If your potential clients could get a price estimate up front, how easy would it be to sell your service? How much time could you save from haggling?
In this YouTube video by the channel “SiteKrafter,” the host, Mak, reviews a tool called Cost Calculator. Cost Calculator is a WordPress plugin, or app, that lets website visitors input data and get a cost estimate for a project. If you run a business such as construction, you can include settings like material costs, measurements, labor costs, and so on. Cost Calculator works for many types of service businesses.
There is a free version of the plugin, or you can pay for the premium version with deluxe features. Ask us about adding this tool to your business website.
Google has released Google Ads API version 13.1, and below is a list of what changed. The big changes include bid simulations retrievals, added several recommendation types related to Shopping campaigns, and much more.
Google has removed the ability to opt out of Education Q&A carousel in its search results. The original help documentation had a section with a link to a form to request not to show your content in the Education Q&A carousel, which was now removed.
Google is testing showing the number of followers a specific social media account has in the mobile search results. You usually see this information in the snippet itself, but Google is testing showing the count also directly below the site name, in place of where the URL would be.
Google may be sending text messages to business owners to verify that the information they have listed in their Google Business Profile is accurate and up-to-date. This text comes from a confirmed Google phone number, but some local SEOs are worried that this is not really coming from Google.
Google has noted that it now supports 25 more countries for the applicableCountry property within the new return policy information to the Product structured data documentation. Now Google supports 50 countries for this property.
David Vongries, developer of the Kirki Customizer Framework plugin, announced he is sunsetting the product and will discontinue development and support. Vongries bought the plugin in 2020 from its original creator, Ari Stathopoulos, and grew its user base from 400K to 600K active installs. He launched Kirki PRO with additional extensions in March 2022.
“When I first acquired Kirki in early 2020, I had big plans for it,” Vongries said. “Although we were able to execute on step one of the 2-step plan we had for the plugin, as time went on, I lost passion for the project mainly due to the direction WordPress core has taken with Gutenberg.
“It’s clear to me now that I was too ambitious in taking on the project.”
Kirki’s customizer framework enabled theme authors to add custom controls and advanced features to the customizer, including the ability to style it, and add a custom header. Although block theme adoption has been a slow process, the death knell for the Customizer rang years ago.
In 2020, Vongries said that exploring how Kirki could potentially extend Gutenberg was one of his goals. Stathopoulos had also discussed the possibility of moving away from the customizer to work with full-site editing and global styles, helping themes that use Kirki transition to global styles. These goals did not materialize but the potential for them is still there.
Vongries is now looking for someone to acquire the plugin but is committed to providing limited support to users in the meantime, including fixing critical bugs and compatibility issues that happen as the result of WordPress core updates.
“The current active install count in the WordPress repository is 600,000, which presents a great opportunity to revamp the plugin and get it in front of actual users,” he said. “I believe that there’s still great potential in Kirki, and I’m looking for someone who shares that vision to take it forward.”
Vongries has put a price tag of $30K on the plugin, which includes all the assets – the website, GitHub, and PRO extensions. No further active development or updates are planned unless Kirki gets acquired by someone who wants to carry it forward.
