Archives for February 2015

I had the joy of speaking on the popular plugin Jetpack this past year at WordCamp Chicago. Jetpack is one of my favorite plugins behind iThemes Security. I use it on all of my sites. I know it gets flack about being a large plugin and it slows down sites but I have not seen a noticable difference in my websites when I test it being off. Earlier I did write a review on the plugin and dug into its features. You can find more of the review by clicking here. Jetpack is a great multifunction plugin. Plus if you are near Chicago in June or care to travel the WordCamp is a great experience.

 

Here are my slides from WordCamp Chicago 2014

And for your viewing pleasure: Here is the WordPress.tv recording of my Intro to Jetpack talk at WordCamp Chicago 2014

One of the most confusing things to beginners is what exactly is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

One has to dig into the history of WordPress to completely understand the difference. Way back when Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little forked B2 CafeLog and made an awesome CMS called WordPress. Little did they know then that it would power almost a quarter of all the websites on the internet in 10 short years. They wrote WordPress under the GPLv2 and made it free to the world. Still to this day the WordPress files are free and will always be.

WordPress.org is completely ran by volunteers to build a better WordPress. Anyone is able to volunteer at WordPress.org and help in a various of ways. On the WordPress.org website is tutorials, free themes, free plugins, and support forum which all are updated often. All themes and plugins are tested before going on in the repository which gives consumers peace of mind that they are getting a quality product. If a vulnerability or malaria is found on a theme or plugin, the core contributors who oversee the respected repositories will remove them until they are patched and able to be downloaded again. Since there are many eyes looking at products on WordPress.org, information is found out quickly if there are changes that needs to be made to core, themes, and plugins.

In August of 2005 Automattic was founded by Matt Mullenweg. Automatic is the company behind WordPress.com, the hosted version. WordPress.com is a free and premium web hosting platform that uses the WordPress.org CMS.  Automattic does volunteer out some of their employees to work on WordPress.org for updating the core files, plugin and theme development and testing, and community involvement. Automattic has also built plugins and features for both WordPress.com and self hosted websites such as Jetpack and Akismet. There will always be a free version and a higher paid version at WordPress.com that users can choose if they want to go that route.

Which WordPress is right for me?

By having two choices of WordPress many do not know which is better for them.

WordPress.com is free to get started and free hosting. Once can pay for premium services or a custom domain. The free service the domain defaults to www.yourdomain.wordpress.com. While using WordPress.com is very inexpensive or free you are limited to what you can do. There are a select number of widgets and themes available. Plugins are not available for WordPress.com at this time. One large advantage of using WordPress.com to host a website is all updating is done by them. One does not have to worry whether the site is on the right version or if the plugins have security releases. Everything is done at the company level instead of the user. WordPress.com is great for beginner bloggers, a place to collect and share your thoughts, or for children wanting to learn WordPress.

If a more custom site is wanted it is best to download the core files from WordPress.org, choose a hosting company ( I recommend SiteGround) and either build it yourself or hire a designer to build it for a price. Using the core files from WordPress.org is also referred to a “self hosted” site. This is because the website is hosted on an external server from WordPress.  The sky is the limit on what can be built on a self hosted website. While the options are limitless, the webmaster has to update, add, and delete from the site manually. If updates are not made a self hosted website can become a target for a malware infection. There are many companies, designers, and developers who can help keep a self hosted website running beautiful and smoothly.

Many large companies like Time Magazine and Sony Music are built with WordPress. It powers almost one-quarter of the internet at this time and is continually growing. No matter which choice fits a website better, sites are always ran better on WordPress.

Plugins are a great way to add functionality to a website. Most WordPressers have a list of preferred plugins they use. Can’t Speak Geek has their own list. I try to take the minimal approach to plugins. If one can have more features that I will use I tend to go with the multi-taskers instead of the uni-taskers.

Can’t Speak Geek’s Top 10 Plugin List for 2015

1. iThemes Security: This is the first plugin that goes on every site that I build, maintain, or consult on right after the install is complete. Depending on your needs I personally choose the Pro version but the free version is great to. I enjoy the added features of Pro but have used the free version on many sites. Security is crucial to a website. One can take the measures now or pay to have a site cleaned later. I once wrote a review about iThemes Security. You can find it here.
2. Akismet: This little jewel comes with the core files when you install WordPress. If you plan on letting your readers leave comments, Akismet is a great tool to aid against spam comments. Plus it is built by Automattic so there is an added comfort there.
3. BackupBuddy: One of the very few plugins I do pay for. BackupBuddy from iThemes makes a backup of my website and my database of every single one of my websites and sends it to my Amazon storage vault every single day. I will always have a backup of my website if the server breaks or my site gets hacked. BackupBuddy is very inexpensive for peace of mind every night.
4. Jetpack by WordPress.com: My absolute favorite all in one plugin. Jetpack is the mother of multi-tasked plugins. I use the Monitor, Publicize, Sharing, Contact Forms, and much more of Jetpack’s awesome features. Earlier I wrote a review on how much I love Jetpack. You can find it here.
5. WP Optimize: No one likes a messy database. WP Optimize runs once a week to take off all post revisions, spam comments, transient feeds, and other unnecessary garbage off my database. I set the schedule when I downloaded it and now it runs on its own.
6. Genesis Simple Edits: When it comes to themes, I am a Genesis girl. I heart them. What I do not heart is a login button at the bottom of my website, but I only code when I have to. Genesis Simple Edits gives me the freedom to make adjustments to the footer and entry meta. Great plugin and easy to use with no coding needed.
7. iThemes Sync: Rounding off my iThemes plugins is Sync. This beauty has been a great timesaver for updating plugins and core. It also has an option to unlock users who have been blocked with iThemes Security. Best part is that it is free for up to 10 WordPress websites.
8. WordPress SEO: Content is king and SEO is the master. WordPress SEO by Yoast is the best plugin ever for content creation that is SEO friendly.
9. All In One Favicon: This is another “I do not want to code so there is a plugin for that” type of plugins. I know how to make a favicon but this is just easier. The plugin has a picture uploader. Once a picture is uploaded, viola it is a favicon.
10. Canva: Instead of paying for graphics, I make my own. Canva gives me the opportunity to make simple graphics in the WordPress dashboard. It is a great plugin for when I am writing a post quickly and do not want to hunt or make a very detailed graphic. It is very easy to use. They do have some premium stock pictures you can use that are $1 but it is not necessary to use them.

I know everyone has their own idea of what are their favorite plugins. Talking to others about what they use is how I found about half of these that I use now every day. What plugins do you use? What is your number one plugin?

 

Disclaimer: All views made in this post are viewpoints of the author. No plugin companies or authors had any influence in the writing of this post. If you still have questions, please contact the webmaster.

Many times I am asked who do I use for hosting. In 2014 I played musical hosting companies until I settled on SiteGround. I have now been with them for almost a year.

I decided to go with their Start Up plan at first just to test them out. The Start Up plan is only for one website and is their basic plan. I always choose to run a basic plan with a new company to test out the waters. The starting company that I was using I had two sites on the server but I only wanted one of the sites moved over to SiteGround. I gave them all of the information for the site I wanted moved. I did inform them that there were two sites but to leave the other one on the old server. About a day later I received an email saying that the site has been moved and everything was great. When I checked they had moved the wrong site. I got on their chat support and talked to one of their techs. He was super helpful and retook all of my information again to make sure everything was correct and said that he would pass it to the department that works on moving websites. Yes, I do know how to move a website but I wanted to see how well this new hosting company was going to stand with the other companies. Another company I had tried before SiteGround moved the wrong site twice, hence I am not with them anymore. That took a total of 4 days to realize they would not be a good fit for me. The next day I got an email saying that everything was moved and the site had populated. When I checked, they had moved the right site and everything was perfect. They even updated the server paths so there were no errors on the site.

Fast forward eight months and I got an email from SiteGround saying they have a deal going that if I want to upgrade to the Grow Big plan so I can add more sites to my shared hosting that I could so at a discount. I decided to take them up on the offer and I moved two more sites over to SiteGround. One site moved over with perfect colors and one not so much. Again, I contacted support through their website and was helped within less than a minute wait time. They were super helpful and got the site up and running while on the chat.

I run Jetpack’s Monitor on all of my sites so I am made aware when my sites go down and when they come back up. Rarely ever have any of my sites on SiteGround have been down and none of them longer than about an hour. Typical downtime has been 1-3 minutes. In the past year the sites have been down a total of 5 times. Their up-time has been the best out of the 5 companies I have been with.

When it comes to customer support, I have seen very few companies that have the level of customer service that SiteGround has. More companies could do well by copying their customer support model. When using the online chat it is never more than a minute wait time. I am always greeted by my name. No one is ever rude or disrespectful. All of the technicians have always been eager to help and will finish a ticket or escalate it to make sure my needs have been met. It is a rarity when a customer can not say any negative about a customer service department but I have nothing but praise for SiteGround’s customer service.

Should you choose SiteGround?

Bottom Line: There are so many hosting companies out there to choose from. I am very happy with SiteGround.  By far they have proven themselves to be a great company and will continue to get my business. If you would like a great hosting company with a great record of up-time and great customer service I would definitely give SiteGround a try. Always do your research before choosing a company to host with.

 

Disclaimer: No company is paying for this product review. The contents of this post is the views of the author. They have no connections with any hosting company. Please contact the webmaster with any questions.