With social media and sharing content with friends becoming the norm of the day, people keep coming up with new and unique ways to say what they’re trying to say. The closest example we can cite for this case is animated GIFs. All you need to do is scroll down your Facebook page a little to spot at least one hilarious GIF someone has shared. Even on WhatsApp, GIFs are the new craze. From commenting on posts to reacting with witty one-liners, everything is being achieved with custom GIFs these days.

If you’ve ever wondered how people seem to find the perfect funny GIFs to share on the exact right moment, well, you’re not alone. A lot of people (including us) have been looking for a way to create our very own GIFs with custom images and we’ve found just the tool that can help. Say Hi to ezGIF – the online GIF maker and image editor. Let’s find out all there is to know about this tool.

ezGIF – Suite of tools for GIFs

ezGIF started off as a simple online GIF maker tool but has evolved into a whole suite of tools for GIF editing. Creating, resizing, cropping, reversing, optimizing, and applying some effects to GIFs, you can do anything with it. Classified as one of the best post production tools, this is the go-to product if you really want to turn your GIFs around. It works with images as well as videos (not YouTube links, yet), lets you play around with GIF size, make them more effect-y flip them horizontally or vertically, add overlay texts, change their speed – basically do almost anything you can think of when it comes to GIFs.

Here’s a quick look at the different tools packed within the ezGIF suite:

• GIF Maker – Allows you to combine separate image files as frames to create your own animated GIFs.
  • You can also edit, shorten or merge existing GIFs.
  • Additionally, you can upload JPG, PNG, BMP, and TIFF and they will be converted automatically
  • Supports PDF files or ZIP archive with images
• Video to GIF – Allows you to upload your mp4, AVI, WEBM, FLV, WMV and many other popular types of video and rich media files to turn them into animated GIFs.
  • Source video file can be uploaded from your computer or Smartphone or fetched by URL
  • Lets you crop the video by entering start and end time
• GIF Resizer – Lets you resize, crop, or flip animated gifs and other images, with the same quality and speed as professional software, without the need to buy and install anything.
  • Lets you select the action to perform if the aspect ratio of the source image and your chosen size does not match
  • Supports resizing of animated WEBP, APNG, FLIF and MNG files (and any other common image type) without losing animation
• Optimizer – Lets you optimize GIF images in one of 4 ways:
  • Reduce GIF file size by compressing them using Lossy GIF compression
  • Reduce GIF file size by reducing the number of colors in each frame
  • Reduce GIF file size by removing every second, third, or fourth frame to reduce frame rate and, therefore, file size
  • Reduces GIF file size by keeping the first frame in the background, and making unchanged parts of the following frames transparent

In addition to these primary tools, ezGIF also includes GIF to Sprite Converter and Sprite Sheet Cutter to play around with CSS Sprites that can be posted directly on websites.

How the various tools within ezGIF work

Visit ezgif.com and choose one of the 4 primary products indicated in the upper center of the screen. Let’s pick each up one by one.

GIF maker

1. Click on “GIF Maker” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the files with which you wish to create GIF. You can choose multiple files by pressing and holding ctrl / command key
3. Click on “Upload and make a GIF”
4. You will now be redirected to the editing page. Here, make the desired changes like:
   1. Change image order (drag and drop)
   2. Set time delay for each image (in milliseconds)
   3. Resize to make all images of the same size
   4. Toggle the range of frames
   5. Set Loop Count (how many times do you want the GIF to repeat playing)
   6. Additional effects (crossfade frames to include a smooth transition effect, or remove frame stacking)
5. When all edits have been made, click on “Make a GIF”
6. After a few seconds your GIF should display in the a box a little lower on the page
7. You can make changes to the GIF (crop, resize, optimize, speed, etc.) after it is created

Video to GIF

1. Click on “Video to GIF” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the video (from computer or Smartphone) with which you wish to create GIF
3. Click on “Upload Video” (maximum upload size is 120 MB)
4. You will now be redirected to the editing page. Here, make the desired changes like:
   1. Cut any undesired parts of the video
   2. Enter start and end time (if you don’t select anything, the GIF will be created with the first 5 seconds of the video)
5. When all edits have been made, click on “Make a GIF”
6. Depending upon the size of the video and your edits, after a little while your GIF should display in a box a little lower on the page
7. You can make changes to the GIF (crop, resize, optimize, speed, etc.) after it is created

GIF Resizer

1. Click on “GIF Resizer” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the image you wish to resize (GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, WebP, APNG, FLIF, MNG)
3. Click on “Upload”
4. Once file has been uploaded, click on “Resize”
5. Depending upon the size of the image after a little while your resized image should display in a box a little lower on the page

Optimizer

1. Click on “Optimizer” on the home page to reach the work page
2. Choose the image you wish to optimize (GIF, JPG, PNG)
3. Click on “Upload”
4. You will now be redirected to the editing page. Here pick which technique you wish to use to optimize the image:
   1. Lossy GIF Compression
   2. Color Reduction
   3. Removing every nth frame
   4. Optimize Transparency
5. When all edits have been made, click on “Optimize”
6. After a little while your optimized image should display in the a box a little lower on the page

That’s pretty much it.

The Good VS the Bad

The good points of this tool are many and don’t need to be recounted.

There are no bad sides as such, only some features that would be good to have, like the ability to upload videos larger than 120 MB, or YouTube link support.

• Create, edit, resize, & optimize animated GIFs easily with @ezgif_com ezgif.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

Considering that the tool lets you do everything for free, we’d say it’s definitely worth it. It works great and does exactly what it promises – delivers great GIFs! Double thumbs up.

Did you get confused after reading the title as to why one would need to make such a conversion at all? We were too. But as we thought about it and explored the HTML to WordPress tool, we were not only pleasantly surprised but also thoroughly convinced that the conversion might actually be a good idea. Think about it: creating websites in HTML is always easier. However, for it to be monitored and maintained by someone who is not a developer, it is easier to do so in WordPress. WordPress is fairly intuitive, and easy enough to be taught to someone who comes from a non-technical background.

Of course, people have been transforming HTML code to WordPress files since forever. However, before the introduction of tools like HtmlToWordPress, the conversion had always been messier. All files had to be organized correctly and referred to during the conversion. Images and media always took tedious efforts in the conversion. Moreover, you couldn’t dream of attempting to do any of this unless you ate, lived, and breathed coding. Conversion from HTML to WordPress was a strict no-no for those who didn’t have a sound technical background.

But now doing so is a matter of a few clicks. Let us show you how.

Switch from HTML to WordPress easily

While coding in HTML is easier, the main benefit provided by WordPress is its Content Management System. If you have clients with unique requirements for their sites, you can fulfill their requirements by creating web-pages in HTML and then hand the pages over to them as WordPress PHP files so that they can maintain the site with ease. WordPress will give them access to plug-ins and other SEO tools. Once you convert your HTML site to WordPress, you have all of the following advantages and more:

• Easier maintenance
• Plug-in functionality
• Social media integration
• Easier Updates

Here’s how HtmlToWordPress can help you extract these advantages:

• Upload HTML files and pick a theme; leave the rest to the tool. No coding required
• Free Live Preview of how your website will look with the theme you picked once conversion is complete
• Compatible with any HTML based website and any HTML editor / framework
• Automatic content and image editing capability through Simple Live Editor
• Ton of tools and frameworks supported
• Time Saving since it takes only a couple of minutes
• No learning curve involved

This technique of transforming usual HTML pages into a fully functioning WordPress website is not just time-friendly but also pocket-friendly. Programmers would probably charge you hundreds of dollars for this and also take up a lot of your time. It really is an obvious choice.

This is how the tool works

The actual conversion process of your HTML pages to a WordPress site has never been simpler. Visit the tool’s homepage and you’ll see an area where you can drag-and-drop the zipped folder containing your HTML pages. That’s all there is to it. The encouraging message of getting to “see a live preview in 15 seconds or less” is more than convincing to at least give the application a try.

We tried uploading a small dummy website to the tool and here were the good and bad points we faced:

• Our zipped folder contained 4 html pages, 1 CSS file, 1 JavaScript file, and a folder containing about 30 images. It took the tool under 8 seconds to analyze the folder which was pretty decent.
• Our home page file wasn’t named index.html (that’s the default name for most HTML based websites) and the tool wasn’t happy about it. It displayed an error message saying we should rename our home page file to index.html (with a lowercase “i”) and then try the upload again. This was a bit strange since the name of the home page file shouldn’t ideally be a show-stopper, but we complied. Although that did involve a couple of iterations to match the case and change every occurrence of the file name in our code.

Once our files were converted we could see a live preview of our website inside the tool’s editor. It is worth mentioning here that the preview doesn’t add any glitter to your files. The live preview will show you a very basic website if that’s what your HTML files contain. So don’t expect anything flashy if you haven’t coded for it.

The top right corner of the editor holds a “Download Theme” button with which you can download the WordPress files created after conversion. This is also where you’ll be required to pay for tool usage, so you’ll be directed to the shopping cart.

Pros and Cons

The pros are quite straightforward:

• Any HTML framework and editor works.
• Images, style sheets are all referenced correctly.
• Both content and media can be edited directly from the Live Editor.
• Free preview after the conversion and before checking out your cart.

The cons should also be clear from the description above:

• The dependency on the home page file’s name (index.html)
• Quite a basic WordPress theme with no options to choose any other theme
• The maximum file size supported is only 100 MB

• Converting an HTML website into a WordPress one was never this easy: htmltowordpress.io/ @HTML2WP_app via @supermonitoring

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Final Words

For us, the deal of converting an entire HTML website to a WordPress one at $4.90 is too good to be true. Perhaps the creators might increase the price once it becomes popular, but for now we are hoping to milk the opportunity and get as many sites converted. The pricing is great, the FAQ is detained, and the interface is more or less self-explanatory. With a few acceptable glitches, this is one of the few apps in the market that allow such a conversion.

Also check this out: WordPress speed optimization services from WP Buffs

I’ve often found myself getting annoyed when a downloaded movie doesn’t play on my movie player due to format incompatibilities. The same applies to music. Sometimes, format also hinders my work when a document or presentation created on one computer won’t be accessible or viewable on another computer that doesn’t have the software with which I created it. Such minor issues can transform into huge problems when your professional deadlines approach and you can’t successfully transfer your work from one machine to another to discuss or share your team’s opinions. And the worst scenario is when after spending hours into creating a presentation with effects, music and transitions you’re up there trying to play it and it won’t play as expected due to incompatibilities on the target computer.

We often find ourselves in similar situations stuck due to format incompatibilities. The smart way however to deal with such situations is to have the same material ready in multiple formats with you so that even if one doesn’t work, the other can save the day. For that you need to rope in a trusty format converter. However, unfortunately, most format converters available online are either restricted to particular formats or don’t complete the task until you pay a hefty sum for them or worse, are laden with malware.
But, with Cloud Convert, all such problems seem to be resolved at last!

Cloud Convert – The ultimate format converter!

The purpose of Cloud Convert is instantly clear when you visit the tool’s website. That is, to convert anything to anything. You read that right; it is actually a universal converter that can convert audios, videos, archive files, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images as well as Ebooks from multiple formats into multiple formats. And that’s not all. This brilliant online tool can also convert fonts, vectors, cad files and entire websites (html files). Wow!

The best part of this unique converter is that you don’t need to install anything on your machine. Everything is online, on the cloud. Just select your source and target formats, upload your files and let the tool do its job. We know what you’re thinking. You’re probably worried about the safety of the files you upload right? Well, you don’t need to worry. Cloud Convert doesn’t let anyone else apart from you access your files. Plus, your files are deleted as soon as their conversion is completed.

With powerful API support, you can even use the full functionality of Cloud Convert in your own applications. So basically you can transform the converter into much more if you want to. To read more about it just click on the “API” link on the main menu of the website. Moreover, almost all conversion types support advanced options such as setting the codecs of audio / video files, folder monitoring and batch converting. With over 210 different files formats, Cloud Convert makes sure that once you’ve used it, you’ll never even think about any other format converter.

How it works

On the homepage of the tool, you’ll find a clearly placed line that says, “convert anything to anything” in large letters. On hovering the mouse over the underlined words ‘anything’, you’ll find out they’re actually links. Click on them to open a drop-down listing the type of conversions available. The following types of conversions are available:

• Anything
• Archive
• Audio
• Cad
• Document
• Ebook
• Font
• Image
• Presentation
• Spreadsheet
• Vector
• Video
• Website

Each of these categories has a further categorization into the format that you wish to select as source and target. For example, you can select Presentation -> pptx (MS PowerPoint presentation) as source and Presentation -> odp (Open Office Presentation) as target. That way you can have your MS Office presentation working fine even if the target machine has Open Office installed.
If you let the selection stay at anything to anything, you have all options available to upload your files. These include:

• Add from URL
• Choose from Dropbox
• Choose from Google Drive
• Choose from OneDrive
• Choose from Box

Depending upon the formats you choose as source and targets, these choices will become restricted. There’s one small catch here – while all other options for uploading are available straightaway, to upload files through OneDrive, you’ll need to sign up for a free Cloud Convert account first. Signing up is very easy, just a username, password, email and a verification code are required. No mess, no problem!
Once you’ve selected the files to be converted, you can choose to receive a notification once the conversion has finished and also pick where you wish the converted file to be stored – to your Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive or box account. After this, just click on the big red button that says “Start Conversion” and experience the magic!

Additional Features

The makers of Cloud Convert have offered easy app adding buttons on the bottom of the screen to add Cloud Convert to Chrome or an iOS app (like iTunes). Just click on these buttons and you’ll be redirected to the respective pages where you can see detailed descriptions about these features. Additionally, to see what all formats can be converted and into which all formats, click on the “Conversion Types” link on the main menu of the website.

Pros VS Cons

Do we really need to repeat the pros? Conversion from anything to anything, literally; that too, accurate, reliable and free. This tool is a clear winner!
Honestly, we couldn’t find a flaw. Even the pricing packages are so affordable that it would be wrong to call this tool expensive. Check out the pricing for Cloud Convert through the “Pricing” link on the main menu.

• Convert between 200+ file formats with @CloudConvert cloudconvert.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Final Words

This was one tool that made us go “Wow!” with its simplicity, usefulness and approach. Use it and experience its worth right now!