When creating websites in CMS WordPress, we have to take into account the inevitable use of plugins. These allow our sites to have more excellent and ample functionality outside what it comes in the box with the CMS. However, we have to tread carefully and spend the time and money that goes with the research onto this technology when it comes to plugins choice used on our WordPress.
In this case study, I will concentrate on plugins needed for the development of a personal website portfolio. To illustrate the particular design, branding and UX capabilities in the case of displaying groups of images in different portfolio taxonomies as a group of posts in an archive. For which the combined ACF; Advanced Customs Field as well as the Custom Post Type UI plugins are more than enough to attain such feat.
According to research, the following plugin choice list is best to include in a portfolio website.
Elementor Pro – Industry Leading Theme Builder in Theme Customization. It allows us to customise header and footer, design every part of the blog, build advanced, dynamic websites visually and get control over the theme without code. Because we are using Elementor, we run Generate Press Premium theme as the base structure as its a great proven theme that works wonderfully with Elementor. Therefore enabling us to build the website riding the customiser of the theme itself, making the development faster and more effective. Quickly will allow administrators of the site to do quick changes without needing to write code.
Updraft-Plus – It allows having automated backups set up on the WordPress website. It’s effortless to use. Automate it. Set it once, and then forget it. I use this plugin on all other sites. The free version is more than what I need to have this feature. All back-ups are connected and managed in Dropbox.
Wordfence Security – This plugin goes without saying, its probably one of the most reliable and accessible security plugins used in the word press community. I never had to buy the paid version yet, so that speaks volumes about this beautiful plugin, definitely a must-have.
Antispam-Bee – For an anti-spam free plugin, it eliminates all kinds of WordPress spam, especially if you have a blog. Install and activate as soon as you start developing.
Safe SVG – The use of a logo as an SVG file on our WordPress site is the best most professional way to illustrate our logo across all different displays on the internet, even on the ones with highest retina display. Although Word press doesn’t allow the upload of SVG content onto its media files console, SVG is code written, and this poses a significant security risk to any website online. Luckily we can thank the free availability of this plugin which allows for the upload of SVG files without fear of any malicious code hindering the site.
Simple SSL Security Certificate – SSL costs are $40 US a year without insurance or $130 US dollars a year with insurance. Often, cPanel offers a free SSL certificate with every website. If a website doesn’t have an active padlock, it will not inspire any trust whatsoever from internet users that are attempting to browse the site to peek at its products, services or content. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates encrypt data traffic going both ways between servers over a computer network. However, it will not protect the site from malware. An SSL certificate protects sensitive data from falling into the wrong hands such as passwords, credit cards and personal information. A securely encrypted connection with an SSL certificate is a standard professional practice amongst ethical web developers and designers. Payment systems such as Stripe will not allow any form of credit card use over websites which don’t have an SSL certificate. SSL has a private encrypted key of 2,048-bit encryption; to put this into perspective credit cards only have 128-bit encryption, so this makes SSL entirely secure. Websites without an SSL also are less likely to be visited by google crawlers, therefore bad for SEO.
Central Colour Palette – This plugin is amazing because it is installed in the root of the theme’s customiser dashboard and is readily available throughout the branding of the sites developing journey.
Tag Pages – This plugin is great for the distribution of posts within different archives. So to say if you want to have a slightly different layout to the one used for your primary post pages by assigning the alternative ones a tag, we can set a display condition to apply only to pages that need the alternative layout or design.
WP-Front Scroll Top – This plugin allows the user to navigate back to the top of the page with ease, making the user experience much more friendly.
Swift Performance Lite – I have used this plugin in other websites, and I believe that it is the best overall for a free page speed plugin available, we run this plugin after making a backup and before going live.
Duplicate Page – Permits to clone or copy a post or a page in WordPress.
I won’t cover plugins that relate to SEO o the optimisation of a page in this case study; this will be included in the blog about SEO strategy.
