Having a well-designed, functional website helps you reach a broader audience, build credibility, and connect meaningfully with customers or followers. In today’s digital-first world, your website is often the first impression you make, and right now is the time to make it count.
Why now? Black Friday savings, of course!
Until December 2nd, save 25% on the first year of any new annual hosting plan from WordPress.com.
There are many reasons a website is important. Let’s take a look at three that impact the relationship you can build with your audience:
Trust and credibility
We live in an “informed consumer” society and having a website allows you to share important details about your business or products. Your customers look for a website to help them form opinions, understand your offerings, and ultimately make a purchase decision. If you don’t have one, it can raise questions of legitimacy and cause your customers to look elsewhere for the products or services they require.
User experience
Your WordPress.com website gives you full control over how people experience your brand. A well-organized site not only sets the right tone but also makes it easy for visitors to find what they need, continuing to build trust and showing your commitment to a positive experience.
Accessibility and convenience
The internet never closes or sleeps. With a website, your audience has 24/7 access to everything you offer—any time, from anywhere.
Putting your audience first is essential to your success.
This is why our Black Friday sale is about so much more than the 25% savings you’ll receive on the first year of any new, annual hosting plan.
Choosing WordPress.com as your website host means choosing a team committed to your success. Our self-help resources, AI Assistant, and Happiness Engineers are all focused on helping you be successful with your website.
Our managed WordPress hosting also offers unmetered visitors, unmatched speed, and unstoppable security for one low price. With WordPress.com, you always have what you need to get online (and stay online) so you can grow your audience.
And if you take advantage of our Black Friday sale before December 2nd, you get even more with your purchase:
25% off any new, annual hosting plan
A free custom domain for one year
Expert support from our Happiness Engineers
What’s possible on WordPress.com
WordPress is a powerful and flexible website building platform, and WordPress.com gives you that functionality alongside powerful, secure, and scalable managed hosting. Whether you want a simple blog, a complex eCommerce store, or anything in-between, WordPress.com is the right hosting platform for you.
ScreenshotScreenshotScreenshotClick to view example sites.
How to unlock powerful WordPress hosting
Ready to get started with WordPress.com? We thought you might be.
Click the button below to learn more about each of our plans, choose the right plan for you, and purchase your discounted hosting plan. Your 25% off discount will apply automatically at checkout.
For sure. You can transfer or connect your domain and we can guide you on the steps as needed.
Can I migrate an existing site?
Absolutely. Whether your existing site is built with WordPress or another platform, we have guides available to walk you through the process. We also offer free migrations of WordPress sites. And yes, our Black Friday offer applies to site migrations too.
Is this offer available on renewals or upgrades?
No, this discount only applies to new annual plans. Current users can, however, use this offer if they’re adding a new plan or site.
How do renewals work?
Our Black Friday offer gives you a 25% discount off the first year of your hosting plan. Our annual plans automatically renew 30-days prior to your expiry date at the regular full price.
Sign up today to take advantage of powerful managed WordPress hosting from WordPress.com and save 25% on the annual plan of your choice.
When you’re building a WordPress website, there are some essential elements you likely want to include, such as a contact form. However, limiting your use of forms to your contact page is a missed opportunity to increase leads, boost engagement, and enhance the overall user experience (UX) on your site.
There are many ways you can use forms on your WordPress site beyond providing visitors with a contact method. From collecting user feedback to generating leads and expanding your mailing list, forms offer dynamic and convenient ways to drive conversions.
In this post, we’ll start by discussing the role forms play in WordPress and how they can help you collect valuable information. Then we’ll introduce you to eight creative ways to use them on your site with some tips for making them effective.
Note: We’ve saved the most surprising ways for the end, so keep reading!
An introduction to using forms on your WordPress site
When most people think of website forms, they likely think of contact forms. These simple, embedded features let your visitors enter basic information to get in touch with you:
However, the use of online forms extends far beyond contact points. These documents allow you to easily and conveniently collect a wide variety of information from users and visitors directly from your website. You can also use them across other channels such as email and social media.
Website forms are beneficial because they provide straightforward ways of collecting lead-generating data that you can store and use in the future. Therefore, forms are essential tools to help you with marketing, sales, and promotions.
Another benefit of using forms on your WordPress site is that creating and embedding them is quick and easy. There are several plugins you can use to build forms if you require different functionality.
Six creative examples of forms you can create right now
Now that we understand more about the role forms play in websites, let’s look at their different use cases. Below are six creative ways to use forms on your WordPress site, aside from your contact page.
1. Run fun contests and giveaways
Running contests and giveaways on your website is an excellent way to boost engagement. Giving away freebies can help promote your brand and spread awareness about specific products and offerings.
To make it as simple as possible for your customers to enter the contest, you can use an embedded or pop-up form to collect their information, such as names and email addresses:
This form provides you with customer contact information that you can use for future campaigns. People will be more likely to hand over their details when they know they have a chance to win something in return.
2. Register users for memberships and events
If you run a membership site or host events, you can use website forms to make user registration a breeze:
You can also utilize them for event registration, such as an upcoming webinar. Like a giveaway, this can be an effective lead-generation technique because you’re giving users something in exchange for their contact details.
3. Conduct user and reader surveys
Curious to know what your readers or customers think about a topic? Use a questionnaire and find out! You can easily create a poll or survey using Crowdsignal, our service for creating surveys and polls. Get started with a free account and learn how to set it up:
You can also effortlessly capture insights from your audience by creating a simple poll using the Poll block:
4. Let users sign up for your mailing list
Email marketing is a powerful way to grow your audience, expand brand awareness, and increase engagement. However, figuring out how to grow your subscriber list can be challenging.
One way to expand your subscriber list is by embedding a newsletter signup form on your website. It lets you easily capture the email addresses of your visitors:
One of the benefits of signup forms is that there are so many different areas you can place them. For example, you can insert them in the header or footer of your website. This placement ensures the forms are easily accessible no matter which pages your users are on.
You can also use forms as exit-intent pop-ups. For example, as visitors are about to leave your website, you can have the signup form appear with a convenient Call To Action (CTA).
5. Enable applicants to apply for jobs
Recruiting and hiring new talent is a staple in any successful business. However, the application process you use can influence the number of applicants and the quality.
Today, many job seekers want a quick and convenient way to apply to jobs they’re interested in. To make the process as convenient as possible for your prospects, you can add a form on your website that enables potential employees to apply to open positions:
You can embed these forms directly below the job descriptions. Plus, you can enable applicants to attach documents, such as resumes and cover letters. This feature eliminates the number of steps users must complete to submit their information for different positions.
Using a form also helps you keep all the necessary information of applicants in one place for easy access. This can streamline the vetting process and, ultimately, help you find the most qualified applicants.
6. “Name It!” campaign – involve users in product decisions
Raise your hand if you’ve ever eagerly suggested a name for someone’s new puppy, or your local zoo’s newborn giraffe. Users love feeling useful, so give them a fun job. Create a form that allows visitors to suggest a name for your latest product or mascot. An entire viral campaign can sometimes emerge simply from a “name this” campaign.
Be forewarned that if you let your audience name something, the results might get a little bit silly. Source: BBC
A few simple tips for creating effective website forms
Once you decide to create a particular type of website form, the next step is to build it. As we mentioned earlier, there are various tools you can use to do so.
However, regardless of which plugin you use to create your forms, there are some essential tips to keep in mind to ensure effectiveness. For example:
Keep things simple. Only include the necessary information to keep the forms as brief and concise as possible. Otherwise, you risk overwhelming users and reducing the likelihood of completing the form.
Minimize the amount of typing involved. In most cases, your customers won’t want to spend considerable time filling out lengthy responses to form questions. Therefore, it’s a smart idea to include multiple choice answers when possible (and where applicable).
Provide clear instructions. To make your forms as effective as possible, it’s vital to ensure that users understand what you’re asking and how to complete the fields correctly. You might consider adding example answers to demonstrate the type of responses you’re looking for.
Best practices for creating website forms vary based on the type you’re building and what your end goal is. However, it’s crucial to prioritize the UX to make the data collection process quick and effortless for your customers.
What will you do with forms next?
Most website owners understand the importance of including contact forms on their websites. However, many overlook the various ways that forms can help drive conversions and generate leads.
As discussed in this post, you can use plenty of strategies to get creative with your forms. For example, you can use them to register users for events, conduct user surveys, let visitors sign up for your mailing list, and offer a seamless way to apply for jobs.
When you’re browsing the web, how quickly do you navigate elsewhere if a website isn’t instantly loading? We all know from experience that every second counts. If your website takes too long to load, visitors won’t hesitate to move on—sometimes straight to your competitors.
Faster load times not only improve user satisfaction but also boost your search engine rankings and ultimately drive more conversions.
That’s why you’re going to love using our new Site Speed Tool. It can quickly identify areas impacting your site’s Core Web Vitals (CWV), like load times, interactivity, and visual stability and provides actionable insights and recommendations, making it easier to optimize your site’s performance and deliver a smoother, faster user experience.
Nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer.
Almost half of consumers say they’ll try to refresh a page at least once when it takes 3 seconds to load. But 22% say they’ll close the tab, and 14% say they’ll visit a competitor’s site.
47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less.
Website performance plays a critical role in the success of any online business. Slow websites will cost you not only visitors but also potential revenue. Investing in performance optimization could be the difference between closing a sale and losing out to a competitor.
A faster website gives you a competitive edge by capturing traffic from slower sites. Visitors are more likely to stay, explore, and convert into customers when your site loads quickly. Speed isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a key driver of business growth.
Optimize your WordPress site for lightning-fast performance
Is your WordPress site as fast as it could be? Test the speed of your WordPress site with free our Site Speed Tool and get detailed performance metrics and tailored recommendations with just a few clicks. Simply enter any public WordPress URL, and we’ll run real-time tests on your site to assess its performance.
Our tool evaluates key areas, such as:
Loading speed: How fast your site loads for users.
Core Web Vitals: Metrics that focus on user experience, including loading, interactivity, and visual stability.
Historical performance: Tracking your site’s performance over time to spot trends and areas for improvement.
Once analyzed, you’ll receive an easy-to-understand performance score and WordPress-specific, AI-enhanced recommendations to boost your website’s speed and overall performance.
If you already have a site on WordPress.com with a Business or Commerce plan, you can also easily access the speed test directly in your dashboard. Test your performance across all of your sites to better understand correlations between site changes and performance.
Get weekly performance change alerts
Want to stay ahead of performance issues? Sign up for weekly performance change alerts, which provide a comprehensive overview of your website’s metrics over the last handful of weeks. These reports will highlight trends, performance fluctuations, and areas where further optimization is needed—keeping you informed and in control of your website’s health.
Test your site today
Your website’s performance can make or break your success online. With our easy-to-use performance measurement tool, you can take the guesswork out of optimizing your site.
Test your URL now for free and get personalized recommendations to ensure your site performs at its best, or head to the Performance tab in your site’s Hosting Overview menu to get automatic performance data about your WordPress.com sites.
Don’t leave your website’s success to chance—start optimizing today.
We are pleased to announce that Ian Stewart (blog, LinkedIn, GitHub, X) has been chosen to lead end-to-end customer experience for WordPress.com as its Artistic Director and product lead.
In a nod to LVMH’s organizational structure, Ian will lead in the style of a maison head, ensuring that every part of WordPress.com remains the best managed WordPress experience available. He has been a part of the WordPress.com team for over 14 years, and we’re excited to see what changes he will implement on WordPress.com in this new role.
“I got involved with WordPress after growing tired of using Blogger for my personal blog,” Ian says. “This quickly led to the demise of my regular blogging habits as I spent most of my time messing around with my theme…My fooling around with WordPress themes quickly became a delightful obsession as I tried to publicly figure out what I thought about them.”
We’re grateful for your obsession with WordPress, Ian, and we certainly know the feeling.
If you find yourself diving deeper into the topic of WordPress, content management systems, and websites, a term you will quickly stumble upon is “PHP.” You will likely hear how crucial PHP is for the Internet and that it is what’s powering WordPress websites.
However, what exactly is PHP, and why is it so important?
The short answer is that it’s a general-purpose, server-side scripting language. That said, unless you are already knowledgeable in programming and web development, that probably doesn’t make things much clearer.
In order to help you better understand this topic, we’ll cover PHP in detail below. You’ll learn what PHP is, why it matters, and how it relates to WordPress and pretty much everything you do online. We promise you’ll be surprised to hear how much you likely rely on PHP every day.
The original developer of PHP was a Danish-Canadian programmer named Rasmus Lerdorf. He first created the language in the mid 1990s to build tools for his own website; that’s why PHP originally stood for “Personal Home Page.” Today, it stands for the recursive acronym “Hypertext Preprocessor” and development and support has been taken over by the PHP Group.
PHP features
PHP has some notable features, many of which are applicable to the way WordPress works:
Open Source: The first thing that is important to note is that, like WordPress, PHP is open source. That means it does not belong to any one business entity. It also means that it’s free to download and use for any purpose.
Finally, both WordPress and PHP are community-funded––while WordPress has the WordPress Foundation, The PHP Foundation’s mission is to “ensure the long-term prosperity of the PHP language.” Automattic is a proud Platinum Sponsor of The PHP Foundation.
Server Side: PHP is a server-side language, which means it executes on the server and not in the user’s browser.
For example, PHP’s most frequent application is for creating HTML documents for websites. Even though there are PHP files on the server, the browser does not receive the PHP code; instead, it receives the finished HTML documents for display. This is different from client-side languages like JavaScript where the processing happens directly in the user’s browser after downloading the JavaScript files.
To make things clearer, server-side languages are a bit like going to a restaurant. You send an order to the kitchen, they prepare the meal, and it arrives at your table ready to eat. Client-side languages, on the other hand, are like meal-delivery services. While they provide you with all the necessary ingredients, you still have to put them together in your own kitchen.
General Purpose: PHP is also a general-purpose programming language. You can use it for command-line scripting, creating desktop applications, and more. However, its primary application is in web development.
Ubiquitous: According to W3Techs, the language is present on 75.7% of all websites. That includes some famous ones, as you will see below.
In addition, it forms the backbone of many content management systems like Drupal, Joomla!, and—the most popular of them all—WordPress.
PHP is one of the biggest open source success stories, as much of the modern Internet depends on it to work.
Benefits of PHP
You might be asking yourself why the usage of PHP is so widespread. There are many good reasons for that, but here are just a few:
Beginner-Friendly: PHP is relatively easy for beginners to learn due to its intuitive syntax. There are also plenty of tools and frameworks available to make coding easier.
Wide Community: The language has a vast and active community of developers worldwide. This means there are loads of online resources, forums, and other places where users can seek help and find ready-made solutions to common problems.
Cross-Platform Compatibility: PHP is compatible with popular operating systems, including Windows, MacOS, Linux, and Unix. It also works on various web servers such as Apache, NGINX, and Microsoft IIS.
Database Connectivity: In addition, it works with a number of different database formats, such as MySQL, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Oracle, and more. PHP can execute SQL queries, retrieve, update and delete data, and handle database connections and transactions.
Cost-Effective: As we have already learned, the programming language is free to use, distribute, and modify. That eliminates the need for expensive licensing fees and reduces development costs, making it an economical choice for web development projects.
Scalability: PHP is capable of handling high traffic loads and can easily scale. You can use it together with caching techniques and other optimization strategies to enhance performance. Plus, it’s generally faster than some other programming languages, such as Python.
How PHP works: Creating dynamic web content
One of the main reasons why PHP is so popular for web development is that it seamlessly integrates with various technologies and services commonly used in this area. Examples include HTTP, POP3, IMAP, and more.
One of its main advantages is that it is highly compatible with HTML, the main language used to create and display websites. In fact, it’s possible to use PHP code in HTML files and vice versa.
<div class="about__section is-feature has-subtle-background-color">
<div class="column">
<h2><?php _e( 'Shape the future of the web with WordPress' ); ?></h2>
<p><?php _e( 'Finding the area that aligns with your skills and interests is the first step toward meaningful contribution. With more than 20 Make WordPress teams working on different parts of the open source WordPress project, there’s a place for everyone, no matter what your skill set is.' ); ?></p>
<p><a href="<?php echo esc_url( __( 'https://make.wordpress.org/contribute/' ) ); ?>"><?php _e( 'Find your team →' ); ?></a></p>
</div>
</div>
Above you can see how both languages appear in the same file. The PHP markup is delineated by opening and closing brackets (<?php and ?>) so that the server knows where it ends and begins. However, the PHP code itself is inside an HTML <p> element. The _e function is a WordPress function used for localization, which allows for easy translations across the WordPress software.
The main benefit of this is that using PHP allows web developers to display dynamic content in otherwise static web pages. For example, PHP is able to pull content directly from databases, making it great for templating. You can create a fixed layout for all web pages but then display different content depending on the page a user is on.
This is vastly different from pure HTML, where the content needs to be hard-coded in the page file in order for the browser to show it. PHP, on the other hand, can add it on the fly as needed. That’s one of the main benefits of this programming language—the ability to dynamically combine and display content from different sources and of different kinds according to what the user requests.
PHP and WordPress: The CMS’ heart and soul
As a WordPress user, PHP is especially important. The programming language forms the basis of much of what WordPress can do. It’s what allows you to create, edit, and delete pages, posts, media, and other content. That’s why you see that a lot of files that end in .php when you look in the directory of any WordPress installation.
It’s also why, when installing WordPress on a server, the system requirements insist that PHP be present. In recent years JavaScript has been playing a bigger and bigger role in the WordPress ecosystem, mainly because of the adoption of the Gutenberg editor. That said, PHP is still the main workhorse in the background.
Powering themes and plugins
What are some of WordPress’ main tasks powered by PHP? Before the advent of block themes, WordPress themes were all written mostly in PHP, especially page template files. In fact, if you look at the template hierarchy, you can see that WordPress has PHP files for pretty much all pages and theme components.
Why? So we have the ability to create a single layout for one type of content and then dynamically display what’s saved in the database for a particular piece of content.
That way, if you have 300 pages of the same kind on your site, you don’t need a file for each as you would on a pure HTML website. Instead, you just need one single page template file; PHP can then populate each individual page with its specific content.
PHP also makes it easy to compartmentalize different parts of your theme. For example, it’s very common to not have the markup for a footer in each file. Instead you can create a separate footer.php file and call it into your templates where needed. That way, if you want to modify the footer layout, you only have to make changes in a singular place—the footer.php file.
The same is true for plugins, aka collections of PHP files that contain the necessary markup for adding extra functionality to your WordPress site. When you activate a plugin, it gets added to the rest of your website code and can provide the functionality you are looking for.
Without PHP, there would be no WordPress
All of the above is only made possible by the flexibility that PHP offers. Besides the benefits we have discussed before, this is the main reason why WordPress relies on PHP to the extent that it does; PHP offers a ton of flexible functionality specifically for web development. PHP’s capabilities in content management, working with databases, and its modularity all make it a perfect candidate for powering the most popular website builder there is.
This also means that if you know PHP, it opens up a lot more possibilities to modify your WordPress website. You can write custom plugins, make changes to (non-block) themes and page templates, introduce functionality to functions.php, and so much more. So, if you want to improve your WordPress skill set, learning PHP is not a bad place to start.
PHP in everyday life: You rely on it more often than you think
Besides WordPress, you might actually be unaware how much of your general everyday online interactions are enabled by PHP. There are a number of very well-known websites that use PHP to run and many common processes that the programming language performs online:
Facebook: The largest social network in existence was initially built using PHP. While they have moved away from the programming language over time, it still plays a significant role in their infrastructure.
Wikipedia: The world’s biggest online encyclopedia also relies heavily on PHP for its back end operations, content management, and user interactions.
Tumblr: This microblogging and social networking platform employs PHP to power its vast network of user-generated content and social interactions. We’re actually in the process of migrating Tumblr’s backend to run on WordPress; if you’re interested in being a part of this exciting project, leave your information here.
Slack: This widely-used team collaboration and communication platform utilizes PHP for its back-end operations, real-time messaging, and API integrations.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless other examples of well-known web staples that exist in part because of PHP.
Other abilities of PHP
Up until this point, we’ve mostly talked about PHP in the context of creating and outputting HTML markup; however, the programming language is involved in a lot more that you probably take advantage of on a daily basis:
Form Processing: PHP can process and validate data submitted by users via forms. It’s also capable of performing actions such as storing data in a database, sending email notifications, or generating dynamic responses based on user input. Plus, it comes with encryption to keep the submitted data safe.
User Authentication: It can also handle user authentication by verifying login credentials. PHP allows you to implement user registration and login/logout functionality, and it can control access to different areas of your website or application. For example: user roles.
Session Management: PHP can also manage user sessions, store session data, and track user activity. Among other things, this allows you to save user preferences. PHP can also set cookies and receive cookie data.
File Manipulation: The programming language provides a wide range of functions for file manipulation, such as reading and writing files, uploading files from forms, creating directories, and modifying file permissions. This comes in handy for managing files on the server through other applications (like WordPress).
Email Handling: PHP comes with functions to send emails from a server. This allows you to build features like contact forms, email notifications, and automated email responses.
Third-Party Communication: With PHP you can interact with external APIs and web services. It makes it possible to integrate with other applications, retrieve data from remote servers, and perform actions like posting to social media platforms.
What is PHP? It is the web’s backbone
If you’re an everyday WordPress user or non-developer, you probably don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how much of your online experience is possible thanks to the humble PHP. However, the more you dive into this topic, the more you’ll realize how much you rely on it.
Who knew an open source solution was at the heart of what makes the World Wide Web tick? From the largest content management system in the world to well-known web entities, so much of what we take for granted exists because of it.
There are good reasons why it’s so widespread; from its powerful capabilities over its wide support system to ongoing development and support, there is a lot that speaks for PHP as the go-to solution for web projects.
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