 The Beautiful part about most of this presentation is we're gonna be actually in wordpress Just going through it hammering through it I mean just going through each of the parts that I'm suggesting to you all to really take a look at if you are thinking of starting a New website or you want to refresh your website? These are the fundamentals. These are the basics This is an overview of what I look at Time and time again every time I'm starting with a new website or the fundamentals of how I Love to work with and build websites and I'll kind of give you some of my story or backstory as we go along the presentation I didn't want to be all Cliche with the whole you know My name is Maestro Stevens and I'm from San Antonio, Texas and I moved to Cleveland, Ohio And I will see how I'm going what I'm going with that there Yeah, I don't want to be all cliche with that like I want to get into the beating potatoes Because I feel like y'all would appreciate more of learning what y'all came here for which is these this information the content the goods right the golden nuggets of how You know, maybe you want to look at wordpress in a different way. I am not a developer. So that's a disclaimer right there. So If you need a developer's perspective, I am not your guy. I'm also not a graphic designer. I'm more of a engineer A visionary strategist. I like to connect the dots I think bigger picture I get my hands wet as well too My hands dirty, you know in wordpress a lot But at the same time I'd rather work with people that know a lot more than me Which are probably people right here in this You know presentation In the session today and I'm really curious. Please put in the chat What no what is your relationship with wordpress? Are you a developer? Are you a designer? Are you a content creator? Are you a beginner? You know, are you just somebody who's just getting in it, you know What kind of relationship do you have with wordpress? I'm really curious If everybody wouldn't mind putting in the chat If it's if again if I mess up your name Forgive me. Is it claudette? You said you are a beginner carry a graphic designer Have your own site, huh? Okay. Okay. We got to check that out. We got ronda beginner Okay So we got a lot. Okay. So we have a good amount of beginners some intermediates beginners Digital for okay. Okay. All right. All right. Thank you every single time You all, you know engage participate. That gives me energy One of my favorite Influencers right now is a guy by the name of and he's actually a speaker But guy by the name of et and his name is eric thomas and if you know anything about him He's all about just getting energy from the crowd feedback And I just love that because that just hypes me up and makes me want to just go in More and give you all more so I appreciate every single time you all give me You're either, you know, your response in the chat or just That energy back. Excuse me. All right. So let's get started with everything The three main topics we're going to talk about within this Session today is going to be setting up your WordPress settings Adding your theme and settings and then adding a central plugins and settings. It's a lot of settings, right? Like is it setting in Hold on So these are the main things that we're going to be talking about and really getting into and then on the part two We're going to really dive in on getting into More deeper on plugins and deeper on Gutenberg specifically All right All right So setting up your WordPress settings. Why is this important? And what does this mean? Well Let's dive into it. So in WordPress And I'm not going to get into the whole hosting aspect of things because that's Can be saved for another topic for another session because that can get really deep in there But I'm just going to assume if you know anything about WordPress At all that you understand that you have to have hosting with WordPress and hosting is a big part Of WordPress for the most part. So Depending on your hosting, you know, some of things may different be different But I just set up a Blank WordPress installation and call it sandbox and WordPress for the most part And I want to I'm starting here from the beginning is if I just started a website from scratch for the first time For the most Yeah, for the first time and we're going to just dive in piece by piece from there So in WordPress you have your settings and you have general settings here And typically when you install WordPress, you'll land on your dashboard page So you'll see something like this, which will be the latest version of WordPress But I'm going to go to general And why this is important? I feel that it's because I got tripped up a couple times. You know, I had to go through some troubleshooting scenarios when it came to the WordPress address URL and site address URL I feel like most people will understand because this is pretty obvious, you know site title But what this really attributes to is the name of your website or the name of your company or name of You know your business in some sort of way Most themes for the most part don't Use the tagline and I can't be wrong on that and hey, just know that I'm not perfect So anybody who wants to you know add corrections. I don't mind Taking feedback and being corrected I won't get offended or anything like that, but I'm just going to give you You know what I know in the best way that I know it, but for the most part You can add the tagline, but most time, you know themes don't use it You can add that in other content areas here in WordPress But where the WordPress address URL comes in and the reason why I brought the hosting part is because depending on your hosting Some hosting will give you the ability to do an SSL, which is Basically in the nutshell you're getting that lock Key here at the top left hand corner and you're making your site secure, right? So that way when people go to it, they don't see Any type of like warning sign or anything like that So when you have that happen When you're able to create the add the SSL to your website You typically have to go into your WordPress Website and then add the s which you'll See when you install for the first time and you don't have the SSL It'll just be HTTP Then you add the SSL You should turn you know turn it on from your hosting or some other method I think you can also do it through plugins. There's many ways to add SSL But a lot of people do it through hosting you add that then you want to come back in here and add that s to both of these And then when you do that, it'll kick you out And then when it kicks you out, it'll let you log back in you'll come back in and then you'll see that s there And then you'll be all good to go So that's something that I just wanted to bring up when it comes to your settings and in the general Menu sub menu is to just make sure that you look at that and then you know make sure that you have the correct administrative email address Because this is going to be the one that's like the default that a lot of other Setting areas or plugins will use when it comes to sending messages out of WordPress To whoever is associated with this email. So just keep that in mind as well And then these a lot of these are self-explanatory when it comes to certain things that I feel are self-explanatory unless You have the freedom to ask questions But I'm going to allow you know You to dial in when it comes to certain things because I really want to get into A lot of the meat potatoes Which is the plugins I feel like that people want to know about because that is you know What creates a lot of the functionality within WordPress and lets us really get free It's like a kid at a candy store So I just want to teach you in this presentation that I know that WordPress can be like a kid at the candy store But you can't just be taking everything off the shelf You know what I say because you might get rotten teeth and that's the equivalent of your website crashing All right So for site language whatever site language or whatever language that you particularly speak in I would do the time zone as well Because that's important These will typically trigger or be used for other within other plugins too and then however the week starts For you, you know, it's up to you kind of thing. So let's go to writing So with writing The default post category that's important You typically don't want to have it as uncategorized But it comes to posts and posts what comes to these posts this post menu right here this is For the most part used for the blogging functionality within WordPress that people That people do that it used to be known for You know back in the day now it's just you can do whatever you want with WordPress But when it comes to the post when you create these categories and you have like a certain main category a default category This is what you want right here The rest of the stuff I would just leave as is if I were you unless you have a special case So homepage When it comes to the reading sub menu, you do want to Add your homepage. This is the way this is how you create what's on the front page of WordPress The first thing that people see so when you have it when you create a page here in this menu or the sidebar You want to add it here and then Check which one that you want to be the homepage and then this one will be attributed to the post page Which is the blog Posts right here. So it's kind of like your post roundup page or your archive I try not to get too technical verbiage, you know Terminology wise with things I do strive to be as accurate as possible because I don't want to give you all false information At the same time, you're going to hear me say things very You know Basic in ways because I feel like that's a lot easier for people It's a better way for people to learn than trying to use a whole bunch of jargon. I strive to stay away from jargon I forgot to set it but say if you if you can't explain it simply you simply don't know it So I strive to really stay within that Right there. So blog posts at the most. I don't really touch these I leave that is unless it's a special case. However, if you're just starting off your site and you don't want search engines to index your site You can check this right here and then It's really up to them as they say right here to honor that request But say you don't want to get your website on google or you don't want being to read your website yet Like you don't want them to have it and when people are searching You know online you don't want them to have their website because you're just building it out and One reason why you may not want that is because you know once you're indexed and you have this kind of you know Half-built website already that people are seeing and could give a bad look You know, you might not want to give them an unpolished look for the first look So that's just give you an example of why you might want to do this But hey, it's up to you at the end of the day. Just make sure you save your changes because when you don't Whoo Yeah It's not cool pretty to have it. No bad habit. Let's see and see. All right, so discussion This right here is really preference based discussion sessions. I mean discussion settings. I said just sessions right discussion sessions now say that five times fast But discussion settings Is really based off your preference how you want to Manage how people comment on your posts and those kind of Things so I'm not going to get too deep into this But hey, you have the freedom because you see there are a lot of settings here But you have the freedom. I typically go with the default but you have the freedom to get You know really a granular. Hey, that's a word, right? granular Just to get deeper in the whole thing if you want to customize it that's up to you Media I don't really touch this too much either. I leave this as is You know the default settings are just fine. Now permalinks I like that now these days WordPress will start off with post name Before I used to use these I would stay away when it comes to permalinks Which is really just the way that your url is going to be structured So you'll have your website then you'll have the backslash and then bam, you'll have this structure, right? That's all this really is so I would leave it either at post name But if you know what you're doing, you can do a custom structure forward slash, thank you thank you and then privacy Privacy settings you have the Privacy page so you create a privacy page. I like that WordPress already creates one for you and then you can Add it right here. Boom, and you're done. I mean it doesn't get simpler than that But those are things that I think that people just need to kind of get Have a little To brush through and just set your general settings up like that So let's move to adding your theme So adding a theme Is not hard at all for those of you all who are very accustomed to WordPress because they're you know People who are not beginners here you already know about the whole adding a theme aspect of things But for those who do not know much about adding a theme I just want to quickly touch on it because and the reason why I I want to touch on it is because Since my mind is more strategic based Thinking when it comes to building out systems and structures a theme is also, you know A part of that system and structure and I feel like it's important for you to understand Just like with the plugins how to vet or how to qualify or how to choose your theme because there are different theme types Now I ain't gonna get too deep in the theme world because that'll be a theme itself. I'm gonna leave that theme for another day But either way, let me share with you all kind of how I think when it comes to themes all right So we have three themes here, right? And these are the main themes that WordPress starts off with I don't use these themes, but They are good themes, right? They're really good themes But I like a different type of theme because I like a little bit more functionality out of my theme However, specifically with this thing what makes this thing different than these other two themes is this theme is made specifically for full site editing and Basically, it's just another way for you to Do a lot of your theme building like your header and your footer Or template building It's one of my like I have but building templates when it comes to creating Parts of your website that you can use over and over again in other areas A lot of times you do that with the theme. So with this theme It's special because you can do it within Gutenberg the WordPress editor But right now I'm going to go to add new theme here All right, so Searching for a theme and the WordPress repo is what I'm doing right now, right? You can also download a theme from WordPress.org. So I'm gonna go here and go to WordPress.org And go to themes So you can search for themes in both areas, right? It's your choice. The choice is up to you blue pill or red pill It's up to you But either way You can choose your theme from whichever direction you want to choose But when choosing a theme when deciding on your theme, I would typically look for certain criteria, you know our characteristics And One of those things that you can look at is, you know, is the theme flexible? Is it going to meet your needs, you know years down the line? I think that's very important You know looking at How you decide to choose your theme? So first you want to search for a theme in the repo You can download a theme from as I mentioned WordPress.org And then let me share with you on how to upload a theme So for instance, if I wanted to download the theme, you saw how easy that was I just click the button and go with download so I just downloaded One of the themes that I recommend and I'm only going to give you a few things that I would recommend because it's fair to give you No alternatives or variations, but when it comes to the demonstration of things I'm only going to use one one theme or one set of plugins So that way I don't get too cumbersome when it comes to adding all the Alternative ones, but I want to let you know it's your choice when it comes to using the type of technologies and type of Themes and plugins that you use. I just want to demonstrate to you. This is how I would go about Creating a website more in a strategic manner or building your website in a strategic manner so for themes You have a few here and for the most part WordPress tends to put the most popular themes at the top that makes sense Right. I mean that's logical A lot of other platforms and you know situations and companies and things would do that So these are the most popular themes as you can see I I'm going to Utilize, you know in this demonstration a few themes that either I know or have used before or I'm I've Been recommended to you know by High caliber people. So my favorite themes are Astra cadence I've heard a lot of good things about ocean wp And generate press and I always wonder what this enneve and bloxy So any one of these can also be the third Option just for the testing just to show you all but you see how easy it was for me to install a theme Same thing when it comes to uploading if I wanted to upload the theme I could just drag astra up here and install And since it's already there, I think it's going to ask me if I want to replace it. It usually does that with the plugins So when you get in there See and it did so I can just say yes replace active with uploaded You see how easy it was to just upload a theme So the whole theme aspect of it is very easy when it comes to uploading themes or adding or installing themes to your website but as I mentioned before I look at a few things when it comes to themes As far as their settings Because i'm a fan of flexibility And these are free as you can see these are free I think some a lot of themes do have or not going to say a lot of themes some themes do have paid versions Where they'll give you even more functionality out of it But as you can see how free that was I was freely able to add the theme to the website All right, so activating the theme Super simple very easy. You just click the button Activate right And boom the theme is here now with some themes and even plugins. They'll directly take you and sometimes it's annoying Uh of mine where they'll like take you to their dashboard Immediately it's like they're just taking over, you know what I'm trying to do But some don't they'll just leave you where you are So you just have to just kind of go with the flow and see which things do that Or you know what themes or what plugins do that and what plugins don't do that All right, so it's as easy to activate And deactivate as it is to activate. So see how this is activated. I can easily just go over here And activate this and now cadence this theme is activated So you can go back and forth between themes activating themes pretty easily And that's something that I really appreciate about WordPress is You can do that and you want to do that because you want to do testing At certain points when something is failing on your website, you're having issues One of the best ways to start your testing is changing the theme and the fact that you can do it very easily Makes it a lot better, you know in my opinion excuse me all right, so let's go into Turning on auto updates and deleting themes So turning on auto updates and deleting themes is pretty easy If you go to a theme and the reason why this is actually Revolutionary oh, nope. No No, we gotta do a little bit. I will do a revolution No Revolutionary, yeah, baby. Yeah So this is revolutionary because before you couldn't enable auto updates and that easily years ago with WordPress, but then with Was it 5.9 or was it please put in chat if you do know exactly what it was but A recent update gave us the ability to enable auto updates when it comes to plugins and themes. So it just made it easier Before being able to do that And boom you can add just enable auto update now you do have to be careful I'll give you a disclaimer. Okay, because this is and this is where things get sticky I know that we I know especially us wordpressers We can go back and forth for you know, the best practices so Always know that hey question everything, you know, do what you feel you need to do But I recommend that when it comes to auto updates Or when it comes to yeah updating your site and I'm not going to go too deep into it But there's a such thing called child themes that you have your theme and then you can use a child theme and what a child theme is basically a companion of a theme it's an extension of a theme where you can Add certain code do certain things with it. You can do whatever you want with it, right? and When your main theme updates, especially when you add code to the theme when your main theme updates Your child theme holds intact that code, you know, all those different Customizations that you did to your website through the theme so the main theme updates You know, so that way you still have a good fresh theme And then you still have the child theme holding your Customizations of your code intact Some people like to do that because it gives them the flexibility and ability to do what they want to do While actually having those updates to keep their Theme running smoothly. So that's something that I do once you all to You know get a grasp on Look at me to the chat. I think Sally that I hopefully I Helped answer that question kind of in a way. So it's really preferred to you. I recommend doing auto updates But that's all dependent on how, you know, what type of theme that you do choose now Let's go to See let me see. I'm not sure I'm not getting too far ahead of my okay. Boom. Perfect So deleting a theme I'm gonna show that real quick and then we're gonna go to the settings. It's very easy You gotta get this up the windows out the way. I know you guys can't see them right now But I have left these windows away. So, okay, so I wanted to leave the theme I would click on it and just click delete And it's gone just that easy But I'm going to add astra back add astra Wasn't that a movie that that would Brad Pitt? I'm a movie buff y'all. So I'm just gonna let y'all know that right I am A movie buff Yes, I am so Did I add astra? Okay, we are add astra no Brad cadence so we have cadence activated here and Here are a couple of things that I like to look at now There's a couple ways you can get to the customize the customizer you can literally click customize you can click on the theme You can click customize over here Now why would we want to go to the customizer because that's where it's going to give us our theme settings And to me, this is where I really choose A theme, you know, based on what kind of settings this has specifically in the free version and in the pro version If there is a pro version So colors and fonts. This is where you put an ad Your colors and your fonts or your typography Most themes will have something that looks like this So if you're not using full site editing and you're still using the old school customizer I guess it's going to be called the old school now now we old school So it's going to be the old school customizer You add your colors. So with this particular theme they give you three different palettes and you can add your colors here So that way you can use your colors in other areas of your website And so when it comes to this particular one they have a functionality where they call global Like a global functionality where if you add your colors here and anywhere on your website you use A color and it'll have a globe on it when you change your colors It'll change across the board across your whole website And some themes do have that and some themes don't so this is just something to just kind of look out for when it comes to your colors And then typography you can See that this is associated with all the different fonts in the font headings So you want to make sure that your theme also has this as well, obviously, but It's really about how much flexibility they give you within being able to change out your different You know fonts and what type of fonts they're able to use that's the part that I will look at as well Then when it comes to the site logo For this particular one you would put it right here. So you add the site icon a k a the fava con because it's your favorite con No all right So you can add the site title here and the site logo right here as well And that way you have your logo dialed in So let me go back And then the last one is More performance base or optimization base. So in here, I think it's found in The performance area where certain themes will have a and they have different words for them So that's why I you know, I don't want to get too deep on the words are called But this one gives you areas where you can add some performance functionality like adding the Google fonts locally preloading fonts and also enabling css preload Here's the other thing. Here's the caveat that And if you don't know anything about this, it's okay, but when it comes to caching Certain caching plugins on which are used to help optimize your website for speed, you know But for the most part some caching plugins a lot of them have the same functionality So just be careful with using the same first functionality across the board. Don't have the same two things checked or toggled on both You know on the theme and in the plugin just one or the other I think that's a good practice to go by So let's go back And I didn't save this if I wanted to change the settings and then save them I would hit the publish button instead of the it doesn't say save But that's what that means when you hit the publish button now when it comes to astra, let's activate astra And do the same thing I just went to them So with astra, which is a really good theme as well a very flexible theme You can do the same thing here. So let's see Global typography right here. This is where you would add your typography Colors same thing and they also have a global Palette global color palette too as well. This is something in my opinion that It's starting to become necessary Like it should be standard in all themes that have this global because I don't want to change every single color When I you know when I want to change my colors in my page, especially when I have Hundreds of pages in my website I want to be able to dial in from a branding standpoint and have everything changed across the board But this is a great way for you to be able to do that And then when you have multiple color palettes, you can even test out other color palettes for different seasons So say you want to do something for this coming halloween season or Thanksgiving or christmas You can have a christmas color palette for change it for that season and then change it back to your normal one Well, this is just the ways that I think you all when it comes to scaling and think and building a website with wordpress in a very As I said flexible way But strategic way more importantly that also is customized to your brand and gives your brand the ability to breathe While you handle your business and you know utilize the functionalities that wordpress and plugins give you The typography and colors. I'm not going to get into the buttons and anything like that But I just wanted to show you that it's the same thing. Here's what they call performance. So low google fonts locally with astra That's perfect. And then site identity here. We go again. So site icon and then the site logo So just a little areas that I want you to see the dial in And to think about when it comes to the type of theme that you are using with wordpress I'm trying to now we're into the meat and potatoes of the plugin. So I made this table here Because I wanted to you know, show you a visual representation of the plugins that I was going to Demonstrate for you today of ones that I feel are kind of essential Or the categories I would say the pelican categories that are essential to building a new wordpress website Or just having a wordpress website in general now This is not an List that is just you know the perfect list. This is just what I feel with some of the basic ones And everybody's lists will differ. But this is how I think from a categorization or compartmentalization standpoint and I categorize everything. Yes, it's good. Yes, it's bad I'm dealing with it. But I'm using it to my advantage when it comes to wordpress So we're going to go through these real quick and I'm going to show you how to add plugins so Let's go to the where is it plugins right here bone. So when it comes to plugins, as you can see, I have a blank slate here and There's nothing No plugins installed as you can see in order to add a new plugin. You can either click add new Right, or you can do the same thing like with the themes and you can go to the plugins From wordpress.org So you can do it from the repo or you can do it from wordpress.org and repo stands for repository Those of y'all who didn't know reposted for so It's pretty easy to add plugins and this is where Caution people a lot to be careful Because this is where we get in trouble. Okay Now I guess I can kind of get into a little bit of the story About me now that we're along the road and you all, you know, please. I'm feedback is all good Do you have a list of plugins we can save? Absolutely. Like I said, you're gonna get this Slide I'm gonna make sure everybody gets a slide I don't have it in google drive and ready for you all right now But I'm gonna make sure when I upload it to wordpress.tv and this time I'm gonna do a better job of uploading it faster I apologize for you all that when I did it slow last time and I gotta take the video down and re upload it because I didn't edit it whoo sometimes I just I got slowed down, you know, but I'm gonna upload this I'm gonna make sure the slides are with it Everybody's gonna get that as well and I do have a special gift for you all that stay to the end There's 16 people here for those of you all who are and I I shouldn't pre-framed it like that But for those of you all who are in Cleveland or in the northeast Ohio area I have a special gift for you all that It is totally free and I think it's gonna be pretty cool Which you got to stay to the end to actually see it when I say it's pretty cool. I'm talking about I think it's pretty freaking cool So when it comes to plugins you see here, I'm in the repo and As I mentioned, this is kind of where we really get in trouble because we'll just go in here and we'll just add anything to our website and For me like this is where it kind of you know my whole life and thought process really came in So as I mentioned in the beginning, I am from San Antonio, Texas. I moved to Cleveland, Ohio. I started My business in 2015 I started an agency and that really came from a pivot Because I really started off with music and entertainment in my 20s and I guess for the good or bad it did or didn't work out And so I picked up a camera. I learned photography. I learned video and then I took a I was living in Austin, Texas and I left my way into a work for a website development team I said I can do SEO and I really couldn't do SEO and they hired me because I just liked my My skill set of you know, just being very technical Uh, so that caused me to start learning marketing and learning Uh branding and then learning websites and just learning at that right there was The thing that connected the dot that connected the dot to everything else, right? So that's the only reason why I'm even in the WordPress world is because one thing led to another I remember one person told me or I was watching the video and one guy Was demonstrating how to get into business like he was asked the question Well, how do you get into business the way he demonstrated was well, he drew a purple dot and then he Took another Marker and then he drew a red square and he took another marker and he drew a yellow triangle And he drew these different shapes and colors and then he connected them all together And he said one thing leads to another if you want to get in business just Being business is getting business the one thing and I feel like that's parallel to life And that's what kind of made me fall in love with WordPress You know because I felt like the plugins and the function that was like that too I was able to one connecting thing led to another But I had to make sure that thing that connected with that other thing that those things You know really worked well together and they matched And so that way I can connect the next dot in the next dot I never knew I was going to need this next thing a k8 like a plugin I need this new functionality. I'm adding this new skill set So if you all anybody in the chat that can relate to me You know give me a one in the chat if you relate to that but That's just how I felt, you know, I'm saying when it came to life So that's why I'm like we got to be careful what the plug is. It's just kind of Understand that it's a great way. I see a lot of ones. Thank you. Thank you everybody But we just got to see how everything kind of leads to you know together links together We never know where it would have been or where would it came from if we just hadn't gotten that messy situation or So, yeah plugins now I'm back right see how I try to lead the little story of the thing together But plugins the way that I look at plugins or I vet them is in a couple ways So as you can see here, I do it with categories And I look for plugins that have These basic starting off with this basic aspect of things these basic Characteristics or quality. So the first thing I look for is I look at stars. You know, I look at the ratings I'm not necessarily first thing. I look at the ratings. I look at the number of installations I look at the how many updates and has this plugin been tested with my website So for instance The plugin category blocks if you are building or Building within WordPress and you're not using a page builder and this is in the session for page builders today We will have those and if anybody wants to teach one Uh, this feel free anybody that wants to present or you want to do a session like this Contact me and let's get it. Let's get it started. Let's make it happen This is not just about me teaching you all you all can be teaching others and be teaching me as well So please just feel free to let me know if there's a specific topic that you want to talk about in touch with me And we can make it happen But when it comes to blocks if you're using Gutenberg you want to It's easy to add a plugin and I add a plugin through the category So I'll do blocks or more specifically do in Berg blocks, right? And what comes up from here is some options of different blocks that I would you know, you can choose Now as I mentioned when I'm looking at the blocks I'm vetting through the eyes or the lens of a little bit of criteria that came before me Before I actually get my hands on it and start really working with it So I use the rating system. I use the active installs I use you know, has it been updated within the last few weeks or at least a month if it has been updated in Six months or so It could be a bad sign, you know, so you just have to be careful with that because of the fact that You want to get updates, you know, as frequently as possible to keep the plugin from, you know, potentially getting hacked Or breaking or not being compatible with other plugins, you know, not playing well in the sandbox with the other kids, you know You got to do that. So think about updates as well and then make sure it's compatible So with plugins I want to show you all that It's easy to install just like it's easy to install the theme, right? So I'm going to install a couple of the plugins here. Spectra is a really good block pack here Gutenberg block pack I'm going to install here cadence. This is another one that I recommend. It's really good And Stackable we'll do this one These ones I have on here. Okay. Oh, yep. Very cool. So I just installed a few different Block based plugins. I mean, I saw some plugins that were block based meaning I can use these to build out my pages in Gutenberg And Gutenberg is going to be what we dive into in the part two series, right? This is just showing you all the plugins And for those of y'all who do have to go directly at 2 p.m. Eastern, it's okay. This is being recorded. So you'll be able to see The rest of the presentation, but you know, we're not too far off from the end anyway So I've installed these right and then I'm going to go to forms. So let's go to forms and I'm going to show you how I would activate these Instead of just kind of activating them one by one. We can do a bulk activation, you know So we'll do a bulk activation. Speaking of bulk activation. I want to make sure everybody is wide awake Everybody's still here. Is everybody still good? Is everybody okay right now? I just want to make sure that we aren't, you know We ain't sleeping on the brother. You know what I mean? I don't make sure we ain't sleeping. I'm talking I don't want to make sure I'm talking. I'm talking to myself Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right We up here. We here. So activated We're not going to activate them yet. We're going to keep going with the different categories. So let's go to forms next All right, we hit the forms. That's what I that's what I like. That's what I like Boom-Bam-Bang-Bam-Yow All right. So the forms we're going to install some popular ones here. So and ones I recommend. So let's go with Contact form seven. That's pretty Popular forms. This is one that I definitely Recommend as well. So one of my favorite ones And then which other one that I put on here. Ninja forms. This is a very popular one as well So again, you can look at the active installations. Look at the star ratings And look at how long they have it has been updated We got three of those there. Let's go to the next one security, right? So let's go with security So I just want to show you how easy this is. I'm not gonna We're not going to set up the plugin settings in this one We're going to do that the next one But I just want to show you how I think and how I dive into adding the plugins to create a basis for my WordPress website So get the fundamental foundation because we want to build our website On solid ground, right? Not shaky ground But solid ground, right? Solid ground all right so Where do we want to go here? All right iThemes. I definitely recommend iThemes It's a good security plugin now when it comes to security and let me get into Adding multiple types of plugins within the same category because that's another thing that people I see typically don't really think about like the strategy for that Don't want to always add multiple plugins within the same category. Certain categories. You want one representation, right? Only one person representing that click in this situation Only one plugin is handling that business in this category. You don't want multiple I'm saying this is not a group thing. This is a one thing So when it comes to security, you typically just want one security plugin because a lot of your security going back to the hosting is done On the hosting side, right? So If you have good hosting, which I say don't sleep on your host Put that hosting to use with security best security practices and then on top of that you want to add a Plugin that adds more layers security layers to your WordPress website Now I will tell you right here and anybody can feel free to challenge me. It's okay. I'm okay with that but in my experience, right There is no like perfect way to not get Some type of hack or issue or anything like that with WordPress There's always a way if somebody wants to bad enough to get into your WordPress website So that's what you need to understand what I mean by that is there is no security that will make you 100 impenetrable That's a real word, right? Did I say that do I need a definite? Do I need a dictionary that do I need a left or that? But there's nothing that would allow you to be perfect. You know, you can only do like 90 percent You know, it just makes it really hard for them. Yeah And so yeah, I just want people to understand that because you know people who are just getting into the WordPress world And heard the kind of the WordPress rumors like the juju like oh my god, you know WordPress has gotten hacked No WordPress is pretty safe at its core. It's very safe. There's security measures on WordPress itself There's security measures with your hosting and then security measures within the plugin So you got different layers of security you got a lot of security But the best security is going to be one of the next categories that I show you here in a second But these are the ones that I recommend site ground i themes And a lot of people either use WordPress or all in one seo So I only activated these because I just wanted I mean I only installed these because I just wanted to show you all Again, I'm not going to activate all three of them because that would be me contradicting myself and you know Let's go to the next category here. So we have backup and that's the one that i'm talking about Right there Back up boom all right, so When it comes to backup plugins in my opinion, this is the number one security measure The irony of that right, you know, it's called it's in the backup category because you're backing up your website This is number one security measure now. Why would I say that? Well The reason why I would say that is because You can always go back to a place in time where the issue didn't happen That is going to be the best backup that you I mean the best security measure that you have So you want to go backwards because you can say hey, I can go back in time before my site got hacked Now here's the thing And we'll get into that in the settings aspect How far you can go back is how is based on the settings and the plugin itself uh But You being able to go back that's pretty important And why we want to have a backup plugin on our work on our website is because not all hostings give backups so My favorite backups are updraft WP vivid And what else did I put right here? I think I put word no No, no backup Back WP up. I mean, that's a hard word to say, man Okay, so when it comes to backups typically you want to get hosting that allows you to have backups But I've learned the hard way over my WordPress years Is that you don't always get backups on like, you know, the cheaper or Costly less costly some people don't like the word cheap But less costly plans. So And that's not good like I'm a fan of backups like you need as many backups as you can get So you want backup on your hosting because it's just really good to have them back up to their server And then you want to be redundant You want to add some redundancy you want to add some protection because you just can't trust everybody with your old stuff You know, so you want to back up to some type of cloud storage like dropbox or google drive or something like that And I think that's very important for you all To understand because you can back up your website to a place where you deem safe Where you want to be protected, right? So now you got the backup on the hosting and now you got to back up where you want it to be And you can do it to multiple places. Sometimes I back up to google drive and to amazon at the same time, you know So just think about that And that way when things happen on your website and they will happen There is no perfect WordPress website. There is no perfect website at all But when things happen, you can at least revert back to a place Hopefully where that thing didn't happen and then you can go from there Oh As far as and I'm trying to kind of look at the chat at the same time But I'm also like trying to be mindful of the time. So now my mind on my brain's like, you know, trying to back up the information What we're doing but I just saw a question here as far as from sally Backing up. It's a good question. I mean, uh, how often Are you supposed to back up or do I back up? I would suggest them to each their own But I would suggest that you back up Based on your type of website You know, so if you have a website that has a lot of things happening on it like a community base website a marketplace You know, things where there's a lot of engagement. You probably want to back that thing up like, you know Hour, you know every hour type thing But for the most part, I would say for most people 12 every 12 hours every 24 hours is the best and at least have 14 days of backups, you know, two weeks Because I would feel like, you know, if you can't if there's an issue that does happen unless it's a sneaky issue And you don't see it until two weeks later You know, sometimes I would say two weeks to a month. How about that? Because remember backups do take up storage And depending how big your website is it's gonna how much storage it's gonna take up Whatever wherever you're hosting at the backup. So you have to be mindful of those variables as well But I would say two weeks Back up, you know back up to two weeks and every 12 to 24 hours Unless you have a website that is a lot of things happening at it in real time And you don't want to like you need to go back an hour because when you if something happens Your users lose all their information. You got to go back 14 day. Oh, you go ahead. Oh What they say when we skip You go get a travel So you don't want to get in trouble with your people, you know, I mean, let me go to the next one I Commerce e-commerce. Okay all right, so And again, I'm going to answer all the questions you all at the end I'm just going to get through the last couple categories here too And then for the people who want to stay we'll call it the after party, you know, I mean, we'll just do that We'll just call it the after party But at the after party All right, all right, so e-commerce now this is where I Really wanted to share with you all kind of like the meat and potatoes things Within this meat and potatoes like wait, there's meat and potatoes within the meat and potatoes Thanksgiving's coming up. You know, I'm thinking of that that the turkey that meat the potato with that gravy The yams and I'm thinking all that all that okay So when it comes to e-commerce We want to look at a couple things But some of the most one of the big mecca and some of the most I almost lost my mind there I almost lost my mind the mecca the 800 pound gorilla in the room for those of you all who don't know is going to be Ding ding ding Woo commerce so Woo commerce is the biggest, you know one here When it comes to e-commerce, you know, it's what most people build their stores on in wordpress but There are There's another popular plugin and then there's one other special one that some of y'all might not know of That I feel like is revolutionary evolutionary All the aries and the canaries of the varies that varies It's going to just take over You know after a while and this is not, you know, me What do they say like just like the thing when they're youtube videos and they're like i'm not getting sponsored There's not a sponsor anything that it's just a new plugin that I feel is going to take some market shares from Woo commerce And another one and I think y'all gotta know about if y'all don't know about it because if you try to get that money It's going to help you get that money So easy digital downloads is more for As they say digital downloads so Woo commerce allows you to build a whole store a whole shop where you have products Variables and skews and all those things and then easy digital downloads came in the game and said hey We're just going to focus on the digital downloads. So You typically would only have one or the other. This is another category where you don't want to have multiple ones, but The older one that I'll recommend that y'all check out and it's free and it's new It's the new kid on the block like the new kid on the block It's called shortcut and the reason why you want to check this one out is because it has a lot of kind of like It's like if these two got together and had Like if these two got together You know, it's coming in as it it's it was built for a digital But they're moving into the physical very soon here However, they add a lot of functionality that when it comes to Woo commerce the thing that Woo commerce is that in order to get the real deal out of it, right? You have to add more plugins like to have a I just keep it real y'all. I mean again anybody that wants to say different you have The ability the freedom to do so, you know, this is You know, but you hold nobody down here But typically you got to have at least five to ten plugins to really do what you need to do when it comes to Woo commerce so I just want to let y'all know that if you're going to use a Woo commerce store You got to add more plugins with it or more extensions to add more functionalities And two of those functionalities that shortcut adds out the box without having more plugins is subscriptions and What was the other one subscriptions? and I forgot what the other one was it's going it's going to come to mind and digital downloads No, no subscriptions and something else But either way it does digital downloads is doing physical you can do subscriptions with it Licensing is coming as well. You typically would need another plugin for licensing split payments To type of things so those are things that typically you would have to do with multiple functionalities multiple other plugins when it comes to Woo commerce and even a payment processing aspect of it as well too So let's move to the next one video so people don't always look at video as a category And I do the reason why I do is because video is very important And video is here to stay it's not going anywhere Another plugin that I recommend that you all check out if you haven't already checked out Is this one called presto player, right? So video is kind of I don't have a lot of video Plug-in recommendations because you can do a lot of video You can use the video blocks within Gutenberg or within your page builder but specifically Gutenberg they have the youtube block and they have the Video block which is just they're the same thing. I don't know why they make them look different But it only gives you certain functionality when it comes to using a tool like this a plugin like this You create a video marketing experience that you can deliver to your users See your customers in a way that really stands you out from all your competition and all the crowd And this is the only plugin right now that I know of that has the type of functionality Within WordPress and it's free. It does have a pro version which gives you more functionality But you can really turn into a video marketing suite Okay, and I think that's sweet really sweet All right, so SEO we're almost done here Forgive me y'all. I'm not 10 minutes late. Okay, so SEO is very important, right This is the best way for us to get on google the reason why I say get on google is because Google owns like 86 percent of the market share of the internet The search engine market shares. So most people aren't doing SEO for being I mean, I know some of y'all I don't mean to being you all over the heads but that but I know that being Still use I still use being in sometimes Yahoo, but typically when you're doing you know SEO you're trying to get on google You still can get on other platforms with these tools as well. But this is how you actually get on there And there are other search engines too. So I'm not taking no shots and it's not saying there's no other search engines It's your preference. I just want to let y'all know that It is pop of that, you know, google is the typical one that most people are trying to get on with SEO plugins now my favorite one is rank math, but the 800 pound gorilla in the room like Woo commerce is yos. This is the one that most people know open is the most popular one 5 million active installs as you can see and Five stars in this now. Here's the thing And I'm not gonna and this is not me taking any shots at yos Yos is kind of how like Woo commerce is where you need a lot you need to have other extensions and other Add-ons to get the functionalities of it that rank math gives you for free out the box So really it's preference based to a degree But also I feel like if you do pound for pound of the what the free versions give I think most people would say that rank math has more features However, that does not mean that yos doesn't have xyz and can do xyz I just think most people would say if you do pound for pound when it comes to the SEO world Of plugin and the free version rank math has more features And then the other one I also recommend to is SEO press And this is another category that you only want one. You don't want more than one in this category Just one Code snippets so codes are all about getting putting code, you know on your website and It's important to understand this to a degree. You don't need to be a rocket scientist You don't need to understand this like the word press developers and everybody else In the world that you know is really, you know Advanced word press users. You just need to know that code Will give you the ability adding like Customized code will give you the ability add functionality to your website whereas you don't need For the most part like for example I think php if i'm not mistaken You know, you don't need certain plugins, you know to give you certain functionalities It also gives you the ability to add Code like css or html or coding languages to certain areas in your website or certain parts of your website That you don't want to add on your theme So this is a alternative of adding and this is the way that I recommend Adding code to your website is doing it from the actual plugin and not on your theme Other people would argue and say different and that's okay This is just my preference and just my suggestion But the ones that I recommend that you check out and look at is wp code and code snippets You know, you don't need multiple of these as well too You can only I would recommend just use one but use one or the other And that way you can try it and add code to your website and then you can have less plugins Because plugins will bloat down your website. So we want to build a lean machine, right a lean Machine That's how we start off a great word WordPress website And the last but not least We're going to get into analytics and there's one poking its head down at the bottom right hand bottom It's already like hey, I'm here and you put in code And its name is google analytics So if you are a user of google analytics site kit by google or google site kit Is a great tool to use when it comes to seeing analytics in your WordPress Dashboard like in your WordPress area And it's the new this newer version now there used to be issues because it used to be buggy I'm telling you I'm keeping it real all the way funky with y'all And let you know that it was annoying how it did used to be buggy, but they got a lot of it together, right? And they've have updated it a lot recently. So it is in my opinion. It's a beauty I love being able to help people Set this up for them And they can see google analytics and the google search console and all that information right within wordpress They don't have to go like I would go and go to analytics Google analytics itself. You can see it right within wordpress alternative is monster And this also allows you to see google analytics too in your dashboard difference between these two or there's a lot of differences But the main thing is this is the official that this is made by google. This is made by A company and you know, that's not google that's getting into google, you know, that's utilizing google's api system xyz abilities But those are the main ones that I would recommend categories the main categories that I recommend that you look into When it comes to building out your wordpress website