Useful Tools for Building Your Website
This page is a collection of themes, plugins, and resources for WordPress which I find useful and may want to use again. It has been sorted into categories for your convenience,
Social Media
- AddtoAny – my current preferred social media plugin.
- Social Warfare – a social media plugin that lets you share network specific images and snippets.
- Buffer – an online service for managing multiple social media accounts.
- IFTTT – I use this service to get notifications of any time I am mentioned on Twitter.
Mailing Lists
- Mailchimp – an email newsletter service. it’s free tier can’t be beat.
- Mailmunch – a second newsletter service. I like it for its form and for the subscription confirmation email option (you can use it to give away bonus content).
- My blog posts – I’ve been blogging about this topic for a while now.
SEO
- Yoast SEO – a good basic SEO plugin.
- WP SEO Structured Data Schema – an advanced SEO plugin which helps make your content show up in google’s preferred formatting in its search results.
- WP Keyword Suggest – this plugin helps you find longer keywords for posts.
- Google Search Console – This tool will tell you how many people are finding your site through Google, and the terms they are searching for.
Blogging
- Cookie Law Info – an easy way to comply with EU’s law on tracking cookies.
- wpSpoiler – easy to use spoiler tags
- WP 404 Auto Redirect to Similar Post – Got a broken link on your site? This plugin automatically searches for pages and posts with a similar slug, and then redirects visitors to that page.
- WordPress Notification Bar – it’s like a banner ad across the top of your site
Speed & Optimization
- WP Smush – an image optimization plugin.
- Shortpixel – an even better image optimization plugin (use this one).
- WP-Optimize – a database optimization plugin.
- GTMetrix.com – this is my main diagnostic tool for speeding up a site.
- AMP – the official plugin for Google AMP.
- AMP for WP – this plugin adds all the features you expected from the official plugin, including comment sections, menu, site logo, etc.
- FV Gravatar Cache – this plugin caches gravatar icons
Setup
- PeoplesHost – My recommended hosting company.
- 101Domains – For registering your website domain.
- ManageWP – This is a great online tool that lets you manage multiple WP websites from one place.
