WordPress, Plugins & Themes
Once you’ve chosen a Hosting plan and obtained a Domain or two, you need a website building platform. ie-what software format will you use to create your website? Depending on where your Hosting is, you typically have several choices. While there are many people switching over to various AI-based platforms, or basic DIY Website Hosts with their basic cookie-cutter proprietary page building tools, there are still some really good, much more traditional & powerful website building platforms you can consider. The main (and the most common) choices for serious website architects are:
- Drupal -Great for larger data-oriented, high security & enterprise level websites
- Joomla -Great for multi-lingual, complex user-permission environments
- PrestaShop/Open Cart -Great for larger dedicated Ecommerce environments
- WordPress -Can go in many directions, for more serious projects that can upscale
Let’s focus on WordPress
WordPress is a great platform for those wanting to get started building and growing their online experience to lofty goals such as advertising, marketing, creating an E-commerce business, news, personal blogs, information & technology forums, private communities, product reviews and much more. There are endless possibilities when building on a WordPress foundation. You aren’t limited to simple designs, limited usage scenarios or other surprises that may come up.
With WordPress, there are literally thousands of add-on software extensions, applications and themes that you’ll be able pick & choose from. With the right set of plugins, you can take your website anywhere. Many, including WordPress itself, offer free-to use versions, free-to-try (temporary) versions to sample, and/or paid subscription versions that give access to their full feature sets. If you just stick with the freeware versions of everything (including WordPress itself) you can still go a VERY long way with your website!!
The first things that’ll benefit you the most are:
Themes
- OceanWP -Gives you great menu, sidebar, header, footer & typography control.
You can simply delete the default Themes that came with your WordPress Intallation, they could be retrieved & used at any time in the future if you so choose. You can only use 1 theme on your website at any one time. There are other good themes, and each one has its own different control interface. Stick with the one you best, and for me, that is OceanWP. There is an additional Plugin (OceanWP Extra) you should want to install later, if you opt to use OceanWP …
Plugins
Here are some of the best Plugins I’ve used, but this list is just the beginning. There are likely many many more I should have installed & activated, but I’ll ‘add as I go’ when I have something to report back here with. For many of these, there are also plenty of very good alternatives that I could’ve used instead, these are just the plugins I’ve opted to go with. If I were starting another website from scratch, I’d probably start with most of these (depending on the purpose of the site).
- Elementor -Currently the best overall page-builder available for WordPress
- Ocean Extra -Adds extra features & capabilities to your theme (OceanWP)
- Classic Editor -Pretty good basic page builder, you don’t always need to use Elementor
- Smush -Resizes youe media to a far smaller format for faster & higher efficiency
- AIOSEO -All-In-One-SEO adds great SEO Optimizing assistance
- Broken Link Checker -Also by AIOSEO, monitors & tests all the links on your site
- Google Analytics for WordPress -Best overall Analytics plugin
- WordPress Importer -For Importing posts & pages or Migrating entire websites
- Lightspeed Cache -great for page caching & site optimizing
- OptinMonster -Popup builder, if you have newsletters, groups, sales, etc …
- Tablepress -Builds table & charts to insert on your pages & posts
- WooCommerce -Great storefront & Ecommerce platform
- wpForo -Good forum creation plugin (must de-activate Lightspeed Cache)
- Hide Admin Bar Based on User Roles -As it says, for community/member sites
- Fluent Community -builder for membership based closed communities
- FluentCRM -CRM/Newsletter plu
- Post Types Order -For customized arrangments of posts in searches of topics
There are so many other great useful plugins, all you can do is search in the Plugin store for what you might need. Also, most Hosting providers will have a suite of their own plugins already available for you to try out with a new WordPress installation.
My own service provider, Hostinger, gives me:
- Hostinger AI
- Hostinger Easy Onboarding
- Hostinger Reach
- Hostinger Tools
To my knowledge I have not used any of these, yet they are activated and available for me to use.
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