Quick Business Website

Updated January 20, 2021     Leave a comment on Quick Business Website
Originally posted June 7, 2013

WordPress Plugins

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Quick Business Website WordPress Plugin screenshot

Quick Business Website plugin transforms your WordPress blog into a business website in a few clicks.

Quick Business Website plugin for WordPress gives you a complete business website with a few clicks. When you activate this plugin, your website will immediately have an Announcements section to post sales, events, news, or anything. You’ll also have a section to showcase your business services, a section to showcase your staff, with links to their own social profiles. Your website will also have a Reviews page where you can control the reviews for your business. Your website will also have Google Structured Data for reviews and star ratings which will give your site stars in Google Search, making your site stand out from the competition.

Immediate Back-end Branding
The WordPress login page (wp-login.php) will show your business name with a link to your own website, instead of “WordPress” linking to the WordPress site.

More Back-end Branding
If you uploaded a logo for your Website in the WordPress customizer (or theme options) then it will be displayed on the Quick Business Website options page. You also have several options for back-end branding tweaks. You can change or remove the footer text for the WP admin area. You can remove the WordPress links (and the WordPress logo) from the Admin/tool bar.

You will also have a working contact form on a contact page. The Contact page will display, in addition to the contact form, links to your business’s social profiles (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube, etc.), business hours, address, phone, fax number, and email address (all optional).

You will also have 6 Quick Business Website widgets to make it easy to display your featured announcements, featured services, staff, and testimonials.

After you enter your business information (name and address), your site will then automatically have Google Structured Data on the Contact page, as recommended by Google, to help generate rich snippets for your business in Google Search. (The structured data used is schema.org microdata for the LocalBusiness type.)

Documentation for Quick Business Website

Jump down to:

Setup | Common Tasks | Widgets | Troubleshooting | Support

Getting Started

Installation

  1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to “Plugins -> Add New”, and search for “Quick Business Website”.
  2. Click “Install” when you find the plugin.
  3. Activate the plugin by clicking “Activate.”.

Set Up Quick Business Website

  1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to the Quick Business Website page.
  2. Click on the “Business Info” tab.
  3. Enter your business information, and click “Save All Changes.” This information will be displayed on your Contact page. It will also be used for Google Structured Data to help generate rich snippets for your business in Google Search.
  4. Click on the “Preferences” tab. Do you want your website to show Staff, Announcements, Services, and Reviews?
    • The Staff section gives you a place to easily add each of your staff members.
    • The Announcements section (also known as the “News” section) gives you a place to add any kind of announcements for your business. For example, you could use this section to announce sales, promotions, and giveaways for your business, as well as company news.
    • The Services section gives you a place to add each of the services your business provides.
    • If you enable Reviews, visitors will be able to give your business a review and star rating right on your your site (on your Reviews page). This will also enable structured data for reviews and star ratings, which will give your website stars in Google Search Results.

    Remove the checkbox from any of those that you do not want to display on your site, and click “Save All Changes.”

  5. Click on the “Social Media” tab and enter the information, and click “Save All Changes.” The links to your social media accounts will be displayed on the Contact page.

  6. If you want to add your own branding to the back end of your site, click on the “Backend Branding” tab. There you can add custom text to be displayed on the footer of all WP-admin pages. (This will allow to you replace the default text, which is, “Thank you for creating with WordPress.”) You can also remove the WordPress logo link from the admin tool bar.

    In addition to these branding options, the Quick Business Website options page will display your site logo, if you’ve uploaded a site logo, or your site icon, if you’ve uploaded one.

  7. The “Contact Form” tab is completely optional. Use this only if you want to change the default behavior. The default behavior is that when someone fills out the contact form on your site, the message will sent via email to the email address which is set in your WordPress General Settings. The “Contact Form” tab lets you change the email address that will receive these emails. You can also change the subject line for these emails. You can also add stuff to appear above or below the contact form, as well as change the labels for the contact form fields. You can also add a field on the contact form to collect their phone number.

    If you don’t want to add this contact form, you can disable the Contact page entirely by checking the option, “Disable Contact Page” which is found at the bottom.

  8. Now that you are done with the settings, it’s time to add the new pages to your website menu so that visitors can get to these pages. To do this, go to your WordPress dashboard –> Appearance –> Menus. Do each one of the following only if you didn’t disable that in the “Preferences” tab.

    • Contact Page. To add the Contact page to your menu, look for the “Contact” page in the “Pages” section. Put a checkmark next to it and click “Add to Menu.”
    • Reviews Page. To add the Reviews page to your menu, look for the “Reviews” page in the “Pages” section. Put a checkmark next to it and click “Add to Menu.”
    • Staff Page. To add the Staff page to your menu, look for the “Staff” page in the “Pages” section. Put a checkmark next to it and click “Add to Menu.”
    • Services Page. To add the Services page to your menu, look for the “Services” page in the “Pages” section. Put a checkmark next to it and click “Add to Menu.”
    • Announcements Page. To add the Announcements page, click “Announcements” and then click “View All.” Put a checkmark next to “All Announcements” and click “Add to Menu.” You can change the label from “All Announcements” to simply, “Announcements” by clicking on the menu item’s little arrow to edit it. Change the Navigation Label to “Announcements,” or “Promotions,” or “News,” or whatever you like.

    You must click “Save Menu” to save your changes. The menu items will then be visible on your site.

  9. You’ll find the 6 QBW widgets at “Appearances –> Widgets”. Use them as you would regular widgets. The 6 widgets are: Announcements, Featured Announcements, Services List, Featured Services, Staff List, and Reviews Testimonial. See descriptions of the 6 widgets.

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Common Tasks

How To Add Announcements

  1. From your WordPress Dashboard, click Announcements -> Add New.
  2. Enter the title of the announcement in the first box.
  3. In the text editor, type your announcement. You can add images into the text area by placing your cursor where you want an image, then clicking “Add Media” above the text editor box. You can also add videos.
  4. If you want to include this announcement in the Featured Announcements widget, then check the box that says “Feature this?“.
  5. If desired, you can add a featured image to the announcement. To do this, click on “Set featured image“, which is usually on the sidebar. A box will then pop up. You can choose an existing image from the Media Library, or you can click “Upload Files” to upload your own image. Then, click “Set featured image”.
  6. When you are ready to make it go live, click the blue “Publish” button. Publishing it will make it visible on the front of your website.

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How To Add Services

  1. From your WordPress Dashboard, click Services -> Add New.
  2. Enter the title of the Service in the first box.
  3. In the text editor, enter a description of the service. You can add images and videos into the text area by placing your cursor where you want an image, then clicking “Add Media” above the text editor box.
  4. If you enabled the option to “Set Custom Sort-Order” for services (in QBW options -> Preferences tab), then you will see here the option to enter a “Sort Order Number”. Give this service a number to order them on the services list on the services page and in the services widget. Number 1 appears 1st on the list, while greater numbers appear lower. Numbers do not have to be consecutive; for example, you could number them like, 10, 20, 35, 45, etc. This would help to leave room in between to insert new services later without having to change every service’s current number.
  5. If you want to include this service in the “Featured Services” widget, then check the box that says “Feature this?“.
  6. If desired, you can add a featured image to the service. To do this, click on “Set featured image“, which is on the right side of the screen. A box will then pop up. You can choose an existing image from the Media Library, or you can click “Upload Files” to upload your own image. Then, click “Set featured image”.
  7. If everything looks good, click the blue “Publish” button. Publishing it will make it visible on the front of your site.

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How To Add Staff Members

  1. From your WordPress Dashboard, click Staff -> Add New.
  2. Enter the name of the person where it says, “Enter staff member’s name here“.
  3. In the text editor, enter a description of the person, if desired.
  4. Job Title: enter the person’s job title.
  5. Optional: Sort Order Number. Give this person a number to order them on the list on the staff page and in the staff widget. Number 1 appears first on the list, while greater numbers appear lower. Numbers do not have to be consecutive; for example, you could number them like, 10, 20, 35, 45, etc. This would help to leave room in between to insert new staff members later without having to change everyone’s current number.
  6. Enter the Facebook Profile ID. To find the profile id, go the person’s Facebook profile. Look at the address bar. The Facebook ID is the part of the address after “https://www.facebook.com/”.
  7. Enter the Twitter Username. To find the Twitter username, go to the person’s Twitter page. Look at the address bar. The Twitter username is the part of the address after “https://twitter.com/”.
  8. Enter the Google Plus Profile ID. To find the Google Plus Profile ID, go to the person’s Google Plus Profile. Look at the address bar. The Google Plus Profile ID is the part of the address BETWEEN “https://plus.google.com/” and “/posts“.
  9. Enter the person’s Linkedin Profile. This is the part profile address after “www.linkedin.com/”.
  10. Upload a picture of the person. To do this, click on “Set featured image“, which is on the right side of the screen. A box will then pop up. Click “Upload Files“. Then, click “Set featured image”.
  11. If everything looks good, click the blue “Publish” button. Publishing it will make it visible on the front of your website.

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How To Approve Reviews

When someone submits a review on your website, it will not be publicly visible until you approve it. To approve reviews, do this:

  1. In your WordPress Dashboard, go the “Reviews” page. Here you will see any pending reviews that are waiting for your approval.
  2. Optional: If you want to respond to a review, write a response by first clicking underneath “Official Response:“. This response will be publicly visible on the Reviews page, but it does not get emailed to the reviewer.
  3. Click “Mark as Approved” to approve the review and make it publicly visible on the Reviews page.

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The Six Widgets

The plugin includes six custom widgets which you’ll find at “Appearance -> Widgets“. They can be used like any other WordPress widgets on your sidebar or footer, depending on where your theme allows widgets. Here are descriptions and basic usage instructions for the six widgets.

  1. QBW Announcements widget shows the three most recent “Announcement” posts. You can choose how many posts to show in the widget area settings (default is 3). It shows only the post title and date; no image.
  2. QBW Featured Announcements widget shows only the “Announcement” posts that you have marked as “featured.” It shows the post title, excerpt, and its featured image. To mark an Announcement as “featured,” see how to add Announcements.
  3. QBW Services List widget shows a list of all services. It shows only the post title of each; no excerpt, no image.
  4. QBW Featured Services widget shows only the “Services” posts that you have marked as “featured.” It shows the service title, excerpt, and its featured image. To mark a Service as “featured,” see how to add Services.
  5. QBW Staff List shows a list of all staff members. It shows the member’s name and picture.
  6. QBW Reviews Testimonial shows random customer reviews (testimonials). It will show just an excerpt with a link to read more. You can choose how many testimonials to show in the widget settings (default is 1).

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Troubleshooting

"Page Not Found" Error

The pages for Staff, Services, News, and Reviews are enabled by default. If you disable them in the options panel, and you later enable them again, you must click “Save All Changes” twice. This is similar to refreshing the Permalink settings by saving Permalink settings twice (you can also try this).

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Support

To get help, you can request support on the plugin’s official support forum or ask a question below.

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