Best Plugin To Integrate An Existing Forum Into WordPress

Via:MyTutorialGuru.com

Building community on your website is a must nowadays. Outside of traditional comments, you can accomplish this by building a social network. And one great way to do that is to create a forum.

I’ve written before about how to add a forum to your WordPress site. Those forums were brand new and were installed into WordPress as they were born. What about a forum that was born outside of WordPress? Forums have been around for a long, long, time. They’re one of the oldest platforms on the Internet. In fact, the phpBB platform has been around since 1994. Another popular forum platform is vBulletin, which has been around since 2000. This means that there are a lot of them that have been in use for longer than WordPress has been in existence. What if you want to integrate one of these old forums that has dozens, thousands, or even many millions of users and comments—or any existing forum for that matter—into WordPress?

A Note on Forum Integration

Okay, let’s back up a minute. First, what do I mean by integration? I don’t mean connecting them together with a link that takes the visitor from your WordPress site to the forum site. I mean actually bringing the forum into WordPress so that it’s truly integrated. If the two platforms only contain links from one to the other, the users will have to sign in to both independently. And, they will have to go to each platform independently to see updates.

That’s not integration. Integration merges them together so they act as one. Once the two platforms are completely integrated, users will only have to sign in once. It doesn’t matter which platform they sign into; once they’ve signed in to one they’re signed into the other. And, no matter which platform they’re looking at, they will be able to see updates to the forum because they will act as a single platform.

Now, I know this sounds daunting, but please don’t be afraid. If you can create and admin a forum or run a WordPress site you can do this. In fact, if you’re a forum admin you’re already doing the impressive and scary part. So let’s get started.

Some integrations are as simple as installing a plugin. Others—not so much. One problem is the sheer amount of forum platforms out there; and not all of them have easy solutions.

Let’s look at a few, shall we?

phpBB

The most WordPress friendly forum platform is phpBB. There are many good plugins available to integrate phpBB into WordPress. The platform is widely used and established. The following list are bridges that connect the two platforms for a completely integrated solution.

phpBB to WP connector

phpBB to WP connector is a plugin that connects your phpBB forum to your WordPress site. It shares users with WordPress. Users that do not exist in WordPress are automatically created as a WordPress subscriber. It allows users to use PHP login credentials to comment, so it doesn’t require new credentials for current users.

WP-United

WP-United is another phpBB WordPress bridge. This one has lots of supporting widgets. It is fully modular, meaning that individual features can be turned on and off. Modules include sign-on, theming, widgets, cross-posting, and behavior. These modules add some awesome features to the integrated package. And speaking of features, there is plenty to like here:

• User integration. This includes a single sign-on, it synchronizes profiles with avatars, and includes user management. You can use external registration modules such as plugins for social media logins. It automatically creates user accounts between phpBB and WordPress. And you can easily set individual permissions.


• Template integration. Your phpBB forum appears within your WordPress site, or your WordPress site can appear within your phpBB forum’s header and footer. It analyzes your CSS and makes the necessary modifications to avoid CSS and HTML conflicts. It does not use iFrames.


• Behavior integration. This gives you word-censor features and allows you to use phpBB smilies.


• Cross posting. You can have it automatically—or manually if you choose—to crosspost between WordPress and your forum. It will even sync comments.

WP-United also includes 10 widgets that displays information about the forum. They are configurable and even work with the other modules turned off. These widgets include latest posts, latest topics, current users online, statistics, an integrated login/meta/avatar/profile block, birthday list, quick poll, useful links, top bar with breadcrumbs, and a bottom bar that matches top bar.

BridgeDD

BridgeDD is a WordPress bridge that doesn’t bloat or slow down your WordPress site. It automatically handles integrating members between both applications.

This plugin is free to use. For even more features you can subscribe for $40 per year. This gets you access to BridgeDD PRO, which allows you to add your WordPress header, footer, and widgets directly into your phpBB templates. It does this without having to load WordPress and it creates a seamless integration. The subscription also includes supporting CSS, custom plugins, and phpBB modifications.

Bridge WordPress!

Bridge WordPress! Is another WordPress plugin that was developed for seamless integration between WordPress and phpBB. When users register in one they are automatically registered in the other. Likewise, when users are logged into one they are automatically logged into the other. This allows users to move from one to the other without having to log into each independently. Users can register on either platform. If they update their password and email address on one platform, the info is updated on the other.

Installing it is easy but it does require some PHP code changes. Well, not really “changes,” just the addition of a single line of code. Once you’ve installed the plugin in WordPress you go to the phpBB side and add a single line of code. You then enter your settings on your dashboard and you’re done. Integrated. It also works with WordPress Multisite.

Speaking of, the coolest thing about this plugin is its multisite feature. It will connect multiple WordPress sites to the same forum. Bridge WordPress! also works alongside the Domain Mapping plugin so forum members can have separate blogs.

This is a premium plugin at $29.95.

vBulletin

Another popular forum platform is vBulletin. This one is a premium platform. There are not as many integration solutions but there are a few that work really well.

vBSSO

vBSSO is a free open source plugin for vBulletin that connects your forum to various other platforms including WordPress. It has two components: one for your vBulletin forum and one for your WordPress site. The vBulletin component creates an interface for authenticating, controlling access, and managing user profile data. The WordPress component creates the interface that allows vBulletin to share data with WordPress.

vBSSO has strong safety features. Data is exchanged using a private security key and it communicates only through the API of the connected platform. It also includes Basic Access Authentication support.

You can log in and out of third party applications through vBulletin using a single sign-on.

vBulletin Connector

vBulletin Connector is a WordPress plugin from CodeCanyon. It connects to your vBulletin database to display comments in WordPress posts. It can be used with your existing commenting system or it can replace it completely. It creates a matching vBulletin thread when you post in WordPress and creates a trackback link in the vBulletin thread back to the WordPress post. The vBulletin post contains a quote from the WordPress post. The posts are placed in forum categories that you choose.

There are customization options for avatars, configurable language settings, and multisite support. It also has BBCode support so it will display QUOTE and URL BBCode.

One downside to this one is that is doesn’t do login and registration syncing. So a new user in vBulletin isn’t automatically created in WordPress.

This is a premium plugin with two purchase options. The first is the regular license. It is for use in a single product and costs $15. It can be used by a client but the end user is not to be charged for it. The second is the extended license. It is for a single product and costs $75. It is for a single product in which the end user can be charged for it.

Importing

For some forum platforms there are no currently supported WordPress plugins available. One option is to import your forum data into another platform for use with WordPress. There are a few different options to do this.

bbPress, from the makers of WordPress, allows you to import forum posts from other platforms such as Simple Machines Forum. It also works with many others including vBulletin.

It adds several options to your dashboard for creating and managing a forum. It fully integrates into your site and you can manage forum topics and replies easily with several included widgets.

Visitors can subscribe to the forum itself, to specific topics, and to replies. You can set user permissions individually so they can delete posts, make stickies, flag spam, make edits, and more.

Importing your forum data is simple. You will have to configure the importer, but there are step-by-step instructions on how to do it. Detailed instructions are also given so you can create your own custom importer if your platform is not on the list.

CMS2CMS

CMS2CMS is a service that will migrate from one content management system to another. It is a great way to migrate your forum to bbPress or WordPress. The migration is done through their website so there’s no coding or software installation on your part. It preserves your SEO rankings and visitors, and it keeps your category and content relations.

Supported forum platforms include vBulletin, myBB, Board, phpBB, Joomla Kunena, Simple Machines Forum, Drupal Forum, ImpressCMS, Simple:Press, and Tiki Wiki CMS.

Migration from one platform to another takes 15 minutes. CMS2CMS will migrate content, users, categories, images, tags, comments, etc., from your old forum to your desired forum. You can try a 10-page demo to see if it will work for you before you move everything over to your new system.

For pricing, there is an easy to use price estimating app on their website as well. It allows you to choose the platform you’re moving from, the platform you’re moving to, and the number of threads, users, and posts. I used the default settings for an estimate to move an SMF forum to WordPress. The default settings were 250 threads, 1000 users, and 1000 posts. I then checked the additional options, which gave me three choices (the rest were grayed out): 1, clear current data on new site before migration (free); 2, migrate images / attachments ($1.00); 3, fix broken relationships in the database (free). I chose all three options.

My estimated migration price was $50. I doubled the number of threads, users, and posts and the estimated migration price was $78. I doubled them again and the estimated price was $98. So for under $100 I could migrate an SMF forum with 1000 threads, 4000 users, and 4000 posts to WordPress. vBulletin was $49, $77, and $97, but migrating images / attachments wasn’t an option.

If you don’t want to migrate your forum to WordPress, and you REALLY want to integrate your forum with WordPress like one of the phpBB options, you can always migrate your forum to phpBB and then integrate the two platforms. FYI: the prices to migrate from SMF and vBulletin to phpBB were the same as migrating them to WordPress.

Adding an existing forum to your WordPress site shouldn’t be complicated. In fact, it’s downright easy if you use the right tools. And there are plenty of tools out there to get you started. Hopefully, this list gets you set out on the right track.

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Top 5 apps to help Muslims observe the holy month of Ramadan

Via:MyTutorialGuru.com

Ramadan starts on Thursday for most Muslims around the world. This means a month of fasting, prayer, and piety, all in an effort to deepen one’s faith. The holy month is also looked upon as an opportunity to increase community ties, bring people closer together, and share blessings with those less fortunate. For some it may also mean a short pilgrimage to Mecca, as it is believed reward for good deeds is multiplied manifold during this time. All in all, the month is revered and eagerly awaited by adherents of Islam worldwide.

There are also a bunch of apps out there to help Muslims with observing their duties during the month. In no particular order, here are 5 Ramadan apps that caught our eye:

Ramadan Legacy was only launched earlier this month but claims to be the world’s first “fully-featured” app for Ramadan. The app includes a step-by-step interactive action plan, which allows you to monitor a checklist of things to do during fasting. These include prayers, taraweeh, and reading the Quran.

The app also notifies you of a new Quranic verse and prayer to learn each day. Other features include a knowledge library with tips and guides on Ramadan topics and a live social stream which allows you to share your Ramadan experience with others around the world. There’s also an iOS version.

AlQuran is an iOS app that allows you to read the entire text of the Holy Quran, along with translations and commentary. It claims to support over 30 languages, with more in the pipeline. Users can bookmark verses and search through the holy text for topics of relevance. There’s also a similar app for Android devices.

Al-Muslim is a free iOS-only app, which is available in both Arabic and English.

The app allows you to schedule daily acts of kindness as well as compulsory activities such as prayers. The embedded checklist is a good reminder of how Muslims can help the community during Ramadan and the app also provides a summary of all what you have done. Additionally, there are options to add preferences for certain types of acts of kindness and to read verses of the Quran.

Instadeen is a photo sharing and editing app which allows users to put religious quotes and sayings on their images. These can then be shared on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The developer claims his inspiration to be from a saying of the Holy Prophet, “It is also charity to utter a good word.”

Prayer Times: Qibla and Azan is a free Android app which provides accurate prayer timing and direction to Mecca in 251 countries worldwide. Useful for frequent travelers and those constantly on the go, the app will also notify you when it is time for each daily prayer and uses a compass to determine which direction to pray.

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Learn How to Make More Money With Fewer WordPress Clients

Via:MyTutorialGuru.com

In this highly competitive world, WordPress developers will often take low paying projects as a means to kick-start their career and build a portfolio. Starting with a low cost gig is an oft-used method and scores of developers will attest to its effectiveness.

While this method does knock at the door of possibilities, it also opens the way to several problems. If they’re not careful, developers can find themselves trapped in low paying projects, with little to no job satisfaction and barely making ends meet.

In this post, we will discuss means and strategies a WordPress developer can employ to escape from the yoke of low budget projects and make more money while catering to fewer, higher paying clients.

Why Staying With Low-Paying Clients is a Bad Idea

So you started with low paying clients and things seem to be okay. Money trickles, but it is way better than the worry and uncertainty of having no clients at all.

This is a false comfort zone; it may seem to be working, but it is a bad idea. Let us review why.

The low paying concept is simple: a lot of work, a lot less money. Developers caught in this situation often find themselves burning the midnight oil in an attempt to make ends meet. It isn’t exactly rare to have several clients at once, and developers end up spending a lot of time managing clients rather than working on their projects and earning money.

The resulting low job satisfaction is always a problem. After all, it is tough to love a job that has you slugging through the field all day and offers little in terms of monetary compensation. Working at the bottom of the food chain is no one’s dream – certainly not that of a web developer with skills to do much better.

In a way, working for low prices sets off a vicious feedback loop. You’re spending so much time trapped in jobs that scrape the bottom of the barrel, there is no time to look for opportunities elsewhere. Your business growth has effectively been stunted.

The Superior Alternative: Have Fewer, Better Paying Clients

As a developer, do not aim to have a plethora of clients. Instead, you should be focusing on acquiring and retaining fewer, better paying clients. There are no economies of scale when you’re building custom sites. Each client has to add value to your business and portfolio.

It will always be easier to handle one $5,000 client, rather than dealing with ten $500 clients. But let’s be honest – even these hypothetical numbers are rarely achieved. Those of us who have seen the freelance market are rarely surprised to see people willing to build websites at a hundred dollars or less.

Usually such aggressive pricing will prompt developers to lower their rates to match, thereby perpetuating the barely sustainable circle of price cuts. When you find yourself in a situation like this, remember to play on your strengths. Waging a price war against freelancers from the developing world will not do you any good. Instead, choose to rely on quality and delivering a service that your competition may not be able to provide.

There’s more to handling better paying clients. You will have comparatively more time and resources to dedicate to your work. You won’t be in a hurry to complete the job and move on to the next one for the sake of paying your bills. These little things are what translate into job satisfaction, and you can start taking pride in doing the things you love.

Edge out your older, lower paying clients. Let them know you’re moving to a new pricing structure. If they’re willing to continue at the new prices, awesome, bring them onboard. Otherwise, meet your obligations, complete the job and end the project professionally. Never burn bridges, that achieves nothing in professional settings.

How to Find Better Clients

It is not too tough to establish that better paying clients are the way to go. The difficult part is finding such clients. Before you head out to find your dream client, position yourself in relation to niche and market demands. Here are a few things that should help:

1. Do a SWOT Analysis

A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis is an excellent place to start. Know the talents you can capitalize on, the opportunities that can be exploited and find ways to deal with your weakness and outside threats.

SWOT analysis groups key pieces of information into two main categories:

1. Internal factors – the strengths and weaknesses that you already possess


2. External factors – the opportunities and threats presented by the environment

Once you have a clear SWOT analysis, position yourself in a niche that caters well to your strengths and has the opportunities you need. Weaknesses can be dealt with by more training or, if needed, by outsourcing.

2. Create an Awesome Portfolio to Showcase Your Work

A well executed website is an excellent testimonial to your work and capabilities. Show off some past projects that you are proud of or create display items to highlight your skill and capabilities.

Testimonials from previous clients greatly help in shaping the perception of prospective clients. Ask your clients for feedback and referrals.

3. Give Something for Nothing

So you’ve got your business website up and running. The next step of course is to let people know of your business. Offer something to the site visitors – newsletter subscriptions and free e-books related to your niche will have people taking notice of you.

You could also write tutorials and blog posts relating to your skills and strengths. You’re not giving away your secrets; you are teaching others who will see your website as a great resource and bring some much needed exposure to your business.

4. Contribute to the WordPress Community

The WordPress repository has thousands of free plugins and themes. Put your skills to use and code one that suits your work. Contributions like these showcase your skill, help you reach more clients and add vigor to the open source development community that WordPress is.

Several developers also leverage their free plugins as supplementary sources of income. A plugin or theme can have a pro version with added capabilities and options.

5. Get on Clients’ Radars by Networking

Networking is essential to every business. Meet prospective clients and have sales conversations with them. Pitch your ideas and make an offer. Don’t get disheartened if results don’t start pouring in – give yourself some time and don’t give up on the sales conversations.

You can reach out to prospective clients at developer events and WordPress meetups. Online networks can make it way easier to reach out to prospective clients, so harness the power of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

How to Bring in the Money

Once you have the clients and connections, it is time to capitalize on the opportunities you have created. Here are some ideas and tips to help you along the way:

1. Resist the Temptation of Overworking

Having better paying clients is excellent and you may feel inclined to accept quite a few projects, but never accept more clients than what you can comfortably handle.

Rather than having a jam-packed schedule where you hop from one project to the next, consider being generous with your attention to each project. This will leave some empty spaces on your timetable, and that’s a good thing.

Working through the day and night is not the goal here. The goal is optimization and sustainability.

2. Run a Tight Ship

You want your business to be a well-oiled, professional machine that handles issues without a hitch. A big part of that is being clear on services, deliverables, deadlines and payment:

• Deadlines are sacred. Make it a point to reach them. In fact, your aim should be to beat them.


• Have a clear idea of what the client expects and what you are supposed to deliver. Leaving a communication gap gives rise to unwelcome notions and cause problems.


• Don’t promise what you cannot deliver and don’t be afraid to say ‘No’ to things that are beyond your contract.

3. Create a Clean Pricing Structure

Perception plays an important role in pricing. Do not offer services for too little, but if you’re charging a higher price the client should not feel that you have overcharged and under delivered.

Market ideas at a value and price that is amiable to perception. Ironic as that is, offering services at super low costs will generally not create a favorable impression. Unnaturally low prices will be perceived as low quality or suspicious, insinuating that corners have been cut.

Focus on delivering a premium service that has value for the client. For example, offer websites that are future-proof for up to a year. Offer greater options with added value to make sure the client sees an ROI in your work.

Nathan wrote a very good article about what Web Designers should expect for their salary. While there are variables that a developer may need to change, the constants remain more or less the same. At the very least, you have a roadmap to build your pricing structure. In a similar vein, this analysis can help you place yourself competitively in the market while catering to perception and average rates.

Wrapping Up

WordPress developers often find themselves in a place where they have several low-paying clients to handle. A better and more sustainable approach is to have fewer clients who pay more. To recap, here are your first steps:

1. Do a SWOT analysis


2. Create an awesome portfolio


3. Offer something for free on your site


4. Contribute to WordPress


5. Network with clients

Then bring in the money by:

1. Working reasonable hours


2. Running a tight ship


3. Creating a clean pricing structure

Once you’ve achieved the above, you should be less stressed, more satisfied in your work, and better off for your efforts!

Via: elegantthemes.com/blog

How to Add Video Backgrounds to Your WordPress Website

Via:MyTutorialGuru.com

Displaying a video as the background of your website is a sure-fire way to make a strong impact on your visitors. While animated, or video backgrounds aren’t suitable for all websites, if it’s a good match for the type of site you are building, and you execute it correctly, then they can really help create a memorable first impression on your target audience.

As video backgrounds are a web design trend that hasn’t yet reached saturation point, it’s an effect you can still make use of in order to stand out from the crowd and grab the attention of your visitors.

Thankfully as a WordPress user there are a number of ways you can easily add video backgrounds to your entire site, or specific posts and pages, as well as creating full screen video sliders with advanced animation effects. If you’re using the Divi theme, then you will be pleased to know it couldn’t be easier to add video backgrounds to your WordPress website in a number of different ways.

However, there is more to adding this feature to your website than just uploading a video file to your WordPress Media Library and inserting into your pages. If you get the process wrong, then you could have a disastrous impact on the ability of your website to serve its purpose.

In this article we will look at when you might want to use video backgrounds, where you can find suitable files, and how you can go about adding them to your WordPress website.

Should You Use Video Backgrounds On Your Website?

Background videos are best used on websites that are aiming to make a big first impression on their visitors. The video content itself isn’t always the most important aspect, but rather the impact it will have on the viewer when displayed as the background of your site.

As we are talking about background video here, rather than a video welcome message, or other foreground video content, in most cases the exact footage of the video will be obscured. This can work in your favor, as it gives you some freedom in terms of what type of video content you use on your website. The footage doesn’t have to be too tightly focused on the topic of your website, provided the overall look and feel of the video matches the aesthetic of your brand and the overall design your website.

It is possible to add video backgrounds to any part of your website, from the home page, to the individual posts and pages on your site, right down to specific page elements. However, in most cases, it is websites with a static of fixed home page, rather than a traditional blog configuration, which are best suited to full screen video backgrounds.

It might be tempting to dive in and start using this feature on your website just because you can. However, in most cases its best to practice some restraint and truly consider if it’s really the best choice for the current design of your website, the content you are publishing, or your target audience.

However, if you do feel that video backgrounds are a good fit for your project, let’s take a look at where you can find good quality footage for your website, before we move onto how to add them to your website.

Where to Find Videos for Your Website Backgrounds

Shooting or creating your own video footage, for use as a background on your website is a great option. However, not everyone has the skills, equipment, or subject matter on hand, to produce the right type of content for their website.

Thankfully there are now plenty of resources online that offer high quality, royalty free stock footage, all at a range of prices. While your budget will largely dictate the quality and breadth of content available to you, it is possible to find high resolution videos that would work well as a background video, without breaking the bank.

Here are a few places where you can look for content for your background videos:

Free Videos Hosted at YouTube and Vimeo

There are countless videos hosted on YouTube and Vimeo, covering every topic imaginable. Most of the methods for displaying video backgrounds on your WordPress website give you the option of using one of those recordings as the source material.

While you should be able to find any type of video on either of those two large hosting sites, there are some drawbacks of using this content on your website. One is that the video you are referencing may one day become unavailable. This could be due to it being removed by the owner, taken down by the service provider, or many other reasons.

Another negative aspect of using a video hosted by sites like Vimeo or YouTube is that you may end up inadvertently displaying adverts on your website. While some options for adding video backgrounds to your website can overcome this now, this may not remain the case forever. Also, as YouTube displays links to related videos at the end of each item, these could be featured on your website too.

Furthermore, with these free video hosting sites, you often don’t have control over the quality of the video playback. As the quality can drop to quite low levels, it can have a real impact on the impression your video backgrounds make on your visitors.

However, it’s worth mentioning that the Vimeo Pro service is a good alternative to hosting the videos yourself, and it’s something we will look at in more detail in the next section.

Stock Video Libraries

Although there are now many places where you can source free to use, royalty free images for your website, the same can’t quite yet be said for video. However, there are a few places emerging where you can find royalty free, stock video footage for use on your website:

• Videvo: over 2,000 completely free HD stock footage and motion graphics for any project.


• Video Hive: very affordable collection of over 163,000 royalty free videos can be found at this Envato marketplace.


• Video Blocks: large collection of royalty free videos that are ideal for video backgrounds, spread across many categories, with prices starting at $49 and annual pricing plans available.


• Shutterstock: massive collection of royalty free stock videos to suit a range of budgets.


• iStock: more premium, high quality stock video, covering a range of categories.


• Pond5: royalty free stock videos starting at $1, with a free clip of the week.


• Movie Tools: collection of free to use video loops of varying quality.


• Stock Footage for Free: more free to use video clips

As you can see, while you might not be able to find the same quality free to use videos, as you can now with images, there is plenty of content available. With very affordable video files available from sites like Video Hive and Pond5, most projects should be able to justify the cost of including at least one video background.

How to Upload Video Files to Your WordPress Website

If you are planning on using a video file that you’ve downloaded or created yourself, rather than one someone else has upload to a video sharing site like YouTube, then you will need to host it somewhere so that it is accessible by your visitors.

While you might be tempted to upload the file straight to your WordPress Media Library, storing it on your web hosting server, this often isn’t the best solution. As the type of videos you would typically use as a website background are often of a large file size, this can have an impact on the performance of your site.

Depending on the type of web hosting you are using, uploading these large files could see you run the risk of having your account suspended, or incurring extra charges due to the additional bandwidth that is consumed, each time the video is loaded.

For these reasons, it’s recommended that you seek out an external service to host your video content. One option is to use a service like Vimeo Pro. However, Vimeo Pro isn’t the cheapest option around, and other services such as Rackspace might be a better option for most users. These services give you a place to upload your videos, before you embed them on your website.

Other benefits of using a premium video hosting service, is that your content can be protected in order to prevent it being downloaded without your consent.

If you are going to upload videos to your WordPress website, then you many run into an upload limit if the files are over a certain size. Fortunately it is possible to increase this limit (although your web host may have their own limits in place) and you can find the instructions on how to do so here. The free Increase Max Upload Filesize plugin also gives you a quick and easy way to increase the file size limit of your WordPress website.

Now that you know where to find suitable videos, and how to make them available for use on your website, let’s take a look at how you can set them as a background for your content.

How to Add Video Backgrounds to Your Website with Divi

Divi gives you two easy ways to add video backgrounds to your WordPress website. One option is to set the background of a page section to display a video. While the other is to create a slideshow which contains slides that have video backgrounds.

As Divi allows you to create full width sections for your custom page layouts, you can use this feature to easily add full width video backgrounds to those sections. You can also add full width video sliders to your website.

In this part of this guide, we will now walk through how you can use these two main options to add video backgrounds to your website.

Creating a Slideshow with Video Backgrounds

As part of its page builder, the Divi theme includes two easy to use slider tools:

• A regular slider for creating mixed media slideshows that can contain text, images, and videos


• A video slider for creating video slideshows

Both tools make it easy to add sliders to your custom page layouts. However, if you want your slideshow to contain links to the other pages on your website, or to external sites, then using the regular slider tool is the best option.

This is because unlike, the video slider, it gives you the ability of adding text, buttons, and other content to your slides – even those slides that have video backgrounds.

Creating a Regular Slider with Video Background

On the other hand, if you want to display a collection of videos in the slideshow format, then the video slider is a better option.

When creating a new section for your page layout, two of the options available are to add a regular section, and add a full width one. In you do choose to add a full width section, you then get the option of adding a full width slider to it.

The Divi slider tool makes it easy to add slides to your slideshow, and once you’ve created a new slide, you can then add a video to it. There are a number of options for adding videos to your slides, this include:

• Enter the URL of a video hosted on YouTube or Vimeo


• Upload a video file to, or select an existing item from your WordPress Media Library


• Enter the URL of a video file that is hosted elsewhere

As mentioned earlier, using a video hosted on YouTube or Vimeo does have its drawbacks. This includes the possibility of the video being made unavailable at some point in the future. Therefore it’s good to see that you also have the option of quickly adding a self-hosted video the slide instead.

The Divi slider supports WebM and MP4 video file formats, giving you two good alternatives for using a self-hosted video as your section or slide background.  However, it’s recommended that you upload your video in both formats, as this will ensure maximum compatibility with a range of different devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and regular desktop computers.

After uploading a video file in these formats to your WordPress website, a content delivery network, or somewhere else, you can create a new slide for your slider. After doing so, you can click on the upload a video button to select the file from the WordPress Media library. If you are hosting the video elsewhere, you can simply enter the URL of the video file instead.

If you want to add any other content to the slide with the video background, such as text or images, you can do so from the same settings page.

Now you will have at least one slide in your slideshow that features a video background.

Adding a Video Background Section to a Page

As well as creating a slider with video content, you can also set the background of a section of your page to display a video.

After creating a new page, or opening an existing one for editing and launching the Divi Page Builder, you can click on the Section settings icon.

Doing so then displays the section module settings panel. As well having the option of setting a background color and uploading a background image for the section, you also have the ability to set a background video instead.

The options for doing so, again includes uploading or specifying the URL of either a WebM or MP4 video file. You can also set the width and height of the background video. Once you’ve specified a video, your section will now have a video background for this part of your custom page layout.

As the above information covers how to set a background for a section, you can also add more content to the section. This additional content will then overlay the background video. This is done by adding one or more modules to the column and row based layout to further build your page and its content.

Once you’ve created your custom page layout, complete with additional modules and custom content, you should now have a page with an animated background.

The Divi page builder tool gives you the ability to add multiple sections to a page. This means that you have the option of creating a page with multiple video backgrounds, which are displayed one after another, complete with optional parallax scrolling.

Plugins for Other WordPress Themes

If you aren’t using Divi, or another WordPress theme that makes it easy to set video backgrounds for your pages, then there are some plugins available that can help.

If you want to use a video from YouTube as a background on your website, then the free mb.YTPlayer for background videos plugin could be just what you are looking for.

The plugin gives you the option of setting a YouTube video as the background image of your home page and blog archive page, as well as on individual posts and pages.

If you do want to display a YouTube video as the background on the home page of your website, you can enter the video URL on the settings page of the plugin. Setting a video background on individual posts and pages, takes place on the edit screens for those item.

When adding a YouTube URL, you can enter the address of multiple videos and the plugin will choose from the list at random, each time the page is loaded. Through the settings you can also set an opacity for the video, enter the points at which the video should start and stop, and set the volume level.

You can also set the video playback to loop continuously, as well as controlling the visibility of the video playback controls.

When testing the plugin, it did a great job of displaying a full screen video background, using a video from YouTube. The only downside is that you cannot set a background video globally, that will be used on every post and page on your site. Therefore, you would have to manually set the background video for each piece of content you publish, in order to create a consistent look throughout your website.

If you are happy to use a video hosted by YouTube, and you don’t mind the limitations of this free plugin, then mb.YTPlayer for background videos does a good job of allowing you to quickly setup video backgrounds for your WordPress website.

Easy Video Background WP

If you want to set the background of your website to display a video from somewhere other than YouTube, then upgrading to the premium Easy Video Background WP plugin is one option open to you.

For only $14, a whole world of possibilities open up when it comes to adding video backgrounds to your WordPress content. The features of this plugin allow you to set a site wide background video, or add the video backgrounds on a page by page basis. You can also apply the video backgrounds to specific containers on your site, such as the post area.

With the Easy Video Background WP plugin, it’s also possible to set the videos to display as fixed backgrounds, or give them the ability to scroll with the rest of your content as the visitor moves down the page. Other options allow you to set a crop ratio for your videos, play them in a loop, enable auto-start, mute any audio, and set a fallback image for mobile devices.

The Easy Video Background WP plugin supports a good number of file types, including MP4, WebM, OCG, and FLV, as well as videos hosted on YouTube and Vimeo. You also get the option of setting an image overlay for the videos, with a custom opacity level.

Unfortunately, the video background wasn’t displayed in the sidebar area of the theme I was testing this plugin with. However, by purchasing this premium plugin, you do get access to the support ticketing system for reporting any issues you may experience.

Conclusion

Now you know the whys, wheres, and hows of adding video backgrounds to your WordPress website. With internet connection speeds getting faster, and the majority of websites yet to embrace full screen background videos, now is a good time to think about using this feature to help your website or blog stand out from the crowd.

Many of the solutions we’ve just looked at for adding video backgrounds to your WordPress website are fully mobile-friendly, and have the ability to not display the video to your smartphone and tablet using visitors.

While video backgrounds won’t work for all websites, for some they can be a great way to not only make a strong impact on your visitors, but also get your message across in a way that text and images alone, often cannot.

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How to Test Responsive Design of Your WordPress Website

Via:MyTutorialGuru.com

Responsive web design was first introduced to us by Ethan Marcotte in a 2010 post published on A List Apart entitled (as you might expect) Responsive Web Design.

In the very same year – in fact, just a few weeks earlier – the iPad became the first of the current wave of mobile tablet devices to be released to the public, changing the way we surf the web and communicate with each other forever.

Since then, responsive design has slowly become more widespread. But for the vast majority of people using the web, the term means nothing. They just want websites to render properly on their device. They don’t want to click on tiny hyperlinks that may or may not take them to the page they wanted, and they certainly don’t want to wait while a page rammed with resource-heavy code and imagery takes way too long to download.

They want zippy, fast-loading pages that are easy to use, which is what you should get from responsive design.

And that, in a nutshell, is why you’re reading this. In this post we’re going to help you turn the should into will.

Mobile Responsiveness is Now a Ranking Factor

What’s brought everything to a head is Google’s announcement several months ago that the user-friendliness of sites on mobile devices will become a ranking factor.

Google made the announcement in February:

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.

Despite this, April 21 came and went, and nothing much really happened. At least not yet. But you can guarantee that it’s only a matter of time.

The update is dubbed Mobilegeddon in SEO and online marketing circles. It’s also a big deal for businesses; in fact, it’s such an important update that it made the news in the US and the UK.

In today’s post I want to look at ways you can test your site – or your clients’ – to see if they’re effectively mobile responsive or not. And if they’re not, we’ll cover what you can do about it.

What Is Good Responsive Design?

Responsive design adapts fluidly to all screen sizes and resolutions. Quite simply, the goal of responsive design is to provide every user, no matter what device they’re using, with a consistently usable browsing experience.

In more specific terms, this means that all functions should work and behave the same way on each device. On your typical blog this could be everything from social sharing buttons, to mailing list sign-up forms, to navigation menus. Furthermore, content should be easily digestible, no matter what device the end user is browsing on.

Typically, there are four screen types:

1. desktop,


2. laptop,


3. tablet, and


4. smartphone.

The exact dimensions for each varies wildly across manufacturers. Your site should look the same on each variant. Figuring that out sounds like fun, right?

Do You Need a Responsive Website?

Quick answer: You certainly will do in the future. There’s no doubt at that. But do you need one now? Another quick answer: Almost certainly.

If you don’t spend much time looking at the data in Google Analytics, it’s a good time to remedy that – especially with regards to people visiting your site on a mobile device. From the data you can find out how many people visit your site using a mobile device. You can also discover how long they stick around and what kind of experience they’re having.

Depending upon how you’ve setup Analytics, you can also discover how many people using a mobile device convert to customers, join your mailing list or sign up for a free trial of your service or software.

To view the data, login to your Google Analytics account, select the site you want to review and navigate to Audience > Mobile > Overview.

Here you will see analytics for desktops, mobiles and tablets.

If your site is non-responsive, check out the data relating to how people interact with your site:

• Bounce Rate


• Pages/Session


• Avg Session Duration


• Goal Conversion Rate

If the numbers are significantly lower than the desktop stats, you have a serious issue on your hands. The data is telling you the people on mobiles and tablets are not having a good experience when they visit your site.

Which means that it’s time to do something.

Testing Your Site for Mobile Responsiveness

If you’re not that your site is mobile responsive, the first thing you must do is run a few tests. Thankfully, there are a lot of tools online that can help you to assess how a site looks and works on mobile devices.

We’ll come to some of those in a few seconds. But for now though, let’s perform the simplest tests of all.

If you’re on a desktop machine, go to the site you want to test, let it load, then make your browser screen narrower. As you do this, if the site has a responsive design, the elements from the web page will collapse down on top of each other, but you will still be able to see the whole page by virtue of scrolling.

If you’re using a mobile device, simply visit the site you want to test and see how it renders on your machine. If it looks like exactly the same as the desktop version but shrunk down, your site is not responsive.

How to Test Multiple Devices Using Online Emulators

It’s all very well running these two simple tests, but what about the plethora of machines out there? From iPads to Google Nexus’ to Samsung Galaxy smartphones? How does your site look on these?

Luckily, you don’t have to go out and spend a small fortune on every device on the market. Instead, use one of the emulator sites available to run your tests.

Let’s take a look at some of them.

MobileTest.me

This one tests your site across six popular mobile device emulators, including the iPhone 5, HTC ONE and Google Nexus.

To test a site, click on the device you’re interested in and enter the URL of the site/page you want to test. Within a few seconds the emulator retrieves the page on the device. Not only that, the page links and other data remains active, so you can browse the site via the emulator.

Use MobileTest.me.

Responsinator

A nifty emulator that mostly focuses mainly on Apple devices, but also includes a couple of Android machines. Instead of having to test each device in turn, like the MobileTest.me, you just enter the test URL and scroll down the page.

As you do, you’ll see how it looks on popular devices in both portrait and landscape mode.

Use Responsinator.

 

Am I Responsive

Same process here: enter the test URL to get the results. This time, you don’t scroll; you’ll see the results at the top of the screen for generic devices. If you click inside the screen of each one, you can scroll and use the site as normal.

Use Am I Responsive.

 

Google’s Mobile Friendly Test

There’s one more worth mentioning: Google’s own tool.

Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

What Next?

By this time you have an understanding of the importance of responsive design and know what your site looks like across multiple devices. But do you need to take action?

If your site works across all devices, you don’t need to do anything; just keep on working on improving your site for your current and future visitors.

If your site doesn’t work, you have three options:

1. Convert the current design to responsive. This could well be more trouble than its worth.


2. Use a mobile theme. This defeats the key responsive design principles of consistency and usability.


3. Adopt a fresh mobile-responsive theme or design. While not the cheapest option, starting from scratch is arguably the only option that doesn’t represent a compromise of some kind.

Incidentally, it would be remiss of me not to mention that we make beautiful responsive themes, with no less than 21 to choose from.

Once you have the new theme installed, it’s time to test it. Here are three key considerations to bear in mind:

1. Is it easy for users to navigate your site?


2. Is the content easy to read?


3. Is it easy for users to follow your Calls to Action?

Go through every part of your site as if you’re a user and fix any problems you find. If you’re using one of our themes and have come across an issue, just get in touch; we’d be happy to help.

Wrapping Up

I think the move by Google to ‘force’ people to adopt mobile responsive designs is long overdue.

For too, long large sites and big businesses have dragged their heels when it comes to switching. This potential loss in traffic and sales is a surefire signal for them to take action.

For freelance web designers and theme builders, you could be entering the busiest time of your career as the rush to comply gathers pace. How many clients do you have who are still using non-responsive designs? How many non-responsive sites are out there waiting for an update? I shudder to think! But one thing’s for sure: there’s plenty of business to be had, especially if you can clearly communicate just how important responsive design is.

If you need to ram the point home to your clients about the importance of responsive design and how their site looks compared to their competitors, the online emulators are great tools to use, and they should make selling your services a lot easier!

I hope that you found this post useful. I’d love to read your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

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New PayPal Chief Wants to It the Universal Payments Platform

Via:MyTutorialGuru.com

PayPal president Dan Schulman wants to make a payments platform that every merchant and consumer will use — regardless of device.

The 57-year-old executive, who previously spent four years at American Express, said as much on Thursday during a PayPal media event in San Francisco: “You’re going to see a fundamental change over the next three, five, 10 years, with more of it going to mobile and point-of-sale checkout.”

Schulman, of course, wants PayPal to lead the charge in that transition. As part of his strategy, the company announced on Thursday the ability to link its OneTouch web and mobile experiences, as well as an integration with Bigcommerce, an Austin-based startup that provides e-commerce and shopping-cart software.

OneTouch for the web, introduced in April, lets all 165 million PayPal users make purchases from third-party websites without having to go through the lengthy process of manually inputting their payment information.

The ability to link OneTouch web and mobile experiences means PayPal users don’t have to have the company’s app on their smartphones, provided they’ve already logged onto PayPal via any mobile device at least once before. Being able to link OneTouch on mobile and web simplifies the mobile-shopping experience for PayPal users.

“It’s a leap forward — all the consumer has to do is opt in,” Schulman said of OneTouch to Mashable in April.

Meanwhile, the Bigcommerce partnership is yet another way for PayPal to bridge the online-to-offline experience for merchants, by offering software that helps small businesses get online and running more quickly. Bigcommerce currently powers more than 90,000 stores in over 100 countries, and processes $5 billion in transactions annually.

PayPal vice-president Bill Ready also referenced Paydiant, the white-label payments and loyalty-rewards platform that PayPal purchased earlier this year for a reported $280 million. Ready did not elaborate on how exactly Paydiant would be used, but suggested its technology would help merchants and retailers engage with shoppers in-store well before checkout by potentially offering, for example, coupons and discounts on their smartphones.

“By the time you get to the register, you’ve missed [the] chance to influence consumer[s],” he explained.

In many ways, 2015 is critical for PayPal, which is being spun off from eBay later this year. Thursday’s event was an opportunity for Schulman to offer a look at his longterm vision for the company.

Although the 17-year-old payments business has long been eBay’s fastest growing business unit — with double-digit revenue growth year-over-year — that has slowed down, partly due to increasing competition on mobile from companies, such as Apple, Square and Stripe.

In fact, a recent study by 451Research comparing consumer interest in Apple Pay versus PayPal strongly suggested that as of March, more people planned to use Apple Pay rather than PayPal’s mobile offerings: 45% compared to 28%, respectively.

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Now Facebook Messenger Gives Context About People Contacting You

Via:MyTutorialGuru.com

Getting messages from someone you don’t know can be a pretty intimidating experience. How did they find you? Why did they reach out?

To make new connections less jarring, Facebook Messenger is introducing a new feature on Thursday that gives you bits of information about someone messaging you for the first time, whether the person is one of your Facebook friends or not. The Messenger team is rolling it out to iOS and Android users in the U.S., UK, France and India over the next few weeks.

Think of it almost like an icebreaker, or “a way to give you more context about new conversations in Messenger,” a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable.

When someone messages you for the first time, Messenger plucks bits of information from their Facebook profile, like what their job is, which town or city they live in, and who your mutual friends are (if you have any), then displays that info above their first message, alongside their profile name and photo, like so:

Image: Facebook

The new feature is similar to one offered in Hello, the app Facebook quietly rolled out in April, which gives Android smartphone owners tidbits of information about the person on the other end of the line.

Messenger’s new context feature is somewhat similar to the one in Hello, the Android app Facebook released in April, only savvier.

But the feature people will see in Messenger is a tad more savvy. It shows information Facebook thinks will prove most useful, while respecting both users’ privacy settings. That’s key, especially if you and the other person aren’t actually friends on Facebook — in which case, only publicly available information on your profiles is used.

It’s a small feature in the big scheme of things for Messenger but one that makes sense. Facebook already sits on data from 1.44 billion active monthly users, so why not use some of their publicly available information to give a little context about new folks who message you? And of course, if the feature helps boost Messenger’s user engagement — the more friends you message, the more time you spend on the service — it’s a win-win.

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