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.
With 2017 came a new look!
I never know when I’m going to flip my look. I just know that I don’t like the same look for very long. After about 6 months no matter how much in love I was with the latest theme, it starts 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.
Compared to last year’s round up, this latest setup is leaner with fewer plugins.
PREMIUM WORDPRESS THEME:
- Genesis By StudioPress
- Elegance Theme: 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: The ultimate shortcodes collection for any theme from Elegant Themes. Shortcodes are fun!
- Monarch Plugin: 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.
- Gravity 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Slider: Simple WordPress Slider Plugin that is easy to use and setup.
- WP-DBManager: I’ve used this plugin forever to manage my WordPress database. Allows me to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up, optimizing and repairing of your database.
- All in One SEO: Thought I would give this one a try after using Yoast for years. Still getting used to it and not sure if I’m sold. Miss the Yoast readability guide.
- Testimonial Rotator: I use this for the quotes on my site.
- WPS Hide Login : WPS Hide Login is a very light plugin that lets you easily and safely change the url of the login form page to anything you want. It simply intercepts page requests for your login from bots and troublemakers.
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.” Read my full Affiliate Disclosure Statement here.