- Welcome to The Journey.
Today we're gonna talk about WordPress plugins
that we cannot live without.
If you're a small business owner
or an entrepreneur your business
is priority numero uno.
And the last thing you wanna be doing
is spending hours and hours trying to maintain your website,
so that's where WordPress and WordPress plugins come in.
- We don't recommend you install
every single one that we talk about.
See what's best for you and your website and your business.
- All right, so you are a WordPress master,
so what are some of your favorite plugins for design?
- Yeah, so I definitely have my favorites,
my go to for all things but if you wanna
just stick with using the Gutenberg editor,
the new WordPress editor in WordPress,
highly recommend CoBlocks it,
just basically adds just extra functionality
to designing a site.
But my favorite, favorite,
favorite go to design plugin is Elementor.
It's super visual, it helps me just be
on the actual website and make my edits from there.
I'm a visual person, I don't like the back end too much,
I like to kinda see what I'm doing, so it definitely helps.
- All right so the next category of plugins
are optimization, so these are things
that make your site run better, faster,
all good things.
- Stronger. - What is your top one?
Stronger.
(laughing)
- So there's lots of things you can do
when it comes to optimizing your site, right.
So, one of my favorites and it's become
super popular by WPMU DEV is WP Smush.
- Smush.
Now what this plugin does is exactly
what the title says, it smushes.
Compresses your images on your website
so they're not as big.
'Cause not everybody has lightning fast
internet speeds at home so all that stuff
they have to download makes your site kinda slow.
- And site speed is one of the most
important things that you should
be optimizing for on your site
because it's an important factor
for Google, on whether it's going
to rank your website but even more importantly,
it affects your users.
If your website is taking forever to load,
five, 10, 15 seconds because you have these massive images.
They're headin' out.
So this plugin saves the day, makes them small,
but does not affect the quality.
- Yes, and to really pair with WP Smush,
is having some sort of Lazy Load plugin.
Lazy Load by WP Rocket is a plugin you can use.
It's free and basically what Lazy Load
does is it only loads the images
that the visitor can see.
So that means all the other images on your page,
your browser doesn't have to load it right away
so it makes your site even faster.
- Yeah, so if you're a fashion blogger
and you're talking about your favorite
top ten spring outfits and you just have
just this massive photo shoot and you love it
and all those images are super important
'cause you have product links that you're linking to.
You don't want to waste a whole bunch of time
loading a hundred images all at once.
And so what this will do,
just when the user is looking at the three images
it loads those, as they scroll down,
it just loads the next ones.
- Just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
- It's really cool, it looks nice too.
It looks fancy, it's like ooh.
- Yeah, like little fade in effect.
And it's super easy to use,
literally you go to the plugin settings,
you click a couple check boxes, hit submit,
and that's all you have to do.
All right, so more image optimization.
Images as you know, super important.
So a kinda new-ish technology,
like a dot WebP format, basically what that is
is just a different type of image format.
Kind of for the web.
So it takes images and basically
reduces up to 25% in size.
With the same quality.
So their plugin called WebP Express
that you can use to convert your JPEG's,
your PNG's to that dot WebP extension.
And what that does is it should hopefully
help your site load that much faster
'cause there's less to load.
- Awesome.
- Now this technology is a little bit newer
so test it out maybe on like a staging site,
maybe not your production site
to make sure everything works.
'Cause there is a lot of rewrites and redirects
that need to happen to basically make this plugin work.
- Nice.
And another really cool optimization plugin
is called Autoptimize.
That's auto optimize, smush 'em together,
and that's actually what it does
is it smushes your code on the back-end.
So, you know, majority of them time
you're not going into the back end of your code
but your website is made up of code.
And then that is translated to your users.
But that code takes up space and that space
takes up page load time right,
so what Autoptimize does is it takes
all the spaces within your code
and just smushes them all together,
so you can load super duper super fast.
Yeah, that's what we do.
- [Both] Smush.
- And last but not least when it comes to optimization
plugins that are our favorites,
is a plugin called WP Disable.
Now what this does is it's going to
disable the different functions
inside of WordPress that maybe
you don't actually need on your website.
It's all the extra bloat that is just there with WordPress,
it's not for you, you just go ahead
and disable with a couple clicks
of a button and you're good.
Your site loads a little bit faster,
that extra stuff isn't there and we all win.
- So the next section of plugins are security plugins.
And these are so important
because you don't want your site
getting affected with malware, or getting hacked,
so tell me about one of your favorite security plugins.
- Yeah so one of my favorites,
really to harden the WordPress itself
because WordPress is super popular,
covers over a third of the internet
and the last thing we wanna do
is have a site be hacked, redirected to malicious things,
then your brand is just destroyed.
So, these plugins should help with some of that security.
The first plugin that I really recommend is Sucuri.
It looks like security, it's just a WordPress
hardening plugin.
It's gonna do a lot of stuff on the backend for you.
All you have to do is do a couple of clicks of a button,
and click save and it does everything for you
to really harden WordPress itself.
- Awesome, and if you wanna learn a little more
about what to do if or when your site gets hacked,
we have an awesome video right here all about it,
so check it out.
- And the other plugin I just can't live without
is Really Simple SSL, especially for first time users,
or beginners, or people that just don't
wanna even deal with it like myself.
What it does is after you have an SSL
installed on your website with WordPress
it doesn't do the redirect for you.
So even though you have the SSL there,
your site still shows http, colon, slash slash.
- No good.
- This plugin you activate it, and it's there,
and it's gonna add all the redirect scripts,
do all the things in the back end.
And then your site's secure,
you have that https, you have that lock symbol
that no longer says not secure.
Google now loves you, your rankings are getting boosted,
all with just a click of a button.
It really helps me out just save time,
'cause I don't wanna go in the code
and set up those redirects.
Go into the back of the database,
go into the files and find all the http links,
this makes your life so much easier
and it's super quick to use.
- So our next category of plugins
are plugins that help you get found online.
And the number one plugin,
this probably is my top plugin.
- She never stops talking about it.
- It is Yoast SEO.
So basically SEO is one of the most important
things that you should be doing
if you have a website but no one is finding you.
It's because your website
is not optimized for search engines.
And what Yoast SEO does is it makes some of the back end
technical things very easy.
It optimizes your site in a way
that Google can find it.
It creates certain things like
robots.txt files, and site maps.
But then it makes it really easy
for you to edit your on site work and content.
So that's the two parts of SEO,
you have your on site and your off site work.
And Yoast SEO helps you do everything on site.
So easy, so awesome, I really can't talk about it enough.
I love it, I'm a super fan.
So the great thing about Yoast SEO
is that it again, it helps you with your on site
and your keywords to make sure that the content
that you're writing on your pages
or your blog posts are targeted and are written
in a way that Google is going to rank those pages.
So let's say for my website there's a new movie trailer
that came out for a movie that everyone's
really excited about, it will help me and guide me
as I'm writing that letting me know
that hey this blog post is too short,
you don't have the keyword in your title,
it will just give me all the tips.
And then it will rank it on a scale
so that way I know these are the things
that I need to do to give my article
the best chance of ranking.
Super cool, makes it very easy
for SEO novices, or SEO experts.
- Yeah, I love the little check box
that way it's kinda like a little progress
like cool I'm almost there, I'm almost there,
cool I nailed it.
- So now you've done everything
to optimize your site for search engines,
but it's really important that you're tracking
where all that traffic is coming in
and different sources and yes Google Analytics
is so important but it's another dashboard
on another site you have to log in to.
So that's where Google Analytics Dashboard
comes in, it takes it into your WordPress site,
so it's all there, very easy.
- Yeah and it's the first page you see
when you log in, so you log into your site
and there's the little graph saying
what are your top posts, what's not working, what is.
And you can kinda dig in deeper,
directly on your site without having
to go to Google Analytics.
And what's cool about it is these plugins
will actually give you the information
that you really care about inside your dashboard.
'Cause Google Analytics is a lot, it's overwhelming,
sometimes some of the things don't make sense.
These plugins help just a little bit.
- So the next plugin I love because it helps
other users all over the internet find your content.
It's called NextScripts: Social Poster.
And basically what it does,
anytime you post a new blog post
it automatically pushes it out
to all of your social networks.
There's a giant list and you can choose to do
all of 'em or some of them.
So if you have followers that follow
you only on Twitter or people that are only on Facebook,
or what not you can just go anytime
you hit publish for one of your articles,
poof off it goes and the really cool thing
is you can edit your individual captions
for Twitter, you could have a different one for Facebook
obviously there's different character lengths.
And so that way the users on each of those platforms
are getting a really unique experience.
It's really cool, it saves you a lot of time.
You spent a lot of time on this post,
the last thing you want it do is just
to fall on deaf ears, so this gives you
a chance to spread it out the world so they can find it.
- Absolutely, and I don't recommend enabling
this plugin while you're developing
a website because you might throw out
a bunch of posts that should not have got out.
All right now with the internet being so global
as it is and being able to get a visitor
from literally anywhere in the world,
that means some of those users
might be speaking a different language.
And I know I only know English,
so I can't go and translate everything.
But there are translating plugins, like Weglot,
and Polylang, that go in and automatically
translate your website for you.
You can go and make edits afterwards
if the automatic one didn't work as well.
But it's definitely helpful to really
reach that global audience and expand your business online.
- That's awesome.
Another plugin that I absolutely love
is called Pretty Links.
And it does just that, it makes your links
and your URL's nice and pretty and bite size.
So let's say that I'm on a podcast
or on my YouTube channel and I wanna direct people
to my podcast page basically what it will do
is take my big long link and all they have to do
is type in my website name backslash podcast
and it will go straight to that page.
It's easy for your users to remember
because they're not gonna remember this big long link.
And so you can create little bite sized links
that redirect to your main one.
- Yeah that's super important,
and especially with WordPress if you create a post
it'll do like my post I'll list ten ways to optimize
your site it'll be 10-ways-to-optimize-your-site.
And havin' to tell someone that especially
in a quick forum like video
or just talking to 'em, is awful.
- They're gonna type it wrong,
they're not gonna remember.
They're gonna give up.
- Yes, so those quick little bite size,
like just slash podcast or slash optimize.
- Slash 10 tips.
- 10 tips, whatever it you wanna do
it makes it easier just to say is
my domain .com slash 10 tips.
And then they're there. - Off you go.
Another plugin that I love if you are using AdSense
or even any sort of ad platform to monetize your site
is called Quick Adsense.
And what I love is that sometimes
when you have your AdSense code
it can be kind of confusing on where to put the code
and then you have to put it in this section,
and then I want it to appear here, here and here.
Let's be honest, I've totally crashed my site
by going in and trying to do that myself.
That's where Quick Adsense comes in.
Basically Quick Adsense does all of that work for you
and all you do is you check boxes
of I want an ad to appear before my post,
I want an ad to appear after my post,
I want one to appear on my side bar.
Whatever, you get to pick and boom, it appears right there.
- So speaking of possibly breaking your website,
there's a plugin called Wp File Manager
and it does just that.
Gives you a file manager inside of WordPress.
So instead of having to go via FTP's
Using a third party program like FileZilla,
you basically can manage all of your files
in the back end directly in your dashboard,
super quick, super easy.
And this one is just super cool
just to give your visitors that next level
of customer service.
There's a site and plugin called Tawk.to.
Tawk.to.
Basically it's a free chat software
you can put it on your website,
there's a mobile app too so you can actually
respond to visitors on your website
directly from your phone. - That's cool.
- And give 'em those quick answers,
that quick customer service that'll potentially
boost sales, boost customer service,
boost retention, boost loyalty.
And it's a free plugin, I highly recommend it
to any really brick and mortar type business.
Or someone that's constantly on their website anyways,
its definitely helpful.
- Yeah if users are coming to your website
and they're asking you quick questions
they're probably people who are interested
in potentially buying your product or service.
So if they know that they're getting a response right away
and it's from the business owner
or someone who works for the business,
that gives a lot of confidence
that this business is on top of it
and they probably end up buying from you.
The last WordPress plugin that we cannot
live without is call WooCommerce.
I love WooCommerce.
'Cause if you're already using WordPress
for your website you don't wanna have to send
your users to another shop platform
that gives 'em a different user experience.
WooCommerce allows you to have that e-commerce
functionality within WordPress.
It's slick, it's simple, it's awesome.
Tell us a little more.
- Yeah, so it obviously will give you that e-commerce
ability but it makes just managing
your e-commerce store that much simpler, right?
So you have an order management area
so you can manage customer orders,
you can respond to customers directly in WooCommerce itself.
Can set up shipping rates, you can set up taxes,
you can set up advance taxonomies,
you can set up advance attributes
so if you want certain products
to have blue shirt, large, and then some engraving
or whatever else you wanna have on your product,
you have the ability to do so with WooCommerce.
Does literally everything for you.
There are some extra premium features,
you can always get at WooCommerce.com
and there are tons of third party plugins
you can use to add onto the functionality of WooCommerce.
Just go to plugins, add new, search WooCommerce,
and there's gonna be tons of different things
to make WooCommerce even better.
- All right guys I hope you liked the WordPress
plugins that we cannot live without.
They're amazing, now let us know in the comments below
what your favorite WordPress plugin is,
I'm interested I'll be down in the comments,
takin' notes, because--
- We're gonna add 'em to our own sites.
- Yup.
- And while you're there,
make sure you smash that like button
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This is The Journey, we'll see you next time.