Podcasts are a great way to capture your audience by uploading audio and video episodes. However, producing quality content is as important as choosing the right podcasting tools to win your audience’s attention. A great tool should be compatible with your website and hosting service as well as support the video and audio files you […]
The post 7 Best WordPress Podcast Plugins in 2023 appeared first on Hostinger Tutorials.
Most of the magic in WordPress happens within the “dashboard.” If you’re wondering what is the WordPress dashboard, then it’s time to get your answer in this article. We’ll also review some of its most important settings to set you up for success.
The post What Is the WordPress Dashboard and How Do You Use It? appeared first on Themeisle Blog.
Building your church website from scratch can help you create a stronger community. It enables you to keep your members informed, accept donations, promote religious events, and more. However, you must create a visually appealing and highly functional website to accomplish your goals. To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of 25 top church […]
The post 25 Best WordPress Church Themes in 2023 appeared first on Hostinger Tutorials.
WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world, used on more than 44% of websites on the internet. While there are a plethora of plugins you can use to improve your site, a new and better way is emerging: artificial intelligence (AI). By using AI, you can enhance your copy, generate images, improve SEO, bolster security, and even personalize the user experience. In this post, we’ll share a few ways how you can improve WordPress with AI.
Let’s get started.
image created with Midjourney
AI involves the use of computer systems to perform tasks that normally a human would do, usually in a fraction of the time. Using AI, you can create images, videos, and even music with a simple text prompt. AI can also process complex tasks like analyzing millions of data points in mere minutes.
A popular form of AI used to create text and images is called generative AI, which works by training two systems, a discriminator and a generator, to generate output. The generator is used to create text, images, and other generative content, depending on the dataset it’s trained on. During training, the generator presents its creation to the discriminator, prompting the discriminator to determine whether the output is real or artificial. As training evolves, the generator is eventually able to fool the discriminator to the point that it can’t tell the difference between the real and synthetic media. The result is the generated image, text, music, or video you’ll see once the process is complete.
image created with Divi AI
If you’re thinking of incorporating AI into your WordPress website, you’ll be pleased to know that there are plenty of benefits to using it. Through the use of AI, you can improve your website’s performance, optimize images, make performance enhancements, and even create or enhance your site’s content. Several AI products, such as Divi AI, can help you boost your SEO through AI-generated copy. If you’re looking to create images or enhance them with AI, Divi can help with that too. Regardless of what your site needs, there are various tools and WordPress AI plugins out there that can help you step up your game.
When it comes to AI, all of the options can be confusing. It’s important to understand what’s out there to determine what works for your specific situation. In the following section, we’ll walk you through different ways to improve WordPress with AI and the tools to use for each.
One of the most immediate ways to improve WordPress with AI is by using it to improve your website’s text content. There is a lot of AI writing software out there, including Jasper, but few have the ability to improve your copy automatically within WordPress like Divi AI can.
Divi AI stands out from its competitors by allowing you to integrate AI directly into the design experience. With direct integration into Divi’s Visual Builder, Divi AI can suggest text for your site based on surrounding content. In addition, it can improve your existing copy by allowing you to insert relevant keywords and specify a set number of words to generate.
Being able to create keyword-rich content for your site is excellent for SEO and gives you a much better chance at ranking high in search engine ranking pages (SERPs). By using an AI product like Divi AI, you can write SEO-quality copy at the click of a button.
Another way to improve your WordPress website with AI is by incorporating AI art. Using a quality tool like Divi AI, you can generate images for your content with AI. Anyone who’s worked with WordPress for any period of time knows the challenge of finding quality photos on the cheap. Additionally, finding the right image for your content can be challenging, to say the least. Most of us don’t have access to an affordable professional photographer, so using AI to generate images is a great way to add pictures without breaking the bank.
Divi AI integrates into the Divi Builder and allows you to create images for products, posts, pages, or anywhere your site may need. All you have to do is describe the image you need by inputting a text prompt, and Divi AI will take care of the rest. In addition to that, you can improve your existing photos by refining them with AI. The best part? It’s easy to use, is affordable at $24 a month, and allows you to create unlimited images and text for your website.
image created with Divi AI
One of the most important aspects of successfully running a WordPress site is optimizing it for search engines. There are several factors to consider, including keyword research, off and on-page SEO, and rich snippets, which all contribute to a successful SEO strategy. By leveraging the power of AI, you can easily stay on top of these important tasks with speed and efficiency. For example, using a good AI SEO tool such as Surfer SEO, you can analyze content as you write it. Through artificial intelligence, Surfer SEO can analyze competitor keywords, suggest new ones, and even instruct you on how often you should use them within your content. Surfer SEO also integrates seamlessly with WordPress and other SEO plugins, giving you an excellent head start on competitors.
A live assistant embedded in your WordPress website is one of the best ways to improve customer satisfaction. Through AI programs like Tidio, you can incorporate live chat into your site without the need for human management. Tidio can answer the majority of customer questions automatically, freeing you up for more important tasks. This is especially beneficial if you are a one-person operation or have limited funds to hire someone else to handle it. Tidio is excellent for fielding pre-sale questions, setting up a support ticketing system, or conversing with your site’s visitors.
Keeping your site speedy should be at the top of your list of things to do if you’re looking for ways to improve your WordPress website with AI. Slow performance is a surefire way to plummet your site in SERPs. Thankfully, AI software such as Swift Performance can keep your site running fast and smoothly. As an all-in-one AI caching plugin for WordPress, Swift boasts automatic speed enhancements by optimizing core web vitals. In addition, it handles tasks such as CSS, HTML, and JS minification, along with image optimization, so you’ll worry less about your site’s performance and more about other business-related tasks.
With nefarious actors always looking for opportunities to do harm, securing your WordPress website is a must. Security starts at the server level, so it’s important to choose the right WordPress hosting company to partner with. SiteGround is one of our favorites because they are optimized for WordPress, have amazing features, and an affordable price point. To help keep their server infrastructure secure, they incorporate an artificial intelligence anti-bot to continuously scan for malware and block brute force attacks.
Through a combination of an analytics plugin and an AI chatbot, such as Writesonic, you can determine the type of people who visit your site and how they use it. By knowing who your customers are, you can easily cater to the user experience directly for them. Additionally, through segmentation, you can analyze what different groups are looking for, then use that information to create customized landing pages for each group, allowing you to test which works best.
Incorporating AI into the mix gives you a distinct advantage over your competitors. For example, using data points collected through analytics, you can ask AI to provide insights on the data, giving you ideas on personalizing the UX directly to a specific group.
One of the biggest speed killers on a WordPress website is oversized images. Among Google’s core web vital metrics, time to first byte (TTFL) weighs heavily on how your site is graded. A poor score warrants a dip in the SERPs, so making sure your images are sized correctly plays a big role in search results. By using a WordPress image optimization plugin like ShortPixel, you can optimize and compress your images, making search engines happy. It works by incorporating AI to resize your images on the fly, ensuring that every image you upload is sized correctly, resulting in a much faster page loading time.
By leveraging generative AI, you can effortlessly create engaging content for better SEO and user engagement, generate high-quality images, and offer personalized content to your site’s visitors. Tools like Divi AI allow you to streamline content creation and optimization in just a few clicks, while Surfer SEO breathes new life into your SEO strategy. Incorporating AI into WordPress saves time and can nurture personalized user experiences. As AI technology develops, it promises to reshape the digital landscape, blending WordPress with AI for better, faster websites. Whether you want to take your creativity to the next level or incorporate an AI chatbot to spearhead customer engagement, AI-driven solutions are the way of the future.
How do you incorporate AI into your WordPress website? Let us know by dropping a comment below.
Featured Image by Divi AI
The post How to Improve Your WordPress Website With AI in 2023 appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
Work on WordPress 6.4 is kicking off with a post from Editor Triage Co-Lead Anne McCarthy that highlights everything the team has planned for the release. This will be the third major release of 2023, and is unique in that it’s being led by an underrepresented gender release squad.
Although WordPress is moving into Phase 3 of the Gutenberg project, which focuses on collaboration, 6.4 will primarily extend existing features in the block and site editors.
“Initial explorations for phase 3 will continue in the Gutenberg plugin, and any early wins will be added alongside the foundational work already planned in this major release,” McCarthy said.
WordPress 6.4 is anticipated to introduce typography management features, including a Font Library and server-side @font-face CSS generation and printing. This means users will be able to browse a library of fonts in the admin, similar to how they manage media. It will not be dependent on the theme that is activated but will be a library that is extensible for plugin developers.
Other new functionality planned for 6.4 includes the following:
WordPress 6.4 will also ship with a new Twenty Twenty-Four default theme that will showcase the latest capabilities of block themes.
McCarthy emphasized that the features published in the roadmap are “being actively pursued” but may not represent what actually lands in the final release.
WordPress 6.4 is anticipated to be released on November 7, 2023, with Beta 1 expected on September 26.
Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a tool that many sectors, including web design, are adding to their feature sets. Digital design and marketing are seeing many established tools add AI functionality to their products. The same can be said for WordPress. As one of the most popular website builders available, it’s no surprise that you see more AI plugins for WordPress. This guide will show you how to bring AI into your next WordPress build. First, let’s cover why you may want to use AI to make a WordPress website.
You would want to make a WordPress website with AI for many reasons. Some of these benefits include:
Bearing this in mind, it’s evident that using AI to help build your WordPress website is a wise course of action.
There are plenty of AI tools that can be used to build and enhance a website. Some AI website-building platforms outside of WordPress, like WixADI or Hostinger AI, can generate your entire site from the start with AI. But, for many, all-in-one website builders lack the control and flexibility of WordPress. There is a reason it is still the best CMS for building websites.
That said, WordPress users are looking for more streamlined methods of integrating AI into WordPress. Thankfully, AI-powered WordPress plugins, themes, and page builders are growing by the minute. This type of integration bridges the gap between AI and WordPress, making it easier than ever to build a site in WordPress.
Considering all these AI tools at your disposal, here are a few ways you might use AI to build a WordPress website.
There is a myriad of AI tools outside of WordPress that you can use to build your website. AI writing software and chatbots like ChatGPT can generate pretty much anything text or code you might need for a website, including WordPress. You can use it to create a thorough outline for your website, generate copy for your pages and posts, and write code to create WordPress plugins or other custom functionality you may need. You can even create entire HTML docs for your pages or templates. More robust AI writers like Jasper and Surfer SEO can help with SEO content.
You can also use many of the same AI writers to improve existing copy for your site. And you can use Grammarly as a browser extension to help proofread and optimize your text inside the WordPress editor.
On the design side, there are AI art generators that anyone can use (like MidJourney) to generate stunning AI images for your site. And if you are a graphic designer, you can take advantage of AI-powered design tools for photo editing and graphic design needed for your WordPress site.
Many WordPress plugins are starting to incorporate AI into their software. These allow users to use AI for content generation and other AI-automated tasks right inside WordPress. What makes AI plugins so great is that they work with popular WordPress themes which handle the design of your site, leaving AI to generate your content and enhance your existing design. For example, AI Engine brings the power of OpenAI and ChatGPT to your WordPress dashboard.
Some AI plugins are more about enhancing your existing site rather than generating new content. For example, SEO plugins like RankMath can streamline the creation of SEO content, and automation plugins like Uncanny Automator can automate and manage many WordPress tasks for you.
For more, here’s a list of the best WordPress AI plugins to help get you started.
WordPress page builders have changed the game for designing websites in WordPress. Even WordPress has a block editor that brings full site editing on the front end. Nothing seems to beat the drag-and-drop visual editing experience offered by Divi, Elementor, and other great page builders.
The two AI page builders leading the way so far are Divi and Elementor. Elementor was the first to add AI integration to their page builder, allowing users to generate text, images, custom code, and more with an easy-to-use interface.
Divi, our WordPress theme and page builder plugin, recently launched Divi AI. It includes , Acting as a powerful AI assistant inside the builder, Divi AI uses cutting-edge generative AI to generate text and images contextually as it learns about the existing content of your site.
Using an AI page builder is one of the best ways to use AI to build a WordPress website because it is an all-in-one solution for both design and AI content generation.
Although there are various AI tools, plugins, and page builders you can use in WordPress, there is a benefit to using a combination of external AI tools and native AI WordPress solutions. In this manner, you get the best of both worlds when building your WordPress site.
For this tutorial, we are going to dive right into how to use AI to build a WordPress website. To do it, we’ll be using ChatGPT to help with the planning process. Then, once WordPress is up and running, we are going to use Divi AI to demonstrate just how easy and efficient AI can build a WordPress website.
Let’s get started.
We will begin building our website by creating a simple outline in ChatGPT. To do this, navigate to ChatGPT. Next, enter the prompt, “Make a concise list of the pages an email marketing agency’s website should have?”.
ChatGPT gives us a list of eight pages we can create for our website in our first prompt. We can even go a step further and ask ChatGPT to outline what each page should contain as well:
Notice how in-depth ChatGPT’s AI was able to get when planning out the content and function of each page. We can use these to our advantage when building our pages, choosing modules, and creating the content for each page. We will be creating a five-page website for our fictional email marketing agency with the following pages:
With our outline, we now move into the website-building phase.
Some prerequisites must be met before we enter the new and exciting world of AI-powered WordPress web design. First, you’ll need to register a domain name for your site. A good domain name provider is NameCheap, but there are many domain name providers for you to choose from.
Next, you’ll need to choose a hosting provider. This is important, so choose wisely. We recommend Siteground, Pressable, or Cloudways. However, our list of the best WordPress hosting options is also an excellent place to find the right one for your website.
The final prerequisite for building a WordPress website is to install WordPress. Our definitive guide on installing WordPress shows you a few ways to set up a successful WordPress install.
Now that you have your domain name, a secure web host, and WordPress installed, we can start building our website with the help of AI.
Now that WordPress is installed, you are ready to install your theme. For this tutorial, we are going to use our Divi Theme, which includes a powerful AI page builder with Divi AI. (Note: The Divi builder and Divi AI are also available as a plugin to be used on any WordPress theme as well.)
Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes available. Its AI feature, Divi AI, works within its visual builder, bringing advanced prompting options, copy editing, and image generation to WordPress websites. One of the critical features of Divi AI is its ability to understand the copy already living on your web pages. This allows your website’s AI content to be created with context in mind. Divi AI is smart enough to understand what’s written within modules, sections, and pages and use that understanding to create new copy that fits into the realm of your webpage.
The Divi AI roadmap promises to bring code generation, full layout generation, image editing, and more shortly. So stay tuned to see the magic unfold! As such, we’ll show you how to make a WordPress website with AI using Divi and Divi AI.
Before you can use Divi, you’ll need to subscribe for a membership. Then you can download the theme or plugin from the members area.
Divi AI is already integrated with Divi, so you won’t need to download anything else. You can use Divi AI for free with a limited trial period, but you can easily upgrade when that time comes.
Once you download Divi, you can install it like you would any other WordPress theme in the WordPress Dashboard. For more details, you can follow this guide. After Divi is installed, we can start creating our website and creating content for our website.
Setting your site title and tagline in WordPress is an essential first step in training Divi AI. By doing this, you are giving Divi AI more context about your website. This will help better inform Divi AI as you seek to create content, generate images, and more while building your WordPress website.
To begin, let’s assign a site name and tagline. From your WordPress dashboard, hover over the Settings menu item. Then, click General from the flyout menu.
From there, give your site a title and tagline. You can also add your site languages, set your admin email, and more here. Once completed, click the blue Save Changes button at the bottom of the screen.
With this in place, we can start building our website’s pages.
Equipped with our page names in hand from ChatGPT, we will now start creating the blank pages of our website. Hover over the Pages menu. Then, click on the Add New text link.
Next, enter the name for your page, in this case, Home. Finally, click the blue Publish button at the top right-hand side of the screen.
Repeat this process for the other pages within your website’s sitemap.
Now that all our pages are created, we are ready to add our first premade Divi layout to the home page. Navigate to the home page we created again, hovering over the Pages menu item. Then, click on the All Pages link. You’ll be presented with our list of new pages for our website. A text link menu appears when you hover over the Home page’s row. Click on the Edit with Divi text link to activate the Divi Builder.
We are now presented with three options. We will select the second option, Choose a Premade Layout, by clicking the purple button that says Browse Layouts.
In addition to being a powerful AI tool for WordPress, Divi comes with an ever-growing collection of premade templates and layouts that you can use for various sectors. In the search box, enter the search term email marketing. Then, select and install the Email Marketing Home Page Layout.
Finally, select the blue Use this Layout button to begin the installation process. Deselect the Import Presets modal box that pops up.
To complete our layout installation process, save the page by clicking the green Save button in the bottom right-hand corner.
You can repeat this process for the other pages of your website, using the pre-created layouts – provided for free by Divi – to create a sleek and professional website for your agency.
Though the layouts come with design, the copy included is boilerplate and repetitive. However, it gives us a good starting point to use AI to create better content. We’ll start by creating new titles for the various sections of our homepage. First, let’s start with the hero section:
With Divi AI, let’s create a different headline with a casual, down-to-earth tone. First, click the gear icon on the Text Module containing our hero section’s title.
Next, click the new blue Auto Generate Text with AI button, activating Divi AI within the Visual Builder.
Immediately, Divi AI can provide us with another option for our hero section’s title.
While this is a good option, let’s see if we can enhance it with Divi AI. Click Improve with AI from the Divi AI modal box to do this. We’re presented with many options regarding what we can do with our new hero headline. Let’s click Change Tone and select the Casual tone from the list of options provided.
Our new hero headline now reads as follows:
When we compare both the titles, we see that this new version has a different, more welcoming feel than the first one, which felt stale and cookie-cutter. Now, let’s do this same process with the other titles on our page. To save our new copy, click the blue Use This Text button. Next, click the green checkmark Save button.
We’ll use the same casual tone for the rest of the titles on our page. For our next section, titled Our Services, we used Divi AI to add more context and vibrancy:
This section’s title is now “Get Ready to Explore Our Awesome Services!”
After updating all our titles, let’s move on to the page content.
To create content with Divi AI, we will edit the text within the various Text Modules of our page. We will also use Divi AI’s powerful context feature to ensure our text can build upon other modules as we use AI to generate it. We’ll start with the sentences under our new page title. Click on the gear icon of the Text Module within the hero section that is under the title.
Next, remove the current text that is within the Text Module. Finally, click the Divi AI icon to provide the Write with AI option.
Now, we’re presented with several options that we can use to have AI create the content for our lead text:
After entering these in, click Generate text. Now, we’ll see the paragraph that Divi AI created for our home page:
While this is a great first draft, it’s a bit long. So, we’ll use Divi AI to improve this paragraph. First, we click Improve with AI. Then, we click Shorten.
Notice how Divi AI cut our paragraph down and made it more concise.
With our new intro paragraph in place, we save our work by clicking the blue Use This Text Button and then the green check mark button to save our Text Module.
Use a similar process to update the various Text Modules throughout your pages. Divi AI has many quick actions that you can take to optimize your copy further.
Divi AI doesn’t just work with copy. It can also manipulate images! We’re going to update the icons that are used within the services section of our homepage. To begin, click on the gear icon of the first Image Module.
Next, click on the Divi AI icon. Next, click Generate with AI. This is where the fun begins!
We can now feed Divi AI with various prompts to create a stunning new image for our web page. We set the image style to photo. Divi AI has more than ten different image styles you can use. Next, we add an image description. You can also add a reference photo and set your image’s aspect ratio or specific pixel size. We left all of these as the default. Finally, we click Generate.
Divi AI will generate four options for us. Click the option that most resonates with you. If you’re unhappy with the choices, click the Generate More Like button. Once you’re satisfied, then, click the blue Use This Image. Finally, click the green checkmark button to input your new, AI-generated image.
Do this with the other image modules on your page and have fun with the various styles, sizes, and prompts that you can put together to create unique art pieces for your website.
At this time, we’ve covered how to plan your website from pages to content with AI through ChatGPT. We’ve also reviewed how to create our copy with Divi AI and create new digital artwork for our web pages. Continue this process for the other pages of your website, mixing and matching different prompts, quick actions, and more! Once your website is complete, you can use Divi AI to proofread and check the spelling and grammar of your page content.
Additionally, fact-checking and proofreading with a human reader is essential when creating long-form content like articles and blog posts.
Now that you’ve finished creating the pages of your WordPress websites, there are still some things to do and consider after using AI in your website-building process: :
With these things in mind, you’re on your way to building a beautiful, AI-informed WordPress website!
Building a WordPress website with AI will soon become commonplace. While, at the moment, there isn’t one tool that can build a WordPress website entirely from scratch, you can create your own AI tech stack to do just that. Planning, copy, imagery, and more are all aspects of website building that now have powerful AI tools to help their process. As such, looking at how these tools can better help you build your next WordPress website isn’t a bad idea. How would you use AI to build a WordPress website? Were there any steps that you think we missed? Let us know in the comments section down below!
To learn more about Divi and Divi AI, check out our Divi AI page and our getting started tutorial.
The post How to Make a WordPress Website With AI appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
When publishing a new blog post on your WordPress site, it will appear on the homepage by default. If you prefer to have a dedicated blog page while keeping your homepage static, you’ve come to the right place. In this WordPress tutorial, we will explore two easy methods to create a professional-looking blog page on […]
The post How to Add a Post to a Page in WordPress Using Classic Themes and Gutenberg appeared first on Hostinger Tutorials.
A Director of Community Engagement at StellarWP, a Podcaster in WP Coffee Talk and Audacity Marketing, a Director of Community Relations at Post Status, and a frequent organizer and speaker at WordPress events. To some, that might be the perfect definition of multi-hyphenates – folks who have multiple skills or work more than one job – but to us, it’s our fellow WordPress enthusiast Michelle Frechette.
It’s beneficial to be a multi-hyphenate person, as you’ll have additional income streams and higher hiring potential due to a more comprehensive skillset. But if not managed well, doing different jobs at the same time can be stressful.
We wanted to discuss this topic with someone who walks the talk, Michelle. Read on to find out her insights about bringing impact to your community, and how she empowers the WordPress community by enabling access for wider audiences while keeping the work-life balance.
Michelle has been active in her local community’s activities for decades, and it has helped her solidify her career as a community professional.
“You either build on things that you are required to do, or you build on things that you enjoy,” she says.
She has worked with her local chamber of commerce, organized community meetups, and was elected as a local school board member. Over the years, she has experienced being a leader, a team player, and a casual observer who just watches what’s going on and has an opinion.
“You’ll learn how to either lead or follow. So it’s important that we have leaders, but everybody in a group can’t be a leader either,” Michelle says.
This extensive experience has helped her grow to understand the community ecosystem comprehensively. “If you start working at community and you find that you love it, then you look for more ways to work in the community,” she adds.
And that’s what Michelle does: she keeps finding more ways to make an impact in the community she’s part of. Together with Allie Nimmons, she founded Underrepresented in Tech, a free database that helps underrepresented people – like women of color or people with disabilities – find new opportunities within the technology ecosystem, specifically WordPress. They can use the database to look for jobs, and everyone can use it to find talent.
They also have a podcast on the Underrepresented in Tech website, where they talk about how people can help solve diversity issues every week.
“We’re trying to kind of reduce ableism, racism, and misogyny, all of those things that suppress groups of people like us, like Allie and me. We want to ensure we’re using our voices for good,” Michelle says.
For Michelle, this database is still a highlight in her WordPress journey so far.
And she’s not stopping there. On May 2023, Michelle launched WP Speakers, a database of speakers with WordPress-related expertise. This addresses a pain point many WordPress event organizers have felt – finding a speaker.
For Michelle, one beauty of the WordPress community is that everyone comes together around almost anything. When someone knows more about something, they will eventually teach somebody else about that, helping others understand the topics better. The cycle will then continue, as people pass on the knowledge to others.
The lifting-each-other-up spirit also applies to event organization. “When organizing a meetup, you are looking to build the local talent,” she says.
Michelle realized sometimes a group doesn’t have expertise in a certain area they want to learn, so connecting to people outside of a particular local group would be nice. That’s why she created databases like WP Speakers and Underrepresented in Tech – to bring in speakers that can help everyone’s group grow.
“I think we perpetuate the ability to share and grow not only when we look inside our own local community, but when we also bring in outside speakers to infuse ideas and topics that we might not have any local expertise,” she says. “You never know when you might be helping somebody into their next level of expertise on something.”
Michelle also loves that in the WordPress community, she can be friends with people who work for products similar to her day job. “People can work for competing products, but that doesn’t make us enemies – everyone wants to see each other succeed.”
Now what’s the best way to start contributing your skills to the WordPress community?
“It’s hard to pick a particular point because it’s like a river with many tributaries. But I think starting locally is always a great way to begin,” Michelle suggests.
If no local WordPress community is nearby, then joining Slack or Facebook groups is a way to go.
Michelle also encourages you to visit WordCamps when you have the chance. You’ll learn a lot when you’re physically in a space with all the people that are also using WordPress, especially if you’re part of underrepresented communities.
“I would never force somebody to attend events to be a tokenized representative, because that’s not what representation means. It’s to be inclusive, and include people to be able to inspire confidence in other people to do things,” she emphasizes.
For Michelle, being regarded as “an inspiration†feels performative in many ways. But it’s different when someone tells her, “I was inspired to join this community because you showed me that it could be done.†That shows how people actually do something after seeing what she did, which she finds very rewarding.
“There are more young black women in WordPress because Allie Nimmons exists in WordPress. There are more women in headscarves in WordPress because you are wearing a head scarf and representing your community and your faith. And I think that those are very, very important things.”
Looking at Michelle’s long list of current activities, we can’t help but wonder how she keeps the balance between work and living her life to the fullest. Especially in the era of remote working, where the line between work and life might get blurred.
“Yeah, it’s impossible to completely disconnect sometimes, right? Especially if something is happening that’s of greater importance,” says Michelle, confirming the struggle to separate work and life.
“But for me, I have a cutoff time. I am usually done with work at 5 pm. Of course, there are exceptions. For instance, I organize the local meetup for WordPress, so the first Monday of every month, my night goes until 8:30 pm. My weekends are usually not work-related, unless I’m doing a podcast on a Saturday morning – but I make sure everything is scheduled,” she explains.
One of her favorite things to do on weekends is driving to a wildlife resort to shoot nature photography. For her, having a creative pursuit is one of the ways to balance work and life.
“Doing photography makes me happy. Usually, twice a year, I’ll give back to my community by doing a day of photography. The last time was for an animal shelter. My friend dressed up as Santa Claus, and we raised money for the organization by having people photographed with Santa Claus and animals. That was really fun.”
Michelle’s passion for photography also makes way for her WordPress contribution. She’s been contributing to WordPress’ Photo team, and anyone can use her nature photo works through the WordPress Photo Directory.
If you imagine Michelle having an intricate and tedious time management trick to organize her jam-packed schedule, then you’ll be surprised by her simple toolkit. Her secret sauce is just the combo of her trusty calendar, shared notes, and the habit of texting herself – plus a kick of caffeine.
“First, coffee, before I even turn on the computer,” Michelle says. “Then it’s a lot about my calendar. As long as I have a to-do list on the calendar and keep it up to date, I can ensure I’m getting accomplishments done.”
The shared notes fit well when she’s working with other people, such as when co-authoring a blog post or coaching a client. It lets Michelle and her clients or collaborators look at the same notes, streamlining the working process. This echoes the interconnected nature of the WordPress ecosystem, where seamless experiences are key.
“It’s nice to have something that’s just very quick to check, and on your phone,” she argues. Michelle also synced her notes on all her devices, so she can access them anywhere.
She uses notes to collect her ideas, too. “Every time I come up with a topic to submit for an event or WordCamps, I write it out, fully flush it there. So if I have to, I can pull out the text and use it at any time,” she elaborates.
As for self-texting, Michelle uses this method to save links to check out for later. “This way, I can remind myself to look at the websites. I also text myself links to funny stuff,” Michelle laughs.
Michelle’s resourceful methods become proof that modern problems don’t always require super-complex solutions – it’s the simplicity that enables the versatile application across the dynamic WordPress landscape, indeed.
The post Michelle Frechette: From an Active Volunteer to a Diversity Advocate appeared first on Hostinger Blog.
Freelancers and web agencies alike have long struggled to find good stock images to use in web projects. They either require an expensive photography membership, a keen eye for photography, or having to depend on the client to provide them. Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), creating your own images is possible, often with incredible results. In this post, we’ll explain what AI is, tell you how to use it to generate AI images for WordPress, and provide tips and best practices for generating them.
Let’s dive in.
image created with Divi AI
AI is a field within computer science and engineering that focuses on making smart machines capable of mimicking human-like actions and thinking. With AI, machines can learn from their experiences, adapt to new information, and accomplish tasks usually involving human smarts. A particularly popular form of AI for creative purposes is known as generative AI.
image created with Divi AI
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that is used to create content based on a text prompt. You can make all kinds of AI art through text-to-image software, generate AI music, create videos, and more. Generative AI works by training highly intelligent systems on large amounts of data. It also used neural networks (much like the human brain) and machine learning models such as a discriminator and generator.
The end goal in training is for the generator to fool the discriminator. During the training process, the discriminator and generator play a game where the discriminator has to determine whether the output (image, music, text, etc) is real or fake. These steps are repeated to the point where the discriminator can’t distinguish between real and artificial data.
You might want to use generative AI to create photos for your WordPress websites for many reasons. First, it’s a lot more cost-effective than other options. If you’ve been a web developer for long, you know that finding quality stock photography at a decent price is a challenging task. Additionally, by using AI to make your photos, you can get high-quality results that look like they were taken by a professional photographer.
Another benefit of using AI to generate WordPress images is taking the stress out of procuring assets from clients. More often than not, clients will provide grainy or low-quality photos for use on their sites. While smaller images will sometimes work, you’re out of luck if you want to create hero sections with background images or call-to-actions (CTAs) where bigger images are required. This is where AI images come in handy.
There are dozens of AI art generators on the market, with more popping up seemingly daily. However, there are only a few that integrate directly into WordPress. In this post, we’ll demonstrate the best ways to incorporate AI art into your website. As an added bonus, we’ll provide you with an additional option to create images outside WordPress.
image created with Divi AI
Up first on our list is Divi AI, Elegant Theme’s new flagship AI product that was designed specifically to work within the Visual Builder. In just a few clicks, Divi can generate text and images for any module containing those elements. In addition to creating images, Divi AI can also improve existing copy and images in a snap. Think of Divi AI as your personal web-building assistant.
Divi AI is built on the backbone of Stable Diffusion and includes several base models, such as the more popular 1.5. But to understand how Divi AI works, we must dig deeper. In addition to its Stable Diffusion roots, Divi AI integrates fully within Divi’s core files. Because of this, it can generate content based on various factors, including pulling the context directly from your site’s title and tagline, as well as content on pages, sections, and modules. Basically, Divi AI can generate content based on your site’s specific niche.
Before we delve into creating images with Divi AI, we should give you a rundown of the interface. Once the Visual Builder is activated, you can click on any module with an image field to reveal the settings. To demonstrate, we’ll apply a background image to a row within the AI Generator Layout Pack for Divi. To activate the Divi AI options, click on the row near the bottom of the landing page layout design, then click on the background tab (1). Next, click the AI icon within the image placeholder (2).
This will bring up a few options:
For example, if you choose Generate & Replace, Divi AI will create four new images that are based on the page’s current content:
Upon clicking Generate with AI, the interface will greet you with several options:
We’ll select photo as the style, use the prompt highly detailed photograph of a spaceship in space, celestial background, blue glow, millions of stars, soft shadows, no contrast, 8k resolution, select the landscape aspect ratio, and set the size as 1280×800 pixels. When we click generate, Divi AI will create four new images for our background in less than a minute.
From there, we can choose our favorite by clicking on it and selecting use this image (1). Alternatively, we can create four more by clicking generate more like this one (2), generate 4 more (3), change the style (4), or add a new description (5) to regenerate more images (6).
Here’s a look at the final result:
Note: The larger the size, the longer it takes for Divi AI to generate images.
Our next option, AI Power, is a WordPress AI plugin that uses DALL-E or Stable Diffusion to generate images within the WordPress dashboard. That said, you’ll need an active OpenAI account and an API or SD API key to generate them. Let’s walk through the steps necessary to get AI Power up and running. For this post, we’ll demonstrate setting things up with OpenAI.
First, start by logging in to your OpenAI account (1). If you don’t have an account, you can sign up for one for free (2).
Next, head back to your WordPress dashboard, then search for and install the AI Power WordPress plugin. Once installed an activated, click the AI Power tab (1), then click Generate Images (2).
Once your screen refreshes, you’ll see a dialog box requesting your OpenAI key. Click the Get your API key link to head over to OpenAI to generate one.
Click the + Create new secret key button to generate a new API key.
Next, give your key a name (1), then click Create Secret Key (2).
Copy the key, then head back over to your WordPress dashboard.
Lastly, paste the API key into the field (1), then click Validate (2).
Finally, we can start generating images with AI Power. One of the cool things about AI Power is that it allows you to choose between generating images with DALL-E (OpenAI) or Stable Diffusion. To help you understand the interface, we’ll give you an overview of the settings for DALL-E. While we won’t review the Stable Diffusion settings, they are the same, except for adding a negative prompt and image resolution options.
The interface is quite simple. You have a basic text prompt field (1), the generate button (2), and some additional settings to help DALL-E understand what you’re looking for (3):
Now that you are comfortable with the settings let’s generate our first set of images. For the prompt, add 3D rendering of an astronaut wearing a space suit, then add the following settings:
Here are the results:
To use your image, click your favorite to add it to the WordPress media gallery.
In addition to generating AI images within WordPress, there are multiple other ways to create them. Two more popular options are Midjourney and Photoshop AI.
A widely popular choice is Midjourney, which lets you make images for your site through a text prompt. While learning the interface is a bit more time intensive, the image quality is quite good. By default, images are created at 512×512 pixels, then upscaled to 1024×1024. However, you can use the –ar command, which lets you change the aspect ratio of your images.
With Midjourney, you can create images, webpage designs, logos, and more. That said, creating images takes a bit of practice and knowledge of all the associated commands.
Another excellent way to create images is via Adobe Photoshop AI. The generative fill tool allows you to create images from a text prompt. Using the crop tool, you can also use it to create complete photo compilations or extend the photo’s dimensions.
It is an excellent tool for enlarging photos for your web projects. However, we should note that Photoshop AI is currently still in beta, so creating commercial images isn’t allowed. We do anticipate that changing soon, though, since Adobe’s AI feature is entirely trained on Adobe Stock images.
Regardless of the platform you choose, there are a few image prompting tips and best practices to follow to get the best results to generate AI images for WordPress.
When crafting a prompt for your images, it’s best to be as descriptive as possible. Concentrate most on using nouns, verbs, and adjectives within your prompts. For example, if you want to create an image depicting a landscape scene, think of it as looking at the scenery through your own eyes. What do you see? Take that thought and transcribe it into words. However, you don’t want to use too many words. You aren’t writing a book, just describing a scene for AI to follow. Let’s look at the following prompts so you can understand our meaning.
Prompt: Underwater scene
While this will produce an image of an underwater landscape, it leaves AI to determine what should be within the scene.
Result:
image created with Divi AI
On the other hand, when you add descriptive elements to your prompt, you’ll get a much better result:
Prompt: highly detailed photographic still shot deep underwater, coral reef, brightly colored fish, fisheye lens, cool muted colors, sun filtering down into the water, cinematic photography
Result:
image created with Divi AI
Being descriptive is important, but try not to be overly repetitive. For most AI art generators, it’s best to place important descriptors first, such as the subject, then finish the prompt with details about the environment, followed by lighting, camera angles, and other composition elements. When you add repetitive words, it tends to confuse or overwhelm the AI. For example, if you are using Divi AI, there’s no need to note style repeatedly (like in Midjourney). You can select the style you want, then add descriptive elements.
When using AI to create images, you won’t always get a stellar result the first time. Refining your prompts or regenerating images is usually necessary to get the best possible output. Start with your chosen prompt, review the images, and then make changes as necessary. When we created Divi AI, we had this very point in mind. When you sign up for Divi AI, you’ll get unlimited generations. With other AI art generators, you will get a set number of tokens, which will run out quickly when refining images. For a mere $24 per month, you can generate as many photos as you like without worrying about loading more credits into your account.
To better understand what AI can do, here are a few examples, along with their prompts to showcase the power of generative artificial intelligence.
Style: 3D Render
Prompt: Spooky cottage set in moonlit woods full of trees, full moon, ambient lighting, spooky clouds.
image created with Divi AI
Style: Photo
Prompt: Red Fox in nature, National Geographic, highly detailed fur, hyper-realistic photography, cinematic lighting.
image created with Divi AI
Style: Comic Book
Prompt: Group of superheroes fighting an alien
image created with Divi AI
Style: Painting
Prompt: Sunset on the moon, earth in the background, dramatic lighting, dynamic lighting, octane rendering
image created with Divi AI
Prompt: rocket launching, rolling firestorm, set in mid-afternoon on a sunny day, mountain backdrop, award-winning photography, clean sharp focus, sparse clouds, sunbeams, distant stars, cinematic photography –ar 16:9
image created with Midjourney
Prompt: Temple, forest, stairs, columns, cinematic, detailed, atmospheric, epic, concept art, Matte painting, background, mist, photo-realistic, volumetric light, cinematic, 8k, movie concept art
image created with Photoshop AI
There are a few options for generating AI images for WordPress. Although we may seem biased, Divi AI is the best choice. With Divi AI, you’ll get unlimited image and text generations, can improve existing images, and even create images automatically that match your site’s niche – all for a very affordable price point.
What’s your favorite AI image generator? Let us know by dropping a comment below.
Featured Image via Divi AI
The post How to Generate Images For WordPress With AI (2023 Tutorial) appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.
Maintaining a blog on your WordPress site is essential for providing valuable content to your readers. Also, blog posts can help your site appear on search engine ranking pages (SERPs) when written well. In the past, those without good writing skills would have to hire someone to write their posts or, worse, not have a blog. Thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT and Divi AI, you can harness this new technology to help craft your posts for you. In this article, we’ll walk you through the steps to write a WordPress blog post with AI.
Let’s get started.
WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that is utilized on more than 43% of all websites on the internet. It started as a blog platform in the late 90s and has evolved into a website-building powerhouse used by freelancers, web agencies, and large corporations. There are two types of WordPress. .org and .com. While they are built by the same people, there are some differences. So everything is clear, we will be working in WordPress.org, which is self-hosted and comes with nearly unlimited customization options.
image created with Divi AI | Prompt: photo of a Maine Coon cat, set a snowy forest, dramatic lighting, ultra quality, 8K UHD, National Geographic Wildlife photo of the year
AI is the development of computers that use machine learning to achieve tasks that would normally require humans to do. AI can train these systems to generate images, text, video, music, and more. This type of AI is called generative AI, which involves intensive training between two systems, or generative adversarial networks (GANs), containing a discriminator and a generator. They work together to compare the generator’s output to the data the system was trained on. For example, during image generation, the generator presents output to the discriminator, which tries to determine if it’s real or fake. As training continues, the generator will be better at output, so the discriminator can’t tell the difference between the two.
Some of the more popular AI text and image generators like Divi AI, Jasper, Writesonic, and ChatGPT have many uses, including writing blog posts, creating realistic images, and more.
Divi AI is the newest, most exciting product launch in recent memory. Based on Stable Diffusion and Open AI models, Divi AI can write content and generate images right inside the Visual Builder. That said, Divi AI is built a bit differently than other generative AI. Made specifically for Divi, it understands all of Divi’s design elements and can make suggestions for text and images based on the associated content on the page. For example, if your page is about a Maine Coon cattery, Divi AI will suggest text related to Maine Coon cats. This incredible new tech will make creating Divi websites easier than ever!
With all of the AI technology available to WordPress users today, there are several ways to create a blog post using AI. However, for this post, we will concentrate on two routes. The first uses Divi AI, and the other uses ChatGPT and Midjourney.
Regardless of the method used, using the Gutenberg editor to create blog posts is recommended. The primary reason for this is that full site editing themes like Divi or Twenty Twenty-Three allow you to create templates to showcase your site’s content. We won’t go into detail about Gutenberg here, but this post outlines how to get around in the block editor. If you’re a Divi user already, you’ll be happy to know that we released improved compatibility with the block editor back in 2022 by introducing the Divi layout block. It allows you to use the Gutenberg editor and Divi Builder simultaneously, which will be needed to use Divi AI.
Before creating your first post, you’ll need to learn how to create a template using Gutenberg or Divi. When your template is created, you can get down to business.
We’ll outline the steps to create a blog outline using ChatGPT. While this step isn’t necessary, it will help you form your thoughts and give you a structure for AI to follow. If you haven’t already, sign up for an account with ChatGPT. Version 3.5 is free, but you must sign up for a paid plan for the more advanced version. For our post, we want to feature the dog-like qualities of Maine Coon cats, so we’ll use the following prompt: Create a blog post outline describing how Maine Coon cats are like dogs.
ChatGPT will get to work on creating an outline for our post:
To create a new post, log into your WordPress dashboard, then navigate to posts (1). Next, click the Add New button (2) to create your first post.
Next, we’ll need to add a title to our post (1). Let’s use the one generated with ChatGPT: The Canine Charm of Maine Coon Cats: Unveiling Their Dog-Like Traits.
If using Divi, click the default editor button (2) to load Gutenberg.
With the post created, the first step is to add an intro paragraph.
Creating an introductory paragraph is simple using ChatGPT. Head back to the interface and write the prompt: Create an introductory paragraph using the outline above. Keep it under 300 words, briefly touch on the points in the outline, and give it a human tone of voice.
Now, you can do one of two things here. You can copy and paste the generated paragraph or use it to aid you in creating original content. Because we want to keep things ethical, we’ll change the introductory paragraph by using the generated output merely as a guide.
Paste the output into the default editor by adding a paragraph block. To do this, click the + icon (1) in the page builder or navigate to the list view (2) to add a paragraph block there.
We’ll need to set things up differently if using Divi. We’ll use Divi to create our post rather than adding a paragraph block to add content. The initial process is the same, except for the block. Click the + icon (1), then search for and add the Divi Layout block (2).
Next, click the Build New Layout button.
To create our new layout, we’ll build it from scratch. Click the Start Building button to continue.
Choose the single column row.
Select a text module to create AI-generated text.
Generating text with Divi AI is a snap. To start, click the Generate Content with AI button (1) or hover over the placeholder text to reveal the AI icon (2). You’ll have two options: Write with AI (3) or Write Automatically (4). Choosing the automatic option will generate text automatically. This is an excellent feature for posts and pages with content you want to expand on. For this case, however, we’ll choose to write with AI. This will allow us to give Divi some context.
You’ll notice a new dialog box with a few features when your screen refreshes. Let’s briefly explain what each setting does:
To generate our first paragraph, we’ll choose the following options:
With the settings in place, click the generate button to produce the text. Divi will create the text based on your prompt. If you are satisfied with the results, click the Use this text button (1). Alternatively, if you want to make changes, you can modify the output by clicking retry (2) or by selecting the improve with AI dropdown menu (3). You can make it better, rephrase, lengthen, shorten, simplify, paraphrase, or modify it by changing the tone of voice, amongst other options. If you’d like to refine it, you can add more details in refine result (4) text field, then click regenerate (5).
The next step is to create an image for our post. After all, blog posts are better with supporting photos. They provide visual aids, keep your readers engaged, and serve as a way to boost your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) using alt tags.
We’ll showcase two ways to generate images for your WordPress blog post: Midjourney and Divi AI.
image created with Midjourney
Midjourney hit the scene earlier this year and has become one of the most popular platforms for creating images. We won’t go into the steps to use it here, as we have an in-depth tutorial already created for you. Midjourney generates some of the most incredible AI art you’ll find. However, we should caution you on using it commercially. Due to ongoing litigation, its future is unclear. That said, generating images with it is likely ok if you are a paid subscriber. This post concentrates on the second method, Divi AI.
Another (and better) way to create images for your blog posts is by using Divi AI’s built-in image generation tool. It functions like the AI text generator, where you can create, refine, and use pictures within your posts or pages. Unlike other AI image generators, there’s no need to use a separate platform. With Divi AI, you get the power of Stable Diffusion right in the Visual Builder. To create an image using Divi AI, add an image module to your post.
To activate AI, hover over the placeholder image in the module to reveal the AI icon.
Upon clicking the icon, you’ll have two options: Generate with AI or Generate Automatically. Select the first option.
Before generating an image, let’s go over the settings so you’ll understand how things work. We won’t go over everything related to generating images, like prompting tips, but we will show you the basics.
Now that you know the interface, we can generate our first image. Since our blog post is about Maine Coon cats, we’ll generate an image that can be used in our post that we can also apply as our featured image. With the AI image dialog box opens, input the following settings:
With the settings in place, click the generate button to generate your photo.
When the process completes, Divi will provide four images for you. To choose one, click on your favorite (1), then click Use this image (2). Alternatively, you can generate more like it (3), generate four more (4), change the style (5), or add a completely new description (6) to regenerate it (7).
Once you select a photo to use, Divi will automatically place it into your image module. From there, you can upscale it to make it a higher quality image by clicking the AI icon again and selecting upscale in the settings.
Now that we’ve generated our title, introductory paragraph, and featured image, let’s walk through the steps needed to create the body copy.
To create the body of your blog post using ChatGPT, you’ll repeat the steps outlined above. Head back over to ChatGPT, then instruct it to complete the body of the post. You can do this by entering the following prompt: Based on the outline above, create the post content minus the conclusion. Make it no longer than 1500 words, and use the same tone of voice in the introductory paragraph.
ChatGPT will proceed in creating the body copy for your post. As previously stated, you should use this text as a guide rather than simply copying and pasting it into your post. There are several reasons for this. First, ChatGPT has been known to suffer from hallucinations or falsehoods. Therefore, you should always fact-check everything it gives you. Secondly, Google is getting better at recognizing AI-generated content. This is a grey area since the technology is so new, but some indications using generated content without a human touch could hurt you in the SERPs.
Additionally, there will obviously be plagiarism concerns, especially since ChatGPT was training on information pulled directly from the internet. Lastly, generated content generally needs more creativity and personality. Therefore, we recommend taking what it gives you as a guide to overcoming writer’s block or for inspiration in more creative writing.
Now that Divi AI has a bit of context, we can proceed one of two ways: use Divi AI to create the entire post or generate a few paragraphs at a time. The method you choose depends on whether you plan on making more images. If you only plan to have one image in your post, Divi can create your entire post for you. However, if you want to create additional supporting photos, you’ll need to create a few paragraphs at a time. To generate your entire post, activate Divi AI by adding a new text module and clicking the AI icon again. Choose blog post from the dropdown menu when the dialog box appears.
In the What are you writing about text field, head back to ChatGPT to copy the blog outline we created in step 1, then paste it into the field. Be sure to omit the intro section.
Click guide me (1) to reveal the additional settings. Be sure to add your tone of voice (2), must use keywords (3), specify the number of words to generate (4), select the language (5), then generate your post (6).
Tip: When generating content with Divi AI, add headlines for your important paragraphs. Also, use Divi AI’s word settings to keep paragraphs under 300 words. By doing this, you’ll achieve a higher SEO score with your chosen SEO plugin.
Writing the conclusion paragraph is the last step in creating your first post. If using ChatGPT, all you have to do is provide it a prompt to complete the post. For example, give it the following: Based on the outline above, write a conclusion paragraph in the same writing style.
To create our conclusion paragraph, we’ll take a slightly different approach. Instead of leaving the context blank, for this last paragraph, we’ll have Divi write a conclusion based on the content of our post. To do this, add a new text module, then fill in the following settings:
That’s it! You’ve successfully created a well-written blog post with Divi AI.
So you can get a better idea of how amazing Divi AI image creation is, we thought you might like to take a look at the images we generated for our Maine Coon cat post:
Prompt:Photo of a Maine Coon cat sitting in a window, majestic, award winning photography
image created with Divi AI
Prompt:Photo of a Maine Coon cat wearing a harness, highly detailed fur, walking on pavement, afternoon lighting
image created with Divi AI
Prompt: Photograph of a Maine Coon cat, clean sharp focus, highly detailed fur, green eyes, cinematic lighting
image created with Divi AI
Prompt: Highly detailed photograph of a Maine Coon cat, wading through water, ripples, clean sharp focus, 8k resolution
image created with Divi AI
With the introduction of generative AI, freelancers, and website owners can easily write blog posts with AI. With tools such as Divi AI and ChatGPT, what would normally take a day or two (or sometimes longer) now takes a fraction of the time. By using artificial intelligence wisely and responsibly, we can use it to harness creativity, increase productivity, and make writing fun!
What are you most excited about with our new artificial intelligence feature? Let us know by sounding off in the comment section below.
Featured Image via Lightspring /Â shutterstock.com
The post How to Write a WordPress Blog Post With AI appeared first on Elegant Themes Blog.