Starting a blog or website can be very simple or a more complex task depending on which publishing platform you prefer and how much knowledge you have when building and setting up websites.
Furthermore, there are various publishing platforms and content management systems to choose from, so it is not an entirely straightforward task to get started. However, since I am familiar with and have used WordPress since the dawn of time, I recommend WordPress, whether you are a beginner or a pro.
Why WordPress? WordPress is simply the most popular CMS and powers more than 42.4% of the websites worldwide and continues to grow.
Moreover, the WordPress community is vast, and there are always tips, guides, tutorials, and help available through simple Google searches.
Numerous blogs write about everything possible regarding WordPress, so it is beneficial to follow some of them. Furthermore, I hope that WP Webify will also be a resourceful site with lots of tips, tutorials about WordPress, and web tools.
It is the first article on WP Webify, and I hope you will follow me on this new journey.
Furthermore, I would like to inform you a bit about WP Webify. Who I am! What expectations do I have? What direction I have decided? Which websites I have had previously?
Here is some information about me and my new blog – WP Webify.
WP Webify
WP Webify is a new WordPress blog by Peter Nilsson in the WordPress community. The new kid on the block! WP Webify is a blog that will publish articles about WordPress (of course), WordPress themes, plugins, tutorials, SEO, marketing, web tools, and other related topics.
In addition to myself, there will be other writers like Daniel Pintilie, Atif Shahab, and Rupam Krishna Bharali who have vast experience with WordPress and related topics. They have written excellent articles on my previous websites and are well-known names in the community.
Check out some of their articles:
- Pingdom Speed Test Tool – The Fundamental Step Towards Improving Page Performance
- The Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Maintenance [2021 Edition]
- The Ultimate WordPress Security Guide – Step by Step (2022)
Moreover, I look forward to starting testing themes, plugins, and web tools again (unfortunately, I have not had time to do that for a while). Hopefully, it will result in new articles here on WP Webify.
My ambition is to make WP Webify a useful resource for all WordPress enthusiasts out there. Whether you are a beginner or a more advanced user, I hope you can benefit from our articles.
Furthermore, compared to my previous websites, I will focus much more on online web tools. I use loads of excellent web tools every day in my daily work, and perhaps you do too. There are so many great online tools available, and many of them are also free to use. Don´t we all like freebies?
Who is behind the WP Webify site? – My name is Peter Nilsson and I am the guy behind the website.
Who the heck is Peter Nilsson? Never heard of him!
Fair enough! Let me introduce myself.
Peter Nilsson – Founder & Blogger
As I mentioned earlier, my name is Peter Nilsson, born and raised in Sweden. Moreover, Sweden is a beautiful country with beautiful landscapes, lots of forests, and lakes. In the summertime, we are happy to visit new places and make new experiences around Sweden.
Unfortunately, we have a long and tedious winter in Sweden. We do our best to leave the country during these long dark times. My family visits Thailand as often as we can. It is our home away from home.
I am a big fan of WordPress and have used and worked with WP since 2008.
Back in 2007, I started my blogging career with Google’s platform Blogger, which I quickly and undoubtedly dismissed because of its inflexibility and lack of features.
Furthermore, I also tried other platforms like Joomla and Drupal before discovering WordPress, the self-hosted WordPress.org, aka “the real WordPress,” a free open-source with tremendous flexibility. However, you need a domain name and web hosting. But it is the best CMS and blogging platform out there (in my opinion).
However, WordPress.org should not be confused with WordPress.com (as many unfortunately do),
Since 2008, I have used WordPress for all my own and my client’s projects because it is simply the best platform (in my opinion) available right now.
I have been around long enough to see how WordPress has evolved from a fairly simple blogging platform to an advanced content management system (CMS).
Over the years, I have set up numerous websites for both myself and my customers. Perhaps, some of you guys maybe know me from my websites WP Newsify, WP Pluginsify, and WP Daily Themes.
If not, I hope we get to know each other here on WP Webify, where we will do our best to provide articles with useful news, tips, and tutorials.
A Look Under the Hood at WP Webify
For those of you who are curious about what is behind the hood on WP Webify! What web hosting, what WordPress theme, plugins, and more do I use on this website, sit back and relax; everything will be revealed below.
Hosting
I have chosen SiteGround as my WordPress hosting service for this website and left my traditional hosting company, which I have used for numerous websites for over ten years.
So far, SiteGround has surprised me positively with features such as good performance, a free SSL certificate, daily backups, free Cloudflare CDN, a staging tool, unlimited email accounts, and much more.
Furthermore, with SiteGrounds own free SG Optimizer WordPress plugin, it is also possible to further optimize your website performance. Features that can be optimized are dynamic caching, environment, frontend, and media.
WordPress Theme
I always use a premium WordPress theme for my main sites. WP Webify is no exception. Free themes in all their glory, but I prefer a theme that is updated regularly and supported. (Although many of the free WordPress themes are updated frequently, many do not).
For WP Webify, I have chosen a premium WordPress theme called Veen that suits my purposes. Veen is a minimalist, lightweight, and fast-loading theme created by the WordPress theme provider EstudioPatagon.
It is important that a WordPress theme has a great aesthetic design and that the theme is adapted for both SEO and speed. So far, Veen meets my requirements.
WordPress Plugins
All of you who use WordPress know that plugins are add-ons to add additional features to your WP site. WordPress itself is basically equipped with basic and necessary features and works out of the box. You can basically start publishing immediately.
However, it is almost inevitable not to use plugins! There are always features that need to be supplemented, such as increased security, contact form, spam blockers, image optimizer, and more.
I normally use about 20-25 plugins on my previous websites, depending on what services the hosting provider offers. Sometimes you can save on plugins such as CDN, optimization plugins, backup, and more services that sometimes are included and sometimes not depending on the hosting.
On WP Webify, I have picked a minimal number of plugins. There will probably be more added later, but right now, this is the arsenal of WordPress plugins that I use on WP Webify.
Wordfence Security – To increase and enhance security, I use the plugin Wordfence Security – Firewall & Malware Scan, a firewall and malware scanner plugin with lots of options to boost WordPress security.
Rank Math SEO – SEO is an essential part of your website strategy to get your website searchable in search engines and hopefully rank high in the SERP results to attract more traffic to your website.
Normally, I use Yoast SEO, which is an excellent plugin. However, the Rank Math SEO plugin is more advantageous and flexible because you have tons of more settings to configure your SEO options for free; the equivalent of Yoast SEO is to choose their premium plugin.
Akismet – When you start a new blog, it does not take long before you are flooded with spam comments and sometimes malicious content, which is not something you want. It is also very time-consuming to go through and delete all spam comments.
A plugin like Akismet is invaluable if you want to stop spam comments and malicious content to use your time for something better, such as writing great content.
Site Kit by Google – Most website owners often use Google’s many tools for insights, stats, metrics, analytics, and more. I’m one of them.
Site Kit is a useful plugin and tool for linking several Google products such as Google Search Console, Analytics, PageSpeed Insights, AdSense, and more and display insights directly on the WordPress dashboard.
WPForms Lite – It is important and essential that visitors easily can contact you on your website. It can be anything from support, help, or other issues. Then a contact form is one of the best solutions.
I use the plugin WPForms Lite because it contains all the features I need to create simple, although flexible, contact forms. WPForms is also very easy to use, and you have a working contact form up and running within minutes.
SG Optimizer – As I mentioned earlier, I use SiteGround as hosting. SG Optimizer is their own plugin (only works if you use SiteGround as hosting) to handle specific performance optimizations.
With the SG Optimizer plugin, you have the opportunity to optimize dynamic caching, environment, frontend, and image optimization. Furthermore, you can also run performance tests (powered by Google PageSpeed) to check everything works optimally on your website.
WPS Hide Login – To further increase the security, I use the WPS Hide Login plugin, making it possible to change the URL of the login page to anything you want.
It also means that you can avoid common hacking attempts at the WordPress default login URL that most people probably know by now. WPS Hide Login is a plugin that is also very easy to use.
Easy Table of Contents – We use the Easy Table of Contents plugin to create a context-specific index or table of contents (TOC) to make it easier for visitors to get a better overview of the article or content headings and second-level headings.
Furthermore, using a table of content plugin enables readers to find and jump to sections they’re interested in. The article is more structured and organized. Plus, it is more SEO-friendly to use a table of content plugin.
At the moment, it’s all the WordPress plugins I use. However, I will install more if needed. Since I have worked with WordPress for so long, I know that this number of plugins is not enough to cover all the needs and features needed to run a blog. But for now, it is all I need.
Final Words
I hope you got to know me and my new website WP Newsify a bit more with this small introduction. My colleagues and I will do our best to make this blog a resourceful place where you can discover news about WordPress, useful tutorials, great tips, and cool web tools.
From time to time, we will also accept guest contributions on WP Webify. If you want to write about WordPress, tutorials, or great web tools, you can read more about our guidelines here.
If you want to get in touch with us please reach out to us via our contact page.
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