Time for a site review! I get asked all the time about the products and services I use on this very website. At the beginning of each year (sometimes sooner) I stop and actually take some time to review my own site, themes, plugins and setup. So I thought I would share with you what the bones of my site are as of right now.
No new look?
This is one of the longest time-frames that I’ve been on the same theme. So far, I’ve not seen another theme to make me take the leap — yet… I never know when I’m going to flip my look. No matter how much in love I was with the latest theme, it will start bugging me.
Then, one day; it happens. I see a new theme and need to use it for my site! Not in the near future, not next month, not next week — now! The bain of being me. So maybe I’ll have a new look in my next review?
Compared to last year’s round up, this latest setup is leaner with fewer plugins.
PREMIUM WORDPRESS THEME:
- Genesis By StudioPress (aff)
- Elegance Theme (aff): A third party child theme for Genesis offered by StudioPress
I now exclusively use StudioPress for all my sites and recommend the same to my clients. You can read about why here.
GENESIS | STUDIOPRESS PLUGINS:
- Genesis Simple Edits: Genesis Simple Edits lets you edit the three most commonly modified areas in any Genesis theme: the post-info, the post-meta, and the footer area. A bit behind WordPress updates but I’m sure if there was a conflict it would have been addressed.
- Simple Social Icons: A simple, CSS and icon font driven social icons widget that I use in top left header.
- Elegant Shortcodes (aff): The ultimate shortcodes collection for any theme from Elegant Themes. Shortcodes are fun!
- Monarch Plugin (aff): Social Media Plugin from Elegant Themes — that’s the share bar pinned to the left of the screen over there. I also use the ET Shortcode plugin.
- WP Hummingbird: Hummingbird zips through my site finding new ways to make it load faster, from file compression and minification to browser caching – because when it comes to page speed, every millisecond counts.
- WP Smush Pro: Reduces image file sizes, improve performance and boosts my SEO using the WPMU DEV WordPress Smush API.
- Appointments+: For my Judith Live scheduling.
- Membership 2: For my exclusive IStudio InSiders Members Only Area
- Ninja Forms: Easily create web forms and manage form entries within the WordPress admin. It is easy to use and what I rely on is the fact that all submissions are stored in my dashboard just in case I don’t get the e-mail notice.
- 404 to 301: Automatically redirects 404 errors to a designated page using 301 redirect for SEO. You can redirect and log every 404 error. This plugin became a necessity when I did an extensive overhaul of my site and a whole bunch of URLs were retired. This allowed me to redirect retired URLs to a helpful sitemap type page.
- Yoast SEO: Cannot live without the Yoast readability guide.
PREMIUM WORDPRESS PLUGINS
PREMIUM WORDPRESS PLUGINS FROM WPMUDEV
PLUGINS FROM THE WORDPRESS PLUGIN DIRECTORY
The above is the setup and what I have integrated as of today — this could change at any moment, whim or new discovery! Now you have the G-2 so you can have a site just like mine!
At your service,
P.S. Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are “affiliate links” marked (aff). Read my full Affiliate Disclosure Statement here.