There’s a bewildering variety of ways to get your words and ideas onto the web. In the early days of the web, most of these required a lot of skills, courage and time. But these days most tools are built not for the uber-geeks but for the interested occasional user.In the digital arena, any task can be done in many ways, and when you have several tasks to do the sheer level of choice becomes overwhelming. At the same time, just about every niche has businesses large and small clamouring for your attention. Guess what? It costs a lot to get a new customer, and recouping that investment is a priority.
It’s a minefield.
I’m not an expert. I don’t have the time or the will to check out any and every option out there. But I do enjoy experimenting. And I love to learn.
So when I realised I needed a website to help this work, I had two rival thoughts.
The first thought was, it has to be WordPress! It’s the fastest way for me to get the job done.
The second thought was, why should it be WordPress? Wouldn’t it be better to try something new?
Speed won. This is a WordPress site. I’m going to write a few posts on how I put it together, why I made each decision, what went right and what went wrong along the way. For now, here’s the kit of parts (plugins) I’ve assembled so far, and at least a short version of the “Why?”
| Plugin | What it does | Why I used it |
|---|---|---|
| Akismet | Fights against spam | It’s simple and good enough for an important job |
| GenerateBlocks | Helps me create decent pages and posts | It works well with GeneratePress (below) |
| GeneratePress† | Helps me create websites quickly | It’s my “go to” when I want a site to run fast without much work! (The link is to the theme, and I have the associated plugin) |
| MailPoet† | Manages email lists and newsletters within WordPress | Like MailChimp, but far less annoying and everything stays in my website |
| UpDraftPlus | Automatic backup | I break things |
| WPCodeLite | Makes geeky stuff less scary | I needed an easy and safe way to validate my website quickly, and that involves some copied and pasted code |
Half of these I’ve been using for a good few years and the other half are more recent finds. WordPress is a long-term success story as a platform, but plugins come and go, and what was best-of-breed a few years ago can have fallen far from grace. In the digital world, there really is no such thing as “future-proof.”