Jetpack is one of those plugins I require on all of my sites. It’s a beast of a plugin with many modules. The two modules I always use are Stats and Monitor. From time to time I receive down notifications from Jetpack Monitor for a website which is no longer active. In those cases I…
Backups are typically only considered when you need them. That’s generally not the best time to find out if the backup is any good. Any good backup system also involves some trial runs to make sure the restores work. If you can’t restore from your backups, then you don’t have a backup. No one is immune…
I love using Advanced Custom Fields to supercharge WordPress’ custom fields. With ACF, custom fields can be finely tuned to the needs of clients giving them a solid backend website experience. I recently attempted to use a custom field repeater with a large data set which I ended up scrapping due to PHP limitations. PHP has…
If you only have one copy of your data, it’s already lost. If you care about it you need a backup. Every website needs a backup as well. There are plenty of great backup plugins however I highly recommend using a backup service not a plugin. Problems with backup plugins There are plenty of backup…
Page builder plugins are hugely popular. I’m going to say it, I don’t like them. It’s not due to many of the reasons most commonly stated like poorly coded, no standardizations or too complex. Even if all of those issues were solved overnight a bigger issue still remains. That is page builder gives your client too many…
DNS is one of those things nobody thinks about unless there is a problem. When a DNS server goes down it takes down everything, website, email service, etc. To prevent this from ever happening you should use a DNS provider which has lots of redundancy and proven track record. You decide who handles your DNS…
Jetpack Photon is free, quick and easy Image optimization is one of those things you really shouldn’t have to think about. The best way to not think about it is to use Jetpack Photon. With Photon enabled all of your images will be served optimized for free from WordPress’ servers. With Jetpack active and…
Nearly every website has a contact form. It’s the first place potential customers go. Making sure you never miss a message is critical. The following 2 tips will make sure nothing slips through your WordPress site. Tip 1: Use an Email provider Web hosts are good at one thing, hosting. Email is best done with through…
There are many great tools to help move a website from one server to another. My go to plugin is WP Migrate DB Pro. As a service I really like ManageWP. Any tool or service you use to move a website can only go so far. A successful website migration typically includes more then just moving the website. Other things to consider include…
Last year WP Engine started rolling out WP-CLI to select partners. I was glad to be included in one of the early batches. Their implementation of WP-CLI is partial, excluding a number of commands. Also calling it “command line” is a bit of a stretch as everything is done through the web browser. Even so,…