With the new Google changes coming soon that penalize sites for using pop-ups, you might be looking for alternatives. One great option is using a notification bar instead of a popup. Here’s what mine looks like (the red bar at the bottom):
I created this with WPFront Notification Bar and it gives you a lot of options that are easy to configure – and it’s a free plugin!
The documentation for this plugin is great, but I’ll give you a quick run down of the essentials:
Once you install the plugin and activate it, it will create a new menu item on your left-hand menu bar in your dashboard.
Go to:
WPFront > Notification Bar
I’m not crazy that it creates that other “all plugins” menu item, but hey, it’s a free plugin and that’s a small price to pay.
Check or uncheck the “Enabled” box at the top if you want to turn it on/off.
Next you can choose to show it at the top or bottom. I recommend the bottom, because adding it to the top can cover your logo and other important info in your header. Keep in mind that by putting it at the bottom just means it’s at the bottom of the window, not the bottom of the footer. People will be able to see this bar without scrolling down.
Height is set under “Bar Height”. My recommendation would be to leave this at default so that the height is created automatically, but if you want to change the height here, it’s easy to do.
Scroll down a little further to get to the “Content” area. This is where you put in the text you want. This area accepts HTML tags, so you can add some there if you like. You can see I have changed the font size to make it bigger.
You will see in the screen capture above that there is also a place to choose if you want to display a button. If so, add the button text and the URL you want the button to link to.
There are a ton of other options including being able to change the colors to match your site and being able to create a gradient. A lot of nice options, but not so many that it’s overwhelming. And, as I mentioned, they have great documentation for all this here.
Finally, after you make changes, be sure to save them with the big blue button at the bottom and you’ll be in business.
Do you have another alternative to popups? I’d love to hear about it.
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