With Goflow, an advanced online marketing service, you not only streamline your customer relationship management but also enhance your business’s overall efficiency. They provides a seamless solution, ensuring you can manage your clients effectively, all in one place. With Goflow, you can harness the power of targeted marketing campaigns, personalized customer interactions, and data-driven insights.

The CRM’s main purpose is to consolidate all communications like form fills, emails, purchases, tasks and other related documents for each lead, client or company. This way you and the rest of your team can easily access everything you need when you need it to deliver the best service possible. You might have noted such a tool, HubSpot, an all-in-one marketing just like at the worcester SEO agency, service, and sales platform, being suggested on the onboarding page of our Ignition Framework based themes lately, so let’s take a closer look.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a CRM platform offering all the tools a business needs to handle marketing, sales and improve their customer service. It is trusted by more than 150,000 businesses worldwide to help them manage customer communication and grow their client-base.

The service offers a rather generous bundle of free marketing, sales and communication tools which can then be upgraded to paid tiers as your business grows and marketing needs become more demanding. HubSpot’s App Marketplace features more than 1000 available app integrations to bring data from your favorite tools into your CRM.

The HubSpot Plugin – CRM, Email Marketing, Live Chat, Forms & Analytics

HubSpot has created a WordPress plugin which brings CRM functionality right into your site’s dashboard.

With the HubSpot WordPress plugin you can manage all your contacts, handle email marketing and automation by creating responsive newsletters with the built-in drag and drop email builder and send out automatic replies on form submissions or live chat requests. Unlock realtime communication via live chat or via automated chatbots, which can reply to leads and customers when you and your team are offline. Build beautiful forms and pop-ups with the included drag and drop builder or integrate your existing forms into HubSpot.

To bring everything together, HubSpot installs a special tracking code on your site which allows you to monitor every move your leads and customers make on your site, including which pages they’ve viewed, their form submissions and chat requests. This information, for each of your contacts, is stored and available right in your WordPress dashboard to help you send relevant, timely communications that convert more leads to customers – and customers into raving fans.

Get started with HubSpot and WordPress

To get started you can install the free HubSpot plugin from the WordPress plugin directory. Navigate to Plugins > Add New and search for HubSpot. On the plugin’s card click install and then activate.

After you activate the plugin you can navigate to the HubSpot tab in your WordPress dashboard. If you do not have a HubSpot account you will get an account creation wizard, otherwise you can log in with your existing account and start using the plugin.

New users will get a comprehensive and easy to follow onboarding procedure covering all features of the plugin. You will be guided through form and email creation, contact import and management, live chat and chatbot set up and everything else you need to integrate a fully featured CRM right into your WordPress dashboard.

Getting support

While CRMs can be complex applications and the nuances of inbound marketing can be daunting for beginners, HubSpot makes it easy. On HubSpot’s Help Center you will find an extensive knowledge base with all the how-to articles you’ll ever need. On the off-chance you get stuck with something that’s not in the knowledge base you can always take your query to the community and find a solution with the help of both enthusiasts and experts. For paid customers, e-mail, live chat and phone support is available depending on the subscription tier.

If you are looking to get bespoke solutions for your site you can hire HubSpot Partners to handle the implementation for you. Finally if you want to dig deeper into HubSpot’s ecosystem their Academy can help you learn more and get certified in everything HubSpot.

Wrapping up

HubSpot is a one-stop-shop CRM for your WordPress site, offering a great collection of free inbound marketing tools to get you started.

Sign up for HubSpot free today, combine it with one of our themes and watch your online business grow, right from your WordPress dashboard.

The post How to Grow your Online Business with HubSpot’s WordPress Plugin appeared first on CSSIgniter.

A very useful tool that can make this process a bit easier, more streamlined and also help you maintain a consistent posting schedule, which is also very important to keep up reader engagement on your site, is an editorial calendar. These can help you with content planning, editing drafts, reviewing finished content and finally publishing the posts at a set, consistent schedule. That helps take some of the weight of, ease the grind and allow you to focus more on writing content that your audience wants to read.

WordPress users are lucky to have at their disposal a lot of editorial/content calendar plugins. Plugins come in varying degrees of complexity depending on now much help you actually need on your site. Below we have a collection of the five best content calendar plugins for your WordPress site.

Strive Content Calendar

Strive is a new plugin that adds a content calendar directly into your WordPress dashboard. Using the calendar, you can quickly visualize and edit your publishing schedule. Create new posts, insert drafts, and reschedule posts with simple drag-and-drop.

In addition to the editorial calendar, Strive includes a variety of practical tools for content creators. Posts in the calendar are color-coded based on their status, which you can update for any post right inside the post editor. There are also custom checklists so you can create a predefined process and check off items while you write.

If you are interested in getting more search traffic to your site, you’ll appreciate the revision feature too, which lets you create revisions of existing posts and schedule their republication.

• Visualize your schedule with the content calendar
• Manage posts with statuses
• Create custom checklists
• Republish posts with revisions
• Get an overview with the Pipeline

Editorial Calendar

The Editorial Calendar is a free WordPress editorial calendar plugin. Once activated it will give you a calendar overview of your blog so you can see what posts are schedule and when they will go live. In the calendar you can drag & drop to move the posts, edit them and easily manage your blog from a single view.

Some of the plugin’s key features are:

• Calendar overview of post publish dates
• Drag & drop publish date rearrangement
• Quick edit posts from the calendar view
• Publish or manage drafts
• Manage posts from multiple authors on multi-author blogs

CoSchedule

CoSchedule is a SaaS marketing calendar with great WordPress integration via the provided plugin. It essentially is a content calendar and a social media marketing calendar fused into one. It will allow you not only to schedule and publish content on your site, but will greatly help with marketing efforts on all the important channels. The plugin is ideal for solo writers, small businesses, companies with in-house marketing teams and more.

Some key features of the marketing calendar are:

•  Overview of post scheduling to ensure you are working on the right priorities
• Share progress with your team or higher ups
• See the effect the marketing you do has on your posts
• Easy rescheduling of post publishing dates with drag & drop

PublishPress: Editorial Calendar, Workflow, Comments, Notifications and Statuses

PublishPress: Editorial Calendar, Workflow, Comments, Notifications and Statuses is another free content calendar plugin for WordPress. The plugin will offer you a calendar like overview of your publishing schedule. By default it will display all the planned content for the next six weeks with filters available to help you narrow down what you want to work on. Rescheduling for unpublished content can be done via a simple drag & drop. Content can be created right in the calendar, and subscription to calendars are available through iCal or Google calendar. The plugin offers a pro version as well with some extra features such as Slack integration, reminder notifications whitelabeling and more.

Some key plugin features are:

• Calendar like overview of the publishing schedule
• Drag & drop rescheduling
• Calendar view filters
• Custom post statuses
• Editorial comments

Oasis Workflow

Oasis Workflow is our final plugin in our list. It is a free content calendar plugin designed to automate any editorial workflow process using a simple, intuitive drag and drop interface. The plugin specializes on facilitating workflows to improve content review and publication processes, this makes it ideal for multiauthor WordPress websites, industries with regular content output in need of formal review processes and industries where strict auditing requirements need to be met. The plugin also offers a pro version with some advanced features such as published content revisions, auto submit and more.

Some key plugin features are:

• Drag & drop visual workflow designer
• Role-based routing for task assignment
• Inbox for assignments and tasks
• Custom editorial statuses
• Process history

Wrapping up

That was our selection of the 5 best content calendar plugins for WordPress. Hopefully one of them can help you with your post publishing workflow on your WordPress blog, allow you to write better content, while keeping a consistent schedule and help drive your audience numbers and engagement up. Are you already using a content calendar plugin? If so what’s your opinion about them, did they help you? Let us know in the comments below.

The post The 5 best editorial calendar plugins for WordPress appeared first on CSSIgniter.

Without further ado let’s check out the block editor ready WordPress plugins that will help you embed audio in your posts.

AudioIgniter

AudioIgniter Pro is the last WordPress audio player plugin you’ll need. Easily and quickly create unlimited playlists with unlimited tracks on each one using the bulk track upload feature, if the tracks have metadata attached to them AudioIgniter will automatically read and apply them to the list. Embed anything, from single tracks, albums, podcast episodes or playlists of entire shows, streams from ShoutCast, RadioJar and more! Embed them in your content in no time using the included custom block, or utilize the shortcode to embed the player in the classic editor, widgets and anywhere else you might want to.

Create unique, fully responsive, compact or extended players with visible playlists that perfectly match your site’s style with the plugin’s built-in Customizer color options. Use the global player which sticks to the bottom of the page to detach the listening experience from the page’s content. Control the starting track, volume, playback rate, and add a delay between tracks to create the listening experience you want for your visitors. The plugin also supports lyrics/descriptions per item, ideal for song lyrics, podcast descriptions etc. Additionally each item has a play URL, a buy URL and a download URL ( both optional).

AudioIgniter also offers a free version which has all the features you need to add awesome playlists to your site and test our the plugin.

Cue by AudioTheme.com

Cue is another plugin which can help you create and manage audio playlists. It supports uploading tracks via the media manager with automatic metadata detection. The player is fully responsive with a customizable background image and a custom artwork per track. The player can be embedded via its provided custom block or via the available widget and shortcode. A pro version is also available for Cue which adds info regarding visitor interaction, purchase and download links, player themes and more.

Html5 Audio Player – Audio Player for WordPress

Html5 Audio Player is a simple, easy to use and responsive audio player for WordPress. It supports popular audio formats like mp3, wav & ogg. Each player supports a single track for a more focused audio listening experience with autoplay, repeat and mute functionality available. The player can be embedded in the content via the custom block provided or anywhere else via a shortcode. A pro version of the plugin is also available with color customization options, toggleable player controls and more.

Meks Audio Player

Easily enhance your podcast, music, or any audio on your website with Meks Audio Player. The plugin will automatically detect audio in the content and play it in a full-featured sticky audio player. Perfect for personal podcasts, podcasting networks, radio stations, or music websites.

The plugin features player color customization, allows for toggling the appearance of player control elements, supports both the native audio block & the audio shortcode and automatically detects existing audio in the content, offers a timestamp navigation custom block, can be configured to work on posts, pages and custom post types and offers hooks for easier customization.

CP Media Player – Audio Player and Video Player

CP Media Player – Audio Player and Video Player is another flexible audio player plugin for WordPress which supports popular audio formats and can display playlists. The plugin includes several skins for the audio player to offer a more flexible appearance. Players can be embedded in the content via the provided block or anywhere else via a shortcode. A pro version is also available which allows selling files through the player.

Core audio block

What if you just want to embed a single file inside the post’s content without any additional bells and whistles? Well the core audio block is perfect for this job. Drag & drop it anywhere you like in your content select or upload a file from your media gallery and publish the post, that’s it, you have an embedded, responsive audio player for your site, and if your theme developer has included any custom styling, it might look awesome too!

Wrapping up

That’s all for this article. Which is your favorite audio player for WordPress & the block editor? Let us know in the comments below.

The post The 6 best audio player WordPress plugins for the block editor appeared first on CSSIgniter.

The plugin is available for download through our downloads section. You can download and install it just like any other plugin, just make sure you have installed and active the Ignition Framework Plugin, an Ignition Framework based theme and the Elementor page builder.

Once the plugin is installed and activated you will find its Post Types Widget towards the bottom of Elementor’s widget list, under the Ignition Widgets section, drag and drop in anywhere in your content to start working with it.

The widget and its options

The widget allows you to create highly flexible post grids and listings through its various options. You can use any of the available custom post types as a source for your post listings and choose to enable isotope filtering based on a post taxonomy. Furthermore you can choose to narrow down posts by taxonomy term or author, modify the number of items shown, change their order, column number, spacing and even use alternative layouts for post items.

Along with the extensive query customization the widget offers many color options to help you tailor the new grid or listing to your liking. Everything from post title, meta, and excerpt to button and filter colors can be easily modified.

The plugin also supports the Ignition Framework’s templating system, allowing users to modify the appearance of post items easily and safely via a child theme.

Grab your copy of the plugin and give it a spin today!

The post Meet the new Ignition widgets for Elementor appeared first on CSSIgniter.

The plugin

Smart Slider 3 is a feature packed free WordPress slideshow plugin which can help you create mobile ready and search engine optimized slideshows. It offers pre-built slider templates, dynamic slides, page builder support, font management and more.

Installation

Smart Slider 3 is available in the WordPress plugin directory. To install it navigate to Plugins > Add New, search for Smart slider and click the install button. Once the installation finishes click activate to enable it.

After activation the plugin’s options can be accessed under the Smart Slider tab in your WordPress Dashboard.

The welcome tab offers a short video to get you started and also gives you access to the plugin’s global settings page.

From the plugin’s settings page you can control various options, such as automatic update check, enable the enhanced privacy mode for YouTube embeds, customize the mobile breakpoints, change the fonts used and modify the default styling for layer headings, text, buttons and more.

Once you are done with the settings you can head back to the dashboard and get started by clicking the new project button.

Create your slider

You will be prompted to select between starting a slider from scratch or picking one of the pre-built templates as a base for your slider. Let’s create an entirely new slider.

The first screen for your new project will allow you to select the type of project and slider you want to built. You can also name the slider and set its size and layout. Click create to get started.

It’s time to add some images to our slider. Click the add slide button and pick image as the slide source. If you are looking to create dynamic sliders or ones based on posts you can do so from here.

Next you will use the familiar interface of the WordPress media manager to add your images.

After the images are added you can go through the slider’s settings to tailor it to your specific needs.

Using the slider’s settings you can customize the slider’s size, controls, animations, toggle the autoplay and adjust its timings, optimize images by compressing them and many more. When you have customized the slider according to your needs you are ready to save and use it.

Slider templates

If you’d like to utilize a pre-built template you can pick “Start with a template” in the new project pop-up. You will be presented with a selection of ready made slider layouts, some of which are free. Pick your favorite and use it as a starting point. The rest of the configuration is the same as if you were starting from scratch, however if you are using a template most likely you won’t have to mess around with the slider’s settings since these will be preset by the template’s creators.

The Smart Slider 3 block

Adding the slider you’ve just created in the content is pretty easy with the help of the bundled custom block.

To utilize it search for slider or smart slider in the block selector and click on the Smart Slider 3 block.

Once the block is added click the select slider button and select your slider from the resulting pop-up.

Click insert to add the slider in the content.

That’s it, the slider was added to your content. Finish up your post, publish it and let’s check it out!

The slider

Just like that we have created a new slideshow from scratch and added it to our content.

Wrapping up

Core blocks do not offer any way to create and use a slideshow yet so third party plugins with their custom blocks come in handy in these cases by allowing us to create beautiful and captivating slideshows for our content quickly and easily.

The post How to create a slider within the block editor with Smart Slider 3 appeared first on CSSIgniter.

The plugin

MetaSlider is a free WordPress plugin which allows you to easily create responsive and SEO ready slideshows in a matter of minutes. The plugin offers a variety of customization options like transition effect, speed and more through a simple and easy to use interface, it also comes bundled width some pre-built themes which will give a more professional appearance to your slideshows.

Installation

MetaSlider is available in the WordPress plugin directory. To install it navigate to Plugins > Add New, search for MetaSlider and click the install button. Once the installation finishes click activate to enable it.

The plugin only has a few global options which can be accessed under MetaSlider > Settings.

These options allow you to set  a default name for new slideshows, base image width & height and enable full width sliders.

Create your slider

To get started just navigate to the MetaSlider tab on your WordPress dashboard.

Here you can either drag & drop some images into the box to start the process or click the Create blank slideshow button. We’re going to do the latter.

The first thing you need to do is add a title for our slider.

Do that and then click the Add Slide button on the top right to add your first slide. Once you click the button the WordPress media manager will pop-up providing you with a familiar interface where you can upload photos from your PC or use existing ones from the WordPress media library. Here you will also find an interesting feature bundled with MetaSlider, the access to the Unsplash image gallery.

The plugin allows you to browse the popular royalty free image hosting site right from the media manager and use your favorite free stock photo without ever leaving your dashboard. Rinse and repeat for the rest of your slides.

Once all the slides are added you can fine tune them by modifying each images caption, title and alt texts and the crop position.

You can also select which slider you are going to use, set the slideshow base image size, toggle navigation arrows and dots and pick a theme for the slideshow. To do that just click the Select a custom theme link.

You will be presented with a pop-up featuring the available custom themes, pick your favorite, preview it and select it for your slider.

Finally, if you wish so, you can mess around with the slider’s advanced options which control timings, direction, crop, effects and more.

Your slider is ready, click the Save button on the top right and you are good to go.

The MetaSlider block

Adding the slider you’ve just created in the content is pretty easy with the help of the bundled custom block.

To utilize it search for MetaSlider in the block selector and click on the block.

Next select your slider from the drop down.

That’s it, the slider was added to your content. The preview won’t have the same layout (i.e. custom theme) as the published post, so let’s publish the post and check it out.

The slider

The slideshow in the final published post will have the custom theme applied to it.

Wrapping up

Unfortunately the core blocks do not include a slideshow one yet, but through the magic of third party plugins creating and embedding a slideshow in our content is child’s play. In a few short minutes we have created and added to a post a slideshow with a custom theme and some royalty free stock images.

The post Block editor series – MetaSlider appeared first on CSSIgniter.

The plugin

Modula Gallery is a free gallery plugin which offers fully responsive, customizable and fast galleries for your WordPress site. It comes with a neat little feature called custom grid which allows you to easily customize your gallery’s layout and image aspect ratio to create galleries just like you want them.

Installation

The plugin is distributed via the WordPress plugin directory. To install it navigate to Plugins > Add New search for Modula Gallery and click the install button, once the plugin is installed click the activate button to activate it and you are good to go.

Modula Gallery does not offer much in terms of global options, the only interesting one would be the ability to migrate existing galleries from plugins such as Envira, NextGEN and FooGallery. This can be done under Modula > Migrate in the WordPress dashboard. This can help you be up and running with the plugin much faster if you were previously using any one of the previously mentioned gallery plugins.

Creating a gallery

To create a new gallery simply navigate to Modula > Add New and you will be presented with the new gallery creation screen.

Start by adding a title for your gallery and choose if you want to upload new images or select existing ones from the WordPress media gallery, both these procedures are handled through the familiar WordPress media manager interface. Once you are done with uploading or selecting images you will be presented with a preview of your gallery.

You can hover over any of the added images to edit its alt, caption, alignment and URL, you can also remove any image from the gallery. Now that the images are taken care of let’s move to the gallery options.

Modula Gallery offers quite a few customization options for a free plugin, although most of the tabs are exclusive to the pro version but still visible to the free users. You can control the gallery’s appearance by setting width, height, gutters, thumbnail size and image shuffle. You can also customize the captions, add social sharing links, toggle loading and hover effects, add custom CSS and toggle lazy loading for larger galleries.

Under General settings you can select the gallery type. There are three available options, the creative gallery which is an automatic masonry based layout, the classic columned one and the quite interesting custom grid type. If you choose to use the custom grid layout you can drag to resize your images and create a mosaic just the way you want it.

Once you are done customizing the gallery go ahead and save it.

The Modula Gallery block

Modula Gallery offers a custom block which can be used to add any gallery you’ve created in your content. To find the block just search for gallery in the block selector.

From the results pick the Modula Gallery block to add it in the content.

From the block’s drop down pick the gallery you want to use.

The block itself does not offer any options worth mentioning, there is a dropdown to change the selected gallery and the classic edit block button which will take you to the gallery edit screen we saw earlier.

Now that you’re done with adding the gallery to the content you can publish or update your post and check it out.

The gallery

As you can see our gallery looks exactly like the custom grid we have created earlier allowing us to highlight some images more than others and create unique galleries very easily.

The core gallery block

You don’t necessarily need a third party plugin just to create a gallery in WordPress. There is a core gallery block which is suitable for most everyday gallery creation needs. To add the block simply search for Gallery in the block inserter and pick the gallery block.

You can choose to either upload new images directly from your computer or create a gallery using photographs already uploaded to the WordPress media gallery. In both cases the procedure is done through the familiar interface of the WordPress media manager.

Once the images are added and the gallery is created you can modify its appearance. The core gallery block offers column number options, optional image crop, customizable image linking and thumbnail size.

The core gallery block with images

The configuration options are pretty simple and can be completed in no time. After that you are ready to publish the post and check out your brand new gallery.

Wrapping up

Modula Gallery is another pretty handy third party plugin to help you manage your galleries. Its custom grid and ability to import existing galleries from popular gallery plugins make it a very interesting choice. However if you are just looking to place a few images along your content and don’t have the need of an advanced gallery management solution make sure to check out the gallery core block which can be pretty handy for such a case.

The post How to create a photo gallery with the block editor with Modula Gallery appeared first on CSSIgniter.

The plugin

FooGallery Image Gallery is a complete gallery management solution for WordPress. It offers responsive retina ready galleries with various layouts available, customizable thumbnails, borders, loading icons, lazy-loading support and many more features that guarantee a comprehensive gallery management experience.

Installation

The plugin is available through the WordPress plugin directory and can be installed like any other plugin. Navigate to Plugins > Add New and search for FooGallery, once the results come in click the install button on the plugin’s card and then the activate one.

Plugin options

After the plugin is successfully activated you will be prompted to opt-in to data collection for product improvement, once you make your choice on that you will be forwarded to the plugin’s welcome/help screen which contains a quick overview of how to create and use a gallery.

The welcome/help screen

Under FooGallery > Settings you can configure global plugin options, such as toggle lazy-loading, the gallery’s cache, default gallery settings, image sorting, image handling and quality and more.

FooGallery settings

Creating a gallery

With the initial configuration taken care of we can navigate to FooGallery > Add Gallery to create our first gallery.

Start by clicking the Add From Media Library button, which will present you with the familiar WordPress media manager pop-up to upload or select your images and add them to the gallery. Once the images are added you can configure the individual gallery if you wish to do so.

Individual gallery options

From the gallery settings metabox you can select the gallery’s layout, add a lightbox (please note that the plugin does not inlcude a lightbox, you will need to download an extra plugin to get this functionality), set image border size, hover effects, pagination and more. We’re going to leave everything as is so the gallery follows our global settings. Now the gallery is ready to be published and used in the content.

The FooGallery block

FooGallery provides a custom block which can be used to embed galleries using the block editor. To use it just search for gallery in the block inserter and select the FooGallery one from the results.

Once the block is added click the Select Gallery button to pick the gallery you’ll use.

The following pop-up will list the available galleries, choose the one you want to embed in the content and click insert gallery.

That’s it, the gallery was inserted in the content. If you’d like to make any changes to the gallery after adding it you can click the edit button from the block’s options to be transferred to the gallery edit window and make any modifications you need.

The gallery

You have successfully created a gallery and used the custom block to add it to your content, it’s time to check it out!

Creating galleries with the core gallery block

WordPress offers a core block which can group images together in the form of a gallery, however it does not offer most of the advanced gallery management functionality you get from a dedicated gallery management plugin like FooGallery. If adding a few images along with your text is all you need, the core block will do just fine, if however you need more from your galleries, you might want to take a look at a purpose built gallery management plugin.

The core block can be added by searching for gallery in the block inserter and selecting it.

Adding images is very easy, either click upload or add existing images from the media library. Both options will present you with the familiar pop-up of the WordPress media manager where you can upload or select the images that will comprise your gallery.

The core gallery block with images

With the images added you can tweak the galleries appearance by selecting the number of columns, toggle image crop, where the images link to and the image size. Once done publish the post and check out your new gallery.

Wrapping up

In this installment of our block editor series we took a look at the FooGallery plugin and its capabilities when it comes to comprehensive WordPress gallery management. We also created a gallery and embedded it in a post using the custom block provided. Finally we checked out the core provided alternative to gallery creation in order to get an idea of what WordPress offers by default when it comes to gallery handling. If your needs stop at just adding bundled images along your content the core block is great at its job. If on the other hand you need extensive customization on gallery layouts, pagination, advanced features such as lazy-loading, you need to take a look at third party gallery plugins like FooGallery.

The post Block editor series – FooGallery appeared first on CSSIgniter.

In today’s installment we will use the very popular NextGEN gallery plugin to create and insert galleries into our content using the block editor.

The plugin

NextGEN Gallery has been around since 2007 and sports more than 800K active installations, making it one of the most popular gallery plugins for WordPress. The plugin offers a complete gallery management system which can handle image uploading, metadata import, photo sorting and grouping and more. Galleries can be presented in various layouts, with lightboxes, transitions, styling etc.

Installation

The free version of the plugin which we will be using throughout this guide is available in the WordPress plugin directory which makes installation very easy. Just navigate to Plugins > Add New and search for nextgen gallery from the returned results click Install on the plugin’s card and then Activate.

Plugin Options

After the plugin is activated you will be asked to opt-in to data collection for product improvement. Next you will be forwarded to the plugin’s settings overview tab.

The plugin’s settings overview

Here you can check out an intro video to help you get started and learn more about the plugin’s pro version and its creators. The rest of the plugin’s settings allow you to create and manage galleries, albums and image tags.

Global Gallery Settings

The Gallery Settings tab hosts global options for thumbnails, slideshows and more. Options such as images per page, gallery columns, slideshow timing, autoplay, AJAX pagination, album breadcrumbs and more can be configured here and will be applied by default to all new galleries and albums.

Other global options

Under the Other Options tab you can configure thumbnail sizes, lightbox type, setup your watermark, add custom CSS and more.

Once the initial plugin configuration is done you can proceed to create your first gallery.

Creating a gallery

We start by creating a new post.

In the block inserter you can just search for gallery and click the NextGEN gallery block from the results.

After the block is inserted you can click the button to add a gallery.

You will be presented with a popup window from which you can insert galleries into the page, currently we don’t have any galleries so we will navigate to the UPLOAD IMAGES tab using the menu on the left hand side to create one with some images.

Here we have the options to upload images directly to our new gallery, import from the media library, or import from a folder in our installation. We’re going to go with the second option and import from the media gallery.

Start by giving your gallery a title and then click the Select Images button and you’ll get the familiar media manager popup where you can select the images you want to import. Once you’ve done that make sure you import the selected images.

After the importing procedure has finished you’ll be notified with a popup at which point you can return to the INSERT INTO PAGE tab.

Now that you have created your first gallery you can select it from the drop-down. If you’d like to override any global display settings you can do so in the CUSTOMIZE DISPLAY SETTINGS tab.

Once you are done configuring your gallery’s appearance go ahead and click the INSERT GALLERY button to add it to your content.

That was it, you gallery was successfully created and added in the content. If you want to make any last minute changes before publishing click the EDIT button to go back to the gallery management popup, otherwise publish your post and check out your new gallery.

The gallery

The final product

In just a few steps we have a gallery embedded in our content.

The core gallery block

The WordPress block editor also offers a way to embed basic galleries in your content. The core block is mostly there to help you quickly bundle some images together in a gallery and add them in the content, it lacks all the advanced gallery management features, different layouts, lightboxes etc which come with NextGEN. However it’s perfectly fine when you just need a gallery in your post.

To add the core gallery block just search for gallery in the block inserter and select it.

The core gallery block as the second result.

After adding the block either click to upload images or add some from the media library, both procedures are done via the familiar interface of WordPress’ media manager. When done insert the selected images to the library.

The core gallery block with images

Once the images are added you can configure how many columns you want the block to display, if you want the images cropped, where they will link if clicked and, finally, the image size, not that many options here. Publish or update your post and check it out.

Wrapping up

In this installment of our block editor series we saw two ways to add galleries in our content. One with a very versatile and comprehensive gallery management tool, NextGEN gallery, and one with the core block provided by WordPress. Both tools are capable of creating a gallery, but depending on your needs you might prefer one over the other. NextGEN allows you to categorize your images in galleries, albums and group them via tags, reuse the same galleries in more than one posts, offers different gallery layouts, custom styling, lightboxes and many many more, if you are looking for an all-in-one tool for all your image management needs it’s surely worth a try. If on the other hand you just want to add a bunch of images in your content perhaps the core block is perfect for you.

The post Block editor series – NextGEN Gallery appeared first on CSSIgniter.

The plugin

Ninja Forms needs no introduction when it comes to creating contact forms on WordPress. It features a drag & drop form builder, more than 27 form fields, it is responsive, supports anti-spam and RECAPTCHA, allows easy integration with third party services and more

Installation

The plugin is available in the WordPress plugin repository which makes its installation pretty straight-forward. Navigate to Plugins > Add New in the WordPress dashboard and search for Ninja Forms, click the install and activate buttons to get started.

Creating your first form

After the plugin has been successfully installed and activated you can navigate to Ninja Forms > Dashboard to start creating your forms.

The Ninja Forms dashboard

Here you can either create a new form from scratch or edit the sample form provided by the plugin. In this article we’re going to do the latter since the included form is well suited for a basic contact page. To start editing the form just click on its name.

The form builder

Ninja Forms form builder

In the form builder screen you can click on the blue plus button to add a new field.

Drag & drop to add a field to the form

Adding a field is very straight forward, simply drag & drop it where you want it to appear. Once the field is placed you will be able to configure it.

The field’s options

In the case of the checkbox block you can change its label, set it as a required field, set its default value and display a description for the field.

Other form options

After adding and configuring your form fields you can check out the rest of the form’s options by clicking the Emails & Actions tab.

Other form options

Here you can configure various messages for form success, confirmation and notification. In the Advanced tab you can toggle parts of the form make it visible only to logged in users, set a submission limit and more.

Once the form is configure to your liking you can publish it and exit.

Publish the form and exit.

The contact page

Our contact page base

Above you can see a basic, but informative and efficient contact page created using the Google Maps block of the GutenBee plugin, following that we have a small piece of text  and finally a 1/3 – 2/3 column layout using the Columns core block. The left column hosts a list block with alternative contact info such as email, address, telephone etc. The right column will host the contact form you’ve just created.

The Ninja Forms block

The Ninja Forms custom block

Ninja Forms provides a custom block to make embedding forms using the block editor as easy as possible. To add the block simply click on the plus icon in our large column and search for Ninja Forms in the pop-up block selector. Click the block to add it.

Upon adding the block you will be able to select which of your forms you want to display.

Form selection dropdown

Find the form you’ve just created from the drop down and select it. That’s about it. The block does not feature any options so you can go ahead and publish/update your contact page and check out the result.

The final result

Our simple contact page is ready, complete with maps, extra contact info and a contact form.

The final result

Wrapping up

As you can see from the above article creating a complete and functional contact page using the block editor is pretty simple. Just combine the core blocks with a couple of custom ones to get the layout and functionality you want and you’re up and running in no time.

The post Block editor series – Ninja Forms appeared first on CSSIgniter.