Five of our favorite new themes.
WORDPRESS
12 Best Prebuilt Websites for WooCommerce and Retail
WordPress and WooCommerce have made it super easy to set up an online shop and to sell goods and services around the world. There’s just one problem: It’s not so easy to design a custom shop that stands apart from the WooCommerce lookalikes out there.
Sure, there are hundreds of WooCommerce-compatible themes available. But how many of them give you the ability to customize your store’s header and footer? Or to design the perfect mega menu? Or to personalize the key parts of the shopping experience across the site?
You’ll be able to do all that and more with BeTheme.
Let’s start by checking out 12 of the best prebuilt ecommerce websites today. They’re all available for free with BeTheme. Then we’ll show you how this content management system helps WordPress designers transform the way they build online stores.
12 of the best BeTheme prebuilt websites for ecommerce and retail
BeTheme has nearly 700 prebuilt websites, with 50+ built specifically for WooCommerce. BeTheme’s setup wizard will help you find the right one and get it set up in just a couple minutes:
You always have the option to build an online store from-scratch with BeTheme. As you’ll see down below, you’ll have all the tools you need to do it.
However, it’s much easier if you start with a prebuilt ecommerce website. Here are 12 of the best:
1. BeStore
If you’re building a larger online shop or marketplace, then you’re going to need a site built with all the features that customers have come to expect from retailers of that size. BeTheme Store 2, for example, is chock full of these features — a mega menu, dominant search bar, trust marks, attractive sales promos, detailed product pages, and more.
2. BeBiker
High-octane products or experiences need a design that feels just as action-packed. You don’t need to overwhelm or distract shoppers with tons of video or animations to achieve that effect though. BeBiker’s zoom effects, atmospheric backgrounds, and vivid colors will do the trick.
3. BeCarParts
Although the prebuilt ecommerce site for BeCarParts is for an auto parts shop, this type of design works well for other businesses too. The dark theme, no-nonsense design, and concise product page layouts would be great for car manufacturers, appliance stores, home improvement retailers, and more.
4. BeCosmetics
Consumers have become quite savvy about what goes into the products they buy. So if you’re building a site for eco-friendly products, the design should align with that theme. The earth tones, soothing textures, and nature-inspired backgrounds of BeCosmetics 3 work really well for this.
5. BeDietShop
As more mealkit and delivery service providers enter the market, new companies are going to need a shop design that sets them apart. BeDietShop doesn’t just look attractive. It also has super modern flourishes, like hand-drawn elements, rotating stamps, emoji, and more.
6. BeEco
Local vendors that sell a unique product should have online stores that look equally as unique. BeEcoFood 2 demonstrates how impactful an illustrated ecommerce shop can be. Not only will your shop look different from everyone else’s, but your food photos will stand out beautifully against the illustrations.
7. BeFurniture
Just because shoppers have become accustomed to certain ecommerce layouts doesn’t mean you can’t play around with the design. BeFurnitureStore, for example, follows the rules of good, modern design. However, we see how modular-looking sections, layered graphics, and interactive product photos shake things up.
8. BeHemp
For shops that sell products designed to calm and heal, the design should feel just as soothing. For something like hemp-based products, it’ll be important for that design to boost customer trust, too. So the combination of neutral colors, realistic product imagery, and trust marks included in BeHemp will come in handy.
9. BeJeweler
There is no one-size-fits-all way to promote and sell jewelry. It all depends on the products’ unique value proposition. In the case of the BeJeweler 2 website, the clean, minimal design and delicate details are clearly geared towards customers looking for luxury products (jewelry or otherwise).
10. BeBabyShop
If you’re building a website for a local retailer or a smaller sized ecommerce company, consider using BeBabyShop. This light and airy store design is perfect for companies that want to create a comfortable, no-stress shopping experience for their customers.
11. BeSurfing
The BeSurfing2 site is a fantastic example of how to draw inspiration from your products. You’ll find wavy lines in the design, parallax sandy backgrounds, and images laid out like polaroids. Details like these are what will make a local shop’s online store stand out from their neighbor’s.
12. BeWhiskey
If you want to create a shop that highlights the products just as much as it does the brand’s personality, give BeWhiskey 2 a try. The beautiful dark theme does a great job of highlighting the product images. In addition, creative layering, hover-triggered effects, and the occasional animation will keep shoppers engaged.
Why choose BeTheme and BeBuilder for ecommerce
Don’t stress if you find a BeTheme site you like but that doesn’t have WooCommerce enabled. You can add WooCommerce to any site and then use BeBuilder to add and customize the shop features you need like product previews, off-canvas filters, bottom sticky menus, dropdown login menus, and more.
With BeBuilder, you can build your ecommerce store exactly as you envisioned it. No compromises needed.
For instance, this powerful website and store builder allows for unparalleled mix-and-match capabilities with:
- 3000+ premade pages
- 100+ predefined sections
- 80+ page elements
- 11 product gallery styles
- 4 shop layouts
- 4 attribute swatch styles
What’s more, you’ll have access to 600+ theme customizations. You can even create custom designs and global templates for the:
- Header
- Footer
- Mega menu
- Shop archive
- Single product pages
- Web pages
- Sections
- Wraps
BeTheme isn’t like other WordPress themes. And BeBuilder certainly isn’t like other WordPress page builder plugins.
With so much of your store’s infrastructure already built out, BeTheme and BeBuilder enable you to harness your energy and focus on what matters most — customization.
What’s more, you won’t have to worry about if your shop’s design is modern or attractive enough as all of BeTheme’s sites are responsive and built with today’s standards and trends in mind. You also won’t need to stress about speed as BeBuilder offers not only the fastest WordPress page builder, but the fastest website loading speeds, too.
Try out BeBuilder yourself for free. No installation required.
WORDPRESS
New WordPress.com Themes for March 2024 – WordPress.com News
The WordPress.com team is always working on new design ideas to bring your website to life. Check out the latest themes in our library, including great options for small businesses, sports fan, nostalgic bloggers, and more.
Feelin’ Good is a vibrant (to say the least!) blog theme with a bold vaporwave aesthetic. Its nostalgic atmosphere pays homage to the daring, over-the-top visual art and advertisements of the ’80s and early ’90s. We’ve combined a lot of elements that shouldn’t work together, but do. If you’re looking for a dynamic, attention-grabbing, eye-popping visual feast of a theme, try Feelin’ Good.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
Low Fi is a simple blog theme featuring a narrow column layout that’s optimized for seamless browsing on mobile devices. With six style variations, you’re sure to find a palette you’re drawn to. Taking inspiration from the lo-fi beats music scene, the theme’s design cues, such as the square header image, offer a nod to album artwork.
The overall aesthetic is deliberately understated, with each element—from the muted color schemes to the textured background—crafted to evoke a sense of nostalgia and warmth.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
Cakely is the ultimate WordPress theme designed specifically for passionate bakers, cake enthusiasts, and dessert lovers. Tailored for small businesses aiming to shine in the world of sweets, Cakely effortlessly combines style and functionality to showcase mouthwatering creations. Its vibrant pink color scheme exudes joy while maintaining a classy, clean layout with easy navigation. This theme ultimately strikes the perfect balance between professionalism and playfulness, making it an ideal choice for showcasing your delicious masterpieces.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
Treehouse is a carefree, fun, and friendly theme ideal for Woo stores selling children’s products. With its unlimited customization options, Treehouse enables you to set up an online shop with just a few clicks. Utilizing a soft color palette, playful design details, and simplified layouts, your site will attract a wide range of customers, from young parents to over-the-moon grandparents. This theme is fully responsive and cross-browser compatible.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
Major League Baseball’s 2024 season kicks off on Thursday, March 28. What better way to show your home team the love it deserves than with a baseball-themed fan site! With a somewhat old-school layout, this theme evokes some of the classic sports sites of the ’90s, back before fantasy leagues took over. The header and accent colors are customizable, ensuring that your favorite crew is properly saluted.
Click here to view a demo of this theme.
To install any of the above themes, click the name of the theme you like, which brings you right to the installation page. Then click the “Activate this design” button. You can also click “Open live demo,” which brings up a clickable, scrollable version of the theme for you to preview.
Premium themes are available to use at no extra charge for customers on the Explorer plan or above. Partner themes are third-party products that can be purchased for $79/year each.
You can explore all of our themes by navigating to the “Themes” page, which is found under “Appearance” in the left-side menu of your WordPress.com dashboard. Or you can click below:
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WORDPRESS
How to Get Started: Investigating Payment Gateways Online
When investigating a website, app, or online shop, one of the key questions you may need to answer is ‘How are they making money?’
Investigating the financial transactions of an organisation can reveal details about its connections and funding. Furthermore, if the website or app is engaged in illicit transactions, tracing the payment gateway can help achieve accountability by identifying what sites they are using to earn money. Bellingcat has looked into the payment processors in previous investigations on far-right merchandise, Britain’s far-right influencers, and non-consensual deepfake pornography.
Payment gateways are a technology that takes a customer’s payment information, checks it with their financial institution, verifies that the transaction is legitimate, and then completes the transaction. As explained by Forbes, online stores need a payment gateway to be able to facilitate payments. Companies including PayPal, Stripe, and Square are commonly used as a payment gateway for online purchases.
Most mainstream payment gateways (like Stripe and PayPal) prohibit their services from being used in illegal transactions including the sale of illegal drugs, the promotion of hate or racial intolerance, and non-consensual adult content. Finding evidence that someone is violating the Terms of Services of these companies – and how they are doing so- can lead to the closure of loopholes and accounts. It can also provide additional information about an organisation’s revenue streams.
It is nearly impossible to conduct online transactions without a payment gateway. So it should be possible to find the payment gateway of an organisation earning money, even if it is not obvious at first. One resource that is extremely useful is Chrome’s built- in developer tools (other browsers also have similar tools). Below we’ll provide an overview of the tools to use and questions to ask when scrutinising payment systems.
How are they Taking Payment?
For online transactions, you’ll typically see websites accept traditional forms of payment including credit cards, debit cards and, more recently, cryptocurrency. Since cryptocurrency is not subject to the same regulations as traditional financial systems, cryptocurrency is often used to process payments for illegal services. Since this does not need to be ‘hidden’, websites will usually disclose which currency they accept and how to transfer funds into a crypto wallet. There are other ways you can track funding through cryptocurrency, as discussed in this guide.
If none of the above apply? Other sites that use a payment gateway will accept money directly via credit card payment, bank transfer, or through peer-to-peer payment apps (i.e., PayPal, Cash App, Zelle). If this is the case, you should be able to identify the payment gateway being used. In the case of the peer-to-peer apps, these services may be used by businesses and not just individuals’ transactions. They also require a bank account or credit card to use them. It is helpful to view transaction options on both the mobile app and web browser, in case the options differ. It is also worth checking the currency that payments are being taken in – if it is a US website taking payment in a foreign currency, that can also provide clues. Further, if a website is using different payment gateways depending on the currency, this can lead to additional leads in your investigation. Payment options may also change depending on what IP address you are using. In other words, setting your IP address in the UK and then changing it to the US may result in different payment gateway options.
Where are they Soliciting for Payment?
Organisations may solicit for payment via a website or a messaging app like Telegram. It is important to investigate all avenues where payment is being requested as each method may provide different clues for your investigation. For example, for some of the AI deep fake services we investigated here we found that companies would accept different payment methods depending on how you tried to pay – via their website, via a web browser or via Telegram. Sellers may want to direct their users away from their website to more private forums such as Telegram to facilitate transactions and avoid detection.
Is the Organisation Trying to Hide How Payment is Taken?
For some sellers, using a mainstream payment gateway may violate the terms of service of that company. To be able to use their services, these sellers may try to hide the nature of their goods from the payment gateway company.
A Walk Through Example
Some sites may not show their payment options without signing up first.
This was the case with the Nudify.VIP site which offers non-consensual AI Deep Fake pornography.
Initially, the website states that their services are free.
“With our service you can undress any person in a photo absolutely FREE!”
However, this is misdirection, as you are then prompted to log in or sign up. Only once you create an account do you discover that you need to pay to access the service and how much it costs.
You are then presented with an option to pay via crypto or via credit card, but it does not yet say what cards they accept or what payment gateway they use.
Clicking through to ‘Go To Payment’ gives us a new screen that lets the user pay via credit card (ie MasterCard, Visa), a US Bank account (ie Wells Fargo, USAA), or through Cash App.
There is no indication of the payment gateway they are using, but if we look at the URL on the checkout page, we can see that it no longer says that we are on a Nudify.VIP domain. This is a clue that users are being directed to the checkout page through another website. This method is used to hide the true source of purchases from payment gateway providers. There’s another clue that the domain has changed- in the fine print at the bottom of the checkout page. Via the Checkout Page using either Cash App or credit card options, it discloses:
“By providing your card information, you allow aiphotos.art to charge your card for future payments in accordance with their terms.”
This is another clue that the payment gateway does not know this belongs to an AI Deep fake service Nudify.VIP.
Use Browser Developer Tools to Investigate Further
All modern browsers have some form of built-in developer tools. You can search online for your specific browser (e.g. Firefox, Chrome, Safari). If you are in Chrome, you can right-click anywhere on the screen to get a menu and an option to ‘Inspect.’ You can also use keyboard shortcuts which can vary between MacOS or Windows. For Windows, you can click CTRL + SHIFT + I and on MacOS you can click Option + Command + I on your keyboard. Any of these actions will open the developer tools which allows you to view the code of a webpage (such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript). This should appear on the right-hand side of your screen. While developer tools are designed to check for bugs or errors in a website, you can use them in your investigation.
There should be a list of tabbed options for you to view on the top menu bar. Clicking on ‘Sources’ shows you all the resources that the website is using.
This is a good place to start to look for any clues about what piece of code is being used in the checkout process. In the example below, one of the listed sources on the page is titled ‘js.stripe.com.’
Googling ‘“js.stripe.com” brings up documentation from the company, Stripe.
The documentation shows that ‘js.stripe.com’ is Stripe’s JavaScript library which is the code needed to facilitate payment processing.
This confirms that Stripe is the payment gateway being used by Nudify.VIP. In this case, Stripe was the payment gateway that facilitated transactions via credit card, US banks, and Cash App.
Using Browser Developer tools and following these simple steps, we were able to learn that Nudify.VIP created a decoy website to which they were redirecting their credit card payments to make Stripe think they were processing sales for a company called “Aiphotos.art.”
As you investigate payment gateways, you can begin to recognise the Javascript libraries used by companies.
Rummaging around the ‘Sources’ tab via the Google Chrome Inspect tool is a useful starting point to find out details about what sources a seller or organisation is relying on to run its website and process payment.
For example, we investigated the payment gateway for a candle company, Patriot Candle Co. At first glance at the Sources tab, it may look like they are only using WordPress related scripts. WordPress is one of the most common website building tools available. However, if you click through to expand the contents of the folders, in this case, if you click ‘wp-content’ and then click ‘plugins,’ we see a few libraries using ‘woocommerce.’ WooCommerce is WordPress’s open source payment gateway.
Some sites may have multiple payment gateways, so it is important to investigate the entire site and all the sources being used on the website.
A Few Minutes Research, Rich Rewards
We have outlined some very simple steps that take only a few minutes of work and produce clear leads for an investigation. In the case of Nudify.VIP, we were able to show the company had created a decoy website to which they were redirecting their credit card payments in order to make Stripe think they were processing sales for a company called “Aiphotos.art.” Stripe shut down the account, when we contacted them about it. It may take only minutes to go through this process, but it can provide important starting points for your investigation.
Bellingcat is a non-profit and the ability to carry out our work is dependent on the kind support of individual donors. If you would like to support our work, you can do so here. You can also subscribe to our Patreon channel here. Subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on Instagram here, X here and Mastodon here.
WORDPRESS
15 WordPress Pro Developers You Should Follow in 2024 – WordPress.com News
The WordPress community can sometimes seem like a vast ocean of people, information, and resources. Here are 15 folks to follow to stay on top of everything you need to know.
WordPress is so powerful and versatile that the WP community can sometimes seem like a vast ocean of people, information, and resources. In today’s Build and Beyond video, Jamie Marsland shares 15 of the most influential developers he follows to keep on top of new features, learn cool new tips, and, ultimately, get the most out of WordPress.
Of course, we couldn’t feature all the great people in this space, so be sure to comment below with your favorite WordPress-related follows.
Ready to build on WordPress.com? Start a free trial today:
Here are the folks mentioned, as well as where to find them on the web:
Nick Diego
nickdiego.com
twitter.com/nickmdiego
Sarah Norris
Brian Coords
youtube.com/@BrianCoords
twitter.com/briancoords
Carolina Nymark
fullsiteediting.com
twitter.com/carolinapoena
James Kemp
jameskemp.blog
twitter.com/jamesckemp
Anne Bovelett
annebovelett.de/en
twitter.com/bovelett
Justin Tadlock
justintadlock.com
twitter.com/justintadlock
Ryan Welcher
ryanwelcher.com
youtube.com/@ryanwelchercodes
Aki Hamano
Aurooba Ahmed
twitter.com/aurooba
youtube.com/@AuroobaMakes
Eric Karkovack
twitter.com/karks88
twitter.com/speckyboy
Keith Devon and Mark Wilkinson
Joost de Valk
Elliot Richmond
youtube.com/@elliottrichmondwp
Rich Tabor
rich.blog
twitter.com/richard_tabor
Jessica Lyschik
twitter.com/jessicalyschik
youtube.com/@jessicalyschik
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