Education. Bleh. Even I can learn lessons. Yea. I’m Supposed to be ‘educating you’ with the blog. More education. OK, Teachers themselves can make mistakes with education and we’re all teachers for sure, we are always learning too. I do not consider myself a ‘Professional’ in the field respectively just because I have a blog, that profession I respect. That does not mean I cannot teach. A fish cannot learn to climb a tree, but the simplest of creatures can teach others of the same or other species how to do new things, sharing new knowledge in a familiar medium. This includes the human collective. We all accept education in unique ways. Right now I’m focused on the Cannabis thing, but I’ll need you to ask questions in your comments to inspire new posts, or deeper into the posts I write. This is education for me, then hopefully education for you. I will limit those as I see interests sway, or perhaps put new series inspired by you on a new schedule of posts or adventures in my MS’ed-up life! Thank you for staying tuned. Just spent the day installing server-recommended plugins changing the seat (always read server emails of support and follow simple instructions) is my first lesson if I don’t have to upgrade vi emails warning me of the restrictive limits * Limits Exceeded* sorry if you got that message sometimes. They are very touchy on a basic ‘shared’ account. I’ve got a feeling I’ll be learning a lot through this host and the info for your questions, a part of my education.
Ok for my future reference and your knowledge, here is my server-recommended list of plugins I recommend and I used them successfully while sitting on this host. Note, some if not used, will generate intensive sales pressure for site upgrades as a ‘Shared Domain’ can affect other sites on the host when approaching server limits.
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- WP Force SSL Should have installed this one first but it’s now a recent upgrade to this website and an update to this post. I began this site with an unsecured ‘HTTP’ domain. HTTPS is the standard today, if you sell anything you are much more likely to have a dedicated selection of visitors not shy about buying from you. It is way more secure. This plugin took about 24 hrs to completely transfer all my pages, posts, pictures and files to the HTTPS domain, all I had to do was sit back and wait.
- Akismet Anti-Spam This plugin keeps your site free of spam, hackers looking to break into my website’s inner workings and typically ruin your visit here by placing spam comments. Search for it in your WordPress Plugin directory.
- AMP This plugin manages your small browser when you view my posts on your cellphone or mobile device. Designed for developers down to site owners with less experience than me, it’s very simple to install and use. It installs another theme to host an identical accessible version of your website. Search for it in your WordPress Plugin directory.
- Broken Link Checker This powerful plugin scans your website for links that are broken. Sometimes site owners change their sites from ‘HTTP’ to ‘HTTPS’ which is a more secure domain setting. Sometimes site owners change site names. Often their site goes down sometimes permanently. You linked to those sites from somewhere in your ramblings and without this plugin Google gives you a bad report for broken links that you have to manually find in perhaps a thousand ‘Text Links‘ a very simple way to add to your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). As soon as you notice the bad link through the report, you search for a new one if it exists and repair remove your link before Google notices. Your website’s integrity is safe. Search for it in your WordPress Plugin directory.
- Classic Editor. In Late 2019 or early 2020, WordPress auto installed the Gutenberg Upgrade with version 5.5 for all the dashboards hosting a WordPress website. Some users like myself and perhaps you are unfamiliar with ‘Block’ style writing found in this upgrade. This plugin allows the writing field to look familiar to old time users like me. Search for it in your WordPress Plugin directory until 2022, it could be supported past then if needed and we support it.
- Creative Email by Constant Contact is my mass mailer, automatically sending my posts to you who subscribe to the website, when it is written. Look for it in your WordPress Plugin directory
- Jetpack. This is a very powerful multifunction plugin created by WordPress.com. It is a ‘must have’ plugin for your WordPress website. Defiantly install this first before other plugins; easily found in your Plugin’s directory.
- Loginizer This plugin secures your site against Brute force attacks as its main goal but has other security features you should have. It is free in your WordPress Plugin directory.
- Smush This plugin was suggested by my server. It takes your images and compresseses them to sizes your shared server doesn’t complain about and enables you to stay within limits imposed by your ‘affordable’ server. It can also be found within your plugin Directory and does so much more
- UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore This is a plugin I’ve used for many years. It backs up my website and some others I manage using WordPress. Very reliable with the backups and quick restores, even when transferring hosts which I’ll try on the next host in just over 2 years. Make it your second installation of a plugin, backups are so very important to do.
- W3 Total Cache. Every time your website is viewed by a ‘Unique’ user, it uses resources of the server. If the page is not stored in memory each visit is ‘new’. With an influx of visitors it can overwhelm servers and visitors, search engine traffic can get error pages throughout all the websites on the server. It is imperative to Cache your webpages and posts which makes your website more attractive and smoother for all visitors. This was the other one recommended by my server who also mentioned one I already had above, I think it was Jetpack.
- Just added Yoast SEO, a plugin I discovered on my last host and remembered as I put it on the other WordPress websites I manage. It makes good authors better by adding SEO reminders to posts and pages as you write or edit them. Better SEO with focused and high ranking keywords some linked, better rankings at search engines! It is free in your WordPress Plugin directory. Hey- I just remembered a post I wrote on SEO as one of the first ones on this server, I’ll have to link it here to remember to update it!
That concludes the plugins I recommend so far. I’ll take this opportunity to say ‘Thank You’ to my server for leading me to those plugins. Which ones do you use and what do they do? Comment on my post below, perhaps subscribe as well! My site will change from the Cannabis theme after a short series finishes. OK, here’s an Image for SEO…
