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Top useful tips to choose a mobile friendly WordPress university theme

October 19, 2015

Smartphones are playing a more and more important role in our everyday life. Approximately one in two adults now owns a smartphone and by 2018, the worldwide smartphone shipments are predicted to reach 1.7 billion.  One of the most significant advantages brought to our life by smartphones is the convenient option to go online thanks to their mobility and capability of connecting to the Internet. Thus, there are a more considerable number of people who access educational websites with their smartphones to acquire knowledge anywhere, any minute.

Because of the upturn in students’ using smartphones, using a university theme WordPress that lets people create a mobile friendly site is of the essence. Below are some tips to follow when selecting such a university theme for WordPress.

Tips to choose a mobile friendly university theme WordPress

University theme WordPress 1

Responsive Layout

The first must-have of an online university WordPress theme to make educational sites mobile-friendly is a responsive design. It helps the sites adapt well to any screen size so site owners are guaranteed that their content will be displayed correctly on smartphones despite the fact that a smartphone has a smaller screen compared to a PC. Moreover, it is obvious that a lot of smartphones now have high-definition displays. Therefore, site owners ought to choose a university theme WordPress that can support such displays to make sure their site look good on high-quality mobile devices.

Optimized for Speed

Besides, in order to create mobile-friendly sites for educational purposes, it is worth considering university theme WordPress that allow sites to load fast. Such themes often provide site owners enough features to run their sites effectively rather than offer a ton of features, many of which will probably never be used. In general, staples of a WordPress theme and three plugins, including a learning management plugin, a translation plugin and an e-commerce plugin, are necessities for an educational site. Additionally, each site owner should think carefully about their purposes to choose a university theme for WordPress with a sufficient number of features.

University theme WordPress

Mobile-friendly Theme Elements

Also, even though the screen sizes of smartphones are becoming larger and larger, they are much smaller in comparison to those of PCs. Thus, users should choose to use a university theme WordPress having features that make it easy for students to complete all task on a small screen. For example, site owners should select themes with fonts that are elegant and legible enough for smartphones’ screen. Besides, themes having big buttons; simple and vertical-layout menus are perfect choices to increase the mobile-friendliness of educational sites.

University theme WordPress 3

High Security

Last but not least, it is necessary for educational site owners to choose themes which are highly protected in order to ensure that their mobile-friendly websites run successfully. There is a lot of personal information stored on smartphones, for example, the credit-card information that students have to provide when buying courses on educational websites. Therefore, site owners have to use a university theme WordPress which are updated regularly and offer safe ways to complete tasks requiring sensitive information. This will protect the smartphone users while accessing their websites.

Conclusion

The tips mentioned above are the fundamental ones to help those who want to get a good university theme WordPress to run their mobile-friendly education sites. Moreover, site owners should consider many other aspects to choose suitable themes that let them create unique and impressive sites.

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tutorials

How to make WordPress video themes responsive

October 17, 2015

Responsive designs have become a vital part of websites when more users browse websites on smartphones and tablets. Also, Google has considered mobile-friendliness to be one of the standards to rank a site. Under that circumstance, many non-responsive WordPress sites, especially video websites, risk losing their spot in the search ranking. That is the reason why owners need to use responsive video WordPress themes to optimize their sites.

WordPress video themes responsive 2

If you have a video site on WordPress and want to turn it into a responsive one but lack coding knowledge, then this article will help. It is going to guide you how to make WordPress video themes responsive in simple steps.

How to make WordPress video themes responsive

In this article we will take Tenwty Ten theme as example. To make the theme responsive, you need to modify only one file, style.css.

First, put this code at the end of your style.css:

@media only screen and (max-width: 480px) {

}

This is a conditional styling code which tells the web browser that if the screen size is equal or less than 480px, all the styling parameters should be set in between the brackets. And 480px is the maximum screen size of a smartphone.

For tablets, the conditional code will be:

@media only screen and (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 959px) {

}

For the sake of simplicity, in this article we only discuss responsive video WordPress themes for smartphone. Once you master that, making WordPress video themes responsive for tablets will be very easy.

WordPress video themes responsive 1

After typing the conditional code, you put all the following codes in between the brackets.

The first code will set the main frame size of the theme to 400px:

#access .menu-header, div.menu, #colophon, #branding, #main, #wrapper, #site-title {

width:400px;

}

The second code sets the size of main container:

#container {

width:100%;

}

The container layer width is set to be 100%, which means 100% multiplied by the above layer width. So, it will become 400px as 400px x 100% is still 400px.

The next code will hide the header image of the video theme:

#branding img {

display:none;

}

You can also modify the code above to resize the header image:

#branding img {

width:100%

}

Here the width is set to 100% meaning 100% multiplied by the above layer width.

And, the following code is to hide or re-positions the blog description:

#site-description{

display:none;

}

If you insist that the description must be displayed, then change the code above so it looks like this:

#site-description{

float:left;

}

Next, you set the navigation bar size (width) by using:

#access{

width:100%;

}

Then, you need to set the width of the content container:

#content{

width:100%;

}

Also, set the post content layer margin (position):

.hentry{

margin-left:-13px;

}

The code above will make the post content layer positioned 13px to the left.

Next, you hide the sidebar by using this code:

#primary{

display:none;

}

And resize the footer section: </pre>

<blockquote>

#footer{

width:100%;

}

With the code above you can only resize the main layer of the footer, not its content.

The following one re-positions the WordPress credit text:

#site-generator {

float:left;

margin-top:5px;

}

And the last code will set the footer border’s width:

#colophon {

width:100%;

}

That’s all. Now your theme is responsive. Just practice more and you are able to make your default WordPress video themes responsive without the help of developers.

Featured, WordPress Themes

Pros & cons of choosing premium WordPress education themes

October 16, 2015

Premium WordPress education themes have become a critical part of professional WordPress sites aimed at education. However, with a lot of premium theme authors and shops out there, it can be difficult for you to consider their products’ potential downsides. Hopefully the following pros and cons will help.

Pros of Premium WordPress Education Themes

Official Support

Most premium education WordPress themes come with official support via forum, email, or phone in a period of time. Some theme authors even offer lifetime support for their users. This is a huge bonus for users. Particularly, the users will have the theme author answer their technical questions about item’s features, as well as help to fix reported bugs and issues or to solve problems related to the included third party assets.

High Quality

Quality is one of the primary factors that consumers are interested in when reviewing a commercial product. Hence, the quality of premium WordPress education themes, whose aim is to make money, is much higher than free items. For the theme developers and marketplaces, high quality creates a positive feedback loop where their themes are continually getting better as more and more users come to use them.

Advanced Functionality

Premium education WordPress themes usually come with advanced functionality such as advanced plugins (Visual Composer, Revolution Slider, etc.) and advanced admin panels which make customization and site configuration much easier.

Better Design

WordPress education themes

The design of premium WordPress education themes is usually much better in every aspect, from page templates to widgets and back-end admin menus. An education site with clean and beautiful design goes a long way towards promoting your brand and attracting your potential students or customers.

Security

Security is a priority for premium WordPress education theme authors/shops. In order to get a foothold in the theme market, they have to invest in meeting the high security standards of their customers.

Frequent Updates

The update cycle with premium WordPress education themes tends to be tighter. This affects not only the theme compatibility but many other things, from small bugs to big security issues. There are a thousand little issues which can arise from an out of date WordPress theme. The only way to avoid them is frequent updates, which premium theme authors/shops tend to be better at.

Cons of Premium WordPress Education Themes

WordPress education themes

High Price Point

The price point for your favorite education WordPress themes may be quite high and yet still require further licensing fees. If you only run a small education site and not actually earn enough money to offset your theme costs, a premium theme with annual licensing fees can burn your wallet.

No Official Review Process

Currently, there is still no official review process for premium WordPress themes. This means that premium theme authors are able to ignore WordPress development best practices in certain areas. This sometimes causes minor annoyances, even costs a lot more.

Theme Bloat

Premium WordPress education themes have a higher potential for “theme bloat” than free ones. This is a trade-off to have more features and better functionality. Also, the theme bloat is more likely to drag your website speed into the gutter.

Item No Longer Available

When the theme that you purchased is taken down from the shop or the authors stop selling it, this means you no longer receive updates and support. Consequently, you may not only have to transition to another theme but also be out of your money.

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tutorials

Useful tutorials to build WordPress themes for education

October 15, 2015

If you want to build a custom education theme for WordPress with your limited coding knowledge but you do not know where to start from, then this writing will help. The article introduces easy-to-understand tutorials to create a WordPress theme from scratch, which can support you in the first step of developing your own WordPress themes for education.

9 tutorials to build WordPress themes for education

How to Create a WordPress Theme: The Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial

WordPress themes for education 1

This series includes 12 parts, starting with a look at structure of a WordPress theme before taking a deep look at the structure of template files. It gives you basic knowledge of creating a theme from scratch, ensuring that your future WordPress themes for education will have clean structure.

How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch

This tutorial was published on Tuts+ a few years ago. It looks at taking a HTML/CSS template and turning it into a functioning WordPress theme and describes the use of each template file with code samples. Just follow it step by step and you are able to develop simple WordPress themes for educational blog.

Designing for WordPress: Complete Series

Another useful instruction is Chris Coyier’s video screencast series.  This instruction takes a live look at developing a WordPress theme, which gives visual insight you do not get from a written guideline.

WordPress Theme Development Training Wheels

This tutorial series of theme development is written by Nur Ahmad Furlong and published on Tuts+. The series takes WordPress newbies who don’t have experience with HTML or PHP code through the basic steps to create a custom WordPress theme for education site.

Building custom WordPress theme

Chapter II of the “Complete WordPress theme guide” series on Web Designer Wall shows you how to create a custom theme. Part I and III cover the installation of WordPress and the way to export WordPress. This tutorial is also applied for the WordPress themes for education.

Developing your first WordPress theme

WordPress themes for education 3

This is another tutorial on Wptuts+. It not only covers the basic knowledge and steps to build a WordPress theme, but also gives you some tips to create a genetic theme to sell or give away. This helps you to save effort, money and time when developing your own WordPress themes for education.

How to Create WordPress Themes from Scratch

It can be considered one of the most extensive tutorial series of WordPress theme development. After reading this series, you may be surprised to know that developing WordPress themes for education is not very hard. The tutorial covers the whole process of building a WordPress theme, from structuring the theme layout, designing it in Photoshop and slicing, coding the layout into fully CSS based HTML to WordPress implementation.

Basics of WordPress theme design

This tutorial from WPShout takes a deep look at each of template files, from basic to advanced ones, and gives a simple description of how it works in “plain” language. It also gives you more knowledge about template tags, making your process of building WordPress themes for education easier.

How to Build a Custom WordPress Theme from Scratch

WordPress themes for education 2

The WordPress theme tutorial covers the basics of WordPress theme development and goes through the process that the author used when creating his ‘Sticky’ WordPress theme. Before building your own WordPress theme for education site, just read this example.

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips

5 tips to find the perfect WordPress video blog themes

October 14, 2015

 

While the number of premium and free WordPress video blog themes constantly increase, have you ever been so tired of searching for a design that meets your requirements?

So, how to find a suitable one among various WordPress video blog themes available on the Internet? This article will give you five tips to find out how and where to look for your ideal theme.

How to find the perfect WordPress video blog themes

1. Decide what you want and need

Never be in a hurry to find a nice theme. Decide exactly what you need. Do you want to start with a video portfolio, a video-related blog with lots of static information, a great video channel or just a combination? All small details you should have thought about before. Draw broadly on paper how you see the layout of your homepage. Common elements are a clear header, a menu, sidebar and footer.

2. Filter if you search within WordPress Dashboard

Within the WordPress Dashboard, you can use the filter function to specifically look for WordPress video blog themes. The effect is very much like the way you’re looking for hotel accommodation on websites of travel companies. For example you can specify which color the theme should have, choose the number of columns and requirements that you can simply adjust the header or background. WordPress then collects the themes that fit the needs established by you. These are usually fairly basic, but free.

3. Search by category and keywords on ThemeForest

ThemeForest is a huge resource for WordPress video blog themes. Therefore, always go straight towards your goal. In the corresponding submenu shows a useful categorization. If you want to start a video blog, firstly search within the Blog/Magazine category. Here you can search by keyword, such as “video”, or filter by tags. Next, you may want to visit other categories, such as eCommerce and Entertainment, for more video themes.

4. Check the ratings, live preview, comments and descriptions

WordPress video blog themes 1

You can control the order of the offering themes on ThemeForest by yourself. For example, you choose from the dropdown menu at the top for ‘Rating’; then all themes with a high evaluation will come to you. This evaluation is given by users. If a theme has tens or hundreds of ratings and four or five stars, then you do not have much to worry.

WordPress video blog themes 2

After make a short list of ThemeForest WordPress video blog themes, you should view their live preview by hover your mouse over their thumbnail. So you are able to see a photo and the summarized information of the theme. Then you can see whether the theme is suitable for mobile and tablet or not and its listed main functions.

In the comments tab on the theme’s product page, you can ask questions to the developers, as well as see the problems that purchasers or other users encounter when using theme and the answers of the developers.

Furthermore, it is of course very important that you read the description of the theme. This description is often clearly described the possibilities of the theme, which updates were performed, which browsers are supported and how many columns the theme have.

5. Search via Google

Perhaps an obvious tip: searching for WordPress video blog themes on Google. But remember to search the latest result, otherwise, you’re overloaded with suggestions and download links which many of them are not available.

Hope you find the most suitable video blog themes for WordPress!

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips

6 Steps to speed up a WordPress theme for videos

October 13, 2015

A WordPress theme for videos offers significant flexibility in changing setting, adding or removing built-in plugins and modifying theme options to enhance page speed. Therefore, the owners of WordPress video sites should use the following steps to ensure a faster site performance.

6 Steps to make a WordPress theme for videos faster

Step 1: Enable gzip Compression

Enable gzip compression in WordPress can reduce load time by over 300%. So, you should compress the code of the used WordPress theme for videos if possible. If compatibility used to be an issue with earlier browsers, almost modern browsers can handle gzip compression out of the box with significant returns in site performance.

WordPress theme for videos 1

Step 2: Cut down on code bloat

Many free and paid WordPress themes for video portfolio are guilty of using excessive HTML/CSS elements, which adds up to site bloat and reduces page speed. After installing any WordPress video theme, you should remove all superfluous HTML and CSS elements, reduce unnecessary tags, optimize and combine CSS rules for maximum efficiency.

Step 3: Compress images in the WordPress theme for videos

Loading large images places significant strain on the server. You should ensure that every image of the WordPress video theme you use is optimized and compressed to consume as little bandwidth as possible.

Step 4: Minify CSS and Javascript in the theme’s files

WordPress theme for videos 2

“Minify” is an add-on to PHP 5 that combines multiple CSS and Javascript files, then serves them with gzip compression. It is integrated into W3 Total Cache and other plugins. It helps reduce code bloat, remove excessive whitespace and avoid redundant server connections to make faster page loading time.

Step 5: Avoid installing unnecessary built-in plugins

Almost every premium WordPress theme for videos comes with built-in plugins, which offer you more options and features. However, plugin bloat is one of the reasons causing slow site performance. Almost plugins create extra files to load and process which places strain on server and increase loading time. Therefore, you had better reduce the number of built-in plugins used on your video site as much as possible. In general, a WordPress site should not have more than five plugins, including built-in ones, and the ideal figure never exceeds 10.

Step 6: Remove default advertisements

Advertisements are often the last elements loaded on a webpage because they rely on external servers to host their media. Flash and image-based ads makes page loading time slower and they can push well-optimized site into slow loading category. You should remove default advertisements in the used WordPress theme for videos and images to see a noticeable improvement in performance and meet the demand of visitors.

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips

Checklist for Choosing a Perfect University WordPress Theme

October 8, 2015

With thousands of university WordPress themes are released and updated day by day, selecting the right one for your educational site might be a hard mission. A huge of options leads you to be overwhelmed and have a wrong choice. So it is necessary to know exactly what you want for your product or project. In addition, with the support of this post, you can save time for giving an accurate decision. It presents useful advices and checklist of important things to consider before choosing a university WordPress theme.

university WordPress theme 1

4 things to consider before choosing a university WordPress theme

Type of Education Website

Before you go shopping for an online university WordPress theme, you should understand what type of education site you are going to build in order to limit the list of functions and features that are necessary for each type of site. For instance, you would build a site have a lot content like a learning manager system which need more specific features or just a simple one like a brochure.

Also, you should decide which elements are important on your site and which items will be displayed on your home page. This is the basis to pick a theme whose capabilities match your content as not every stunning theme is able to inspire your site.

Design and User Experience

While the matched theme will show off your content (posts, images, audios and videos, etc.) on your education site, its design may increase the attraction of your site looking. There are plenty of websites sell WordPress themes you can find such as ThemeForest, StudioPress and Elegant Themes, which have the best designers. You should experience the demo of each theme to find out the interesting features or obstacles before you get it.

SEO and Site Speed

university WordPress theme 2

The most important way of promoting your site is applying the process which called search engine optimization (SEO). That helps search engines know how the visitors interact with your site in order to rank it on the search engine results. Apparently, the site speed and loading times influent the search engine rankings.

Choosing a fast loading university WordPress theme can increase search engine rankings, online revenue and enhance overall user experience of your website. Avoid using the themes that are too feature-heavy, use a lot of large file formats or have not been updated for a long time. They will pull the site speed into the gutter.

Free vs. Premium University WordPress Theme

Last but not least, that is the price of the university WordPress theme you will choose. In the past few years, the quality of free WordPress theme for university website was usually low. Yet WordPress community has developed day by day and has been available with thousands of great free WordPress themes to pick up. Some popular sources for free themes like WordPress.org are available to check. However, it’s worth considering the premium university WordPress themes with various features available to choose from. Also the prices might be competitive, which allows you can pick a quality premium online university WordPress theme with adaptable payment. Using a premium theme means that its updates and support are always available for you, ensuring that the theme is compatible with the latest version of WordPress.

In a nutshell, the most important of choosing a theme is the quality and the support, so both free and premium university WordPress theme have their own advance.

Featured, WordPress Themes, WordPress Tips

Best education WordPress themes & Checklist for building a school site

October 7, 2015

You think about building a self-host WordPress site for your training center and want to create a checklist for it. You find out that there are a lot of things to do but do not know where you should start. You may wonder: “What should I consider?” or “How to choose a theme among the best education WordPress themes?”

In this article, we will show you the most important things you need to think about when you are planning to build a WordPress education website or renew an old one. Also, we will suggest some best responsive education WordPress themes which are used by many schools.

1. Form and Content

A website is a communication gate, like a school guide, e-mail, a letter, a poster, etc., which identify the school. Therefore, it is important to adjust both the content and form, in the culture and identity of your school.

When you develop an identity for the school, always ask for work files or vector files of your logo and other branding files. If you build a website, these files are needed.

Remember to think about what content should be on your website:

  • General information such as contact information, mission, vision and educational concepts
  • Impressive school photos, videos and text, current data such as calendar and news
  • Documents such as school guide and newsletters

And what’s more?

  • Is there a communications handbook which could be used as an auxiliary guide?

Also, when you understand what content should be on the site, you can start to make a list of best education WordPress themes whose design may highlight the content.

2. Purpose and Function of the school website

best education WordPress themes 1

Before you define the functionality of the school site, it is important to ask yourself the question: What do we want to achieve with your website?

A school site has more than one function:

  • Recruit students
  • Communicate with parents, students, colleagues and other schools through the interactive features of this website
  • Access to available material to facilitate homework

And much more…

Determining purpose and function of the site is very important since it decides which features your theme need to have. This helps you complete your list of best education WordPress themes.

3. Security and Privacy

Be cautious and careful when posting photos on the website. Not all parents are happy when they find pictures of their children online. Many schools ask for agreement in their registration form.

You can choose to make a selection of photos that are publicly supporting the presentation of the school. The other photographs may be shielded so that only parents and teachers can see them by using a password.

Are there other areas of the website that you want to make available to colleagues or parents of students?

4. Target audience

best education WordPress themes 2

Who is this site for?

Of course, parents of potential new students will first contact with your school via the site, so be sure that the website gives a good picture of the school and invites them to come.

Consider also the current parents; they can simply stay up to date on the developments of the school. This facilitates the involvement of students. So remember to involve them in the content and ensure that they can be proud of their school website. Your students are the most important ambassadors of your school.

5. Cost

What budget do you have for a website? Now and in a year?

WordPress itself is free; and it comes with a lot of free themes and plugins. However, when building professional school sites you will need to use the best education WordPress themes among premium WordPress themes. This is worth investing in since a website is more than just a recruitment tool, maybe you can cut costs on other communication channels (such as newsletters, school guides, letters) by making them digitally via the website or email.

A website is not a one-time investment, keep in mind that the website should be maintained. It is better if you can hire a developer to manage and keep your website safe and updated.

In short, plan a budget for the following things:

  • Website building: Domain, hosting, premium WordPress themes and plugins, etc.
  • Website management
  • Site maintenance

6. Management/Editorial

Make sure that you manage the website through a so-called system. View this critically before you build the website. It is important that the website is easy to manage itself. This avoids additional external support costs and prevents the contents from being tracked.

  • Who is primarily responsible for keeping the website?
  • Who will take care of the content of the website? An editorial team, and every teacher, perhaps students can also make a contribution?

Make the website part of the permanent communication. For example, always place the newsletter on the website.

7. Technical maintenance

best education WordPress themes 3

Most of premium plugins and the best education WordPress themes offer professional technical support. However, you should take a deep look at them to ensure that technical maintenance remains affordable and is carried out by trusted partners.

Avoid being too dependent on the developer you hire. WordPress is an open source, so you can always enable another partner to take over the maintenance of the website, or make technical adjustments.

8. Other interesting questions

  • Do you need a site with social networks such as Twitter, or Facebook? It is a fact that everybody increasingly uses them, be aware of that. See if you can make use of them.
  • Remember that websites are increasingly being viewed on mobile devices. So, how can you take this into account and make use of it?
  • If you are building a site network, do you want to buy some best WordPress themes for online education or just purchase one item?

best education wordpress themes

List of some best education WordPress themes

  • University – Education, Event and Course Theme
  • Academy – Learning Management Theme
  • Clever Course – One of the best education WordPress themes for online courses
  • LMS | Responsive Learning Management System
  • Kids Zone | Responsive Children Theme

Above are some of the best responsive education WordPress themes for your preference. You can purchase it on ThemeForest with only $59 for each item.

Hope you will have a perfect school site!

About CactusThemes

About CactusThemes

We are Power Elite Author on Envato. We specialized in WordPress Themes and Plugins development. Our products focus on User Experience and Business Solution, in many categories such as Video, Sport, Magazine, University, Blog...

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