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 -- sometimes later) 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.
New Look
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! Then I have to remember to come back to this post and update it. The curse of being me.
PREMIUM WORDPRESS THEME:
- Genesis By StudioPress
- Authority Pro: A child theme for Genesis offered by StudioPress
I exclusively use StudioPress' Genesis Framework with a Child Theme, 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.
PREMIUM WORDPRESS PLUGINS FROM WPMUDEV
- 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.
- Defender for security.
- Membership 2: For my exclusive IStudio InSiders Members Only Area
PLUGINS FROM THE WORDPRESS PLUGIN DIRECTORY
- 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.
The above is the basic 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 that looks 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.