This resource list for your WordPress website highlights resources I actually use for my clients or myself. There are lots of other good resources; these are just mine.
(Note: Last updated February 4, 2014.)
Domain Name Registrars
Namecheap – This registrar has good prices and customer support. Their management interface is easier to use than most.
Website Hosts
Tiger Technologies – Besides amazing support from company employees, this website hosting company gives refunds for partial months, if you cancel hosting. They have reasonable monthly or yearly prices, support from their own employees (no outsourced support), no CPanel, but a clean, simple interface, one-click WordPress install, shell access, up-to-date PHP, MySQL database access, backups, carbon neutral hosting, free domain name with hosting.
WPEngine – This website host has great WordPress-only hosting; they have managed updates (They update WordPress for you automatically.), daily backups, malware scanning, and staging area for testing.
Website or Blog Platform
WordPress – This is the most popular and fastest growing publishing platform on the web because it’s so flexible, allowing it to power e-commerce sites, personal websites, business websites, blogs, and everything in-between. With a content management system (CMS) like WordPress, you can easily publish and update your own content, and have a blog with your website. WordPress is ten years old on May 27, 2013.
WordPress Themes
StudioPress Themes and Genesis Framework – Genesis framework is a premium theme, but is are well-coded, has good SEO, and a great assortment of child themes to give your site a unique look.
Automattic Themes – Themes are listed near the bottom. They are all really nice free themes available in the WordPress plugin directory. Automattic themes also include default themes Twenty Ten, Twenty Eleven, and Twenty Twelve which can easily be customized for a business.
Smashing Magazine Themes – There are a few really nice themes, as well as other design and development resources.
Vandelay Design – This site has some nice church and photography WordPress Themes.
e-Commerce WordPress Plugins
Easy Digital Downloads – This free plugin is great for managing document downloads whether paid or free. It’s a light-weight, easy-to-customize plugin with Paypal Standard gateway, shopping cart, coupon codes, reports for seller and customers. There are lots of additional free and premium add-ons.
Woocommerce – This is an easy-to-use plugin for selling products online using PayPal Standard. It has excellent documentation, inventory management, reports, flat-rate shipping, shopping cart, coupon codes, is easy to customize, and has many add-ons for your shop. While it’s free to get started, some of the premium add-ons are helpful, including additional shipping tables and methods, recurring payments, and other payment gateways. The one-page checkout is very easy for customers to use, as well.
iThemes Exchange – This is another easy-to-use plugin for selling digital or physical products online. You can use PayPal Standard or Stripe for payment. Exchange has premium add-ons for membership and invoices. It’s free to get started for selling products.
WordPress Plugins
- WordPress SEO by Yoast – Has an indicator to let you know how your on-page SEO is; also has a sitemap generator.
- Jetpack – RSS to email sign up form, contact form, stats, social share, carousel, and many others; all the Jetpack options are easy to use; also see Get Started with the Jetpack WordPress Plugin
- Ninja Forms – very easy to use for non-programers.
- Regenerate Thumbnails – useful if you change themes to create new thumbnail sizes to fit the theme.
- Genesis Responsive Slider – Allows for pages, posts, images with text; very good configuration options.
- Soliloquy Lite – This is an extremely easy to use and simple slider; there is a premium upgrade too.
- Duplicate Post – Very useful if you need to start with similar content in a post or page; Can duplicate, rename, and then edit.
- Relvanssi – Searches custom post types, as well as the usual WordPress content.
- Page.ly MultiEdit – Allows for multiple editable areas on a page; content editor is tabbed.
- Imsanity – Keeps uploaded images to a usable size without editing before uploading.
- Backup Buddy – Is a paid plugin; allows backups to be sent off-site; very easy site restore and migration; worth the cost.
- Limit Login Attempts – Useful if bots try logging into your site often.
- Members – Add new user roles and edit capabilities; limit content; side bar login too.
- User Role Editor – Add new user roles and edit capabilities by role or user.
- SB Welcome Email Editor – Allows you to write a custom email that is sent to new users.
- Login Logo – Easily adds your logo to the WordPress login page.
- WP Google Fonts – Easily add Google Fonts to your website.
WordPress Plugin Editors
- WP Editor – Can be used to edit, upload, and download your theme files; no FTP required.
- Code Snippets – Can be used to add custom functions or scripts without editing theme files.
- Jetpack or Slim Jetpack – Custom CSS Editor can be used instead of editing style.css.
Newsletter services
You can read more about no cost email newsletter services.
Images to Use in Your Blog Posts
You might want to see How to Customize Your WordPress Website Header.
- Unsplash – These images can be used for personal or commercial use
- MorgueFile – These can all be used, and there are also photography lessons.
- Stock.XCHNG – These can all be used; recently purchase by Getty Images.
- Big Stock Photos – Low cost, royalty-free images.
- Flicker: Creative Commons – Choose a license to search for images.
Backgrounds, Icons, and Other Resources
- Bittbox – Lots of great brushes, fonts, textures, and vectors.
- Lost & Taken – High resolution textures and backgrounds.
- Subtle Patterns – Lots of wonderful subtle textures; great for backgrounds.
- IconDock – Really wonderful sets of free and premium icons.
- PSD365 – Download a new PSD everyday or purchase graphics.
Web Font Resources
- Font Squirrel – Lots of free beautiful fonts, web fonts, and also a web font generator.
- Google Webfonts – Lots of easy to use web fonts; read about How to Use Google Web Fonts in Your WordPress Website
- Icon fonts
- Genericons
- Font Awesome
- Dashicons – Read how to use Dashicons
- Fontastic – Create your own custom icon fonts
Image Editors
- GIMP – Similar to Photoshop, but at no cost; good for editing photos or creating images.
- Adobe Photoshop – Premium drawing app and image editor.
Thank you for the web hosting recommendation. After having recent problems with my GoDaddy hosting, I decided to transfer my domain name and website to Tiger Technologies.
I have informed Tiger Technologies of your recommendation.
So far the transfer process has been clear and painless. We hope to have the move completed by next week.
Cheers,
Marcus Tibesar, Founder and Lead Archivist
Tibesar Family Archives
I hope you like Tiger Technologies as well as I do, Marcus. And thank you for mentioning me to them!
As a follow-up I am still hosting with Tiger Technologies and yes, they are superb. They make the WordPress hosters look real bad. The best support I have ever witnessed. They thoroughly research requests for support and time after time again provide a full explanation of the WordPress issue(s) and their resolution. I hosted with WP Engine in the past and TigerTech really shines compared with them.
Thanks for letting me know, Marcus. I still like them too.