Category: WordPress

Backup is equivalent to a lifeline for any WooCommerce store. People prefer not to take a backup but end up taking it anyway.

As the number of websites grows, frauds and scams become increasingly common. There’s a lot that may need to be corrected with an eCommerce store. From insecure checkout or a single bug can cause you thousands of dollars and customer value.

Have you imagined what would happen if your WooCommerce shop crashed or went offline unexpectedly?

Just think about the time, hard work, and dedication that went into creating and maintaining your eCommerce store. In addition, the loss of potential customers and revenue.

This guide will cover why you should back up your WooCommerce store and the methods to help you do it.

Why you should back up your WooCommerce site

You may lose sales every minute your online store goes off. Having a regular backup process ensures that you access the latest data. In case your website crashes, the backup data can be quickly restored.

A stat from Statica shows the average cost per hour of enterprise server downtime in 2020.

There are some common scenarios why you need a backup for your WooCommerce shop –

• Hackers

Usually, hackers use malware attacks to get access to your eCommerce site. Such an attack can keep your website down for a while, and that’s enough to drive your customers.

• Human error

Human error is one of the top reasons for unplanned downtime. In an eCommerce business, a mistake can cost you thousands of dollars, and this type of error can result in hours of unplanned downtime.

• Traffic rush

Almost every eCommerce store owner experiences this issue. Usually, it happens in the festive seasons or when you have discounts or offers on your product.

• Hosting issues

Cheap hosting services have limitations, and they compromise security. Many online store owners mistake opting for a cheaper hosting service even after they started making profits.

• WooCommerce updates

WooCommerce regularly releases new updates and security patches. You could face incompatibilities between plugins, extensions, and even custom code. It is recommended by the WordPress team itself to always have your complete site backup before updating.

Methods to backup your WooCommerce store

Now that you know the importance of taking real-time backups for your WooCommerce store, it’s time to look at the best way.

There are different ways to backup your site, including –

• Automated backup using WordPress plugins
• Using the backup service of your web host
• Take manual backups.

Let’s evaluate these methods in detail and decide which is best for your WooCommerce site.

     1. Backup using a WordPress plugin

Using a backup plugin is the easiest way to back up your website.  WordPress backup plugins offer an easy way to back up your WooCommerce shop.

Many plugins like UpdraftPlus, BackWPup, Duplicator, and All-in-one WP Migration have made it easy to manage backups. We’ll show the process using the UpdraftPlus WordPress Backup plugin for demonstration purposes.

Back up your WooCommerce site using the UpdraftPlus plugin

• Head to your WordPress dashboard.
• Navigate to Plugins → Add New.
• Install and Activate the UpdraftPlus plugin.

• Now, the UpdraftPlus Backup option appears in Settings.

• At this stage, you need to set your backup policies here.
• The Settings tab lets you schedule file and database backup.
• Once done, navigate to the Backup / Restore tab and click on Backup Now.

• A pop-up will appear with a few options.
• Select your desired option and click on Backup Now
• You’ll see a progress bar. Wait for a few moments.

Once the process is done, you can see your existing backups. After that, you can download, delete or restore your backup with a single click.

     2. Backup with the hosting provider

Most website hosting providers offer a backup and restore solution. You can check your web host service to see if this is free or chargeable. However, they usually offer only daily backups.

But finding a host that provides real-time backup would be challenging. When it comes to WooCommerce stores, you need a real-time backup.

We will show you how to back up a site using some best web hosting for demonstration purposes.

Backup with WPEngine

To access the Backup points page of WPEngine –

• Head to the User Portal
• Select your desired environment name
• Click on the Backup Points

 From this dashboard, you’ll be able to back up, restore, and download your backup files.

Backup with SiteGround

To access the SiteGround backup page-

• Navigate to Site Tools
• Click on the Backups under the Security menu
• Fill in the backup name from Create & Restore tab
• Hit the Create button and wait for a few minutes.

Backup with DreamHost

 DreamHost provides one-click backups to all customers and automated daily backups for managed DreamPress plans.

 To access your backup as a DreamPress customer –

• Head to your account
• Select DreamPress from the WordPress drop-down in the sidebar
• Find the domain you want to backup and click the Manage button.

If you still have any issues, contact their support team for help.

Note: don’t forget to check whether the hosting provides a real-time backup. As we have discussed before, regular backups are not ideal for WooCommerce stores. 

     3. Backup your site manually

The manual process of website backup is not too complex, but it can be risky. Moreover, it is time-consuming and involves a lot of steps.

Still, if you want to backup manually, follow these typical steps:

• Connect to your web server using an FTP tool and download all your files.
• Create a backup of all your downloaded files in a destination folder.
• Then create a backup of all your database files using the phpMyAdmin tool or the database management panel.

Manual backups may not be a practical solution if you manage multiple WooCommerce stores, as it can take a long time to create just one backup.

Note: You need to have the necessary technical knowledge and time in hand to perform manual backups.

Conclusion

Backing up your WooCommerce store can save you time and eliminate frustration.

A daily backup is sufficient for regular websites, though more is needed for a WooCommerce store. That’s why we recommend you create a full backup before making any major changes to your site.

Prevention is the best solution. Create a staging environment for your WooCommerce store to help you test any changes.

 

Starting a WooCommerce store is straightforward. You need to purchase a domain, get the hosting, and add the WooCommerce plugin to your WordPress site.

That’s quite simple. It is one of the reasons why WooCommerce is often preferred over other eCommerce platforms. 

However, a store has to be fast and an excellent experience for the visitors to drive more sales.

In this article, we will discuss several ways to speed up your WooCommerce store.

Why speed matters for WooCommerce stores

Before diving into the steps of how to speed up a WooCommerce store, it’s essential to understand why performance is so crucial.

The top reason is user experience. It determines the success or failure of the online business. Your potential customers expect your online shop to load quickly.

Moreover, it should be easier to navigate and perform specific actions like -product search, update cart, and checkout process.

The site visitors do not have the patience for the slow-loading shopping experience. They like to abandon for a better alternative store quickly.

Google’s benchmark for the mobile speed shows, the probability of a visitor leaving a website is as follows:

That’s why it is essential to speed up your WooCommerce store to attract new customers and to retain the existing ones.

How to measure the loading speed

You have learned that your WooCommerce store’s speed is crucial in your eCommerce conversion. The next step is to find out what is causing a slow website.

A website speed test will help you analyze how slow or fast your site loads. Also, it will identify any possible bottlenecks that are causing poor performance—for example, connection data rate and latency.

There are several ways to run a site speed test for the WooCommerce store. We recommend some tools like Pingdom, Webpagetest, GTmetrix, and PageSpeedInsights. These tools will help you get multiple performance metrics of your site.

Apart from the front page, make sure to test all the main pages of your website. It’s a common mistake that many users only test the mostly static front page.

Effective ways to speed up WooCommerce store

Depending on the speed test results you have uncovered, it’s time to optimize your slow WooCommere website.

In most cases, you can fix a slow WooCommercce store by checking a few key things. Let’s take a look at the below tips:

1. Get a quality hosting provider

The hosting service is the foundation of the website as it handles all traffic and relevant data. Low-quality service may damage your WooCommerce store performance.

Though, web hosting is not a primary concern in the earliest stage of a store’s life. However, you’ll need to pay attention depending on your site traffic and transactions.

A WooCommerce store needs a hosting provider that offers – maximum uptime without any interruptions. You need excellent hosting service if you want your pages to load fast.

2. Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)

The integration of a CDN into your site is one of the easiest ways to improve web performance.

A Content Delivery Network is a network of servers located all over the world. The goal of CDN is to store static files of your WooCommerce website like JavaScript, images, and CSS.

It is useful when your targeted customers are spread in different countries. The process helps you to boost your store performance. The closer your customer is to a server, the faster your site will load on their browser.

3. Use a Cache plugin

Caching is essential because it reduces your WordPress hosting servers’ load and makes your site run faster.

By caching, a version of the WooCommerce store’s resource is stored on the visitor’s device. It reduces the amount of data sent between the visitor’s browsers, the server and, the site database. Hence, it speeds up the process.

But, caching plugins improve your site’s loading speed when it’s configured correctly. If they are not set up correctly, then the plugins are very often problematic. 

4. Compress product images

High-quality images are essential for a website, possibly even more for any online store, especially when showcasing galleries and carousels to your visitors.

But, high-quality images generally mean larger file sizes, and larger file sizes can make your WooCommerce store slow. Many store owners make the mistake of using un-optimized pictures that severely impact the performance.

A good practice is to reduce the size of the image to deal with such a situation. You can use WooCommerce image compression tools. If you are familiar with photo editing software, you can optimize your images using one of them.

5. Clean the database

During the life of your WooCommerce store, your database is going through a lot of information such as – products, orders, settings, etc.

That’s not a big deal in the beginning. However, after few months of existence on the web, loading times could be slow due to database issues. The size of your database can affect your WooCommerce site performance.

In that situation, you’ll need to do some clean-up. You can do the task manually using your cPanel. There are a couple of plugins as well that makes the optimization process much more manageable.

6. Increase WordPress memory limit

The WordPress memory limit is the maximum amount of memory (RAM) that your site can use at a time. You will encounter a fatal error when your site reaches the allocated memory limit.

By default, the memory limit is 32MB for WordPress. This limit might be enough for any small WooCommerce stores with a limited number of visitors and plugins. 

However, increasing your memory limit would be a wise action to take if you need to install a fully functional theme and an extensive list of custom plugins.

You can use the following steps to configure the WordPress memory limit:

Method 1: using the wp-config.php file

• Find your wp-config.php file in the root directory of your WP installation.
• Open the wp-config.php file with a text editor. Then locate the line that includes – define(‘WP_DEBUG’, false);
• Add the line of code – define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, 256M’);
• Save the changes.

Method 2: using the php.ini file

• Open your php.ini file and then edit using your favorite editor.
• If your line shows 64M, try 256M: memory_limit=256M.

The maximum amount of memory a script may consume is 64MB.

7. Choose lightweight theme

Selecting a theme isn’t easy, especially for beginners who discover WordPress. In many cases, the aesthetic decision of a website is on the designers’ end who doesn’t care about the page load speed.

There are many themes available where developers inject much code into pages to achieve a specific layout. It’s a best practice to check out your theme is well coded and following WordPress standards.

8. Choose the right plugin

Performance issues are sometimes related to plugin loads. As the plugins are developed independently, you have little control over their quality. A poorly-developed plugin may eat up too much memory.

To check if a plugin is making your store slow, you can deactivate all the installed plugins. After that, reactivate each one by one until you find a potential cause.

Please read this linked guide; it will help you make the right decision on choosing the right plugin.

Time to fix

In this article, we have discussed some common issues that make a WooCommerce site slow. Also, we have covered some practical ways to speed up your online shop.

Now, it’s time to fix these issues on your side. If you find this post helpful, please comment below about which technique worked for your WooCommerce store.

WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms today. It is powering millions of sites. The ability to customize WordPress with themes and plugins extensively makes it the most popular CMS.

Extensions make incredible things possible with WordPress and can take your WooCommerce powered store to new heights. It allows you to add new features and grow your online business.

On the other hand, plugins can be problematic. There are tons of free and premium plugins that you can use. But, not all of them are good. It can be difficult for you to choose which plugins are suitable for your website with so many options.

Moreover, a rogue update, an incompatibility between two extensions, an untested bit of code can make your fully functional website completely inoperable.

But, how do you choose the right plugin for your WooCommerce store?

You should evaluate it against a list of pre-established criteria before installing a plugin. This evaluation doesn’t have to take long, and you can set your own criteria.

In this guide, we will share a few things that will help you make the right decision when it comes to choosing a plugin.

Before we get started, learn why it matters to evaluate a plugin before installation.

Why evaluation matters

There are over 58K+ free plugins available on the WordPress plugin directory. Also, plenty of other premium plugins you will find on other platform.

You have little control over its quality because the plugins are developed independently.

Sometimes you might face common issues such as poor development, incompatibility with your WordPress version, lack of support, and compatibility issue with other themes and plugins.

• Causing 500 errors
• Crushing the website
• Taking too much memory
• Making the site unresponsive

Some of the common issues encountered while using such plugins are:

That’s why it is vital to make the proper evaluation when it comes to choosing a plugin.

You can test some common environments—for example, WooCommerce with the latest WordPress version and a popular caching plugin.

Choose the right WordPress WooCommerce plugin

We will show you some simple ways to choose the right WordPress WooCommerce plugin for your store.

Examine your need

At this stage, ask yourself if it’s essential to install the plugin.

Before choosing any plugin, it is best to create a list of features and functionalities your site currently needs.

For example, you may want a plugin that focuses on SEO performance if you have launched your site recently. You may also want a contact form plugin that does a lot of heavy lifting.

If you have had your WooCommerce site for a while, you may have already noticed the features that would make your store better to improve sale.

Note: This list aims to focus on what is your top priority instead of installing tons of plugins that are not helpful for your site.

To get plugins from WordPress repository, head to the WordPress.org site and search from the Plugins tab.

Verify its legitimacy

The popularity of WordPress plugins has overgrown. The nature of an open-source platform allows anyone to create a plugin and publish it.

The WordPress plugin directory is a great place to search for your desired plugin.

For example, you sell variable products on your WooCommerce shop. You can simply search with the keyword ‘variations.’

Though free plugins hosted on the WordPress repository have to be reviewed, tested, and then approved. But this standard is not necessarily upheld by some independent developers.

That’s why you need to explore further. Such as finding details, reviews, support, installation, development information. A simple search will help you get a detailed overview of what the plugin does and how it can be helpful for your site.

If it’s a premium plugin, you’ll need to do a little more fact-checking. By doing a Google search, you can find reviews of individual plugins and can learn more about them.

There are lots of opinion blogs review on plugins. So it will also help you to find valuable information or feedback in their comment section.

Ratings and User Reviews

The easiest way to choose the right plugin is to investigate the plugin by checking the user rating. You can find these ratings under the Details tab of every plugin description page within the plugin repository.

We highly recommend you to stay away from the plugins that don’t even have an at least average of 4 stars.

It is best to use a plugin with a rating of 4 and above. However, you’ve got to be careful if a plugin is rated five but just a single user rating.

Before installing a plugin, we recommend reading a handful of the most recent highest and lowest review ratings to get a taste of the plugin.

You can find reviews on the Reviews tab, located below the Download button.

Check when the plugin was updated

One of the easiest ways to guard against security is to look at when the plugin was updated. It’s less likely to be secure when its developer doesn’t regularly update a plugin.

A plugins should ideally be updated in line with WordPress major updates to ensure it’s compatibility. Moreover, the consistency and regularity of updates is also an excellent way to gauge the plugin developer’s level of active involvement.

The best practice is to choose plugins frequently updated, at least within the past one or two months. Also, check if it’s operating on the latest WordPress version.

The WordPress repository show exactly when a plugin was last updated on the description page.

Plugin compatibility check

It’s also wise to check the plugin’s compatibility with your version of WordPress before installing anything.

Once again, head to the plugin description page. Here you can see which versions of WordPress can run the plugin:

Plugins that are not compatible with your WordPress version may stop existing plugins from functioning. In the worst-case scenario, they can even crash your website.

That’s why we strongly advise you to pay close attention to the compatibility issue.

To check which WordPress version you are running, head to the dashboard on your WordPress backend. After that, scroll to the bottom right corner of the page.

The same way you can check the WooCommerce version you are using, navigate to the WooCommerce menu. Then click on the Status from the drop-down list.

Note: Look out on the WordPress repository, if there is a warning at the top of the screen saying ‘this plugin has not been tested with your current version of WordPress.’

Check out the changelog

The changelog will let you know what features are added with each update.

Generally, a lot of progress in the changelog means the plugin developer is actively trying to make the plugin better.

WordPress provides a log of all previous updates under the Development tab. Here you can exactly see what the developer has been up to since the plugin’s initial release:

Track down support

Is your plugin looking good so far? Great! If the answer is yes.

But who will you turn to if you have a problem with it?

That’s why you need to check if there is a way to contact. If the plugin is hosted on the WordPress repository, you can check out the support forum there.

All plugins on the WordPress plugin repository have a support forum within the Support tab:

It’s a good sign if you can spot regular activity within those forums. That means the developer is actively working to solve user issues.

You can also check out their website for further detail about support. Many developers handle plugin support externally. They aren’t a fan of the WordPress.org support system.

Besides, check what kind of documentation they offer. The FAQ tab is an excellent place to do your search:

Test it out

We assume you have followed all the tips and got your desire plugin for your WooCommerce store.

Now it’s time for you to go ahead and install it. You need to test if the plugin best suits your requirements. Usability test is essential as well. 

It’s probably the best way to test them out in a staging environment. Create a staging site to install, deploy, and test the plugin before adding it to your live WooCommerce store.

Final Words

Choosing the right plugins for your WordPress WooCommerce website is crucial for you. It involves a bit of research and consideration to choose the right plugin.

Have you applied any further inspections to plugins before you install them? If yes, please let us know in the comments section below.

WordPress offers you the flexibility and freedom to build any kind of website. With the help of WordPress plugins, you can develop an online store, auction site, membership site, etc.

Most WordPress developers use the English language when developing plugins. On the other hand, there are millions of non- English WordPress users as well. Therefore, it is difficult for many users to use them.

However, WordPress plugins are fully translation ready and can be easily translated in the world. Thus, translating a plugin to another language is not impossible.

In this tutorial, we will show you how to easily translate the WooCommerce Variation Swatches plugin using Loco Translate plugin. Before we start with the translation process, I am going to explain some benefits of the WooCommerce variation swatches plugin –

Variation Swatches plugin for WooCommerce

WooCommerce Variation Swatches is a WordPress plugin that turns product attribute select dropdown into beautiful swatches. It will turn your variation selection dropdown menu into the button, color, image, and radio button swatches.

Additionally, the color, label, image attributes will be visible in the product quick view. You can choose between rounded and squared swatches style shape. Also, it has an awesome tooltip feature on the variation swatch hover.

Furthermore, the plugin is ready to translate. The good thing is that, most top WordPress plugins are translation ready.

Translate WooCommerce Variation Swatches Plugin

WordPress doesn’t have inbuilt translation tools. But, you will get a few useful translation plugins in the WordPress directory to translate plugins.

There are many ways of translating the WooCommerce Variation Swatches plugin. In this tutorial, we are going to use the most popular method –

Translate using Loco Translate Plugin

Loco Translate can be considered the most suitable plugin for translation.

Loco Translate plugin helps to translate Variation Swatches plugin and it is very convenient as it takes care of all technical aspects including file creation, synchronization, and many more.

The plugin allows you to translate the WooCommerce Variation Swatches plugin easily. You will be able to translate the plugin inside your WordPress admin area. Your translations will immediately take effect on your online store.

Let’s get started…

Before you can translate your WooCommerce Variation Swatches, you’ll have to install & activate the Loco Translate plugin from your WordPress Dashboard.

3 different methods of installing WordPress plugins are discussed in this article.

We have also created a video tutorial on the same topic. If you prefer video over text then you can check our video tutorial below.

First, you need to change the language of your WordPress according to your particular language.

Head to General under Settings from your WordPress admin dashboard. From the drop-down menu, choose your particular language and Save Changes.

Then navigate to Plugins from Loco Translate to start translating the swatches plugin.

There will be a list of plugins available for translation. Click on the Variation Swatches for the WooCommerce plugin from the list to translate.

On the next screen, you need to add your language by clicking on the ‘New language’ button at the top.

You need to choose your language on the new language page.  Here you will get two options – WordPress language and Custom language.

You can choose the language into which you want to translate the plugin from the dropdown menu in the WordPress language option. For demonstration purposes, I am choosing the Italian language for translation.

Then, choose where you want to store the translation files. Loco Translate plugin will recommend saving the file in its folder by default. But you can change that location.

Click on the Start translating button to continue once you have configured your settings.

On the next step, you’ll get available string options for the Variation Swatches plugin that you can translate.

For demonstration purposes, here we are showing translation for a sting ‘Swatches Settings’. Click on the Save button once done.

Make sure you have already changed the language of your WordPress installation according to that particular language.

Once you are done, check the result of the strings where you have made a change. Follow the same process to translate other strings of this WooCommerce Variation Swatch plugin.

Final Thoughts

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to translate Variation Swatches for the WooCommerce plugin using loco translate. If you have gone through this guide, translating WooCommerce Variation Swatches plugin to another language will not be difficult.

There are many other ways of translating the WooCommerce Variation Swatches plugin. If you have found any better option than Loco Translation, let us know in the comment section.

WordPress is the most popular Content Management System. But it comes with only the basic features to get your website online.

However, the unique part of WordPress is its vast number of plugins that allow you to add more features to your site. There are tons of free and premium plugins that you can choose to fully customize your WP website.

The need for plugins is increasing continuously. If you are using WordPress, you have to deal with plugins at some point.

Hiring experts to get install a plugin might not be an option in all scenarios. That’s why you need to know the step to installing WordPress plugins.

Here, I will discuss 3 different methods of installing WordPress plugins.

Before that, make sure to install WordPress on your computer.

In the following example, we are going to use the WooCommerce plugin. It’s the most popular WordPress plugin to build an eCommerce store.

Install a plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory (admin dashboard)

The simple and easiest way to install plugins on your WordPress site is to use your WordPress dashboard.

The steps are:

• Go to ‘Plugins’ from the left side admin panel and navigate to ‘Add New’
• You’ll find several tabs that let you switch the list of available plugins.
• Use the top right-hand corner of the search field to find your desired plugin. ( I am showing WooCommerce as an example).
• Simply click on the ‘Install Now’ button.

• Once the plugin is installed, the button label will be changed from ‘Install Now’ to ‘Activate’.
• Click on the blue ‘Activate’ button.
• The plugin will be installed, activated and ready to use.

To check and configure the settings of your installed plugins, go to ‘Installed Plugins’ from the ‘Plugins’ section.

You have successfully installed the WooCommerce plugin. Now, it’ll take the basic WordPress operating system to turn into a fully functioning eCommerce store.

 Install a plugin using the upload option (manually)

The best option for installing a premium WordPress plugin is to upload it manually. Premium plugins can’t be installed by using the first method. Moreover, paid plugins are not listed in the WordPress plugin directory.

Before following other steps, you need to purchase your desired plugin from a valid source. I have purchased WooCommerce Variation Swatches and, in the following example, I am going to use this plugin. It is the most popular attribute variation swatches plugin in the WordPress plugin directory.

You may have started using WooCommerce for your online store, and selling physical products like watches, clothes, shoes or anything else. This plugin will help you to turn product variation into color, button, and image as swatches.

Follow these steps to install:

• Download the plugin from the source (.zip file)
• Head to your WordPress dashboard.
• Navigate to the ‘Add New’ page under the ‘Plugins’ section.
• Click on the ‘Upload Plugin’ button on the top of the page.
• Now select the plugin by clicking on ‘Choose File’. 
• Once the file is selected, click on the ‘Install Now’ button.

It’ll take some time before the plugin is installed. You’ll see the ‘Activate Plugin’ button when it is done. Press that button.

Install a WordPress plugin manually using FTP

The third way to install WordPress plugins is by using FTP (a File Transfer Protocol). This process is slightly complicated as compared to the other two ways. There are several options for FTP, like FileZilla, FireFTP and etc. Here, I am using FileZilla to show you the process.

Steps to be followed:

• Download the plugins source file and extract the zip file on your computer.
• Establish an FTP connection to your hosting account using login credentials.
• Navigate and access the path /wp-content/Plugins/
• Open the folder where you store the plugin’s file from the ‘Local Site’ panel.
• Upload the extracted folder from the zip file to your site’s plugin directory.

• Once the file is uploaded, visit the WordPress admin dashboard.
• Activate the plugin by clicking on the ‘Activate’ link button.

Once activated, then you may need to configure the plugin settings.

In this article, various methods to install WordPress plugins have been shown. Each of them is different and varies from beginner level to advanced level of difficulty. We hope this guide was helpful to you. So, what are you waiting for?

In addition, you can check out some of the useful WooCommerce plugins for your store that we highly recommend to use. If you still have any queries, feel free to ask in the comment section.