New Look & My Most Important Blogging Tools

Categories Tips & Tricks


Out with the old and in with the new—my blog has a shiny new look for the new year. I have been on a bit of a hiatus while busily making all kinds of things, but I’m back and gave my blog a bit of a remix.

One of the projects I’ve been working on while on hiatus is an Etsy store where you can find downloadables, prints, and home decor. Check it out and let me know what you think. Feel free to make a request for a new product you’d like to buy or make a customized product request.

While updating this blog, I’ve been thinking about how easy WordPress is to use once you get the hang of it. Many people ask about the tools I use for my blog, so I’ve have put together a list of the most important and basic tools I use to make my blog happen:

  1. Bluehost—for web hosting and domain name registration
  2. WordPress—free open source website creation tool; Bluehost provides it as an easy download
  3. Theme— graphic interface/unifying design for your website or blog; these files are called template files. One theme I recommend because of all it’s customization options, is Jupiter. You can demo the theme here.
  4.  Plugins—extends functionality or adds new features to your WordPress websites. Here are plugins I can’t live without:
    1. Akismet—checks your comments against the Akismet Web service to see if they look like spam or not
    2. WordFence—Anti-virus, Firewall and Malware Scanning feature
    3. Yoast SEO—All-in-one SEO solution, includes on-page content analysis, XML sitemaps and more
    4. Captcha—Security anti-spam plugin distinguishs human from machine input by making you do simple math
    5. Contact Form 7—A simple but flexible plugin so that you can customize your forms
  5. Mailchimp—DIY email marketing service that allows you to easily create and send newsletters of varying types, invitations,  and reminders. It has easy options for designing, sending and saving templates of your emails and also provides simple options for sharing them on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook. You can build your list of blog subscribers or the people whom you want to market your products to, and save the list for use later on, and create custom templates for your products so that you do not have to rewrite mails again and again.

Do you have a blog? What tools are your favorite?

Need professional help building a WordPress website or blog? Contact me here.

 

 

Hello! I'm Linda. I live in Nashville and enjoy most things vintage and modern. I love to create and restore things. And most of all—love attending parties, planning and hosting parties, and spending quality time with friends and framily.