The Horrible Hat-trick: 3 Terrible Fonts That Should Always Be Avoided
They say art is in the eye of the beholder; as much as I want to agree, there’s still no excuse for ‘terrible’ typography. Among the worst offenders are the following fonts:
Comic Sans is essentially the stereotype for bad typography, and few fonts have ever caused more rage amongst designers. This sort of font is abundant in armchair graphic design – it has no place in the professional realm a is a surefire way to cheapen your brand.
Although this style has its place in design, Curlz MT does not; there are several alternatives available when you’re looking for whimsical fonts. Neutral fonts can be used over and over by many brands without consequence, but a very custom/unique font like Curlz MT is used ends up being distracting and ultimately disastrous. (Not unlike the next font, Papyrus).
Like Comic Sans, Papyrus is another running joke among designers. At first glance, it’s safe to assume Papyrus was created for a specific brand. Alas, Papyrus is used by thousands of companies all over the world. Most designers will say it “jumped the shark” long ago (after its first use), but even non-designers will claim it jumped the shark after it was featured in the ever-so-popular movie Avatar. Avoid this font like the plague.
Development of a CCK Webform Module
Here at eMUNICATIONS, we love to play paintball. The game has a lot to offer: teamwork, adrenaline, exercise, and good old-fashioned sunlight (something usually alien to the eMUNICATIONS team).
Naturally, we also like good quality websites (something usually alien to the paintball community). Most paintball websites I’ve come across are in a state of disrepair — there’s usually little to no thought of the end-user, core information is hard to find, and very few of them are using social media in a useful way.
Until recently, most field owners I’ve talked with seem to dismiss their website as an afterthought. This wouldn’t have been a major problem five years ago, but in today’s world, the quality of your website is just as important as the quality of your field.
Not everyone has an eye for design, but when your online presence is clean and professional, it communicates that your business is clean and professional. You may not want to pay for professional design in order to cut costs, but avoiding this expense will only help your costs in the short term; your revenue will suffer in the long term.
One of the biggest frustrations I’ve experienced with paintball field websites is the lack of pertinent information or poor placement thereof. Within the first five seconds of viewing a website, the user should be able to identify your field’s hours, prices, location, and contact information. Some paintball fields keep wacky hours or will open up on random days, and they don’t do a good job of letting their customers know when these things occur. This is where social media comes into play.
Many field owners are reluctant to use social media — some dismiss it as hype, some are intimidated by it, while others simply don’t care. Facebook, for example, is a great way to let your customers know of any unscheduled open days or last-minute changes to field hours. It’s also a great way to get more people to your field and more people looking at your business.
One of the latest social media services is “location-based”. Companies like Gowalla, Foursquare, and now Facebook are all working in the location-based realm, and this sort of thing is VERY advantageous for paintball field owners. These services allow users to “check in” where they are. So they’ll broadcast to every one of their friends, “I’m at Joe’s Paintball Park” which is a clickable link with your field’s contact information. If only five customers check in, that’s generally at least 300 people who were exposed to your company. You can even create an offer like this: “x% off admission when you check in using Facebook.”
So, paintball field owners, you have a lot of work ahead of you and a lot of new players to catch the attention of. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Want to know more? Drop us a line.
See you on the field!
Best Page Builders For WordPress
If you want to create stylish posts and pages for your WordPress website, then a page builder plugin is the best way to do so. The best page builder plugins add a new content editor interface to your website that lets you do so much than what’s currently possible with the default editor.
Not only do these advanced web design tools let you work through a drag-and-drop user interface, but they also provide you with a selection of useful elements that can be added to your website. Some even include high-quality pre-built page layouts for a range of projects and purposes.
If you’d like to start using one of these tools but aren’t sure which one to pick, this comparison of the best free WordPress page builder plugins will help you find the right option for your needs. And, best of all, if you’re on a budget or aren’t ready to invest in a paid tool, this page builder comparison only includes options that are free to use.
To help you find the best page builder for your website, we’ll explore the user interfaces of these tools, their most useful features, and how easy they are to use.
We’ll also look at how popular these plugins are, based on their total active installations, recent download rates, and ratings from users. This information should help you choose a plugin that’s not only been popular in the past but also stands a good chance of being well supported and maintained long into the future.
To help you find the best page builder for your website, we’ll explore the user interfaces of these tools, their most useful features, and how easy they are to use.
We’ll also look at how popular these plugins are, based on their total active installations, recent download rates, and ratings from users. This information should help you choose a plugin that’s not only been popular in the past but also stands a good chance of being well supported and maintained long into the future.
What is Page Builders?
Page builders are tools that enable you to put together websites in record time, by providing you with pre-built elements you can arrange in any way you want. You can insert them into your pages, move them around, and see the effects immediately.
WordPress page builders make it easier for users of all skill levels to create awesome websites by:
- Making it possible to build custom pages without a background in web development.
- Letting you customize complex elements and features with a few clicks.
- Including drag-and-drop functionality, so you can arrange all the elements on your pages as you see fit.
- Enabling you to preview how your site will look when it goes live.
Let’s take a look at what you should keep in mind when comparing the best WordPress page builders, so you can choose the right one for your needs.
Compatibility:
If you’re not interested in changing your existing WordPress theme for a page builder plugin, then the first thing you need to check is whether the builder you want to use is compatible with your WordPress theme.
If you find any compatibility issues, then you might want to use a builder-compatible theme for your site. Most builders in this article are compatible with all themes.
Features:
You need to understand the unique quality of each builder when comparing the features. For example, some builders are shipped with a lot of built-in layouts, while others offer dozens of animation effects.
Responsiveness:
You need to make sure that the page builder you choose allows you to create responsive, mobile-friendly layouts out of the box. For your convenience, every page builder we’ve listed in this article lets you create mobile-friendly layouts.
SEO:
You need to make sure that your page builder is creating SEO friendly layouts. Luckily, all page builders listed in this article are 100% SEO friendly when combined with the Yoast SEO plugin.
WP Bakery Page Builder
WP Bakery Page Builder is possibly the most well-known WordPress page builder in the market since many premium themes ship with it included. Its support for all types of themes and sites is excellent, and its front-end editing features make it very easy to use.
- Includes an extensive collection of pre-made layouts.
- Supports CSS customizations for all of its elements.
- It is fully compatible with translation plugins such as WPML.
- Let’s you edit any page using a front-end visual editor.
WP Bakery Page Builder is a premium plugin ($46), but it also ships for free with plenty of themes.
Beaver Builder
Beaver Builder is a front-end editor that also gives you true what you see is what you get editing. When building your pages, you see the same view as your future readers.
The included modules (or elements) let you add contact forms, CTA buttons, videos, and lots more.
You also get powerful controls for when these modules display. You can choose to only display each module for certain devices or user roles. All Beaver Builder pages are responsive by default, but this feature will help you build even better mobile-optimized pages.
And if you don’t want to start building from zero, Beaver Builder includes templates for both landing pages and content pages
Beaver Builder will work well with whatever theme you’re using, but it shines when you use the included Beaver Builder Theme (only included with Pro and Agency plans). This theme utilizes a combination of the regular Beaver Builder plugin with the WordPress Customizer to give you full control over every aspect of your site.
Beaver Builder has been updated well along with the Gutenberg project. So, it works fine with your new Gutenberg editor.
Elementor
Elementor is the first free and open-source advanced page builder for WordPress. With its quick drag-and-drop builder, you can make instant page edits from the frontend of your site. Elementor is well-known for its high-speed performance, which makes it fun and easy to build with.
With its extensive template library, you get hundreds of beautiful WordPress templates from their top-notch designers, which can be exported to different websites through the page builder.
Elementor supports the responsive, mobile-friendly design, allowing you to build web pages that work great on any device.
You can build a brand new landing page without a header or footer, optimized for high conversions. For maintenance, you can get your site offline with its built-in maintenance mode. Integrating your website with a third-party web application is a breeze using its Zapier integration.
The biggest thing that we don’t like about Elementor is that its license is very restrictive. If you’re a freelancer or agency looking to use Elementor on client websites, please know that their Pro version is not GPL.
Divi Builder
Divi Builder is a popular premium page builder from Elegant Themes. While it’s most commonly used as part of the Divi theme, Divi Builder is also a standalone plugin that you can use with other themes, as well.
The Divi builder works on almost any WordPress website. It gives you endless possibilities to create the most advanced layouts without having to touch a single line of code.
Divi Builder lets you edit your content using both a visual front-end interface as well as a back-end interface, though most users will probably prefer the front-end interface.
With Divi Builder, you’ll get 46 content modules that allow you to add testimonials, portfolios, pricing tables, and lots more.
Divi Builder also ships with more than 20 pre-made layouts, so you don’t always need to start building from scratch.
Divi is slow as compared to the others and leaves a lot of wasted code behind if you remove it from WordPress.
SiteOrigin Page Builder
Front-end and back-end editing. Theme independence. Undo/Redo. Styles for rows/widgets.
Instead of custom elements or modules like other page builders, you build pages with widgets.
Beyond the core WordPress widgets, SiteOrigin Page Builder also offers a free Widgets Bundle plugin that adds a modular set of 23 widgets that you can use. It also includes ~25 pre-built templates that you can use, though these are pretty barebones in comparison to other page builders.
You can’t save your designs as templates, but you can easily clone existing pages, which gets you similar functionality.
Unfortunately, while SiteOrigin offers a free widgets bundle to give you some much-needed flexibility, you still won’t achieve the diversity of elements offered by premium page builders or Elementor.
With that being said, if you don’t need diversity and just want a free way to build pages, SiteOrigin Page Builder is certainly worth a look. Over one million active installs don’t lie!
Themify Builder
The Themify Builder comes with a drag-and-drop interface that helps you create any layout you can imagine with ease. The builder comes with over 60 prebuilt layouts and animation effects that you can choose from. This means you can quickly build beautiful pages without having to start from scratch. All you have to do is simply import the layouts you want to use, replace the images and text, and you’re done.
The builder comes as a standard feature for all Themify themes. You can also use their builder plugin with any third-party WordPress theme.
From the compact backend interface, you can use the drag-and-drop feature to build modules quickly and easily. In the frontend, you can preview the design and make live edits to your modules.
To enhance the capabilities of the Themify Builder, you can find tons of different add-ons that can be purchased separately or as a bundle
Thrive Architect
Thrive Architect is a page builder that’s built for conversion-focused websites. Thrive Architect is developed by the same folks behind Thrive Themes, a company that sells conversion-oriented WordPress themes and plugins.
Thrive Architect is shipped with a drag-and-drop editing tool and 271 prebuilt landing page templates.
With Thrive Architect, you can quickly create a stunning homepage, sales page, blog posts, and everything you could ask for.
To purchase Thrive Architect, you can either get a single site license for $67 or subscribe to the premium Thrive Membership that gives you access to all Thrive products for $19 per month.
Conclusion
Almost every builder plugin out there comes with a drag-and-drop builder on the backend and a live editor on the frontend. It’s important to understand what makes each WordPress page builder unique.
After our comparison, we’ve found that WP Bakery Page Builder, Beaver Builder, and Elementor are by far the best drag-and-drop WordPress page builders. It comes with all the features that you need to build awesome website layouts. You can use its extensive collection of pre-built layouts to quickly build a page from the ground up. After selecting the right layout for your site, you can customize the page the way you want.
We hope this article helped you find the best WordPress page builder for your needs.
White Space Is Not Your Enemy
The term “White Space” is often misused; many believe that it refers to any space in a design that’s white. White space actually refers to the “negative space” of a composition. It’s not simply “blank” or “unused” space, it plays a key role in the design process.
Another crucial role white space plays is eye movement, commonly referred to simply as “movement”. White space allows our eyes to take a break, all while guiding them to the next point of interest. A page with very little white space doesn’t give its users time to slow down and reflect on individual pieces of content, often leaving readers frustrated and uninterested in pursuing more information. Additionally, a lack of white space often gives off the feeling of “cheap” or “amateur”. On the other hand, many upscale brands are designed with a heavy amount of white space, which casts the emotion of “classy”, “elegant”, “luxury”, etc.
Clients often struggle with their content; they want their users to know everything about their company, all in one composition. When a composition is oversaturated with content, the effectiveness of the ad or website begins to diminish (see tongue-in-cheek graph to the left):
Take the following ad into consideration:
A very simple composition using white space to generate interest and flow
And now, let’s remove white space by adding more content and enlarging elements:
As we enlarge elements and add content, the composition starts to become overbearing.
So, what can you do to avoid overcrowding? How can you use white space to your advantage? While there’s no easy answer, I’ve come up with 3 tips to guide you in the right direction.
- Rank pieces of content in order of importance:
This will help you distinguish mandatory content from important content and non-essential content.
- Come to terms with your loss:
Know that by removing non-essential content, your essential content will get that much more attention from your viewers.
- Consider the sizing of various elements:
Arguably, one of the most frequent requests designers hear is “Can you make the logo bigger?”
Ask yourself why you want your logo bigger. Remember, logos are not your only form of branding, and there a myriad more effective solutions to make your logo stand out more. Remember to tell your designer your problem; don’t provide them with a solution (e.g., “make the logo bigger”).
Ryan Martin
Ryan Martin lives in Sugar Land, TX, where he’s the lead designer at eMUNICATIONS.com. With over 10 years of experience, he’s worked with clients such as Visa, Pepsi, and Cessna Aircraft Company.
Login issues? Check your domain for underscores
I recently migrated a WordPress installation to a new site, and when demoing the new install, I found I was unable to log in. I checked the usual places, the database had the correct URL, there were no funky redirects, and I disabled ALL the plugins. This led to 30 minutes of hair-pulling confusion and frustration. Login worked from Firefox on my desktop, but failed in Safari and from every other machine I tried it on. This was strange because the installation was fine on the other URL, and there had been no changes to the files. After some sniffing of the traffic to the browser, I found out that the cookie was sent but not being set in Safari. A quick search led to this embarrassing revelation. This is from the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
Unreserved Characters:
Characters that are allowed in a URI but do not have a reserved purpose
are called unreserved. These include uppercase and lowercase letters, decimal
digits, hyphen, period, underscore, and tilde.
unreserved = ALPHA / DIGIT / “-” / “.” / “_” / “~
That is to say, underscores aren’t specifically allowed in domains. So, if a cookie comes from a domain that the browser is rejecting, it. Luckily, this was a staging subdomain, so I was able to relocate it easily. Something to look out for…
Best WordPress Backup plugins
Creating WordPress backups is the very best thing that you can do to help your site. Backups will help save you in situations once your site gets hacked and offer you peace of mind, or you accidentally lock yourself out.
There are numerous free and paid backup plugins for WordPress, and most of them are user-friendly for backing up your blog content, files, or other things. But using these best WordPress backup plugins, always guarantee that your blog always saved from accidental loss. Sometimes we lose our blog’s important files or page files. But if there is no backup plugin installed, then you will lose these things permanently. So you must use the following plugin to secure your blog files.
If you purchase WordPress hosting, they offer free, limited file backup. But it’s not enough. You must back up your WordPress files with care. Because no one cares about your things like yourself.
If you are not already backing up your WordPress website, then you should pick one of these best WordPress backup plugins and start using it right away.
UpdraftPlus:
UpdraftPlus is a free WordPress backup plugin. It allows you to create a complete backup of your WordPress website and store it on the cloud or download it to your PC.
The plugin supports scheduled as well as on-demand backups. You can choose which files to copy. It may automatically upload your backups to Dropbox, Google Drive, S3, Rackspace, FTP, SFTP, email, and several other cloud storage solutions (see our detailed guide on the best way to copy & restore your WordPress website with UpdraftPlus).
UpdraftPlus also has a premium version with add-ons to migrate or clone a website, database search and replace, and multisite support, along with other things. The premium version also gets you access to priority support.
Duplicator:
Duplicator is one of the free WordPress backup plugins. You can backup or restore your WordPress files most easily. You can reduce server loading time between domains or hosting. Because it gives a 100% percent grantee for your blog. They also offer Pro features.
You can manually back up your whole blog or any parts. You can transfer your WordPress blog to another hosting provider without losing your files. If you want to enjoy a free backup plugin for WordPress, just remember this, and you will get more benefit.
BackWPUp:
BackWPup is a free plugin that lets you create a complete WordPress backup for free and save it on the cloud (Dropbox, Amazon S3, Rackspace, etc), FTP, email, or even on your PC.
It is simple to use and allows you to schedule backups by your website’s update frequency.
Restoring a WordPress site from a backup is very simple. The BackWPup Pro version includes priority support, the capability to store backups, along with some other cool features.
BackUpWordPress:
BackupWordPress is a WordPress backup plugin with a scheduling service. It allows you to make schedules that are unique for your database and files. The issue is that the free version doesn’t let you store your WordPress copies.
Then you’ll need to purchase a superior extension if you would like to store your backups on Dropbox, Google Drive, and so on. The extensions are offered for each service, and you can buy the one you need or the whole bundle.
VaultPress:
Although it started as an independent plugin, VaultPress is now a part of Automattic’s other product called JetPack. You will need a JetPack subscription plan to use VaultPress. There are multiple pricing plans with different sets of features.
VaultPress plugin offers an automated real-time cloud backup solution starting at $3.50 per month. You can easily set up VaultPress backups and restore from backups within a few clicks.
The higher plans of Jetpack also offer security scans and several other powerful features.
There are a few downsides to using VaultPress.
First, it is a recurring expense that can add up if you have multiple WordPress sites because you pay per site.
Second, you will have to subscribe to JetPack, get a WordPress.com account, and install the Jetpack plugin on your site.
Lastly, backups are stored for only 30 days on the lower plans. If you want an unlimited backup archive, then you would have to pay the $29 per month per website, which is significantly more expensive for beginners when compared to other solutions listed here.
VaultPress, as part of the popular JetPack plugin, gives good value for money. If you’re already using JetPack for other features like JetPack CDN for photos, social media promotion, etc, then it’s an easy pick for you.
My WP Backup Pro:
You need to confirm your blog backup first. Because it’s the most important part of blogging. If you want to secure your blog, then you need to use a premium WordPress backup plugin. You can choose this plugin for your blog. Because it’s a premium and has amazing features.
There are multiple backup options for multiple popular storage providers. In fact, you can set up automatic or manual backup to this storage without waiting. In an emergency, you can restore your files at any time. My WP Backup Pro completely offers to migrate your WordPress site easily.
Final Thoughts
Choose the plugins according to your needs. Each plugin that we listed here is good.
Do NOT store your backups on precisely the same server as your site.
By doing that, you are placing all of your eggs in 1 basket. In case the hardware of your server worst you get waxed or fails, then you certainly don’t have a backup that defeats the goal of setting up backups.
That is the reason why we highly suggest storing your backups on a third-party storage service such as Dropbox, Amazon S3, Google Drive, etc..
That’s all. We hope that this list helped you decide on the WordPress backup plugin that is ideal for your website.
