Headless WordPress by WP Engine and Elementor
by u/DigitalSplendid in WordPress
Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
Given pro grade plugins by WooCommerce are not affordable to many, any suggestion on how to develop own solutions for similar outcomes. For instance, I need an online form (with calculator) that user will fill, followed by making an online payment. Also, users submitting the form are added as customer (as part of user list).
Specially, I would like to know why there are so many pro grade forms software? Can online forms be not created by us as user in a simpler way. Without forms integrated with WooCommerce, core WordPress start appearing too limited. Without community feature integrated with WooCommerce, could anyone suggest me a learning path to develop such functionalities inhouse? Any reference to learning guides, courses, tutorials appreciated.




Seeking recommended plugins for tax filing service
by u/DigitalSplendid in WordPress
Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in ProWordPress
Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in webdev
Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in WordPress
Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in WordPressPlugins
Beyond basic, free WooCommerce: How to develop own functionalities
by u/DigitalSplendid in WordPress
Plesk: WP Toolkit got an upgrade
Source: Plesk newsletter dated 25 Jan 2023
Introducing The WP Toolkit Deluxe
Your favorite extension just got an upgrade. The world-famous, industry-leading WP Toolkit, designed to run and secure all your WordPress instances, now offers a Deluxe package! With everything you know and love from the original Toolkit, plus:
✓ Smart PHP Updates ✓ Smart Updates It’s the ultimate tool for WordPress users. Interested? Learn More |
WordPress: Getting access to free perks and privileges with WP Engine Agency Partner Program
For online publishers, web developers, digital agencies, there are many promising affiliate programs/partner programs that help monetize while being focused on the core area.
Affiliate programs are a kind of passive association in which you add affiliate links/banners on your website while promoting the same through activities such as blog posts, sharing on social media, and email marketing. Partner programs are closer association in which you actively use and refer clients the product by the partner while getting special benefits from partner such as referral commission, leads from partner’s online directory, badges authenticating you as an approved partner. Often you are the first to avail free partner’s newly launched product/feature. While affiliate commission is usually one time event, commission from a partner program is recurring.
In this blog post, I take a look at WP Engine Agency Partner Program as per our experience at Splendid Digital Solutions /Techcosec Limited. It is to be noted that one cannot be both registered as affiliate and partner of WP Engine. The affiliate program of WP Engine is managed by ShareASale.

Interested in providing web development services to your clients centered around WordPress? Consider getting approved as WP Engine Agency Partner.

Once approved, you get access to WP Engine’s partner portal.
A. Partner Portal


















Agency directory listing for generating leads.
For a free WP Engine agency directory listing, you need at least one tracked referral within the last 12 months (this condition imposed beginning June 30, 2022).
B. Developer Account


The perks include access to one free live site.







Genesis Pro and eCommerce Solutions need upgradation.




Be the first to access newly launched features such as headless WordPress with Atlas and Flywheel Growth Suite.



WP Engine Agency Partner Program
Content creation, web development & internet marketing: Do-by-yourself
1. Domain Name
We recommend NameCheap due to its competitive pricing, 24×7 customer support over chat, and free email forwarding feature.
2. Web Hosting
Despite a large number of great options from open source and proprietary technologies, we narrow down to open source, easy -to-use WordPress for a starter website. In WordPress, we suggest to go with a managed WordPress plan, making things user friendly for you as an end user.
Once again, there are so many great web hosting service providers. Our recommendation here in no way challenges them. Based on our usage and experience, we suggest NameCheap for those with a limited budget.
Recently, 10Web has attracted a lot of popularity for its AI-induced way to launch a website built with WordPress. Although website builders have been long there, 10Web has integrated AI with WordPress in a novel way. All you need to do is to fill few prompts like you do using ChatGPT and within minutes you have a complete, unique WordPress site matching your niche. Their starter yearly pricing is 120$ or 10$ per month when paid yearly and 20$ when paid monthly.
For those looking for mission critical sites, we recommend Nexcess and WP Engine.
For your e-commerce shop, WooCommerce plugin can be activated for free with any WordPress plan. Keeping in mind specific needs for an e-commerce store, most managed WordPress hosting service providers now have a special package for e-store and Nexcess and WP Engine no exception.
While cloud computing service providers like AWS and Google Cloud provide high-end web hosting, this post is not targeted for developers and trained web professionals.
3. Content Creation
Content is at the heart of perhaps any type of online business. While for a publishing/blogging niche, content is their core specialization, even for a software company focused on developing a software product, there is a need for documentation for which technical writing skills come into play. For an online store, product description forms an important component that in addition to generate interest about the product also helps bring audience to the site through search engines based on keywords used as part of product descriptions.
Relevant article by Interact: How to find SEO keywords you can actually rank for
In addition to text-based content (such as articles, blog posts, product descriptions, whitepapers), images, podcasts (audio files), and videos also qualify as content. Images are mostly used as part of text-based content and videos.
It is recommended to take help of AI writing tools like ChatGPT and Tailwind Ghostwriter to generate initial copies based on prompts/feeds provided. Since such AI tools generate content based on prompts provided, the choice exercised by a trained content writer filling prompts can differentiate the output. The copies generated by AI writing tools these days are accurate in terms of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. The content writer will more function as an editor reading the content generated by AI tools and depending on the use case revise before pressing the publish button.
Online forms are used to collect data from users. Online forms are not just used to gather user data for say completing a sales transaction but can be leveraged to be more interactive with your website audience like by creating quizzes (using a software like Interact).
Branding as part of content strategy
When it comes to logo, you can spend a ton of money hiring a sophisticated logo design professional. On the contrary, you can have a logo at a reasonable price designed by yourself using software like Canva and Looka. We recommend Canva if you are in tight budget (even free plan by Canva can do, pro plan starting from 499 INR/per month). Check Canva pricing here. Beyond one-time logo, with a monthly Canva subscription, you can take care of all your image/banner/video creation needs.
Looka with a slightly higher budget can help come out with a great logo in an automated way by just filling fields like name and tagline of your business, preferred colors.
4. Email Marketing
Once you have your website live, your focus shifts on building subscriber lists and engage with your subscribers.
While we use Moosend, we recommend Omnisend for e-stores given their expertise in e-commerce and additional SMS feature.
5. Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The first place to explore once your business starts is stand out on Google with a free business profile.
For Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook marketing, Tailwind helps automate the process by coming out with fresh designs that align with your brand (Tailwind Create) to scheduling and sharing from one dashboard. We are talking organic social media optimization; that is, opportunity available for free to Pinterest/Instagram/Facebook account holders.
RelateSocial is a newly-introduced social media manager tool by NameCheap that supports more social media platforms in its Pro plan (including Twitter, Linkedin, Google Business profile, not supported on Tailwind) but seems lacking design capabilities of Tailwind Create.
6. Paid Ad Campaigns
Given the dominance of Google Search, consider starting a Google Ad campaign choosing your targeted keyword, location that you wish to target, and daily budget. Similarly to make your business visible on social media, there are paid campaigns on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin.
Another paid/inorganic way to speedup your marketing activities is to subscribe to B2B database services like the ones by Apollo.io and ZoomInfo.
- Relevant article by Interact: Organic Ads vs. Paid Ads: How to Use Both in Your Business
- List of software (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc.) and other offerings with free developer tiers.
Quotation Form
For the above tasks, you can also hire us to get your work done in a professional way.
GoDaddy Website Builder versus WooCommerce for your online store
GoDaddy Website Builder is a proprietary software by GoDaddy. Creating a website/e-store is as easy as operating your Facebook/Instagram account. With simple drag and drop, you end up launching a complete website/e-store within an hour.
Here is our website fincosec.co.uk built with Godaddy Website Builder software. With a few clicks, I was able to connect our Stripe account for accepting payments.

I would suggest making use of the free trial to see if your needs are met by GoDaddy Website Builder. At times, a few tweaks might work for pain points.
For instance, GoDaddy Store allows having variants of a product.

While putting for sale a digital product, I needed three variants:
(1) Domain for sale: The buyer will buy only the domain name and not the connected website.
(2) Website for sale: The buyer will buy only the connected website without domain name. While the ownership of the website will be transferred to the buyer, the domain will not be transferred. The seller will still have the ownership of the domain name that he will disconnect from the sold website.
(3) Domain + Website for sale:
The accurate working should have a feature if the domain is sold, there is still a listing of the website for sale while removing the domain + website for sale variant. Similarly, if the website is sold, the domain listing is active while removing the domain + website variant. If the third variant (Domain + Websiite for sale) is purchased, the first two should be inactivated. Also, free shipping if not quantity (set to 1 as part of tweaking) is not relevant.

All such tweaks are not possible with GoDaddy Website Builder. At most, I could set the quantity equal to 1 for all the three variants. Now, this is faulty. If someone buys a domain (first variant), the website (second variant) and domain + website (third variant) will still be available for sale. Of course, once it comes to my notice that the domain sold, I can remove the two variants manually. In case indeed payment is made, arranging a refund is only a matter of a few clicks. Yet, this is not perfect and might even not be acceptable. Open source CMS WordPress plugin WooCommerce can meet such customized needs. You might need to hire a developer in case available readymade features of the plugin or its addon fail to meet your needs. The problem with GoDaddy Website Builder is that you are out of options very fast if available drag and drop features do not meet your specific needs. With WooCommerce, you can change the underlying codes, something GoDaddy Website Builder will not allow.