I saw a Twitter post recently boosting the idea of a credits page on WordPress websites as a way to promote new and worthy WordPress plugins, developers, etc. I liked the idea, so here's my credits page for everything that goes into building this site.
None of the links below are affiliate links. I just like sharing my favorite tools and resources with no other agenda.
Hosting
My site is currently hosted on a Linode server via Cloudways. Cloudways is a good DIY web host. Their support is pretty good and if you need budget hosting, this is my recommendation.
If you want to know what hosts I recommend for revenue generating sites, please check out my post on How to Pass Core Web Vitals: The Easy Way.
Images
I use the Dall-e AI image generator to create custom images for my site.
You can generate custom images by entering descriptive text in the generator. Example: "race car driving down a road at night in french impressionist style".
WordPress Theme
The theme I use for this site is a custom Genesis child theme built by yours truly. Genesis is now an open source theme framework. I've worked with Genesis for years and still enjoy working with it.
This theme used the Genesis Sample theme as a starting point.
Fonts
I am a huge advocate for system fonts because they eliminate font swap shift which can cause Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
However...however, I am also a web designer at heart and a total font nerd. Not long ago, at WCUS 2022, I was totally nerding out with one of my team members over our shared love for the Google font Mulish.
I've optimized my theme and site as much as possible for Core Web Vitals with the exception of my use of a custom font.
I just couldn't resist this beautiful sans serif font called Geomanist by my favorite font foundry, Atipo.
One of the things I love about the Geomanist font is that it's a near-perfect match for the fallback font, Arial, so very little font-swap shifting going on. (Yes, I am literally that much of a site speed and font nerd that I checked this.)
Their Archiva font is another of my favorites. It was a hard choice but I wanted to limit myself to one font on this site, for simplicity and minimalism's sake.
Plugins
I keep this site pretty lean on plugins. Currently, I have 15 installed and active plugins. (I don't keep inactive plugins hanging around, typically.)
Site Feature Plugins
These are plugins I use for front-end features like social sharing, custom blocks, mobile menus, etc.
- Feast Plugin - From Feast Design Co. While I don't use one of their themes, since I'm using a Genesis theme, I can take advantage of most of the features in this awesome plugin including the Modern Mobile Menu (CSS only mobile menu!), Modern sidebar, Modern category pages, Advanced Jump Links, and more.
- Custom Fonts - From the team at Brainstorm Force. They also develop my favorite popup and optin form plugin, ConvertPro. I was feeling a bit lazy while coding this theme and didn't want to have to enqueue my own custom fonts.
- Genesis Blocks - I really like the Advanced Columns block from this free blocks plugin.
- Novashare - This is a great, lightweight social sharing plugin.
- Simple Social Icons - Great, simple social profile icon plugin.
- Ninja Forms - A free contact form plugin that I use for my Contact page.
Housekeeping Plugins
- Antispam Bee - A free anti-spam plugin that's a good alternative to Akismet.
- Yoast Duplicate Post - Great free plugin for cloning posts and pages or for managing content updates.
- Optimize Database After Deleting Revisions - I use this plugin to keep my database tidy.
- WP Crontrol - For managing some cron jobs on the site.
SEO Plugins
- Yoast SEO & Yoast SEO Premium - This is kind of a "no brainer" option. I know they pretty much have a monopoly on the market as far as WordPress SEO plugins go, but I love their new premium feature, Inclusive Language Check, so much that I invested in the premium version of the plugin mostly for that feature. And I've had a chance to meet some of their team members at WCUS 2022, and I really like working with plugins where I know some of the faces behind the code.
Site Speed Optimization Plugins
- ShortPixel Image Optimizer - For compressing and optimizing images.
- Super Page Cache for Cloudflare - This plugin makes it easy to bring HTML caching to your WordPress site.
- WP Rocket - I have extensive experience with WP Rocket and it's my go-to for site speed. If you check out this site on GPSI, you'll see it's smokin' fast. 😉
If you're interested in other plugins that I recommend for site speed, please check out my post on How to Pass Core Web Vitals: The Easy Way.