How to Make the Most Out of WPBeginner’s Free Resources

Often new WPBeginner readers ask us how they can get the maximum benefits from all the free resources available on our website. WPBeginner is one of the largest free WordPress resource sites on the planet. We have been publishing free WordPress guides, how to tutorials, and videos since 2009. In this article, we will show you how to make the most out of WPBeginner’s free resources.

1. Subscribe to WPBeginner Newsletter

Signing up for our newsletter is the best way to stay updated with WPBeginner’s new posts and resources. When we write a new article, it will land directly in your email inbox. You can select the email frequency such as WPB Daily or WPB Weekly.

You can also select the sections you want to subscribe to. We recommend you to check all the boxes to get the maximum benefit.

2. Signup for Our FREE Video Tutorials

If you are just starting out with WordPress, then our WordPress Beginners Videos should be your first destination. We hate to see many big companies selling such basic education for hundreds of dollars. This is why we decided to make it available for Free.

These HD quality videos are prepared by our experts and are built for beginner level users. Our 23-step easy to follow video tutorials cover from the basics to advance WordPress topics and will help you get started with WordPress in no time.

3. Join our YouTube Channel

With nearly 20,000 subscribers, WPBeginner’s YouTube channel is the best WordPress channel on YouTube.

We regularly upload new videos with useful how to articles aimed at beginner level users. These videos are short, sweet, and easy to follow. You will also get the video transcript, a text version of the tutorial, and you can even ask questions in the comments.

Joining our YouTube channel, will help you stay up to date, brush up your WordPress skills, and discover new tools and plugins for your website.

4. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook. This way you can participate in our community discussions, see what new posts we have published, get in touch with us, and leave your comments and feedback.

We like to hear from our users. In fact, many of our post ideas come from user requests made on Twitter.

5. Got a WordPress Question? Here is How to Find The Answer

At the top right corner of every page on WPBeginner, there is a search box. This search box is powered by Google Custom Search. It is fast and highly accurate.

Simply type the question you wanted to ask us. There is a very good chance that we have already written about it.

6. Can’t Find an Answer? Drop us a Line or Tweet to us

If you have searched WPBeginner and didn’t find an answer to your question, then you can reach us using the contact form on our website.

You can also tweet to us @WPBeginner. We try our best to get back to you with an answer or point you in the right direction within 1 business day.

We love hearing from our users because that’s what keeps us motivated and inspired.

7. Need Plugin and Theme Recommendations?

Many beginners are concerned about which plugins they should use on their WordPress site or how to find the perfect theme. Visit WPBeginner’s Showcase section where we hand-pick the best WordPress plugins and themes. Here are some places to look at:

• 20 must have WordPress plugins for 2015 (Expert pick)
• 40 useful tools to manage and grow your WordPress blog
• 37 simple WordPress themes you should try
• 43 Beautiful free WordPress blog themes

Want to know which WordPress plugins and tools we use on WPBeginner? Check out WPBeginner’s Blueprint where you will find all the tools and plugins we use to run WPBeginner.

8. Hidden Gems

Over the years we have built quite a few awesome resources. The two that you should absolutely check out are our WordPress dictionary and WordPress deals.

WPBeginner glossary is the best place for beginners to start and familiarize themselves with the WordPress lingo. In other words, we help you translate the WordPress gibberish that you may come across.

WPBeginner Deals is the best place to find exclusive discounts on WordPress products and services. Because we have such an awesome community, a lot of WordPress businesses have decided to offer our users exclusive discounts.

So the next time you decide to buy a premium WordPress plugin, theme, or another service, then it’s probably best to search our deals area. You may save 10 – 60% off.

9. Want to Learn More About WPBeginner?

Are you curious about who runs WPBeginner? Why it’s free and how it works? Check out our about page. We started out as a small blog to help our clients learn how to use WordPress. Since then we have grown and become one of the most popular destinations on the web for WordPress related resources.

You may also want to check out the personal website of our founder and CEO, Syed Balkhi. You can find him on Twitter as well.

10. What Else We Do?

WPBeginner is a project of Awesome Motive Inc. Our parent company runs hugely popular websites like List25.

We also sell some of the most successful WordPress related products such as Soliloquy, Envira Gallery, and ThemeLab.

One of our premier products is OptinMonster, the best lead generation solution on the web.

We hope this article helped you learn how you can make the most out of WPBeginner’s free WordPress resources. You may also want to take a look at how to learn WordPress in a week or less.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

To leave a comment please visit How to Make the Most Out of WPBeginner’s Free Resources on WPBeginner.

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How to Add Email Subscriptions to Your WordPress Blog

Do you want to add email subscription to your WordPress blog? Recently, one of our users asked us what is the best way to subscribe by email option in WordPress? In this article, we will show you how to add email subscriptions to your WordPress blog and start building your email list.

Why You Should Add Subscribe via Email Option to Your Site?

While social media is a great way to interact with your readers, email is the most reliable and direct way of communication. By offering email subscription on your blog, you can build a steady stream of regular visitors for your site.

Email subscription also gives your users yet another way to consume your content as some folks may not be on social media. See our complete guide on why you should start building your email list right away.

Often beginners think that adding email subscription is some complicated process. That’s not true at all.

The WordPress RSS to email subscription setup is quite straight forward, and it will take you less than 30 minutes. Once you set it up, your readers will automatically get daily or weekly emails containing your new content.

Now since there are multiple services and plugins that allow you to setup email subscriptions in WordPress, we will only cover the top 3 email subscription plugins and services.

MailChimp RSS to Email

MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing service providers. It is a paid service, but they do offer a free option for those with less than 2000 subscribers.

To quickly get started with MailChimp see our guide on using MailChimp and WordPress.

For the sake of this article, we are assuming that you have signed up for MailChimp and created your first email list. The next step is to setup an RSS to Email campaign.

Simply visit Campaigns » Create Campaign to create a new campaign.

MailChimp will now show you different types of campaigns that you can create. You need to click on the RSS Driven Campaign option.

This will bring you to the campaign settings page where you need to provide your WordPress site’s RSS feed link. Your feed URL is yoursite.com/feed/

You will also need to choose the time and frequency of emails. You can choose to send daily, weekly, or monthly emails.

On the next page, you will have to provide campaign info. You will notice that MailChimp has already pre-filled most fields on the page. These settings should work for most blogs, but feel free to change them as needed.

Now you need to click on the next button to select a template for your emails. MailChimp allows you to customize the template by adding your own logo, by-line, and any other elements that you may want to add.

When you are finished customizing, click on the next button and then click on Save and Exit.

That’s all, you have successfully created your WordPress RSS to Email newsletter using MailChimp.

To add the email subscription form to your website, simply visit the Lists page on your MailChimp account and click on the downward arrow icon next to your email list. After that select signup forms from the menu.

MailChimp will then ask you, what kind of signup form you want to create. Select Embedded Forms.

On the next screen, you can customize your email sign up form and generate the embed code. You can then copy and paste this code in a text widget on your WordPress website.

Alternatively, you can use OptinMonster a plugin created by the WPBeginner team that will make this process a lot easier and offer you pretty signup forms, floating bars, slide-ins, exit-intent popups, and more.

Aweber RSS to Email

Aweber is another popular email marketing service provider. It’s a paid service, but they offer a 30 day free trial. A lot of bloggers and internet marketers prefer to use AWeber.

If you are just joining Aweber, then you will be directed to create your first email list when you login for the first time.

Once you are logged into your Aweber dashboard, simply visit Messages » Blog Broadcasts.

On the next screen, click on the green button labeled ‘Create a Blog Broadcast’.

This will bring you to the new page where you can setup your RSS to email campaign. First you need to enter the URL of your blog’s RSS feed. After that you need to provide a subject line for the emails.

Scroll down a little, and you can choose a template for your email. Select the one you like and then click on load template.

After choosing your template, scroll further down to configure time and frequency of emails. You can setup to send an email as soon as new item appears in your RSS feed. You can also send daily, weekly, or even monthly email digests.

Once you are done setting up these options, you need to click on Save Blog Broadcast button.

That’s all, you have successfully set up Aweber RSS to email subscription.

If you have not already added the email signup form to your WordPress site, then the next step is to add a signup form to your WordPress sidebar. Simply click on the ‘Signup Forms’ in the Aweber dashboard to design your email signup form.

Follow the on screen instructions and save your form. Finally you will reach the publish section. There you need to click on the ‘I will install my form’ button and copy the form embed code.

Now go to Appearance » Widgets on your WordPress site and paste this code in a text widget.

Alternatively, you can use OptinMonster a plugin created by the WPBeginner team that will make this process a lot easier and offer you pretty signup forms, floating bars, slide-ins, exit-intent popups, and more.

Using JetPack Subscriptions

JetPack is another option for users who want to add email subscriptions to their WordPress site. It is completely free, but the downside is that you don’t control your list.

JetPack Subscriptions is not a full newsletter. For example, if you wanted to send an email apart from your daily blog posts, then you will not be able to do that using JetPack Subscriptions. Also, if later you decide to move to a proper email marketing service which most bloggers do, then your users will have to opt-in to the email list again.

Having said that, here is how to add JetPack email subscriptions to your self hosted WordPress site. First thing you need to do is install and activate the JetPack plugin. Upon activation, the plugin will add a new menu item labeled JetPack to your WordPress admin bar. Clicking on it will take you to the plugin’s settings page.

JetPack plugin requires you to create a WordPress.com account and link your site with it (See our guide on the difference between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org sites). If you have a WordPress.com account, then you can use that or you can create a free account.

Once you have connected JetPack to WordPress.com, you need to visit Appearance » Widgets. Drag and drop Blog Subscriptions (JetPack) widget to a sidebar and then click on Save button store your widget settings.

You can also enable subscription option below your comment form. Visit Settings » Discussion page and scroll down to the JetPack subscription section. Check the box next to blog subspcription and comment subscription options. Click on the save changes button to store your settings.

That’s all you have successfully set up JetPack email subscriptions on your WordPress site. If you ever want to move to another email service, here is how to switch from JetPack subscriptions to MailChimp, Aweber, etc.

We hope this article helped you add email subscription to your WordPress blog. You may also want to check out how we increased our email subscribers by 600% using OptinMonster.

While there are dozens of other plugins and services that allow you to setup email subscriptions for your WordPress blog, above are the ones that we recommend. For those who are wondering, we use MailChimp and OptinMonster to handle WPBeginner email subscriptions. Here’s a tutorial on how to create a daily and weekly email newsletter in WordPress similar to WPBeginner.

We hope this article helped you learn how to properly add email subscriptions to your WordPress blog. You may also want to check out our email marketing 101 guide to kickstart your email list.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

To leave a comment please visit How to Add Email Subscriptions to Your WordPress Blog on WPBeginner.

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