Focus Area 1. Auditing Your Site

Creating a positive user experience for potential customers on your website
is important for any online business. Before you begin to change elements of your website, one of the first steps is to check out what you have so far in order to approach your redesign with a fully informed eye.

Investigate the Front End

First, investigate the front end of your website. Click through the different pages and elements of your site and see what pops out at you. Is there a block of text that can be written more concisely? Does your image in the top right not seem
to match as well with the rest of your content? Make a list of all the things that come to mind as you deep dive into the front-facing part of your site. Check out this blog that talks about how to perform a thorough content audit for your site if you’re looking for help making a start!

Investigate the Backend

Next, it’s time to investigate the backend of your website. The first question to ask yourself: how are you currently tracking metrics? Are you using tools like Google Analytics? If not, that’s the first place to start! Check out our blog that talks about how to integrate Google Analytics into your WordPress site.

If you’re already utilizing a tracking tool, there are a few important metrics you should look at:

What pages are most popular? This metric will help show you what is currently working well for your site.

What’s your average bounce rate? The overall goal is to avoid a high bounce rate. By looking at this statistic you can better understand if customers enter your site and immediately find what they’re looking for, or if they leave quickly to go look at another source.

What’s the most popular customer journey? Where are people dropping off and what pages are they navigating to most often? Depending on these answers, you can often tell how well your site’s UI/UX is working and whether there are places you need to edit and improve.

Some aspects that could affect this are page speed, appropriate content on each page, and how user-friendly your website truly is.

During this process, take notes on what you notice when looking at your tracking tools to help you decide what to focus on when you start your editing process.

Perform A/B Testing

Next, it may be smart to work in some A/B Testing. This is a great way to organically test whether some elements you noticed in your audit are legitimate issues or not. To perform an A/B test begin changing certain elements of your website like text size, colors, and images one at a time and see if each edit makes a difference in your conversions. By changing one element at a time, you will quickly know which elements are working and which aren’t.

Ask Your Audience What They Want

You have the best resource at your disposal: your existing customers! Set up a poll directly on your homepage or social media or even send an email or create a survey to obtain your customers’ opinion on aspects like fonts, navigation, and graphics.

See if they have any comments on how they think your site could flow better or be more appealing to a future audience!

Focus Area 2: Updating Your Look: Branding Guidelines

Now that you’ve done some research and you’ve armed yourself with areas to focus on, it’s time to start the actual editing process. The first aspect to consider is the aesthetics of your website. Having a tool like branding guidelines can establish consistency in your branding. Fonts and Sizing

First off, be intentional and strategic with your typography. Keep your font and sizing variations to a minimum. For font changes and sizing, less is more. Some strategic variations can look cool but use with discretion.

Images

An easy place to start is with obvious stock photos lurking around your website. Avoid staged pictures (i.e. portraits of individuals staring into the camera or fake group high fives). If you must use a stock photo, choose natural, realistic poses, creative camera angles, and lighting. Choose photos that align with your brand. Want to layer text over your photos? Make sure the text stands out. Here’s a guide on how to create custom graphics for your site if you decide you’re feeling creative and want to experiment with your own!

Colors

The colors displayed on your website are also important. By using colors strategically you can help guide your customers through your website, carefully choosing where their eyes go to first and the pattern of things they notice as they scan your various pages. Certain colors have certain meanings to users and there is an entire color language called Pantone. Here are some examples:

• Red: passion, anger, love, confidence
• Orange: youthfulness, cheer, warmth, hunger
• Yellow: sunshine, happiness, energy, optimism
• Green: nature, fertility, balance, cleanliness
• Blue: water, tranquility, trust, power • Purple: nobility, power, elegance,
• wisdom
• White: peace, balance, purity, simplicity, winter
• Gray: neutral, sophistication, balance, wisdom
• Black: exclusivity, modern, power, sophistication, mystery
• Brown: earth, stability, tradition, nature
• Pink: love, romance, femininity, baby girls, humanistic
• Turquoise: tranquility, clarity, compassion, healing

Logo Usage

Your logo is you. Give it top billing! Logos set the tone, value, aesthetic, and recognition of your brand. You want it to be remembered! Many companies choose to display their logo in the upper left corner of their website.

WordPress Themes

Using an updated WordPress theme is an essential part of any WordPress website. WordPress themes can even impact the loading times of your whole site. Browse the many free themes available to you in case you decide your site needs a complete refresh.

Focus Area 3: Enhancing Your Website User Experience

At the end of the day, how your users interact with your website can be the difference between a conversion and a missed opportunity. The user interface and user experience, better known as UI/UX, is an important thing to consider when committing to redesigning and refreshing your online presence! Below are some ways you can make sure yours is working in your favor rather than against you.

Simplicity/Spacing

Using white space, also called negative space, can help you bring attention to details of your site that are most important. Spacing around titles can even improve your customers’ experience by 20%. More white space helps separate sections and guides your customers’ eyes down the page. Less white space can indicate that elements of your site are supposed
to go together. Through the yin and yang of content and spacing you can control how your user experiences every part of your page.

Website Navigation and Menu

Another important element of website design is your navigational system. The most important thing to remember when building your website’s navigation is that your users need to be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Make sure your search tools stand out (normally located in the upper right corner) and that your colors are working together for readability.

Your menu should be located at the top of the page and should have no more than seven items (not including dropdowns). There should be ample space in between menu sections for aesthetic reasons. It can be helpful to use a fixed navigation bar as well so if your customers want to move to another section of the site they don’t have to scroll all the way back to the top of the page. A good rule of thumb for your overall design is that users should be able to access any point in three clicks or less. This ensures both efficiency and lack of confusion.

Mobile Responsive and Optimization

In 2021 it’s important your website is both mobile-friendly and responsive.
On average, 80% of users are searching on their smartphones so speed is vital. Though WordPress automatically makes sure your page is responsive (scales up and down with screen size changes and various browsers) it can be helpful to place buttons in the middle of your page for optimum mobile use. It’s also important to ensure a similar experience on both mobile and desktop viewing. This will help with consistency and return customers.

Hosting Choice

53% of people will navigate away from a page that takes more than
3 seconds to load. This means who you choose to host your website will have a major impact not only on your speed, but also on your website storage, uptime, and responsiveness to any future problems. That’s why we recommend going with A2 Hosting. Not only do we have a 99.9% uptime guarantee but our Turbo plans can increase your load times by 20x! This will improve your bounce rates, SEO scores, and conversions.

Speed

Explore these steps for a faster user experience with your chosen host:

• Optimize images
  Reduce plugins
  Clean up your themes
• Use a CDN
• Check as you grow to make sure you don’t need more resources (VPS Hosting can help!)

Selling Yourself and Your Website

Now that you have cleaned up the look and feel of your website and optimized your site for speed, it’s important to make sure you’re selling yourself and converting your customers! Below are helpful considerations.

Blog Posts and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Today, the way to win the web is through quality content and proper SEO procedures. Good blog posts keep your customers engaged and eager for more content. To achieve this, a solid SEO foundation is necessary. Start by targeting keywords to move your site up the ranks on Google searches. You want to generate as much traffic as you can and build credibility within your chosen industry. Check out our guide to SEO-Friendly blog formatting to see what you can do to improve your next post! Plus check out these three SEO mistakes to avoid.

Social Sharing

At the end of each blog post (and preferably at the bottom of your website), there should be links for social sharing. This will allow your followers to share your valuable content on different social media platforms. This is critical to help you build your following and to create an easy way for people to find your site.

Social Proof

You should also have areas of social proof somewhere on your website. This can be anything from written reviews to videos of customer feedback. These areas of true customer engagement lend your brand and your site credibility. They help potential customers trust that you will do what you say you do based on the positive feedback of others. We recommend you try and implement videos because these are a great way to keep your customers engaged with your website and fortify/strengthen human connection.

Calls to Actions

Finally, calls to action are where you close the deal and help your website convert potential customers into customers for life. Make sure they are

strategically placed in places like the top of your navigation, below sections that specifically require action, and at the bottom of the web page. They can be in banners, buttons, or whatever form you like the most! Some good examples include:

• Sign up for our email list!
• Shop in our store!
• Fill out your own lead form.
• Click for more info.
• See pricing.

Conclusion

Refreshing your website can be a long process, but we hope with the help of this guide it’s both easy and successful. Make sure to check out A2 Hosting for great hosting plans for your website and subscribe to our newsletter for future helpful content.

The post Three Areas to Focus on to Ensure Website Redesign Success appeared first on The A2 Posting.

Fortunately, there’s no shortage of CSS frameworks that can fast-track the design and development process. By opting for a framework, you can create standardized, higher-quality code, with less time and hassle.

In this post, we’ll discuss what CSS frameworks are and why you may want to consider using one for your next project. We’ll then share advice on how to find the framework that’s right for you, before exploring six popular CSS frameworks. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to CSS Frameworks

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) controls the presentation of a document that’s written in a markup language such as HTML. Unlike some other languages, CSS creates a separation between presentation and content. This gives you more flexibility in how you display your content.

This language also promotes code reuse, as multiple pages can use the formatting defined in a single CSS file. This can reduce complexity and repetition, while also improving your project’s performance, such as by reducing your website’s page loading times.

Many different systems use CSS. This includes WordPress themes, which uses CSS to output the data generated by this popular Content Management System (CMS). Every WordPress theme contains a single style.css file:

Although you can write pure CSS, many designers and developers choose to use a CSS framework. This is a collection of stylesheets that provide a basic structure and classes for common elements.

You can use these pre-prepared stylesheets as a reference for resolving problems of a similar nature. Alternatively, you can override the framework’s generic functionality for your specific use case.

There can be some confusion about when to use a framework, and when it makes more sense to opt for a library. With libraries, you control when this technology performs a particular function. The rest of your code exists independent from that library. However, with CSS frameworks the control flow is in the framework, and you’ll customize it in places to better suit your project.

Why You Might Want to Use a CSS Framework

CSS frameworks can reduce the amount of code you need to write. Instead of programming everything from scratch, these frameworks provide all the tools you need to spin up a basic UI.

You can then spend your time perfecting this interface to meet your project’s exact requirements. Since you’re not starting every project with a blank slate, you’ll have more time to focus on the specific features that make your site or app unique.

A CSS framework can also be useful for agencies and freelancers who manage multiple client sites. Using this tool, you can create a theme and then deploy it across countless websites. This can help you onboard new clients more quickly, and grow your business without drastically increasing your workload.

If you’re collaborating on a project with multiple people, a CSS framework can help you achieve consistency. For example, instead of each team member inventing their own class names, a CSS framework implements standardized naming conventions. This typically results in higher-quality code that’s easier to read and maintain.

When your code is consistent, you’ll also find it easier to onboard new team members or freelancers. It’s also worth remembering that just because your staff are happy in their role now doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll stick around forever.

It’s smart to ensure that even if your head developer leaves, your project can continue. To make sure your project is never wholly reliant on a single person, it’s a good idea to implement a standardized approach that’s clearly defined and understood by everyone. A framework can help you achieve this uniformity across your project.

Factors to Consider When Using a CSS Framework

A CSS framework can be a valuable addition to your project. However, if you have little previous experience with CSS, then it’s important to familiarize yourself with this language before jumping into the world of frameworks.

By taking the time to master pure CSS, you’ll be better equipped to identify issues with your syntax. When you know how to achieve the desired results in pure CSS, you’ll also find it easier to scan your framework’s documentation for the information you need. This can boost your efficiency, particularly when it comes to problem-solving and troubleshooting.

We always recommend taking some time to sharpen your CSS knowledge before you start shopping around for a suitable framework. Depending on your previous experience and knowledge, this may require a significant amount of time and effort.

A CSS framework will also add to your project’s overhead. Depending on your project, this may include lots of unnecessary or irrelevant code that you don’t even use. Bloat is never good, but it makes zero sense to increase your project’s size without adding any value.

Since your project exists inside the CSS framework, this may be limiting for your application or website. If you rely on a framework too heavily, there’s also the risk that your finished project will look similar to other sites and apps that use the same framework. This can make your project blur into the background, when it should be standing out from the crowd.

How to Choose the Right CSS Framework

To start, your chosen framework should meet all of your project’s technical requirements. It’s also smart to look for characteristics that make this framework a good fit for your project. For example, a lightweight framework may be the perfect addition to a mobile-focused design, but it may be less ideal for a large, complicated application.

Over time, your project’s requirements will likely change. Although it’s impossible to predict the future, it’s always worth considering how your project might develop over the long-term. Your chosen CSS framework should be able to support your site or application as it evolves over months, and potentially even years.

When choosing any technology, it’s always smart to consider its ease of use. Even if you’re fluent in CSS, learning any new technology requires a big upfront investment. Every moment that you spend familiarizing yourself with your new framework is time that you could have invested directly into your project.

Ideally, your chosen framework will be intuitive, user-friendly, and have a gentle learning curve. This will minimize the time between installing the framework and starting to reap the benefits. If a framework is user-friendly, then you’re also much less likely to encounter major issues, including stumbling blocks that require you to pause development in order to research the problem.

When considering ease of use, it’s important to find out what support is available. Ideally, the framework will be backed by official documentation, tutorials, and perhaps even professional support.

You should also consider the level of community resources available, including third-party blogs, forums, and social media sites. An active community can be an invaluable source of additional support. You could even put your questions directly to the community via channels such as Stack Overflow.

6 Popular CSS Frameworks (And When To Use Them)

With so many CSS frameworks to choose from, picking just one isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of the six most popular CSS frameworks. Along the way, we’ll help you make the right decision, by suggesting the kind of projects each framework is perfect for.

1. Bootstrap

Originally named Twitter Blueprint and developed as a tool for internal teams, Bootstrap has since grown into one of the most popular CSS frameworks. Today, Bootstrap is used by around 22 percent of all websites, and its GitHub consists of over 20,000 commits from more than 2000 contributors.

To get started, you can download Bootstrap’s source Sass and JavaScript files from either Composer, Meteor, or the Node Package Manager (npm). You can also use the npm template repository to quickly generate a Bootstrap project, or check out any of the official examples, that are supported by extensive documentation.

All of this makes Bootstrap a great choice for anyone who’s new to CSS frameworks, or has limited pure CSS experience. This may include back-end developers who want to make some changes to their projects’ User Interface (UI). For these designers, Bootstrap provides templates for all of the most popular UI components, including alerts, tabs, forms, and dropdowns.

Bootstrap is also designed for responsive, mobile-first front-end development. This makes it a good fit for mobile projects.

If you do require additional support, Bootstrap has a large and active community on Stack Overflow. You can also access real-time support via the Bootstrap Slack channel.

2. Foundation

Foundation is a front-end framework for building websites, applications, and emails. Thanks to its Sass compiler, the responsive Foundation framework is ideal for creating projects fast.

Foundation favors clean, semantic code and takes a mobile-first approach. After ensuring that your project is fully compatible with mobile devices, you can add in more complexity for a fully-responsive design.

Foundation provides HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which is great for rapidly prototyping websites. If you’re using Foundation to create emails, this framework provides tested patterns that work with all of the major email clients, including Outlook. This can help you create emails that display and function correctly, regardless of how the recipients choose to access them.

Despite its speed, Foundation is far from a limited framework, and many developers use it to create large applications. It’s also highly customizable, which makes Foundation a good choice for designers who want to create a unique experience for their end users, and who aren’t afraid to dig into Foundation’s more complex features in order to achieve the desired result.

Despite its current status as an open-source project, Foundation was originally maintained by ZURB. Today, ZURB continues to offer a full program of tutorials, online courses, custom training, and even an official Foundation certification.

3. Skeleton

The Skeleton framework is a small collection of CSS files that you can use to rapidly generate clean code and simple layouts. Coming in at under 400 lines of code, this bare-bones framework is a good fit for smaller projects, or projects that don’t require the utility of a larger, heavier solution.

As a lightweight framework, Skeleton shouldn’t add unnecessary bloat to your project, which can be particularly valuable for mobile designs. If you’re creating a mobile project, Skeleton has a well-structured grid that enables you to create a responsive layout with minimal hassle.

Skeleton provides a 12-column fluid grid with a maximum width of 960px. This grid shrinks according to the browser and device. However, if you need to alter the maximum width you can make that change with a single line of CSS.

Skeleton serves its scalable grid using media queries. It also provides a list of mobile-first queries for styling your project across multiple devices. All styles outside of a query apply to all devices, so larger devices are targeted for enhancement. This prevents small devices from having to parse large amounts of unnecessary CSS.

If you’re new to the world of CSS frameworks, Skeleton’s simplistic approach makes this a good framework for beginners. For CSS newcomers, it can even be a valuable learning tool before progressing to more complex and feature-rich frameworks.

Unlike some of the other CSS frameworks on this list, Skeleton is designed as a starting point that you can develop into something more substantial. It’s also worth noting that Skeleton’s lack of templates may become an issue if you try to use this framework in larger or more complex projects.

4. UIKit

UIKit is a responsive, lightweight CSS framework that you can use to create clean and professional-looking interfaces. This framework defines all the core components such as table views, buttons, labels, and navigation controllers.

UIKit is also extensible, and supports a comprehensive collection of advanced components that are not bundled with the core framework. This includes parallax girds, dynamic pagination, and sliders.

Alongside CSS files, UIKit provides an autocomplete package for Sublime Text and Atom editors. Since users don’t have to repeatedly look up UIKit markups and class names, this framework is great for your overall productivity.

Unlike other frameworks such as Bootstrap and Foundation, UIKit breaks the layout into three components: grid, flex, and width. Instead of restricting you to a 12-column grid setup, UIKit gives you the flexibility to create as many columns as you require.

Over at the UIKit website, you’ll find extensive official documentation and a series of video tutorials. Despite these useful learning resources, we find that UK Kit is a more complex framework that’s best suited to experienced developers.

5. Semantic UI

Semantic UI is a framework for creating responsive layouts. Based on natural language principles, Semantic UI aims to make code readable and easier to understand by creating a shared vocabulary around UI.

To achieve this, Semantic UI treats words and classes as interchangeable concepts. All classes are human words and use syntax from natural languages, including noun/modifier relationships and word order. Semantic UI also uses plurality to link concepts intuitively. As a result, its code often resembles regular text.

Human-readable code and ease of use makes Semantic UI a great choice for anyone who’s new to the world of frameworks. If you do have previous experience, it’s worth noting that Semantic UI integrates with React, Angular, Meteor, Ember, and various other frameworks.

In addition to the functionality you’d typically expect from a CSS framework, Semantic UI provides simplified debugging and performance logging. This enables you to track down bottlenecks without digging through stack traces. These added extras make Semantic UI suitable for larger projects, including enterprise apps and websites.

6. Pure

Built on Normalize.css, the Pure framework is a set of small, responsive CSS modules that provide layout and styling for native HTML elements. This includes many common UI components. Pure has a minimal and unopinionated design, so you should have no issues adding new CSS rules and overriding Pure.css with your own styles.

Coming in at 3.87B minified and gzipped, this is a simple, lightweight framework. If you only require a subset of Pure’s modules, you’ll save even more bandwidth. This makes Pure ideal for smaller projects, or any project that has modest requirements.

Its small footprint also means that Pure is a good choice for mobile projects, where you’re typically working with less memory. Even better, this framework is responsive out of the box, thanks to its use of Pure Grids and Vertical Menus. With Pure CSS, you can be confident that your UI will look and display correctly across a range of mobile and tablet devices.

Conclusion

Building applications and websites from scratch can quickly start to feel repetitive. Instead of wasting time coding the same elements over and over again, a CSS framework can handle this busywork for you.

If you’re still unsure which CSS framework is right for you, here’s a quick reminder of the six frameworks we covered earlier:

1. Bootstrap: An open source framework that’s perfect for responsive, mobile-first front-end web development.
2. Foundation: With an emphasis on speed, Foundation is ideal for rapid prototyping.
3. Skeleton: Coming in at under 500 lines of code, this CSS framework is designed with mobile devices in mind.
4. UIKit: A lightweight, modular framework that targets highly-experienced, professional developers.
5. Semantic UI: This theming framework contains pre-built semantic components that can help you create professionally-designed, responsive websites.
6. Pure: A collection of responsive CSS modules that have much to offer for mobile developers.

A CSS framework can be your secret weapon for developing professionally-designed websites and applications in record time. However, once you’re ready to send your project out into the world, you’ll still need somewhere to host it.

By choosing a provider that’s optimized for web frameworks, you can ensure that you’re getting the very best out of your finished project. At A2 Hosting, we’ve optimized our plans for a wide range of frameworks, including Bootstrap. We even offer 1-click framework setup!

The post What Is a CSS Framework? (And When to Use 6 Popular Options) appeared first on The A2 Posting.

But what is Jetpack? It’s not the traveling jet propulsion backpack you’ll find in sci-fi films. Jetpack is a WordPress toolkit designed to secure, speed up, and backup your website. Not only will your website load faster, but you will have access to automated, daily backups and automated restores, spam filtering, and a 30-day site archive. All of these features are included with a Jetpack Personal License. 

So, why should I have a Jetpack license for WordPress?

With a Managed WordPress account, we offer a free Jetpack Personal license for your primary domain. Jetpack includes a myriad of features to enhance your WordPress account including

• Automated Backups. There are various backup plugins available for WordPress. Some we recommend, and others–not so much. Jetpack is a premium module and what sets it apart is how the backup is made. Jetpack will take a backup whenever a change is made to your account. This includes creating and editing new pages, posts, new plugin and theme installations, and any updates made to your WordPress installation. Jetpack also makes restoration easy with its activity log. Simply click an event and Jetpack will allow you to either download the backup or restore your site.
• A Free Content Delivery Network (CDN). Jetpack’s CDN comes with unlimited bandwidth and is completely free. 
• Lazy Loading Images. Images are loaded only when users see them instead of loading all at once. The site loads faster as a result and this leads to positive SEO performance.
• Spam Filtering. This automatically clears spam from comments and forms. 
• Downtime Monitoring. Jetpack will continuously monitor your site and will alert you when downtime is detected.

How can I install Jetpack on my WordPress account?

Please follow the steps below to install Jetpack to your Managed WordPress account.

1. Log in to the Customer Portal.
2. If you do not know how to log in to the Customer Portal, please see this article.
3. On the menu bar, click Services, and then click My Services.
4. Locate the specific MWP account you want to enable Jetpack on, and then click Manage.
5. Under the Hosting Information box, click Login to Plesk.
6. When the next page appears, click WordPress in the left navigation bar.
7. Identify the specific WordPress install you want to enable Jetpack on and click Login.
8. Under example.a2hosted.com/wordpress, select Plugins. Jetpack should be under Installed Plugins already if this is a newer account. If it is not, follow the steps below. 
9. Click Install, and then search for Jetpack. Select Install for Jetpack. Now the plugin will begin to install (this may take a few minutes.
10. In the WordPress section of the Plesk control panel, next to Remove, click Manage in WordPress. The Jetpack configuration page appears:
11. Click Set up Jetpack.
12. During the next step, you are prompted to log in to your WordPress.com account. If you do not already have one, you must sign up for one. 
13. Once you are logged in, you can choose from several options including which plan you would like and what features you want to enable. Congrats, your Jetpack activation is complete! You are redirected to your WordPress install and you are ready to use your account.

Are you having issues installing Jetpack or would you like to know more? Our customer support team is happy to help you.

Related Articles 

• Getting started with Managed WordPress

• Installing WordPress on A2 Hosting’s Managed WordPress Hosting

• Managed WordPress video training
• Managing WordPress installs on A2 Hosting’s Managed WordPress

The post Why You Should Use Jetpack for your WordPress Website appeared first on The A2 Posting.

React is one of the most popular front end frameworks. Unsurprisingly, if you want to use React in your WordPress project, you have lots of options. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by so much choice, it’s understandable – but there’s no need to panic.

In this article, we’ll introduce four React frameworks that you can use in your WordPress projects. We’ll cover the pros and cons of each framework. We’ll also look at some common scenarios where you may want to use one React framework over the other. Let’s get started!

What Is a REST API?

An Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of programming instructions and standards for accessing web-based applications and tools. You can use APIs to communicate with other websites, applications, and services. This includes requesting data from third parties.

Many companies have released their APIs as products that third parties can use. For example, Google has released a wide range of APIs that provide access to their services, including APIs for YouTube, Street View, and Google Play.

REST (Representational State Transfer) APIs are distinct from other APIs. To be considered RESTful, an API must follow specific guidelines. These guidelines help ensure the resulting API is lightweight, flexible, extensible, and secure. These guidelines include a separation between the client and the server, the use of cacheable data wherever possible, and a uniform User Interface (UI).

WordPress has its own REST API. This API was originally developed as a separate feature plugin. However, elements of the REST API were added into the core platform as early as WordPress 4.4. The API was fully integrated into WordPress 4.7, which means that every version of WordPress since then has its own fully-functional REST API.

WordPress’ REST API provides data in JSON format. By default, every WordPress website has JSON data available. Unless the site owner has restricted access to it, it’s easy to see your website’s JSON output – simply enter its URL in the following format:

http://example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts

Your browser should now display a series of JSON data related to your site’s recent posts. This data isn’t particularly human-readable, but it’s compatible with a large number of web technologies. Similarly, you can see the JSON output of all your most recent pages, by replacing the /posts part of the URL with /pages.

What Does the REST API Mean for WordPress?

Traditionally, WordPress generated HTML using a theme based on PHP template files. However, the introduction of the REST API removed this dependency on the PHP rendering engine. This opened up lots of opportunities for WordPress developers.

The REST API makes it easier for WordPress to interact with other websites and web applications. This API lets you perform Create, Read, Update, and Delete (CRUD) actions on WordPress content, including posts, pages, and even custom post types. This gives developers an easy way to push and pull data out of WordPress.

WordPress’ REST API can also communicate and exchange data, regardless of the language an external program is using. This has made the WordPress platform far more flexible and powerful, as you’re not confined to any specific technologies or languages.

The REST API makes it easier for developers to display content from an individual website within a multisite setup. It is also possible to display content from separate WordPress websites.

Today, the WordPress REST API is commonly used to separate content from the front end, paving the way for developers to use WordPress as a headless Content Management System (CMS). This is where React comes in.

How React and WordPress Can Help You Create a High-Performing App

The React framework is a JavaScript library. Developers can use this library to build UIs for Single Page Applications (SPAs) within web and mobile environments.

The major aim of developing React was to improve JavaScript’s UI development. Though originally launched for use with Facebook, React is now enjoying a great rate of adoption across several industries. It is also gaining popularity with the WordPress community, particularly with developers who want to set up headless WordPress.

With a headless setup, you can use the WordPress CMS on the back end, then build your front end using practically any development technologies you’d like. React-based frameworks can use the WordPress REST API as an interface to access your website’s data from outside the WordPress framework. This means it’s possible to create an SPA using React, then control the content using the familiar WordPress back end.

React can also make your projects faster by eliminating the need to re-render. Rather than re-loading each page in its entirety, an SPA loads content dynamically. This means the fundamental code of a website is loaded just once. If the state of a component changes, React will re-render the necessary components only.

React has a large and active developer community. Major firms such as Facebook, Airbnb, Dropbox, Netflix, and Reddit use React to build many of their applications. This comes with a lot of perks in terms of development and expert base.

Some of the React frameworks we’ll cover in this article are relatively new. Using cutting-edge technologies may be exciting, but it can also pose problems if you encounter technical issues. You may struggle to find an expert who has the know-how required to help resolve your problem. However, by opting for a React framework, you can request assistance from the large, and growing React community.

What You Should Look for in a React Framework

When using any web technology, it’s important to choose the right framework. Every framework has its own unique set of features, strengths, and weaknesses. Some frameworks are also better suited to particular kinds of projects.

In this article, we’ll share four React frameworks that have plenty to offer WordPress developers. However, the right framework will vary depending on your project. With this mind, here are some things to consider, when deciding whether a particular React framework is right for you:

• The setup process. Some frameworks are easier to setup than others. In particular, you should check whether the framework is pre-configured to work with WordPress. It’s also a good idea to verify whether the framework provides any additional tools needed to build your project.
• The learning curve. Mastering a new technology always requires time and effort, but some frameworks have a steeper learning curve than others. In particular, you should investigate whether there are any additional technologies you’ll need to learn, such as Redux, Webpack, Babel, and GraphQL.
• Compatibility or optimization. All the frameworks in this article are compatible with WordPress. However, some may require additional optimization, in order to deliver the best possible experience. Other frameworks, such as Frontity, are designed with WordPress firmly in mind. Frameworks that are optimized for WordPress shouldn’t require any major additional configuration.
• Flexibility or ease-of-use. Choice is a good thing, but all those extra settings can be confusing. When exploring new technologies, it’s smart to opt for a framework that’s beginner-friendly. However, it’s a good idea to consider how you might use this framework in the future. A framework should offer the advanced features and flexibility you’ll need to support your growing projects.

There’s another major decision to make when choosing your framework. This is the choice between Server-Side Rendering (SSR) and Client-Side Rendering (CSR).

Client Side Rendering or Server Side Rendering?

There are two approaches to rendering content: client-side, and server-side. Both have their own unique strengths and weaknesses.

CSR is where content renders in the browser. Instead of receiving all the content from a HTML document, the browser receives a bare-bones HTML document with a JavaScript file. The rest of the content will then render inside the web browser.

With CSR, the initial page load is typically slower, but subsequent page loads will be faster. A CSR framework can update the UI by re-rendering only the affected DOM element. You don’t have to reload the entire UI following every call to the server. This means the CSR is well-suited to websites that provide rich user interactions, or that feature lots of dynamic content.

The opposite of client-side, is server-side. With SSR, the user makes a request and the server prepares an HTML package for that specific user. The server sends this data to the user’s machine, and the browser then constructs the content and displays the webpage.

The process of fetching data, creating the HTML package, and delivering it to the browser happens very quickly. This means the initial page load is faster, which results in a better user experience.

By reducing page load times, SSR may provide a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) boost. SSR is also good for SEO, as it doesn’t require search engine bots to render JavaScript.

However, with SSR the page rendering is typically slower. New content will also require full page reloads, which can have a significant impact on your website’s performance. For this reason, SSR is better suited to static websites. It also isn’t ideal for sites that feature lots of complex user interactions, or dynamic content.

4 of the Best React Frameworks for WordPress Development

There are lots of React frameworks to choose from. Every project is different, but we’ve collected four React frameworks that we believe have plenty to offer WordPress developers.

1. Frontity

Frontity is an open source framework for React. Unlike other React frameworks that are compatible with WordPress, Frontity was designed specifically for WordPress.org and WordPress.com. This means that Frontity is pre-configured to provide the best possible experience for WordPress users.

As a server-side framework, Frontity stores all your content in HTML, then responds to requests with a fully populated and well-formed HTML page that’s immediately usable. This minimizes your site’s initial load time. The HTML file is also served to search engine crawlers. This keeps search engines such as Google happy, and helps you avoid SEO penalties.

Even if you’re using WordPress for a headless setup, you may still want to use the meta tags generated by a third-party SEO plugin. To help preserve your SEO, the Frontity team has created a REST API – Head Tags plugin. This plugin adds all the meta tags in your website’s HEAD section, to the REST API’s responses.

In addition, Frontity uses Serverless Pre-Rendering (SPR) to render HTML on the fly. By taking this approach, the Frontity team aims to combine the speed and reliability of static rendering with the versatility of dynamic data rendering. A Content Delivery Network (CDN) saves the HTML and serves it as static content.

Frontity is designed to be easy to use. This framework has its own state manager and uses Emotion for the CSS, so you don’t have to learn the complexities of technologies such as Redux. This makes Frontity a good choice for React newcomers, or anyone who’s looking to launch a project quickly without necessarily having to master additional technologies. In fact, you can build a web application using Frontity and WordPress in five easy steps.

2. Gatsby.js

According to a study by Critical Case, a one second increase in page load time can result in 11 percent less page views. If you’re concerned about your site’s performance, Gatsby is a static site generator that places the focus firmly on speed.

Gatsby builds your project into static HTML files that are optimized for performance, and also loads only the necessary CSS, HTML and JavaScript. After your website is loaded, Gatsby will then call upon any additional resources that it requires. This results in faster page loading speeds.

However, Gatsby is geared towards displaying static content. While it does allow for client side code, it has a steep learning curve compared to some other solutions. If you need to display large amounts of dynamic content, Gatsby may not be the best framework for your project.

For newcomers, the Gatsby team provides a helpful starter default project. This project contains code related to your website’s front end, including a site header and page template. It also automatically installs all the modules of code that your project will depend upon. This can save you a considerable amount of time when getting started. If you choose Gatsby as your framework, we’d recommend using the starter default project wherever possible.

However, if you opt for Gatsby you’ll need to trigger a build whenever you update your content. One solution is to deploy your website using the Netlify platform. You can use Netlify to create webhooks that will rebuild your project automatically whenever a new commit is pushed or merged to your repository’s master branch.

Alternatively, you can trigger a build using a WordPress plugin, such as WP Trigger Netlify Build. However, this rebuild process can add considerable complexity to your WordPress projects.

3. Next.js

Next.js is a minimalistic React framework. This framework renders applications on the client-side, but Next.js also supports SSR. This can help preserve your SEO, while also improving your project’s performance. Next.js can deliver an additional performance boost, thanks to its automatic server rendering and code splitting.

However, Next.js is an opinionated framework. This means the framework is designed to be easy to use – as long as you follow the path laid out for you. Deviate from this path, and an opinionated framework can suddenly become much less user-friendly.

This means Next.js isn’t the most flexible solution. For example, you may struggle to use a different router with your Next.js setup.

Before choosing Next.js as your framework, it’s a smart idea to consider how you might develop your project in the future. You can then read through the Next.js documentation, to decide whether this framework is compatible with your project’s roadmap.

If you do decide to use Next.js, you can install all the necessary software and start the development server from the command line. You’ll find detailed, step-by-step instructions, over at the official Next.js documentation.

4. Create React App (CRA)

The Create React App (CRA) is designed to get your React project up and running as quickly as possible. This tool offers a modern build setup with zero configuration. You just need to run a single command, and CRA will set up all the tools you need to start developing.

When you create a project with Create React App, it installs the latest version of React and React-DOM. It also installs the latest version of react-scripts, which is a development dependency that manages the other dependencies involved in starting, testing, and building your application.

CRA generates only the files needed to build your React project. You won’t have access to configuration files such as Webpack, Babel, and ESLint. This is great for anyone who wants to create a project without having to master additional technologies. Since CRA handles much of the configuration and setup for you, you’re free to concentrate on what really matters – building your project.

However, at some point you may need to perform more complex tasks that require access to these configuration files. Although CRA doesn’t provide these files by default, it does have an eject command. This copies all the configuration files and transitive dependencies into your project. However, this is a one-way operation that adds a significant amount of complexity to your project.

CRA projects are rendered on the client-side only. This means CRA isn’t suitable for developing highly-interactive websites, or projects that feature dynamic content. There’s also no code splitting, which is bad news for performance.

CRA is designed with ease-of-use in mind. If you do choose CRA as your React framework, you can create a new CRA project using only a handful of commands.

How to Host Your Completed React Project

Once you’re happy with your web application, you’ll want to share it with the world. Your options may vary depending on which React framework you chose to use in your project.

To provide users with the widest possible choice, the Frontity team ensures that their server code is small enough to work with serverless technologies. This means you can deploy your Frontity project to any Node.js server or serverless provider, including Vercel and AWS Lambda. Alternatively, since you’re using WordPress as the back end you may want to opt for your favorite WordPress hosting solution.

Conclusion

React is a hugely popular front end framework. However, with popularity comes lots of options – and choosing the best React framework for your project can feel overwhelming.

If you’re not sure where to start looking for a React framework, then check out any of the four choices we recommended earlier:

• Frontity. An open source, server-side framework that’s optimized for WordPress.
• Gatsby. A static site generator that prioritizes performance without sacrificing Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
• Next.js. A performance-focused, opinionated framework that transparently handles SSR.
• Create React App (CRA). A zero-configuration framework for when you need to create a React project, fast.

Technologies such as React can significantly boost your project’s performance, but why stop there? By opting for a hosting provider that prioritizes performance, you can supercharge your React project. If you’re lucky, then your hosting plan may even provide Turbo Servers that are 20X faster than competing WordPress hosting providers.

Image credit: Unsplash.

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That’s where Python comes in. It’s known for its emphasis on readability and an easy-to-use syntax that enables programmers to code quickly. It’s also fairly popular and suitable for a variety of different projects.

In this article, we’ll first look at what Python is. After that, we’ll cover its advantages, such as its excellent speed in building applications, extensive community development, and user-friendly data structures. Let’s jump in!

An Introduction to Python

Python is a popular programming language that is useful in several areas including web development, software development, mathematics, and scripting. It’s compatible with all major Operating Systems (OSs) – Windows, Mac, and Linux.

One of its core features is its syntax, which closely resembles the English language. As a result, programmers can develop applications with fewer lines of code when compared to some other languages.

Another core feature is Python’s interpreter system. It can execute code as soon as it’s written, which saves time when testing and prototyping new ideas.

The most recent version of the language is Python 3, although Python 2 is still quite popular.

3 Key Advantages of Using Python

Learning the ins and outs of Python can seem daunting at first. There are many aspects of the language to consider before making the commitment to incorporating it in your next project. To make this process easier, here are the three key advantages of using it.

1. It Provides Excellent Speed in Developing Applications

Python enables developers to quickly build applications by applying an Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) approach when writing their code. This method involves arranging the data and functions that comprise the code into logical subgroups, also referred to as a modular approach to programming.

Modular code is easy to use, reuse, and modify, which helps reduce development time. Additionally, Python combines the functions that act on data into a single structure, which makes it easy to find related parts of your code as they are physically close to each other in the code editor.

In short, some find that OOP in Python is an intuitive programming style. It helps new developers learn about objects and the relationships between them to pick up the language quickly.

2. Extensive Community Development Keeps It Well-Maintained

Another advantage of Python is that a large community of developers maintains it. There are over 8.2 million developers who use the language, and it’s still picking up speed in terms of gaining popularity.

Python has an open-source license, so it’s free to use and distribute for even commercial purposes. This makes it easier to start learning the language, as there’s a low barrier to entry. Anyone who has the time and wants to practice it can.

An extensive online community fosters Python’s development. These professionals and hobbyists collaborate using the Python GitHub repository, conferences, mailing lists, and groups on sites such as StackExchange.

The community also supports extensive public libraries of code for common components such as internet protocols, web service tools, and OS interfaces. By incorporating scripts found in these libraries, developers can save time in building applications as the community takes care of several high-level tasks.

3. User-friendly Data Structures Streamline Python Development

Python makes use of optimized structures for storing, accessing, and working with data.
Data structures define relationships between data and specify the operations developers can perform.

The three main data structures in Python are abstract, primitive, and non-primitive structures. An Abstract Data Type (ADT) specifies a set of operations and what they do. However, it does not specify how those operations are performed.

One advantage of ADTs is that you can write them once and then use them in a wide variety of applications. A common ADT is called the stack, which is a data structure that can contain multiple elements.

Primitive types are the most basic data structures as they contain simple values of data. The four primitive sub-types are:

• Strings: Store words and characters
• Boolean data types: Take up the values of either true or false
• Integers: Contain numeric data, specifically whole numbers
• Floats: Represent numbers with decimals and rational numbers

Non-primitive types derive from primitive types and offer increased functionality. The two non-primitive sub-types are:

• Lists: Store collections of diverse items
• Dictionaries: Store an indexed collection of elements

In essence, these structures enable developers to focus on the bigger picture of solving problems through the use of Python instead of becoming lost in the details.

Conclusion

Not all programming languages are easy to work with. Some have steep learning curves and limited use cases, which can make them impractical for beginner-level and experienced coders alike.

Python, however, provides several advantages for developing scripts and applications:

1. The language is excellent for developing projects quickly.
2. It has an extensive development community.
3. Python features user-friendly data structures.

Featured Images Credit: Pixabay.

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