Turn WordPress Into a Powerful Business Tool
ok.. with over a million downloads – you know this is a good plugin. In fact, it’s the one I use on this site for the contact form.
It’s simple, quick, secure – and when you combine it with the Google ReCaptcha plugin it keeps out the bots and spammers:
OK, so this is simply one of those plugins that needs to be installed. And that’s that.
Yoast – the guy behind the plugin (Joost De Valk) is a seriously smart SEO guy, along with a seriously smart team over at Yoast.com
As you’ll know, from reading this blog, SEO is very important for your business. This plugin is basically all you need – along with your social media accounts of course!
It’s actually just been updated, and there are some great changes. So I’ll run through what I do when I set a website up and install this plugin.
Video and article coming soon!
This beautiful theme is one of the first ones I bought. The author, Kreisi, is exceptionally talented – and claims this is the “user-friendliest WordPress theme ever made”! – I agree with him. Very flexible! One of the most popular themes on Themeforest.
I probably have 3 or four personal websites using this theme. The code is very well written, which counts for the page load times – all factors in optimising your website.
Here’s a quick look at the admin panel – but I’d recommend checking out the full demo on Themeforest
GravityForms are probably one of the most known, and respected forms plugin providers. As a testament to that, I have had a paid membership for GravityForms since 2010.
The only thing I can say in terms of what to watch for – is that GravityForms to WordPress forms is like ‘Microsoft Word’ to word processors – they can do everything! However, sometimes we just need a simple text editor.
If your needs are simple, I also recommend Contact Form 7 – and I’ll do a quick demo and write up on that soon.
But if you want super flexible forms, conditional logic, subscriptions, addons payments, membership… GravityForms is for you..
Check out the GravityForms website to see the full list of amazing features in this excellent plugin.
In terms of backups and disaster recovery, this is probably the best plugin I’ve used, not only for regular backups, scheduled offsite backups, but also site transfers and migrations.
I install it on every client website without exception.
It also comes with a malware checking facility.
It’s one of those plugins that just gets installed, no questions. It’s also one of those plugins, which once in a rare moment, you are soooo glad you installed!
Video and article coming soon!
When it comes to making your website look nice, there’s really only one or two places to know about. StudioPress is one of those places. Dedicated to high quality WordPress themes, exceptional support.
I always think it’s a little understated, sending someone to look at their themes, because although they all look great, with just a little bit of tweaking you can change the look and feel quite radically – giving you so many choices.
You’ll notice that this site uses a Genesis Theme (Genesis is the framework created by StudioPress). It’s one of many themes.
Perhaps what’s most helpful, is the quick setup guides, and the amazing community which has answers to every question you could possible think of – helping you get setup quickly and easily.
I promise to do a walk-through video along with an in depth article on using Genesis from StudioPress.
In the meantime, go and checkout their WordPress themes and testimonials.
For many years, I used GoDaddy. I’d also tried many others, but kept coming back to GoDaddy.
However – recently I’m finding that NameCheap are my preferred choice. Partly because they’re great on domain pricing, and they have a very smooth purchase process. But mainly, because they offer privacy protection (which they call WhoisGuard) and SSL at unbeatable prices.
Domain privacy (WhoisGuard) means that your contact information used when you register the domain isn’t made public – because those pesky spam robots harvest those public email addresses and send you rubbish, as well as sell the email addresses to spam lists..
And SSL is becoming more important these days, if you want any form of security for sensitive information – and of course, it’s critical for any payment information.
NameCheap also do hosting of course, but I still recommend SiteGround for that.
More details coming soon, on what domain names to choose when thinking of marketing and seo.
HideMyAss Proxy and VPN Software
This is a great utility, for keeping on top of the information that is gathered about you – mostly without you knowing!
It allows anonymous browsing, by using either proxies or a VPN connection. As you can imagine, there are a number of benefits – some more innocent than others..
One of the things I like, is that it allows you to wander around the internet, without all these cookies and advertising tracking following you.
It also allows you to access websites in other countries, that you might not normally be able to access. And on the potentially less innocent side – it let’s you access many websites that have been blocked for various reasons by different ISP’s.
Mostly, I like to simply be in control – and not have people collecting all sorts of information about me without me knowing.
Video and in depth article coming soon!
My preferred host is SiteGround. For a number of good reasons. I’ve explained it more in another post, but one of the lesser known features of SiteGround hosting is the ‘staging’ system they provide.
This basically lets you make a copy of your website – and work on it separately from your live site, by clicking a button!
Once you’ve created the staging copy, you’ve basically got a full copy/backup to play around with.
This is very useful and can be used in two ways:
Of course – looking at those two options – you can see why ‘staging’ is a great idea. You can work on a copy to make sure it’s ok, before it affects your live site.
This is just a post about using staging as a way of backing up and restoring – there’s another SiteGround post about actual hosting, and why I recommend them most.
The Duplicator gives you the ability to migrate, copy or clone a site from one location to another. The plugin also serves as a simple backup utility. If you need to move WordPress or backup WordPress this plugin can help simplify the process. For complete details visit lifeinthegrid.com.
I must admit, I prefer Backupbuddy, but Duplicator is free, and simple. I’ve used it a few times, and if you’re looking for a free solution, it’s probably one of the best options.
