Author: Daya

Are you looking to add custom fonts in WordPress website?

Well, that’s a great idea, because the custom fonts in WordPress allow you to add an appealing touch and feel to your site or blog. A beautiful combination of fonts can enhance the user experience (UX) and improve readability for your website visitors.

Along with good looks and attractive typography, the custom fonts help you to build a brand image and boost the average time visitors spend on your website or blog.

Before going into how to add custom fonts in WordPress, let’s first explore from where you can download custom fonts that are reliable and SEO-friendly.

Suggested reading: Top 10 FREE WordPress themes for new bloggers in 2020

Finding custom fonts for WordPress website or blog

There are many sources to find and download the free fonts for WordPress website, but you have to ensure that you are choosing a reliable source.

Some of the best sources to download fonts are:

• Font Squirrel
• Google Fonts
• Edge Web Fonts by Adobe
• Fonts.com
• Typekit
• Font Pair
• DaFont
• 1001 Free Fonts

Things to take care of while using custom fonts

While the use of custom fonts is a great thing, but there are still a few things that you need to take care of while implementing the changes.

You should never use more than two fonts on your entire site. Because if you use multiple fonts on your site, it will impact the loading speed. Your site will become slow because the webpages will take more time to load these fonts. And there are many consequences of a slow site. Your SEO will get impacted and visitors will the leave the site.

Moreover, the use of multiple fonts avoids you from maintaining consistency across the site.

Suggested reading: 5 game-changing image optimization methods for WordPress sites

How to add custom fonts in WordPress?

In this article, we will explore the adding of custom fonts in WordPress using Google Fonts.

Adding custom fonts in WordPress using Google Fonts

The reason we have chosen Google Fonts is because it has been developed by Google, which is the most reliable and trusted source for every website need. Moreover, Google Fonts are SEO-friendly and easy-to-use.

Here is the step by step process:

1. First thing to do is to download the Easy Google Fonts plugin. From your WordPress dashboard, visit the Plugins section, and click on Add New.

2. Search for the Easy Google Fonts. Click on Install.

3. Once installed, activate the plugin.

4. After activation, it’s time for you to customize it. Go to the Appearance and click on Customize. The live theme customizer interface will appear, which will also show you the new Typography section.

5. Click on Typography to see the parts of your website to which you want to implement Google Fonts.

6. Click on Edit Font option under the section of your site where you want to apply Google Fonts.

7. From the Font Family dropdown menu, you can select the Google Font that you want to apply to the selected section. Along with the font, you can also set font style, font size, padding, margin, etc.

8. Once done, click on Publish to implement the changes successfully.

Please note that the Google Fonts plugin will work differently on the basis of your WordPress website theme. Some of the features might not work the same way for all the themes.

The good thing is that using this plugin, you can customize and develop your own controls to make changes to website fonts. For this, go to the Settings, and then Google Fonts page. From here, you can create your own control and add a unique name for the same.

Click on the Create font control button. In the next step, you will have to enter the CSS selectors. It allows you to add HTML elements to which you want to add the custom fonts, such as H1, H2, H3 paragraph, quotation, etc.

Once you have edited these settings, click on Save font control button to save the changes. Also, you can use more than one controls.

Must read:WordPress security guide: 8 best tips to secure WordPress website

Adding Google Fonts to WordPress the manual way

Another way to add Google Fonts to your WordPress site is using the manual way. If you don’t want to use a plugin, you can also do the same thing with a few lines of code. To do so, follow the process below:

1. Go to the Google Fonts library and choose the font of your choice. Click on the quick use button available under the font.

2. Next, find the Embed tab to find the code to be copied.

3. Now, to change the font on your site, simply open the header.php file of your theme and add the copied code here before the <body> tag.

4. Save the file again to implement the changes.

Handing over to you:

So, this was the step by step guide to add custom fonts to WordPress site the easiest way. We have written the process for Google Fonts, but you can also use other reliable fonts of your choice and preference. The steps are not much different. But we recommend the use of Google Fonts.

If you have any queries, feel free to reach us out using the comments below.

Read Next: 4 best ways to find dead or broken links in WordPress

Are you looking to build a multilingual WordPress website?

WordPress is the dominating content management system (CMS) that powers more than one-third of the total websites on internet. The main reasons behind the popularity of WordPress is its ease-of-use, being open source, no need of coding, great for blogging, etc.

So, if you have an existing website or looking to create a new WordPress website or blog, and want to make it multilingual, then this article is for you. Before going into how to build a multilingual WordPress website, let’s first clear what exactly it is.

Suggested reading: WordPress security guide: 8 best tips to secure WordPress website

What is multilingual website on WordPress?

A website that can provide your content to the visitors in more than one language is called a multilingual website. For example, if you are from India, then you would want to serve your content in Hindi and English both. In order to do this, you have to make your WordPress website multilingual.

How to create a multilingual website on WordPress?

So, now that you know what a multilingual website exactly is, the next step comes how to create multilingual website on WordPress.

There are three best ways to do it. With each way, you can allow the users to convert your webpages, blog posts, tags, categories, etc. into more than one language.

The second way is to use language translation tools like Google Translate on your website which will convert the content into the language selected by the visitor. However, these translation services are not that accurate and reliable. The meaning of your content might get different once it is automatically translated. Moreover, most of such services are not available for free.

Lastly, the third way to do is to use WordPress multilingual plugins.

Here, we will talk about two ways only— hiring a content writer or translator for your website, and using a WordPress plugin. Here we go.

Suggested reading: 4 best ways to find dead or broken links in WordPress

Hire a content writer for your website

The professional content writers are great at writing user-friendly and SEO-optimized content for your site. The content writers can provide you high-quality content so that your visitors can get engaged and consider a purchase.

If you are not sure where to hire a freelance content writer, then we have got the best solutions for you. We have a team of top content writers who can write content for webpages, blog posts, social media, newsletters, press releases, etc. The content written by our writers is ranking on the first page of Google and other search engines, bringing a high traffic to our clients’ websites.

Use a WordPress plugin

Another great way is to use reliable WordPress plugins. Following are the best WordPress plugins for a multilingual website:

• WPML
• TranslatePress
• PolyLang

You can install any of these plugins to serve your content in multiple languages. There are reasons behind calling these plugins the best ones. First, these plugins help you to translate all your content, whether it is on a webpage, blog post, product description, categories, etc. Second, they are also SEO-friendly to some extent.

Must read: 5 game-changing image optimization methods for WordPress sites

Having said that, let’s move on to how to set up your WordPress site to make it multilingual. We are sharing steps to use and configure the WPML plugin here.

1. Open your WordPress dashboard.
2. Visit Plugins section and click on Add New.
3. From here, search the WPML plugin and install it. Once installed, you have to activate it on your site.
4. Once activated, a notification will appear in your WordPress dashboard to configure this plugin on your site. Click on the ‘Configure WPML‘ button in this notification to begin the configuration.
5. The WPML setup wizard will open. In this wizard, there are four sections. The first section is to identify the default language on your site, which is generally English. It will be identified automatically by the plugin. In case, the plugin identifies a wrong language, you can change it manually. Once selected, click on the Next button there.
6. The next section is ‘Translation languages‘. From this section, you have to select the languages that you want to make available to users. Once you have selected all the languages of your choice, click on the Next button.
7. The next section is Language switcher. The purpose of this section is to set three primary languages for your site, which will be available as drop-down or collection of country flags. Users will simply have to click on their preferred language or flag to translate the content. You can set primary languages by easily dragging and dropping. The language switcher buttons can be added to widget areas, footer, or navigation menu. It’s all up to you.
8. Now, let’s move to the final step, which is Registration. For successful registration, you will have to enter your site key in the required field. Once done, click on Register button.

If you have followed all the steps as mentioned above, the WPML plugin setup process is done successfully.

Handing over to you:

We hope this guide on how to build a multilingual WordPress site helps you to serve your site to the visitors in multiple languages. All the steps and recommendations mentioned in this article are of great use. If you have any queries, feel free to reach out using the comments below.

Read next: 6 easiest ways to monetize your WordPress blog for free

Are you looking for the best WordPress themes for your new blog?

If you have decided to start a new blog or have already started one with WordPress, then choosing the best WordPress theme is another challenging task for you.

Second, not all the themes are good for your blog. Many of them don’t come with the functionalities and features you want on your site. While, there are numerous free WordPress themes that are not secure and can make your blog vulnerable to hacking.

So, to help you find the best free WordPress themes for your blog, we have curated a list of top themes, which are not only highly secure and reliable, but also come with all the essential features and functionalities.

Must read: WordPress security guide: 8 best tips to secure WordPress website

Free WordPress themes for bloggers

Below is a list of top and free WordPress themes for bloggers, whether you are starting a new blog or looking to bring a new look to your existing one. These themes are already being used by hundreds of other bloggers like you. Here we go.

1. Cenote

Cenote is one of the finest themes for WordPress bloggers. A lightweight theme for your blog, the Cenote gives a neat and clean look with new generation layout. The theme is known for its simplicity and white space to enable a user-friendly website or blog.

Cenote theme can be used for various niches, such as technology, fashion, and lifestyle. It is also an SEO-friendly option that helps you rank easily on search engines.

2. Astra

Astra is a leading name in the WordPress themes arena. It is being used by thousands of users to power their personal blogs, business sites, portfolios, as well as ecommerce stores. It supports most of the well-known page builders for you to easily build your site.

The Astra WP theme also supports WooCommerce plugin, so that you can start your online store or ecommerce site. Furthermore, it also enables support for multiple languages with translation capability, allowing your visitors and customers to access your site in language of their choice.

The theme loads your site faster because it is a lightweight option. You can customize the colors and fonts on your site.

3. OceanWP

You might have already heard about the OceanWP theme, as it is one of the most popular WordPress themes for bloggers. Along with several free features, it also has some premium features which make the blog a powerful one.

Since it is a big name in the WP themes arena, it has got some exclusive companion plugins. When you activate the theme, it will suggest you to install a page builder to easily kickstart your blog designing. The bloggers of any niche can use this theme, along with business sites and online stores.

Suggested reading: 4 best ways to find dead or broken links in WordPress

4. Ribosome

Another great theme for blogging in 2020 is Ribosome. It is great for magazines and personal blogs, as it allows you to customize the background, colors, header, etc.

You can add social media icons on the top of the website homepage and other pages. This theme provides you a single option for navigation menu. There is a sidebar on the right side of pages with a layout having two columns.

With Ribosome theme, you get six distinct Google Fonts, thumbnails in the round and square shapes, a couple of widgets to be added at the start and end of blog posts to show ads or suggested posts.

5. Hemingway

If you are looking for a clean and simple WordPress blog theme, then Hemingway is a great choice. It features a layout with two columns along with a full-width header image. The best thing about this theme is that it comes with a parallax effect.

Hemingway theme is customizable, allowing you to choose the colors, page templates, and ability to add your own logo, add widgets, etc. It is completely user-friendly and easy to set up.

6. Bento

For users who want a multi-purpose theme for a blog, Bento is a good option. It comes with numerous useful features for WordPress bloggers. Bento works seamlessly with most of the plugins and page builders. When you install the theme, it will suggest you to install the right page builders for blog setup.

Even the free version of Bento allows you to customize the look and feel of your blog. You can do so easily from the WordPress theme customizer.

Related read: 5 game-changing image optimization methods for WordPress sites

7. Maxwell

Looking for a theme with minimalistic and elegant design? Then Maxwell is the one for you. It is one of the top WordPress themes available for free with a clean magazine styled layout. We simply love the beautiful typography of the Maxwell theme. The key features of this theme include multiple layouts for blog posts and beautiful slideshow for posts.

8. Writee

Writee is another well-known free theme for WordPress bloggers. It is an ideal option for personal blogs, travel blogs, as well as adventure blogs. The theme allows you to add a slider of featured images and blog posts on the top.

You can add multiple widgets of your choice and several templates for a great blog.

9. Fascinate

Fascinate is a simple yet elegant WordPress theme for bloggers who are looking to build personal portfolios, blogs related to fashion and lifestyle niches, as well as content creators.

It is a beautiful and eye-catchy theme that engages the visitors. You can choose from the color schemes and typography. The featured slider is another great thing about this theme that adds an x-factor to your blog.

10. Lovecraft

Lovecraft is one of the best WordPress themes for bloggers today. It is a neat and clean theme known for the simplicity and white space. With this theme, you get a left sidebar, navigation menu on top, full-width header that can be customized, and much more. The headlines for your blog posts remain in bold with strong typography to drive user attention and clicks.

Must read: 6 easiest ways to monetize your WordPress blog for free

Handing over to you:

If you are looking for free WordPress themes for blog, then your search has ended here. You can choose any of the above-mentioned themes for your WordPress blog, depending on your choice and blog niche. These themes are user-friendly and good for SEO as well.

If you are already using a theme or know of more great themes, let us know via the comments below. Also, share with us about your choice from the above themes.

WordPress is completely dominating the world of content management systems (CMS), being used by more than one-third of the websites today. Because of its ease of use, simplicity, and features, it is become the preferred choice of bloggers and businesses.

However, one thing that keeps on scaring the website owners is the security of their website or blog. Since WordPress is the most popular CMS, hackers are targeting it with advanced tricks to exploit the websites. If you have a WordPress website and are not implementing any security practices, then your site remains at the risk of being attacked. Moreover, Google blacklists thousands of websites every week which are not secure or are vulnerable to cyberattacks.

Also read: 4 best ways to find dead or broken links in WordPress

WordPress security tips to secure your site or blog

If you are serious about your website, then we have curated a few of the best WordPress security tips to avoid all forms of cyberattacks from your site.

1. Choose reliable web hosting provider

Web hosting providers play a crucial role in the quality of hosting services you use. If you use cheap web hosting and poor service provider, then don’t expect to have great security features. There is a reason behind the low cost of poor hosting providers. They don’t provide strong security features.

Hence, you should always power your website with a reliable web hosting, whether it is shared hosting, WordPress hosting, or cloud hosting. In case your websites face any security issues, the good service providers offer support to help you combat such issues. Cheap service providers don’t really provide support or aren’t available 24/7.

2. Avoid nulled website themes

Website development with WordPress is super easy because it comes with free and premium themes that can be used with no technical knowledge. All it takes is finding an appealing theme, live preview, install and activate it. There is no need of coding or programming.

While there are hundreds of themes available out there, you should never use nulled and poor themes. Always choose trustworthy and best WordPress themes for your site. Nulled themes can leave your website vulnerable to attacks, impact your performance and SEO.

Not all theme providers are reliable. Some provide free themes and then hack the websites that use those themes. It would be great to go for a premium theme because they are well-designed and are secure. Also, if you are choosing free themes, then make sure that it is reliable.

3. Use WordPress security plugins

Another great thing about WordPress is that there are plugins available for every purpose. You can find plugins for SEO, social media, email marketing, etc. It will be great to use some WordPress security plugin that can scan your website or blog for viruses, find malware, blacklist suspicious IP addresses, and limit the login attempts.

4. Set strong password

Whether it is a social media account or your website, you should always use strong password. Use of weak and common passwords leave you at the risk of being hacked.

Many website owners use passwords like ‘qwerty12345′, abc123’, which are guessable and crack-able. If you are using such weak passwords, then instantly change it to a strong one. Here are a few tips to set strong passwords—your password should be more than 8 letters; it should contain both small and capital letters; it should have numeric characters and symbols. For example, ‘dFhjYu@4t0U’. Nobody can guess or remember such passwords.

Suggested reading: 5 game-changing image optimization methods for WordPress sites

5. Use SSL Certificate

SSL certificate has become an essential thing for websites today, because it improves security, helps you gain trust of visitors, and enhances your SEO.

Use of an SSL certificate moves your website from ‘not secure’ to ‘secure’, which means all the transactions and communications between the web browsers of users and your web server will be encrypted. This is a must-have security feature. Without it, the users will see a ‘not secure’ warning in the URL of your site, which will impact their trust. They wouldn’t consider a purchase on your site. Hence, install an SSL certificate today. It will also optimize your site for SEO.

Related read: How to install an SSL Certificate on WordPress site?

6. Use custom URL for WP-login

Most of the WordPress websites’ login URL is yourdomain.com/wp-admin. This means that everyone including the hackers know where they have to go to insert the login credentials or target a brute force attack.

What you can do is change it and use some custom login URL that only you know about. This will save your site from a lot of brute force attacks. You should also enable two-factor authentication on login page to further beef up your WordPress website security.

7. Keep everything up to date

One thing that many WordPress websites lack is that they don’t use the updated version of WordPress, and the themes and plugins. WordPress keeps on releasing new updates and bug fixes to improve the performance of the platform, add new features, and fix the security issues.

When you don’t update the WP to the latest version, you are at risk of attacks because hackers know about the vulnerability. Same goes for the themes and plugins. Hence, it is a great practice to keep everything updated for better security.

8. Regular backups

What if your website gets hacked and you lose all the data?

Despite using the best security practices for WordPress, sometimes there remains some loopholes or human error, which can result in your website getting hacked. Cybercriminals are very advanced today and stay a step ahead of us. If they hack the site and locks or deletes all your data, what will you do?

You can simply do nothing and loss your business. That’s why you should always have a backup of all your data, so that it can be recovered in cases of cyberattacks and disasters. You should create regular backups of your site, using a plugin or manually.

Read next: 6 easiest ways to monetize your WordPress blog for free

Handing over to you:

With the rise in cyberattacks against websites today, no website owner or blogger can afford to leave the site vulnerable to attacks. There should be the implementation of the best WordPress security tips.

Using the tips mentioned above, you can easily boost the security of your site and save it from many hacking attempts. If you have any questions, let us know via the comments below.

The web hosting market around the world will grow at a CAGR of 15.9% to reach a market value of $76.2 billion by 2023, as per a report by Market Research Future (MRFR).

Web hosting is one of the biggest business sectors in the IT industry, including numerous services for individuals, bloggers, and businesses of all sizes. These services include domain names, shared hosting, WordPress hosting, cloud hosting, SSL certificate, CDN, and many more.

However, they are still stuck with several challenges related to the billing. As more and more customers sign up and buy web hosting services, the complexity increases at the billing end. Furthermore, the market is now filled with a broader set of services, rather than just shared hosting and domain names.

Related read: Give your web hosting ResellerClub SuperSite 2 storefront professional look with Prohost v2

Billing challenges for web hosting businesses

To beat the competition and make things easier for business, the web hosts have to overcome their billing challenges. In this article, we have curated the top billing challenges for web hosting providers.

1. Lack of integration between systems

Web hosters today are lacking the right tools or solutions that can help them integrate the multiple processes of their business. These processes include link between shopping cart and payment gateway, connection between payment gateway and billing system, and so on.

Without the proper integration between these processes and systems, it becomes difficult for the different teams to manage things and provide reliable support to customers. The right web hosting business tools can help in establishing the proper integration, right from the time of customer onboarding, shopping cart, billing system, and to provisioning of services.

Related read: Where to find custom WHMCS themes for your web hosting website?

2. Delays in payment

One of the biggest challenges for web hosting providers today is the delays in payment by customers. Whether it is an SMB or a large enterprise, delayed payments always impact the operations and cash flow in a negative manner. This is all the more challenging for the new businesses who are dependent on the regular cash flow by customers.

3. Offering add-ons

To gain a competitive edge in the market, the web hosting providers have to be unique and provide additional products, offers and other such things to upsell the services. For example, if a customer is using shared hosting from a particular hosting provider, then it will be a great idea if that hosting provider offers SSL certificate on discount if the customer buys shared hosting for multiple years instead of one year.

Handling of invoices for such customizations and offering of add-on services are difficult to handle for billing teams. They have to check things and take care of everything on their own, unless they use the right billing tools that can manage custom orders.

4. Identification of fraud orders/transactions

Security issues and fraud are the new norms in today’s era of digital transformation. Almost every online business is facing this challenge and things are the same for web hosts. Fraud orders and transactions can’t be identified or detected unless the billing teams work on such transactions.

They need to find such orders even before their occurrence or simply avoid having to accept fraud transactions. Implementation of billing tools that can help in avoiding or detecting fraudulent orders will prove to be a boon for billing teams.

5. Handling tax and VAT

Regardless of the country of operation, you have to manage and handle the charging of accurate tax and VAT for the customers. It’s a tough task for the billing and finance teams to accurately handle all the transactions with tax on the basis of country of operation.

Use of a software like WHMCS and using the right WHMCS themes for web hosting providers can solve this challenge.

Suggested reading: Enabling Automated Backups in WHMCS (Importance and methods)

6. Scalability

The requirements of web hosting services keep on changing for the customers. A customer who has chosen shared hosting plan might switch to dedicated hosting or cloud server in the next months. In such cases, they will change their service plan and package, which means you have to upgrade the billing process.

If the billing process is not seamless and convenient, the customers may leave and go to other service providers. Having a seamless billing is yet another big challenge for the web hosts. Automation of such upgrades and customizations can help in addressing this challenge.

7. Accepting local payments

Good businesses are those who provide their customers the payment options of their preference. It is not a good practice to accept payments only using the options of your choice. Not all customers prefer to pay via debit or credit cards. Not all of them might be comfortable with PayPal. You have to take care of their preference and provide them local payment options as well, such as PayTm in India.

8. Supporting multiple currencies

While USD is the most common currency used by businesses today, but if a customer from different country whose local currency is no dollar is looking to buy services from you, how will he do that? That’s why it is essential to support multiple currencies, which are used mostly or on the basis of the countries where you operate.

However, the management and invoicing of orders with multiple currencies is one of the biggest challenges for web hosting providers. They need to use some automation software or tool for that.

If you are looking to use a billing software for your web hosting business, then always look for this feature so that you can provide support for multiple currencies and accept local payments easily.

Read next: 4 best ways to find dead or broken links in WordPress

Handing over to you:

These are a few of the biggest challenges for web hosting providers today. By using an automated billing solution, best web hosting themes, and other essentials, the service providers can address these challenges.

If you have any query, let us know via the comments below.