Guide on Turning WordPress Site to Social Network With BuddyPress

Almost every business entity now a days is spending a lot of efforts and time to expand their reach in today's highly competitive and wobbly online marketplace. But, having your presence on social media networks can help you reach out to millions of users quickly than a traditional website. Social media platform can help your business gain spotlight you may have dreamed of.

So, if you've made up your mind on creating a social networking site and have selected WordPress as your choice of web development platform, then choosing a plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory is perhaps the first thing that you should consider.

There are a number of plugins out there good at building social network sites with large community, but at times, managing a large community can be distracting. Perhaps, you may need to create a small social network that doesn't demand a wide user base but comes with powerful functionality. In that case, “BudyPresss” is exactly what you need. It is a free plugin and fully compatible with WordPress.

In this post, we will talk about the steps involved in creating a social network website using BuddyPress. But before that, let's first discuss about a few benefits of BuddyPress.

Some Major Benefits of BuddyPress

Large Pool of Plugins Available. BuddyPress is one of the favorite and widely used plugin of webmasters. There are over 330 BuddyPress plugins to choose from, which enable you to extend functionality of the BuddyPress.

Offers Widgets. As we all know, widgets are fancy and powerful tools that helps us integrate extra functionality into WordPress website widget-ready areas. BuddyPress offers eight great widgets that help you perform some important tasks in a highly convenient manner.

The widgets are listed below:

• Members

• Who's Online

• Groups

• Recent Network wide Posts

• Friends

• Sitewide Notices
• Log In

Exchange Information in a Secure Manner

. Security of WordPress sites has always been a major concern among site owners. Thanks to BuddyPress, you can share critical business information using a password-protected approach, so that the information is available only to team members having access to it.

Turning Your Site Into a Social Network Site With BuddyPress

Step 1: BuddyPress Installation

BuddyPress installation process is quite simple. You just need to search for this plugin in the WordPress Plugin Directory. Once the plugin is located, click on install as shown below:

After the plugin has been installed, the BuddyPress welcome screen will pop up. 

Before getting started, it would be better to take a few seconds and think about the functionality of your social networking site you're creating with Buddypress. For instance, think about the core features you would like to add in your site including profiles creation, organization into groups, links, etc.

Step 2 - Configuring Features of Your Social Networking Website

Once you are clear about the features that you would like to add into your site, it's time to begin configuring BuddyPress functionality to fit your needs. For doing so, from your WordPress dashboard go to Settings>>BuddyPress and click on the Components tab.

When the settings page opens up, you will first have to configure he Components section. This section comes with a few default components. Luckily, you can remove the pre-installed components or may even use further components as per your requirements. However, it is recommended that you should avoid removing some default BuddyPress components, such as:

Extended Profiles

: It helps to expand the user profiles, by providing editable profile fields.

Member Account Settings:

This option allows registered users to make tweaks to their settings via their profiles.

Friend Connections:

This component option is similar to the “Facebook friending” or “Google+ Circling” functionality. It enables users to customize who they would like to keep within their feeds.

Activity Streams

: This component helps in generating customized streams such as the Twitter feeds or Facebook Newsfeed.

User Groups

: This option enables your users to organize different activity groups (public, private or hidden) who can talk about anything they wish to discuss.

Site Tracking

: You may want to organize your social network website usage statistics, you can do so using Site Tracking.

Step 3:

Configuration of Pages and Settings

Next, you'll need to configure the Page tab on the BuddyPress settings page. This section comprises of two parts: Directories and Registration. The directory part associates each WordPress page with BuddyPress pages – such as Activity Streams, User Groups, and Members.

The Registration part, on the other hand, help you create a sign-up and activation page.

Settings is the last tab on the settings page, and as the name implies, it helps in picking up the settings for profile, account deletion, toolbar, group creation, and lots more. You can configure the settings according to your needs.

Let's Wrap Up!

BuddyPress since the time of its inception has played a significant role in helping WordPress sites and blogs evolve to engaging and fully-functional social network. Hopefully reading the details covered in this post, including the benefits and the process of creating a social network site with BuddyPress will prove useful to you.

Author Biography:

Samuel Dawson has contributed this content and he has explained each & every step of how you can use social network in WordPress with the help of buddypress. Samuel has top quality methods and strategies to develop WordPress related things. He is the strong part of Designs2HTML Ltd which is responsible to Convert HTML to WordPress in few hours of time-frame. Samuel also shares various things on the web regarding web design and development.

PSD to HTML Conversion Service Reviews

When it comes to creating a professional looking and functional websites, no one can beat Designs2HTML. This company is a source of highly skilled and talented developers who are aware of the ins and outs of web development. Thanks to them, our website is working awesome and its search engine ranking is skyrocketing.

The attention that we received from this company is commendable. It posses a knowledgeable pool of developers who know even the minutest details of a project. I am highly satisfied and happy with their service.

1) James- I am really pleased with the service provided by Designs2HTML. I found this company professional from the core and their knowledge regarding current development trends is truly outstanding. Thank you guys!

Thank you Designs2HTML for your remarkable service, you did a great job. Keep it up!

2) Peter - What I really like about this company is their unique development and designing solutions that continue to please us. We gave them two websites to work on and the results are up to the mark. I would definitely prefer them for my upcoming projects.

The company and its team is simply amazing. Their conversion solutions are excellent and the results always move beyond our expectations. I got my entire website developed within two weeks and it is running flawlessly.

3) Christina - Designs2HTML deserves our best regards. Our project wasn't that easy as it had a very complex design and functionalities. However, the company tackled everything smoothly and there was no delay in the entire process. They also responded to my emails quickly and gave me useful suggestions to influence the future growth of my project.

4) Mark - I had a great experience working with this firm. They met all our expectations and completed my project smoothly. I will definitely recommend them to anyone interested in establishing a strong digital presence.

5) Andrew - It was such a great pleasure working with this company. They pay attention to multiple aspects of a project and went beyond to make sure everything works smoothly. They gave me exactly what I had always envisioned. Thank you for your outstanding service and unwavering support.

6) Sara Johnson- Designs2HTML impressed me with their professionalism and product management efficiency. They added innovative details to my project to strengthen my web presence. The managers of this company are extremely knowledgeable and know well what works and what's not- which is great. I also liked the way they promptly responded to my emails and kept me in touch with various development phases. Thank you so much!

7) Mitchel -My experience with this organization is memorable. I have worked with so many web development and designing companies and they are by far the most proficient and talented I have seen. Their knowledge is outstanding and their creative skills are exceptionally good. They are strongly recommended from my side.

Thank you Designs2HTML for your exceptional support and consultative development technique. From start to finish, we have seen a level of commitment and respect from the team. Giving our project details to these reliable minds really took our online business to the next level. Be remain as good as you are from so many years.

Conclusion:

The above PSD to HTML conversion service company Review that has made the clients overwhelmed with the performance of the firm in delivery of projects.

Step By Step Walk Through the PSD to HTML Conversion

Nowadays , a very simple rule exists that if you have a business, you must make sure that your business has an online presence via a unique website that represents your services on the web. In order to create a simple website, you must have a design and addition to that, an HTML converted from your design, which will be used as a static or dynamic website by nature. So, one of the most important aspects of getting a website built is to convert your design to a very basic web structure that a browser can understands – and that aspect happens to be HTML.

With this post, I intend to share essential steps you can't afford to miss when you are converting your PSD to HTML. I also assume that you are aware of HTML structure and code implementation which is required to understand this post:

1) Gather the basic working idea of your website

Understand what structure you want to have for your website, for instance, what buttons should be used, what kind of boxes should be implemented, which part of CSS is required to implement, and so on? This can help you in planning your HTML skeleton as well as the resources you will need to obtain after image slicing step.

2) Analyzing your PSD file or your design

PSD files represent the photoshop design documents. It's a universal format of developing designs by professionals around the world using a powerful tool called Photoshop. Analyzing your design means that you need to understand and objectify what elements are included in the PSD, what specific actions need to be associated with those elements, for example, whether yu want extra gradient with texts or how you want the design to be coupled with each other in form of layers or what background image (or images) do you wish to use so that you can further identify the exact element or pattern to be used in next step.

3) Slicing up the images

Till this point, you have a pretty good idea about what all elements can be managed directly by HTML like colors, borders or even gradient and what all elements you need use from your design files that is PSD. Start reviewing design files in terms of reusable material in accordance with to convert PSD to responsive HTML e.g. a small 1px image which should be implemented with repeat function of HTML, check for color codes using PSD which you will be using with HTML codes like RGB or alphanumeric color codes. Once the you are done with identifying those elements which you can not use directly in HTML and those elements which are essentially required as images. Now start extracting elements accordingly from your design files and save them with specific name structure you wish to have with your HTML.

4) Generate CSS and HTML structure

Once the images are sliced up and ready to be used, decide what HTML structure you should use like flexible width or fixed width, responsive or adaptive once you have decided your next step will be to create a basic skeleton using default tags of HTML like <header>, <footer>, <body> etc. Once the skeleton is in place, insert elements within that skeleton with the help of tags like <section>, <div>, <ul>, <li>. Now once the elements are listed in there you now need to style them with your CSS codes. This step involves minutely reviewing each of the inserted element and writing defined code for that element. Once you have assigned the style to each of the element your HTML of that page is almost ready to be used.

5) Finalize with test

This step will probably be the most important step after you completed your style. You need to check your created HTML with all of the browsers you have written style and HTML for. You will see different design breaks or missing elements with your HTML on different browsers. Create a list of all such issues and once you have checked your HTML on all browsers, it time to fix the issues from list. Keep repeating the process till you have your spot on HTML ready.

These are basic but necessary steps of creating a full HTML. In case you find it difficult enough to handle by your own, I would suggest you to discuss things with any professional or take his/her services to convert your designs to HTML. A browser compatible and hand coded HTML is what is considered as best quality HTML and industry standard so you need to make sure when you are checking HTML, it should reflect these qualities always.

Key Points To Ensure A Proficient PSD To HTML Conversion Service

Web presence has indubitably become essential in todays modern world. With the advent of advanced devices like Smartphones, wearables, tablets, etc., the significance of the Internet presence has exponentially augmented. As, the users are able to carry the Internet in their pockets, they can even access the desired stuff online as and when desired.

Thus, it is advisable to create a ravishing online presence and efficiently reach the colossal audience base. For the folks, who are interested in converting their dream design into reality, hiring a PSD to HTML conversion service is a great thought. However, it is essential to consider certain key points while streamlining your search for the suitable web development company.

Here are a few of the crucial points that must be considered beforehand.

• Check the code quality: You can review the previous work of the HTML developer before hiring the services to ensure a good quality job. A high end HTML coding involves clean, well-structured, hand coded and easily understandable code

• Must look for cross-browser compatibility: There is a plethora of mobile devices that run on different mobile platforms. Thus, to proficiently target the huge mobile user base, the cross-browser compatibility is essential.

• Adhere the deadlines: You must ask the selected web development company about the approximate turnaround time for the project. The turnaround time is the total time required to transform the Photoshop document (PSD) into the HTML. The company that ensures the minimum time must be considered.

• Ensure an online order form: It is advisable to check whether the company offer an online order form or not. If it doesn't offer, look out for other suitable company that does. The online order form is quite significant as it includes all the project requirements, client details and comprises all the essential info like project cost, turnaround time, etc.

• Review the company portfolio: By reviewing the company's portfolio well in advance, you can get an idea about the quality of work that it delivers. By thoroughly examining the work done by the company so far, you will get a pretty much info about their work style and capabilities.

• Payment plans: It is imperative to go through the payment plans offered by the company. By doing so, you can seek for the most lucrative solution.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• Customer service support: Additional services like customer support for 24 x 7 hours either via mail, online chat or call could be quite beneficial to you. A web development company that offers troubleshooting or technical support even after the completion of the project could be a viable choice. You never know when technical help will be needed in the future.

• Reliable: The hired must be highly reliable. This is necessary because the web page design often incur highly confidential and secret stuff. Thus, to ensure complete security to your secret info from your competitors, it is essential to invest in a reputed and reliable service provider.

• Non-Disclosure document: As mentioned in the above point, reliability is an extremely important factor. Thus, to ensure superior reliability, it is better to sign a non-disclosure document with your service provide. Hence, it is recommended to verify before hiring their services whether the chosen company will offer a non-disclosure document or not.

These are a few of the significant key points, considering which you can ensure the best HTML developer for your project.

Why You Should Choose PSD to WordPress Conversion?

People find WordPress great, owing to the opportunities it provides to customize the website to meet specific wants and needs. There are tons of plugins available online that helps to incorporate additional functionality into your site. In addition, there are numerous themes that enable you to modify the look and feel of your site. And because of the popularity of this CMS, you can easily find web development companies offering quality WordPress development services.

However, in case you want to move your existing site on a WP platform or planning on designing a WordPress powered site from scratch, you can PSD to WordPress conversion service.

Wondering why?

There are a lot of benefits you get by converting your PSD to WordPress, such as:

• It gives you better control over your website design. When creating a Photoshop document, all the elements are slice into layers, you can directly access the layer that contains the element you want to edit. In fact, you can add only relevant elements to the design and get rid of the unwanted ones. This makes your site load quickly.

• Manually converting a PSD to WP themed site ensures that your site has clean and clutter-free code. This is because, the sliced PSD layers need to be hand-coded into HTML and CSS file formats. Hand-coding a theme makes it bug-free. What's more, search engines can easily understand the clean and and well-written code.

• The transformation helps in making your site compatible across new platforms and advanced browser versions.

Although, there are softwares available online that helps in converting PSDs to WP website but there is a downside to using such softwares. They automatically generate the codes, which are faulty and contains bugs (until you are spending on using the best website converter). And so, choosing a web development firm for the job can deliver you optimal results within your budget.

Also Read - Which One is Most Effective: HTML or WordPress?

But make sure to take your time and select only the best markup conversion service provider. Below are a few tips you should consider when hiring a professional for your conversion project:

• Choose one having good experience and expertise in varied types of markup conversions.

• Check out the portfolio to get an idea of the kind of projects they have completed so far.

• Make sure that the company you are about to finalize comprises of a team of skilled and trained developers. Also, make sure they are using the advanced tools and latest methodologies to perform the conversion.

Conclusion

Converting PSD to HTML or WordPress conversion services provides you an affordable way to develop a WP powered site. Moreover, the website is hand-coded and contains clean codes, thereby making it easy for the users as well as search engines to navigate throughout the code easily. Also, this conversion method helps in making your designs free from bugs. Still can't decide whether to opt for PSD to WordPress conversion or not, hopefully reading this article will help you make an informed choice.

5 Signs You are Addicted to Wordpress Plugins and Reasons Why The Addiction is Dangerous

If you have been on the Wordpress turf from quite a while, you need no introduction to the Wordpress plugins. They are a rage among webmasters, and for all the right reasons. Wordpress plugins have indeed empowered the website owners without any sort of coding knowledge bulk their website up with features that seemed inconceivable a few years back – unless you are a topnotch developer yourself.

But all said and done, we have come to a stage where the WP plugins are being overused to a point where from they are doing the websites more bad than good. There no dearth of webmasters who would simply download and install plugins because they are there to be downloaded and installed. These webmasters often find themselves tempted with the flurry of plugins – the popular ones as well as the latest entries – and the next thing they know, their website is bogged down by dozens of them.

And if you are wondering whether or not you fit the description for such webmasters, here are 5 signs to look out for:

You Have a Faint Idea of Their Features

So, you saw 5 stars below a plugins name and 4 lines of description filled with gibberish jargons that you didn't bother to understand, simply because all of it sounded rather too impressive. If the above three lines resonate with you, you have your first sign.

You Started Your Website Barely a Month Ago, And You Already Have a Dozen of Plugins

Now, this may not be the case with every website owner, but does happen with a whole lot of them. On their discovery of everything new in Wordpress, they want to try everything out.

Most of the Time You Spend on Your Website is Dedicated to Updating the Plugins

That's the saddest part. The website was meant to be a product of your labor, but that labor is being dedicated to something which should only constitute a small part of your effort.

You Have Multi-Faceted Plugins that You Hardly Use for a Feature or Two

Now, there are plugins out there that would provide you a bit of everything – SEO functionality, website speed optimizer, email subscription form and newsletter building, social media integration and a lot more. Apparently, for each of the features, there are individual plugins are out there which happen to be much more reliable. And yet, you have this bulky plugin increasing the load on your server.

You Have Installed Plugins that Will be of Some Use One Fine Day

Oh we all are guilty of this one. At some corner of our “installed plugins” list, there are plugins that we installed either just for the heck of it, or because we heard someone reciting homilies about them. So even when don't need them right now, they have found a place in the list because they will be required at some point inn future.

Why Having an Unnecessary Abundance of Plugins is Not Recommended

The age old adage goes like “too many cooks spoil the broth”, and same holds a great relevance as far as the case of WP plugins is concerned. Having too many plugins on the back-end of your website only crowds it and hampers your website's speed and loading time by a great extent. Some plugins are unarguably important for your website's functionality, but not an abundance of them. And then, there are plugins that are remarkably incompetent, despite the heavy files they download to your server. Letting them occupy that space is pointless and you are doing nothing more than hurting your own chances of getting a decent following for your site.

Your website may boast some incredibly valuable content and eye-catchy design, but if it is not fast enough, you are only going as far as spoiling the user experience. And once the user experience takes a hit, no amount of firefighting will come to your rescue. Thus, list down all the plugins you don't need at present and flush them away from your system. A clear, clutter-free website is what will hold you in good stead for the future. 

If some doubts are still there in your mind then please contact Designs2HTML Ltd for your inquiries.

How Photoshop to HTML Conversion Paves Way for Stunning Websites

Photoshop and HTML do enjoy a lot of fanfare among the web development community, simply for the fact that one lays the foundation of creating a pixel rich website, and the other builds upon that foundation to give the idea of website a true shape and form.

Now, website development is a serious business, and also one that involves a range of other factors as well. So, when you set to create a website, particularly using the photoshop with a hyper text markup language , i.e  PSD to HTML conversion services  , you need to take into account the fact that the website may be needed to go under the process of customization in the near future. And PSD and HTML are most perfectly suited for you to inject certain spreads in your web applications, without hampering the core functionality of your website. Both these technologies give the developers and designers a perfect wherewithal to play around with their web solutions and make sure the final product is not only visually appealing, but honors the requisites like the requirements of the target audience, the user-friendliness of the complete website, the domain relevancy and so on. It is due to the concoction of all these factors that website development professionals have been able to so perfectly deliver exactitude and precision in their offerings.

The combination of photoshop with HTML has meant that the web developers and designers have more than ever options at their behest when it comes to creating dynamic and fully featured websites.

Now, it proves to be handy when we know how to slice the PSD files and turn them into HTML documents. That's how we kickstart the process of coding the web templates. Now, this is a not so direct procedure and would need you to be skilled and seasoned in web designing and development. For novices, there is a great probability of making errors and thus ending up with a template that is dysfunctional.

On the other hand, you have web templates in the already in the HTML form and they have in-built pages and images. Modifying them and the images is easier in such a scenario. HTML web templates are customizable and you enjoy a free rein over tailoring them for suiting your creative sensibilities or making it fall in line with the requirements of your users. With an unadulterated investment of creativity, you can surely turn the template on its head and create a website that is non formulaic and highly inventive.

HTML5, in particular, has been gaining ground thick and fast. There have been some amazing updates made to the HTML structure and the features added here have helped the developers and designers truly transform the HTML based web solutions and create a mass appeal for their products.

So, when you are looking to create an HTML powered website using a photoshop file, be absolutely certain you hire PSD to wordpress conversion experts. Without an expert eye, your HTML template might find itself scrambling for features that can otherwise perch your website up and ahead of the competition.