The 10 most important Features for Your New WordPress Site and How to Build Them
Welcome to a guide crafted by our team at Sociably.Media, where we simplify the process of creating and managing websites using WordPress. WordPress is a favorite amongst many, powering over 35% of websites worldwide. It’s popular and for good reasons. This guide will highlight the benefits of using WordPress, share some tips, and of course, we’re on hand to assist you further should you need it!
Why Choose WordPress?
WordPress is an easy-to-use platform, even if you’re new to website creation. It’s user-friendly, requiring no coding knowledge, and allows for extensive customization. You can choose from a wide array of themes and plugins to personalize your site and add functionality. Plus, it’s scalable, making it ideal for anything from a small blog to a large e-commerce site.
Picking the Right Theme
The theme you select sets the tone for your site. It’s crucial to pick one that complements your brand and the purpose of your site. WordPress offers thousands of free and premium themes. Whether you’re setting up a blog or an e-commerce site, there’s a theme for you. Some popular options include Astra, Divi, and Avada and themes from popular market places like themeforest. But we at sociably.media prefer to design custom build sites using premium page builders like bricks builder and oxygen builder. That way we can guarantee you a perfect layout, a unique design approach, a more clean and bloat free code and the UI UX your brand website deserves.
Can’t Miss Plugins
Plugins are essential tools that enhance your WordPress site’s functionality. At Sociably.Media, we specifically use a range of premium plugins for our operations. Our SEO optimization is handled by the robust SEOPress plugin.
For our contact forms, we use the efficient Piotnet Forms plugin. We also incorporate plugins from top developers like Oxytools, Oxyextras, Brickslabs, Brickextras, and Yith plugins for Woocommerce. For our grid lists and facets, we rely on the WP Grid Builder.
We also develop custom post using plugins like ACF Pro and Meta Box. These plugins, coupled with the CSS framework ACSS (Automatic.CSS), allow us to build dynamic, unique, and highly customizable websites.
Personalizing Your Site
Personalization is key to making your site unique. You must be able change colors, fonts, layout, and even add custom CSS code. Custom post types, taxonomies, and custom fields also help create unique content and organize it to suit your needs. That is why we start designing with mockups that your brand approves and then finalize the project to a pixel perfect website as you expect it to be.
Navigating Your Site
A well-organized navigation menu helps visitors find information faster. WordPress makes creating and customizing navigation menus straightforward. Keep your menu simple, use clear labels, and ensure it’s responsive on mobile devices. Our approach includes research, site map design, user journey and mobile first design.
Ranking Higher with SEO
SEO helps your website rank higher in search engine results. Optimizing your WordPress site involves choosing an SEO-friendly theme, optimizing content with keywords, and using meta tags. Tools and plugins, including Yoast SEO, All in One SEO Pack, and Rank Math, can assist with SEO on WordPress. As mentioned we use only Seo Press. SEOPress PRO is an SEO plugin for WordPress that offers premium features to improve website rankings. It includes tools for WooCommerce and local SEO, as well as features like CSV metadata import and AI-generated SEO metadata. The plugin also provides analytics stats, automatic and manual schemas, Google News and Video XML sitemaps, and integrates with popular themes and plugins.
Connecting with Social Media
Integrating social media enhances engagement and drives traffic to your site. WordPress makes it easy to add social media icons and feeds. Plugins like Simple Social Icons and Social Icons Widget can help add social media icons. To display your social media posts on your site, Smash Balloon Social Photo Feed or Feed Them Social can be handy.
Contact and Essential Forms
Contact and other essential forms allow visitors to connect with you. Plugins like Contact Form 7 or WPForms can be used to add custom contact forms. Depending on your site’s needs, you may require additional forms, that is why we use piotnet forms plugin. Piotnet Forms is a highly customizable WordPress form builder plugin that offers powerful features and integrations. It is a fast and lightweight plugin with a small file size. It also provides modern form templates, including multi-step forms, inline fields, repeater fields, and label animation.
Securing Your Site
At Sociably.Media, security is a high priority. We rely on our server’s optimization for security and do not use extra security plugins. Our preferred page builders, Oxygen Builder and Bricks Builder, provide an additional layer of security, ensuring our site remains safe and secure at all times.
Regular Maintenance
Keep your WordPress site running smoothly with regular updates and backups. Regularly check for broken links, optimize your database, and clean up unused files and plugins. Backup plugins like UpdraftPlus, BackWPup, and VaultPress are great for scheduling and automating backups. We guarantee safety of data loss since our servers provide incremental timeline backups.
In Summary
WordPress is a versatile and user-friendly option for creating and managing websites. With the right theme, essential plugins, personalization, user-friendly navigation, SEO, social media integration, essential forms, security, and regular maintenance, you can create an effective WordPress site.
If you need further assistance or advice in setting up your WordPress site, do not hesitate to contact us at Sociably.Media. Our team of experts is here to help you every step of the way.
