are extremely interested in what you have to offer.

According to Direct Marketing Association, email marketing on average sees a 4300 percent return on investment (ROI) for businesses in USA.

In our business, email lists get 10 times higher conversions than social media campaigns. This makes sense if you think about these five advantages of email as a communication channel:

Email is Personal – Email allows you to land into a user’s inbox. There is no ranking system limiting your reach. It is very direct, personal, and casual.

Email is Purposeful – To get your email a user needs to signup for your email list and confirm their email address. Someone doing this much work is obviously interested in hearing from you, and they are much more receptive to your message.

Email is Targeted – As we mentioned earlier the user has already shown interest in your products / content. Since you already know what they like, you can deliver them highly relevant content and offers to get better results. This is called segmentation, and we will cover that later in the article.

You Own Your Email List – You do not own Facebook, Twitter, or Google. Your social media campaigns and SEO efforts can go to waste when these platform change their policies. On the other hand, you own your email list, and it is not influenced by decisions of other businesses.

Email is One-on-One – People read email in the privacy of their inbox. The message is not on a public timeline or newsfeed. They can ask you questions directly in private with confidence. This helps build trust and connection.

This is precisely why every smart business in the world has an email list.

Big name brands learned this lesson a long time ago, and that’s why they spend thousands of dollars on social media campaigns to get people to sign up for their email lists.

They understand that email marketing is the best long term investment with a much higher return. Because people will continue to get their message at a very low cost for a longer period of time.

Social Media vs Email Marketing

Now you’re probably thinking, wait a minute. What about social media?

A lot of social media experts and consultants, in an attempt to sell their services, downplay the importance of an email list.

In fact, we have even been asked isn’t email marketing kind of dead with social media taking over everything?

The best way to answer this question is to look at the information Twitter and Facebook ask you before you create an account:

Yup, it’s an email address. Because these companies know that emails are the most direct and reliable way of getting in touch.

All social media platforms are building an email list because they are smart business owners. This helps their valuation when selling their business.

While social media is a great way to reach your audience, it’s important to keep in perspective the timely nature of social media platforms.

They come and go.

Not too long ago we had MySpace, FriendFeed, Google Buzz, Plurk and countless others. Most of them are either dead now or irrelevant.

Today we have Facebook and Twitter, but not everyone is as hooked up on these sites. Some prefer other places like Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, Snapchat, etc.

But studies show that at least 91% of consumers check their email on a daily basis.

We are not saying that social media is not important. It is, and you should explore every opportunity to reach out to your audiences.

However you should spend more time and effort into something that guarantees much higher results.

What You Need to Start Building an Email List?

Hopefully by now, you should know why building an email list is so important, and why ignoring it would be a HUGE mistake.

So let’s take a look at what you need to start building your email list.

۳ Things You Need to Build an Email List:

A website or blog.

An email marketing service.

High-converting opt-in forms

All three of these are fairly easy to setup, and none of them require you to know how to code.

For the sake of this article, we will only be focusing on the last two items in the list. If you don’t have a website or blog yet, then see our step by step guide on how to start a blog.

Choosing the Best Email Marketing Service

There are tons of email marketing services online. Often beginners use the free options to save cost, which is understandable. However, some of those free platforms are not the best option. Why?

Services like FeedBurner or Jetpack Subscriptions offer blog subscription via email. This allows your users to receive an email update every time you publish a new blog post.

The downside to a blog notification service like this are:

You will have to create a blog post to send an email. This means that information you want to share will have to be publicly available first. You can’t send out private email newsletters.

You can’t personalize the email message. It will be delivered in the same format often with no branding or personalization.

You can’t categorize subscribers by interests, demographics, or content type.

There is no reporting. You don’t know how many people got email, what percentage of users opened it, and how many of them clicked on links.

If you later tried to move to a paid service, your users will have to re-confirm their subscription. Many of them will not do it, and you will end up losing subscribers.

This is why we ALWAYS recommend using a professional email marketing service. Yes, they cost a little bit of money, but they are an investment in your business which pays huge returns.

The benefit of professional email marketing services are:

You can send private mass emails to your subscribers.

You can see subscriber activity and group your subscribers based on actions they take.

You can run A/B split tests to see which email subject line, content, and offers work best with your subscribers.

With reporting tools, you can see which country you have the most subscribers from. You can adjust your timezone preferences, and send emails at the right time.

Last, but definitely the most important, you can see the email addresses of all your subscribers.

There are hundreds of professional email marketing services available, but we have compiled a list of the best email marketing services.

For small businesses, we recommend using Constant Contact because they are one of the largest and fastest growing email marketing services in the world.

They offer a 60 day free trial. This gives you plenty of time to setup and start seeing the results. At the end of 60 days, your email list would likely be paying for itself (cost $20 / month). Start your free trial.

Because we know people often like to see options before they make a decision, we also recommend AWeber. They are another popular email marketing service provider, and they offer our users a 30-day free trial.

Once you have signed up with an email marketing service, the next step is to add opt-in forms to your website to allow your users to subscribe.

Growing Your Email List and Getting More Subscribers

While choosing the right email marketing service is important, getting more subscribers is even more important because this is how you make money.

The biggest mistake beginners make is not strategically placing high-converting opt-in forms.

While some WordPress themes come with built-in sidebar widgets, they don’t convert as well. Your email marketing service may also provide you with codes to embed in your theme, but that requires you to know how to code.

This is why we recommend our users to use OptinMonster. It is the most powerful conversion optimization software that helps you convert abandoning website visitors into subscribers and customers.

You can easily create high-converting optin forms such as lightbox popups, floating header and footer bars, slide-in scroll boxes, fullscreen welcome mat, after post and inline forms, and more.

But what makes OptinMonster really powerful is the behavior automation and personalization features. OptinMonster allows you to automatically show different opt-in forms based on where the user is coming from, which page they are visiting, and what they are doing on your website.

For example, the Exit-Intent® feature track your users mouse behavior and show them a targeted opt-in form at the precise moment they are about to leave. This helps you convert abandoning visitors into subscribers.

This is important because over 70% of people leaving your website will never return.

That’s why influencers like Michael Hyatt, Neil Patel, and Social Media Examiner use exit-intent on their websites. It helped Social Media Examiner add over 95,000 new subscribers in 7 months.

But for smaller businesses, this is even more crucial. Nicolas Gagne, a small business owner, combined Constant Contact with a single exit-intent optin to grow his email list by 500%. This helped him triple his revenue from his online store (see the full case study).

There are tons more case studies and OptinMonster reviews that you can read as well.

Get started with OptinMonster today — Use the coupon WPB10 to get 10% off.

Note: OptinMonster was started by WPBeginner’s founder, Syed Balkhi, because he wanted to get more email subscribers, faster. It helped us increase our email signups by 600%. Due to popular request, we released this tool for public, and now it’s the most recommended lead generation software in the market.

List Building Strategies and Resources

Having the right tools is crucial, but knowing how to use them properly is what makes the most difference.

In your email marketing strategy, the most important thing you should plan out is segmentation. This is the process of grouping your subscribers, so you can better personalize your emails based on interest. It helps you get higher open rates and click-through rates. This definitive guide to email marketing has all the information you need to segment your email list like a pro.

Content Upgrades are the highest converting opt-in forms. It’s a technique where you give your users bonus content at the end of your popular blog posts. These usually convert 5 times higher than a regular opt-in. Here are some content upgrade ideas that you should check out. We have written a guide on how to add content upgrades in WordPress.

If you’re not sure how to create an opt-in form, then use this 63-point checklist for creating a high-converting optin form.

You may want to check out Kevin Duncan’s article on 16 ridiculously simple ways to get more email subscribers in less than 5 minutes.

In case you want more ideas, Mary Fernandez also shared 73 proven and simple ways to grow your email list that should get you going.

Conclusion

It does not matter what kind of business you run, what kind of website you have, or what industry you are in.

If you have a website, and you want to turn your visitors into returning customers, then you need to get them in your email list.

We hope this article helped you understand why building an email list is important and helped you get started on the right foot.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

Why Create a Membership Site?

Membership sites allow you to increase your blogging revenue, but more importantly it allows you to build another community of exclusive users on top of your main blogging community. In membership sites, you will have more interaction with your audience because it is a selective group of users. You can provide them instant support, reply to each comments, and much more.

People often wonder what is the point of a membership site. Well, when you are creating quality content, then you deserve to be compensated. Membership sites are a win-win for bloggers and users because it guarantees quality content to users, and bloggers are guaranteed a regular income which encourages them to keep blogging. There will always be users who are strictly against this idea of premium content, but when use in moderation, membership sites can be a very profitable venue. ESPN still provides quality content, but their insider articles are even better. If you are a design blog, you can provide a tutorial for free, and give source file downloads to premium members ONLY. This way you are still providing quality content and earning a steady income.

For example, if you charge $10 / month for a membership fee and have 200 members, you will be making a steady $2000 / month.

How to Create a Membership Site using WordPress

WordPress is a very powerful platform. When you combine it with Magic Members, it becomes a very versatile membership site platform as well.

Now most of you are probably wondering what is Magic Members?

Magic Members is a WordPress plugin that lets you create Membership sites. Just like almost all WordPress plugins, it is very easy to install. All you have to do is simply upload the files via FTP and activate the plugin (Step by Step Guide to Install a WordPress plugin). Unlike other WordPress plugins (which are mostly free), Magic Members cost $97 for a Single Site License and $297 for unlimited sites license. This might seem like a pretty expensive plugin, but if you hire a developer to create something at a similar level, you will end up paying thousands of dollars.

Overview of Magic Members

Once you activate the plugin, you will see a new menu option added to your wp-admin panel called Magic Members. Once you click on that button, you will see that Magic Members has it’s own version of configuration panel.

You can see that there are bunch of features starting from adding member types, to controlling your content, payment options and more. So many features can be very confusing for beginner level users, which is why there is a support video attached to each section. These videos are step by step tutorials on how to configure that specific section. If you are still having problems with something, then there is FREE unlimited support. You can see how the videos are attached in the screenshot below:

Features

Multiple Membership Levels

You can offer different membership access to different areas (such as downloads, tutorials etc). You can charge separate for each area and increase your revenue stream.

Easy to integrate with Existing or New WordPress Blogs

It is a WordPress plugin that is compatible with all themes. All you have to do is follow few easy steps and let it work it’s magic.

Flexible Membership Options

Aside from multiple levels, you can set different membership billing options (weekly, yearly, trimester etc).

Payment Integration Modules

You can allow your members to pay with Paypal, Authorize.net, ClickBank, and WorldPay. You can pick one of them, or you can pick all of them, it is entirely up to you.

Control Subscription Length

You can control how long memberships are valid with membership expiration. Set different expiration for different user type. This feature works great for trial memberships.

Unlimited Coupon Creation

You can create a coupon to offer a fixed price or a percentage discount on current or new subscription payments.

Login Redirection

If you have multiple membership levels, you might want to redirect them to different landing pages. This features comes in handy when you are trying to send different member updates, news, and/or welcome messages.

Sequential Course Delivery System

If you are a building a course system with your membership site, then this feature is extremely useful. You can control when the content becomes available for users to see. For example, you can have a new lesson / day for 30 days.

Controlled Content Access

You can control which content is visible to each membership level. For example, standard members can only see the basic tutorials whereas Gold members can download source files.

Partial Content Display

You can use the shortcode [ private ] [ /private ] to hide exclusive content within the post. For example a download link to the PSD source file or something else. This feature is particularly useful in providing “teaser” articles that give just enough information that will make non-members want to become members.

Pay Per Post Access

There are times when users don’t want to pay a monthly fee when they only want to see a few articles. This option allows you to charge per post access. User will pay for the access of a specific post.

Entire Blog Protection

You can completely prevent non-members from accessing any information. Anytime a user tries to access a page, they will be redirected to the login page.

Custom Error Pages

Maintain a consistent look and feel across your entire membership site by easily creating custom error pages.

Secure RSS Tokens

This feature allows you to send content via RSS feeds without worrying about non-members accessing it.

Download Manager

This feature allows you to protect downloads from being accessed by unauthorized members and guests. Only users with a specific permission level can access the file.

Simple Member Management

Magic Members allows you to see all of your members, their status, level and other information in one easy to read location. You can easily upgrade, pause, deactivate or delete a member with a single click.

AutoResponder Integrations

Magic Members has seamless integration with Aweber, GetResponse and MailChimp.

Simple:Press Forum Integration

This allows you to turn your regular Simple:Press forum into a paid subscription forum.

Editorial Review

After playing around with the backend of Magic Members, we found it to be feature rich and extremely easy to use. It is worth every single penny it costs. We do not have any plans to make Premium Content on WPBeginner at this time, but it is something that we will consider in the future. If you want to increase the revenue from your blog, then Magic Members is the plugin you need.

Buy Magic Members Now