My list of recommended WordPress resources including Themes, Hosting options, Plugins and Links. See also my other recommended Resources.
Self-Hosted WordPress
- WordPress – I use WordPress on all of my sites now, including this blog.
Hosting
- WP Engine – I’ve moved my serious hosting to WP Engine, because it is super fast, scales, and manages all the security and backups. Note: WordPress only. This site (ie that you are currently browsing) is hosted with WP Engine.
- VPS.NET – I use cloud hosting for complicated sites with lots of different systems and databases (eg if using a non-Wordpress forum on a site).
- Pingdom -Â how I monitor uptime and site response times for my sites.
Themes
There’s tons of theme sites around, the following are my favourites.
- Theme Forest – tons of beautiful themes for WordPress. This site is using the Avada theme.
- Woo Themes – great themes and ecommerce plugin for business sites.
Other options:
- Elegant Themes – this used to be one of my favourite Premium Theme sites, but I actually haven’t used it for a while. But keeping it here as a good option in case the ones above don’t work for you.
Plugins
This is my current list of must-have plugins. Interestingly, this list of plugins used to be much longer, but over the years I’ve really stripped it back to the essentials. And whereas previously I used to have a three plugins for things (eg SEO plugin, XML Sitemap plugin, RSS redirect plugin, etc) now they are all combined into the one Yoast SEO plugin.
- Yoast SEO – covers everything you need for SEO of your site. Includes a sitemap generator.
- W3 Total Cache – I use W3 Total Cache on sites that aren’t using WP Engine (since WP Engine has it’s own built in caching). W3 is awesome.
- Google Analytics for WordPress – makes adding your analytics code simple, but with the added advantage of easily adding tracking of downloads and external link outs.
- DrainHole – the best download manager plugin I have come across
- Redirection – simple way to implement 301 redirects within WordPress
- Wishlist Member – Membership plugin
- WooCommerce – online store plugin that integrates with Subscription plugins and affiliate programs. The only ecommerce plugin I use these days
Other Resources
- The Definitive Guide to WordPress SEO by Joost de Valk
- WordPress Cheat Sheet by Ekin Ertac