Blogging Resources
How to Start a Blog: If you’re looking to start a blog, our post on How to Start a Blog in 6 Steps walks you thorough the process in 6 easy to follow steps.
Bluehost: If you’re looking to start a self-hosted WordPress blog, Bluehost is who we always recommend for hosting. They’re cheap and reliable have 1-click WordPress installation. We talk about how to set up your blog with Bluehost in our post on How to Start a Blog in 6 Steps (above).
17th Avenue: If you’re after a beautiful, professional looking theme for your WordPress blog, 17th Avenue definitely has some of our favourites. They’re easy to install and customise, and are very well priced. We list out all our other favourite WordPress themes in our post on 9 Best WordPress Themes for Blogs.
Tailwind: If you’re active on Pinterest or Instagram, Tailwind is a huge time saver and will really help you up your social media game. It allows you to schedule your Pinterest pins and Instagram post, and shows you really useful analytics. It saves so much time and really allows you to put your Pinterest on autopilot, helping to grow your blog reach.
Convetkit: ConvertKit is an amazing email marketing platform and it’s the one we always recommend when starting out. It’s easy to set up and use, and has been built with creators in mind so it’s very blogger-friendly. You can segment your subscribers into different groups which means you’re able to deliver content specific to their needs.
Google Analytics: Google Analytics tracks the performance of your website and will provide you with valuable information, such as the number of views you’re getting, where these users come from and what content they’re looking at on your blog (along with so much more). We definitely recommend adding a Google Analytics tracking code to your website.
WordPress Plugins
Yoast SEO: Making sure your articles are written with Search Engine Optimization in mind is important for making sure they appear as relevant search results in Google and other search engines. The Yoast SEO plugin helps to optimise your posts based on the keywords you provide. The free version has everything you need when you’re starting out.
WP Smush: WP Smush can compress images sizes to help your site load faster, without sacrificing the image quality. Large image files can low down your site and take up storage space, so this is a great free plugin to help optimise your images.
Akismet: For protection against spam comments, install the Akismet plugin. It filters comments and allows you to block or approve commenters.
Jetpack: Jetpack includes a number of features, including social media sharing and site statistics. It’s easy to use and you can select the features you want to activate.
W3 Total Cache: W3 Total Cache reduces your website’s loading times by storing data to provide that data faster the next time it is requested by a user (this is called caching). If your site loads slowly, this can hinder your search engine rankings, so this is a great plugin to install.
Google XML Sitemaps: Your site needs a Sitemap so that search engine crawlers can find your pages and posts more efficiently. The Google XML Sitemaps plugin is easy and quick to use, so we definitely recommend having it installed.