A Word from the Founder – Matt Mullenweg

Here are some of the interesting points that came up in a recent extended interview J.J. Colao of Forbes.com did with WordPress Founder and CEO Matt Mullenweg. Talking points were shared on WordPress releases, market share, funding, revenue sources, mobile, and other interesting insights about the future of WordPress and Automattic.

  • On Web Presence: WordPress now powers 22% of the Web, including Forbes.com
  • Mullenweg became CEO of Automattic in January 2014 after being chairman for 8 years.
  • On WordPress releases: The next WordPress release isn’t expected this year but Mullenweg hopes maybe in a year or two.
  • Automattic is basically a big experiment hoping to create something that’s fully open source to the core, that becomes a big Internet-scale business.
  • Revenue composition is 80% from WordPress.com subscriptions, 10% each from WordAds and VIP
  • People who are hosted on Amazon or GoDaddy or those places also have a set of products for them under Jetpack.
  • On Mobile: A new interface that works fluently whether you’re on the desktop, a tablet or notebook is currently being built targeting half or a plurality of active users by the end of the year.
  • On the future of Automattic and WordPress: 10 years from now, Mullenweg wants it to be an organization that has thousands of people – to build, in a completely distributed, open source fashion, a 10 or 20 thousand-person company.
  • On Mullenweg’s management style and hiring policies: “Don’t worry about whether your team hired someone that put you over budget for the year. Something like that has nothing to do with creating great products.”
  • On Touch Technology: “We’re not going to launch anything anymore ever again, that’s not responsive. I want to be more of a mobile company but as we do that I don’t want to lose the things that make us the engine of the independent Web.”

Mullenweg’s aggressive and visionary approach to delivering a product that is open, diverse, and which can be widely adopted by tens or thousands or millions of users is not an easy task. But then again, to quote his own words, “I didn’t sign up for easy.” Here’s to an exciting WordPress future for the world wide web.

Check out the complete transcript of the interview on Forbes.com

WordPress Slider Mania

Sliders are staples in websites nowadays. A homepage without a slideshow seems an oddity considering the media intensive content this generation craves for. For all the benefits sliders give website owners, there are indeed some sliders that really standout from the rest. Below is a listing of 5 of the most popular sliders available in the market today:

Slider Revolution

Considered the most popular plugin in the Envato marketplace, Slider Revolution is a slider definitely worth considering. This plugin features tons of unique transition effects, an image preloader, video embedding, autoplay that stops on user interaction and lots of easy to set options to create your own effects. This plugin is one of the few that offers full screen slideshows, it is also noted for enabling almost any type of content that can be put in a slideshow, and, it is quite popular for its responsive feature as well. The plugin also enables easy slider creation using Visual Builder. Using its animation builder, you can conveniently drag and drop captions, and, create your own custom animation easily. Slider Revolution also allows you to integrate SEO optimization measures on your slides thus further improving your page’s performance on search engines.

Royal Slider

This slider plugin was created especially for mobile devices. What makes Royal Slider standout is its affinity toward touch screen interfaces. Create your own custom slideshows and css3 banner rotators with images, videos or HTML content in slides, allow dynamic population of data from Flickr, Instagram, Featured posts and even WooCommerce products, display vertical or horizontal thumbnails with the plugin’s photo gallery. While it doesn’t have much of fancy transition effects, Royal does guarantee a stable, accessible, high performance slider experience on any device. RoyalSlider is tested on Mac, PC, iPad 2, iPhone 4, HTC Desire, Lumia 920, Surface, Blackberry PlayBook and even on Kindle Keyboard

Layer Slider

Layer slider is most noted for its use of cutting edge technology to give you more than 200 preset 2D and 3D slide transitions to give you the smoothest slideshow experience available. At the very heart of this slider is its layered design that enables you to have 3D like slideshows. Easy to use interfaces enable you to create your slideshows in a WYSIWYG manner which include live previews, drag and drop slider builder, etc. The plugin supports responsive layouts, multiple layouts and touch screen gestures to ensure that your slideshow experience is the same regardless of device. Layer slider is SEO friendly allowing you to build semantic markup with custom attributes that search engines can index easily.

Slider PRO

This fully responsive and mobile ready slider plugin in comes with 150+ options to help you set-up your very own slideshow. The plugin allows you to dynamically load content from your content. Slider PRO also enables you to add animated or static layers into your slideshows to create 3D like slides. The plugin uses a user friendly media loader to enable easy population of content into your slideshows. Slider PRO offers 100+ transition effects which can be optimized into hundreds of possible variations.

Touch Carousel

This slider plugin was created with mobile devices in mind. Touch carousel enables touch navigation on iOS, Android and Blackberry devices. Over 20 settings are available to control speed, layout and slideshow. Touch carousel allows you to slide any post type including WooCommerce and Jigoshop content. You can select content based on taxonomy, popularity or date.

WordPress Music Themes April 2014

Music fan sites are a great way to bring together people who have a common interest in a specific musician, a music genre, bands, etc. If you are thinking of putting up a website for that type of audience, here are some of the latest music themes you can check out:

Dubstep – Premium Music WordPress Theme

Dubstep is a WordPress theme for bands, musicians, DJs, clubs and everyone involved in the music or entertainment business. This theme supports every post type that a music & entertainment theme would need such as: intuitive Events Management (ability to set date, time, venue, location, and map coordinates; provision for normal and recurring events, tickets support); Discography Management (ability to share your music with fans using either self hosted audio files using the powerful soundManager2 or embedded sounds from SoundCloud); Artists Management (display an infinite number of favorite artists, colleagues, or band members (their albums, tracks, or playlists) and categorize them easily; Media Management (share videos either self-hosted or from services like Youtube, Vimeo etc. and create endless interactive custom photo galleries from your events using templates or sliders).

SoundBlast – Music Band WordPress Theme

Sound Blast Premium WordPress Theme is a WooCommerce ready theme especially designed for bands and music websites. This easy to modify theme features include: Album + Track Management (options include Now Playing, Download, Play Only, and Buy Now), Slider Management, Event Management, Gallery Management, Sidebar Management, Powerful Theme Options + Page Builder, 2 pre-made color variations.

MusicVent – Premium Music & Event WordPress Theme

MUSICVENT Premium WordPress Theme is a modern, responsive, and a well-thought out HTML5 WordPress Theme for Music & Event related Personalities/Studios. The theme’s clean Lines & minimal design approach truly highlights the artist(s) and the work(s) showcased. Its unique design and streamlined navigation makes it easy for fans, music aficionados, potential producers, talent scouts, etc., to go through the website get the information needed and take the necessary action after. The 6 built-in page templates (Albums, Artists, Events, Gallery, Bloglist, Contact) are organized and give you or users everything that is needed. Transition and animation effects like black and white photos display their full colors when hovered over. It also includes 2 homepage layout options (fullscreen image slider and fullscreen video background) to choose from according to the audience you are targeting.

RockOn – Multipurpose Music WP Theme

RockOn! Premium WordPress Theme is a WooCommerce ready multipurpose music theme for singers, artists, music bands or musical events created using Twitter Bootstrap, with a responsive design which makes it a perfect fit for all devices. This theme includes features such as: Event Management using one of the best event management plugins – WP Event Manager, 100% responsive 3D Layer Slider, Sidebar Managerusing CrunchPress “CP” framework, WooCommerce Shop Catalog Grid OR Full Layout also Masonry (Filterable), and so many other features.

NOISE – Onepage DJs & Band WordPress Theme

NOISE Premium WordPress Theme is a cool, creative and modern theme perfect for musicians, DJs, bands and other music related professionals or businesses. Built with smooth and sleek CSS3 and AJAX animations including a unique spectrum analyzer to help you visualize music automatically on every single track. You can easily manage and display your artists, albums, audios, images, videos, events dates and sell your items (tickets etc.), allow users to rate music, and share instantly on their social networks. It also comes with 2 different players (SimplePlayer widget and Extended Player) to give users control over every single track played.

Music Club – Music/Band/Club/Party WordPress Theme

Music Club Premium WordPress Theme is the best WordPress theme for music, club, party, radio station, bands or even entertainment magazine. It comes with great features for music such as: a floating music player at the bottom of the page, a traditional boxed player for those who prefer something familiar, an Event post type that come with a ticket button with 5 tickets status, a Music Album feature which when clicked, automatically fetches all songs in an album to the floating player. Other outstanding features include a Page Builder, Revolution Slider, GoodLayers Importer, and other great music tools, to help you build a power music website users will truly enjoy.

One Page WordPress Themes April 2014

One Page WordPress themes are quite popular nowadays. Some like it for its low maintenance qualities, others like it for the speed, the fast-loading time and SEO benefits, while others enjoy it for the ease of use and the simplified navigation for both website owner and users as well.

Here are some of the latest One-Page WordPress themes in the market that might match the features and functions you need to create your own One-Page wonder website.

Candy Queen – Responsive One Page Theme

Candy Queen Responsive One Page Theme is a beautiful and clean responsive one page design theme for your candy boutique, florist design studio, or beauty salon. This premium theme is suitable for showcasing your product portfolio in a unique, feminine and playful way. This theme includes 3 ready color schemes (blue, lavender, and pink) that can be easily modified, SASS files, and layered PSD files including PSD files of sprites for easy theme modification.

Nivan – One Page / Multi Page WordPress Theme

Nivan – One Page Multi Page WordPress Theme is a fresh and refreshing portfolio theme for Agencies & Corporate websites, Artists, Creative Agencies, Collectors, or anyone who needs to showcase their work in a beautiful and elegant way. Its dynamic design, eye catching effects and animations, and flexible settings let you to make the most out of your theme and present a different and unique result for yourself or your client. Key features include: SPNOY exclusive gallery, Revolution Slider, Video Background (animation off), Multi-page option.

SimpleFlex – Flat One Page WordPress Theme

Simpleflex is an ultra-responsive, creative, and retina-ready flat-designed WordPress theme, that offers you one page and multi-page layouts with the latest and most powerful features. Its uniquely flat design, beautiful parallax effect and dynamically smooth animations provide you a simple and modern look on all devices. Built on the ThemeLuxe framework, SimpleFlex gives you the cleanest code with an advanced admin panel and an easy-to-use shortcode generator. also Simpleflex includes 2 versions of possible setups (Simple and Modern) no to mention even the PSD files to provide you with all the flexibility of customization you need to create the look that you want for your website.

Bubbles Parallax One Page WordPress Theme

Bubbles Parallax One Page WordPress Theme is a delightful, clean and modern one page parallax theme that can be used for companies, agencies, portfolios, product presentations, landing pages, and so much more. You have a choice of using a video background, a full screen slider background, or the popular Slider Revolution (in full screen or in custom size). This minimalist premium theme features amazing parallax features for that dynamic and animated look without being distracting.

Alpine – WordPress Responsive One Page Parallax

Alpine is a modern, professional, and flexible one page parallax multi-purpose WordPress theme, developed in Bootstrap framework. This responsive theme built with great attention to details can be used for any type of website: business, corporate, portfolio, products, marketing, etc. Modification and customization for: layout, styling, colors, etc., can be done directly and easily from within the admin backend. You have the opportunity to change layout settings for the whole site, for a particular section, or even both. You can also combine any of available elements to build beautiful Main Page, add more pages if needed, or create your own color scheme. Key features include: parallax sections, 4 home section versions, isotope portfolio, ajax project expander, font awesome integration, etc.

Heartbleed Could Affect Your WordPress Site

A critical OpenSSL vulnerability nicknamed “Heartbleed” was discovered recently and you need to know whether your information could be impacted. What is Heartbleed anyway?

What is Heartbleed

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs). (source – Heartbleed.com)

Basic Things You Should Know About Heartbleed and OpenSSL

  • The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software.
  • OpenSSL is a library that provides cryptographic functionality to applications such as secure web servers. Be sure to read the documentation of the application you want to use. The INSTALL file explains how to install this library. OpenSSL is based on the SSLeay library developed by Eric A. Young and Tim J. Hudson and the OpenSSL toolkit is licensed under an Apache-style licence which basically means that you are free to get and use it for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
  • The Heartbleed bug compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content.
  • The Heartbleed bug allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.
  • The Heartbleed bug is not a design flaw in SSL/TLS protocol specification. It is an implementation problem, i.e. programming mistake in popular OpenSSL library that provides cryptographic services such as SSL/TLS to the applications and services.

Should You Be Concerned?

Encryption is the process of encoding messages or information in such a way that only authorized parties can read it. Encryption doesn’t prevent hacking but it reduces the likelihood that the hacker will be able to read the data that is encrypted. Encryption is used to protect secrets that may harm your privacy or security if they leak. This bug has compromised secrets in four categories:

  • The Heartbleed bug leaked primary key material – the crown jewels – the encryption keys themselves. Leaked secret keys allows the attacker to decrypt any past and future traffic to the protected services and to impersonate the service at will.
  • The Heartbleed bug leaked secondary key material – the user credentials (user names and passwords) used in the vulnerable services.
  • The Heartbleed bug leaked protected content – actual content like personal or financial details, private communication such as emails or instant messages, documents or anything seen worth protecting by encryption handled by the vulnerable services
  • The Heartbleed bug leaked collateral – Leaked collateral are other details that have been exposed to the attacker in the leaked memory content. These may contain technical details such as memory addresses and security measures such as canaries used to protect against overflow attacks. These have only contemporary value and will lose their value to the attacker when OpenSSL has been upgraded to a fixed version.

OpenSSL is the most popular open source cryptographic library and TLS (transport layer security) implementation used to encrypt traffic on the Internet. You may be directly or indirectly affected if your popular social site, your company’s site, commerce site, hobby site, site you install software from or even sites run by your government might be using vulnerable OpenSSL.

Users of OpenSSL versions 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f with the heartbeat extension enabled are affected. OpenSSL 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f (inclusive) are vulnerable

OpenSSL version 1.0.1g addresses the vulnerability, as well as OpenSSL instances compiled without the heartbeat extension.

What You Can Do

  • If you are not using OpenSSL on your servers (or are not hosted on one of our Shared hosting plans), you are not affected.
  • If you do use OpenSSL, identify which servers are running OpenSSL (versions 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f are affected).
  • Update to the latest patched version of the software (1.0.1g), or recompile OpenSSL without the heartbeat extension, if applicable.
  • Reissue any SSL certificates on affected web servers after moving to a patched version of OpenSSL.
  • Test your SSL installations. You can also test your site here: http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/
  • Revoke any certificates that were replaced. Please revoke AFTER the reissue has been completed and you have successfully installed it on your web server.
  • Consider resetting end-user passwords that may have been visible in a compromised server memory.

Helpful Resources regarding Heartbleed

It is wise to take all the necessary precautions but without allowing panic to come in. Learn all you can and act accordingly.

Moving to WordPress?

Many website owners start off as casual bloggers, typically on a free platform, and usually not expecting any life-changing thing to happen to their websites. However, life in cyber space is full of surprises and no one can really predict which site will be the next big thing. Some, are fortunate enough to find their match audience and experience reasonable success. This could mean that the free platform might not be enough to contain and sustain the increased volume of traffic and content. Migrating to a more robust and dynamic platform could be the solution.

But what about all the historical content that’s been created? Or what about a test or a private staging site you use for you or a client? If you are moving from a free platform, another WordPress site or any other platform and migrating to a self-hosted WordPresswebsite, here are some tools to help you make the transition as less hairy as possible.

All-in-One WP Migration

All-in-One WP Migration allows you to export your database, media files, plugins, and themes. You can apply unlimited find and replace operations on your database and the plugin will also fix any serialization problems that occur during find/replace operations. It is also the first plugin to offer true mobile experience on WordPress versions 3.3 and up. Features include: multisite compatible, works on Windows OS and IIS.

WP Migrate DB

WP Migrate DB exports your database as a MySQL data dump (much like phpMyAdmin), does a find and replace on URLs and file paths, then allows you to save it to your computer. It is perfect for developers who need to update their local install with fresh data from the production site, or copy their locally developed site to a staging or production server. It also takes into account serialized data (both arrays and objects) and updates the string length values. You can select the tables you want to migrate, pull production db down and replace local db, push local db up and replace production / staging db, enjoy unlimited find & replaces (free is limited to 2), Multisite support, Video walk throughs and how-tos.

WordPress Duplicator

WordPress Duplicator gives WordPress administrators the ability to migrate, copy or clone a site from one location to another. The plugin also serves as a simple backup utility. The Duplicator supports both serialized and base64 serialized string replacement. This tool is great for pulling a production site down onto your local machine for testing and validation. It also works great for developing locally and then pushing up to a production server for a first time site release. Requires above average technical knowledge and not recommended for WordPress beginners.

WordPress Move

WordPress Move is a migration assistant for WordPress that is capable of changing the domain name in use and/or migrating your installation to another server either as is or based on your choices. You can use WordPress Move to transfer your database or create backups of your installation.

Site Push

SitePush is a WordPress plugin that allows you to have multiple versions of your WordPress site, so you can edit, develop, test without any risk to your main, live site. It’s great for developers, designers and editors or anyone who wants to be able to test changes to a site before it is visible to the world. You can easily easily move content between sites, test new themes and plugins – all in a private staging site, and you can also test and easily push new code on to a live site.

Top 5 BuddyPress Themes April 2014

BuddyPress ready themes enable you to create your own special social network centered around your website and content. This means that visitors can register as members and connect and network with other members who are part of your specific niche community. This is especially useful in creating and growing a social network where members share common interests. Here’s a rundown of the top 5 themes that have BuddyPress integrated into them.

WPLMS

WPLMS Premium WordPress Theme is a learning management solution for WordPress. It is designed to deliver and manage educational content for an online audience. WPLMS enables you to create and sell courses as single items, as subscriptions or as a combination of both. You can embed videos and other multimedia content into your courses, create your own question bank with multiple choice, single answer or essay type questions including quiz timers, timelines and auto submit with WPMLS’s built-in quiz and test capabilities. WPLMS includes an instructor dashboard allowing you to check submissions of students as well as your own course content. The theme also has a progress page for users to track progress and l badges and certificates earned and attained. This theme uses BuddyPress for collaboration and discussion with other learners.

Kleo

Kleo Premium WordPress Theme is a multipurpose theme designed to meet various requirements of most websites.This BuddyPress and bbPress ready theme gives you great flexibility to create a membership site with complete ease. Powered by the popular visual composer plugin, Kleo enables you to simply drag and drop elements into a single page. Kleo enables managing content according to membership level. The theme gives you the ability to restrict content according the type of membership one has. Kleo comes with key features such as an awesome option panel, shortcodes and templates for easy customization, 700+ Fontello icons, WPML ready, and so much more.

Xphoria

Xphoria Premium WordPress Theme showcases what BuddyPress and bbPress plugins are capable of doing. Xphoria gives you the ability to create display forums turning your site into a big social network exchange. Visitors can join groups, post messages, make connections and the like. Conversations are displayed in a neat tiled fashion showing the number of posts under each thumbnail. Groups are displayed on the homepage and may be viewed according to popularity, alphabetical order, activity or date created while each group has a separate page displaying member info and conversations. Essentially, a social network in a box, Xphoria can hel you build a social network for your company, school, sports team or niche community.

Plexus

Plexus Premium WordPress Theme is a multisite theme created especially for enabling your site to host a blog network within WordPress. This theme is fully integrated with BuddyPress and bbPress giving the social networking power fitting for a blog network. It comes with specific network settings that give you control over what blog admins can do with it. Aside from BuddyPress and bbPress full integration, the theme also includes: Visual Composer plugin for that drag and drop convenience in customization, Layer Slider plugin to create a responsive slider with hundreds of transitions, site wide widgets that display content across the blog networks, and so much more.

Klein

Klein Premium WordPress Theme is a powerful community theme that gives you the utmost power to maximize social networking. At the heart of this theme is the Gears core framework that enables you to integrate other plugins easily. This innovative WordPress theme was built to support BuddyPress, bbPress, and WooCommerce. It is ideal for a website that interacts with a lot of users. Members can create profiles, send messages, add connections, or simply share what’s happening. It also allows members to collaborate through forums or sell any products you require. Key features include: Visual Composer plugin for drag and drop layouts, paid membership pro features to manage subscription packages, supports Woocommerce to set up a vibrant private online ecosystem, etc. This theme works well with BuddyPress plugins such as Events Manage and Album Plus, extending the power of your site’s network.

Not Your Usual WordPress Themes Roundup

Multipurpose WordPress Themes are great for creating all types of websites but sometimes it’s more convenient and it saves a lot of time to use a ready-made theme that’s specific to your website requirements. Here are a few WordPress themes that are more than just your usual WordPress theme designs. Check them out:

Joglo – Woocommerce Real Estate Theme

Joglo Premium WordPress Theme is a modern real estate theme especially built for the real estate business. This WooCommerce enabled premium theme makes it easy to run an online realty company that can handle transactions like offering property for sale or home/apartment renting service. It has a sleek and dynamic design packed with features and functions like: Advanced Search where customers can easily browse any property filtered according to price, location, type or some other category or tag; Agents page listing agents names, description, and contact information; Responsive and custom layout; Property page with a contact form; and, Property detail page with map

Advocator: Professional Nonprofit Organizations

Advocator Premium WordPress Theme is primarily designed for non-profit, charity, organization, or advocacy related websites that aim to be interactive with their audience. This theme boasts of professional level accessibility and performance having been built using the Foundation 5 framework by Zurb. Key features include: audience can engage with you on mobile devices with ease, you can accept donations seamlessly, you can add Events for your organization, you can collect emails using Mailchimp, and if you’re a developer, you can customize super fast and efficiently.

Frisieur – WordPress Theme for Hairdressers

Frisieur Premium WordPress Theme is a fully responsive theme designed for hairdressers, hair salons, stylists, makeup artists, and similar professionals you need to set appointments with. This theme includes features and functions like: Working Appointment form, Approximate time with timepicker (compatible with two time types), Opening hours table, Google Map with geolocalization, and Working Contact Form, – elements necessary to booking clients online.

Pump – Responsive Wedding & Multi-purpose Theme

Pump Premium WordPress Theme is a Wedding Event & Multipurpose WordPress Theme all rolled into one. This super simple and yet fully functional responsive theme has endless possibilities not only for Weddings and events but even for business, corporate, or portfolio applications. This theme can grow with its users and convert into something else and adjust as the couple’s needs and interests evolve. It is also WooCommerce, BuddyPress, bbPress, and WPML ready.

WooCommerce Supermarket Theme – GoMarket

Woocommerce GoMarket Premium WordPress is a complete shopping solution for eCommerce owners. This theme includes 6 pre-designed stores making it easy to set up the store of your dreams. It features a
combination of Vertical Menu and Main Mega Menu to help customers navigate through the site easily.

Opt In Plugins for WordPress

Placing a strategic call to action on your website such as subscribe, register, download, purchase, etc. can make a difference in your conversion statistics. Make it easy for your audience to perform the CTAs you want them to with these opt in plugins for WordPress.

Magic Action Box

Magic Action Box is an easy to use but powerful lead generation plugin that lets you create a focused and high converting feature box in minutes. It let’s you display professional looking opt-in forms and feature boxes in your WordPress site. This plugin makes it easy to create powerful calls to actions and helps users to focus on one thing while presenting the CTAs in sleek professional looking action boxes without the need of a designer. This plugin also integrates with Gravity Forms to build complex, powerful and beautiful contact forms in just minutes.

OptinSkin

OptinSkin allows you to add eye-catching opt-in forms and social share boxes to your blog easily. One great feature of this plugin is the ability to split-test all the elements of your opt-in form (buttons, color, text, covers, images, etc. to find out which one visitors respond to the most. Another feature worth noting is the the Fade feature which allows the form to fade into your content – a great way to address ad blindness. This plugin also works with all major email marketing services and easily integrates with any of them. You also have the option to earn through your opt-in box by enabling an (optional) affiliate link. OptinSkin can be used on multiple websites you own without purchasing additinal copies.

Email Pickup

Email Pickup allow you create simple and powerful landing pages with email capture form. This is handy when you promote your products, for “Coming soon” pages, and for creating multiple subscribers lists for your newsletters. You can easily add forms to pages and posts using a special button or using a shortcode. This plugin also integrates with INinbox.

WangGuard

WangGuard protects your registration page against sploggers, spam users and unwanted users from gaining access to your website’s resources without the use of complicated captcha. This plugin cleans your database from unwanted users from within the Users panel. This plugin protects the standard WordPress, WordPress Multisite, BuddyPress and bbPress 2.0 registration forms. WangGuard is fully compatible with Standard WordPress (non-multisite), WordPress MU, WordPress Multisite, BuddyPress (multisite and non-multisite), bbPress 2.0, and plugins like WooCommerce.

Email Newsletter

Email Newsletter plugin gives you the option to send HTML Mails/Newsletters to registered users, commenters, subscribers, and users who contact you. This plugin gives you several options to: setup an email subscription box, send a newsletter to subscribers, add an unsubscribe link in the newsletter, export or import email addresses, send an auto email to new subscribers, and receive admin email notification for every new subscriber who joins.

Hybrid Connect

Hybrid Connect is a powerful plugin that allows you to create and customize your own opt-in form, display it strategically on your website (sidebar, footer, widget, slide-in, squeeze page, pop up forms, video, etc.), and improve your conversions by testing the elements in your opt-in form to produce the best results. Hybrid Connect is easy to use and requires absolutely no technical knowledge or coding skills. Hybrid Connect also features the easiest and most highly customizable opt-in form builder – the Hybrid Connect form builder – to help you create opt-in forms that match your website’s style without any coding knowledge required. This plugin also supports all major auto responder services.