Plug the Pluggin’ Hole – Plan Your WordPress Series
Keep it lean! Keep it clean! Your WordPress plugin library shouldn’t look like an actual library. Neither the WordPress site dropdown nor the “New” dropdown have an option to navigate to the plugin pages. When I was new to WordPress, that omission...
Imagine Images – Plan Your WordPress Image Strategy
Go faster! Be more engaging! Our never-ending quest to enhance our WordPress website’s user experience invariably takes us to the images. This is part of our Plan Your WordPress Site series because it’s best to get out in front of how images will be used...Latest Posts
Why and When to Use a Visual Builder – Plan Your WordPress Series
Gutenberg is in WordPress core today. It may be a... Read more
Gutenberg is in WordPress core today. It may be a baby, but visual builders have been around for a while. Gutenberg joins the ranks of Divi Builder, WPBakery Page Builder, Elementor, Beaver Builder, and many others. How did we get here? Visual builders allow for the non-technical creation of beautiful pages. They range in versatility, but you often have the ability to add columns, add an assortment of pre-built features like a slider or newsletter signup and configure specific styles at the block/module level. All without coding. It's a great business proposition, one that has stuck, given their prevalence. A visual builder offers a special user interface in either the WordPress backend (admin), frontend, or both for users to create content. But do we need one? It depends. And it should be part of planning your WordPress website. Here are some considerations?
When can a visual builder help me?
A sound business case is if I have a small business website that will have dynamic pages like the home (new content, updated slides, routine color changes, etc.), and the admin maintaining the website doesn't have a technical background. Maybe the home page will have several interactive elements or will need to scale. It will be easier to find an all-in-one solution in a visual builder than adding a bunch of plugins. However, if speed is your need and you don't envision the pages changing that much over time, coding page templates is more ideal.What theme / visual builder combination should I use?
Compatibility is first and foremost. In the wake of Gutenberg's release, it may take some time for your theme of choice to release a version that plays nice with the visual builder. The theme may also come pre-packaged with one. In this case, it makes the most sense to leverage the visual builder that comes with the theme. But if you would rather not be locked in to a certain builder or aren't sure if you will use one at all, a theme that doesn't have one integrated may best suit your needs.Where can a visual builder help me?
Editors like Gutenberg can be great for creating unique one-off pages like home and contact. You can often choose pre-formatted layouts and color schemes to quickly stand up a site. Adding interactive elements like sliders, maps, newsletter signups, etc. is simplified when your visual builder is worth its salt. These editors aren't that useful as templates for something like blog posts, products, or events. Your posts and other content types outside of pages won't be so sophisticated that they need their own dynamic custom layout. It's likely more ideal that blogs and other dynamic content have a consistent look. Adding a visual editor to the mix may bog down your writing process. You can reasonably rely on a more bare bones editor to add and format text and images.What to look for...
Above all else, the visual builder you select should be well-supported. If you've made the decision to use a builder, remember that there is a time investment to learn it. You don't want to be stuck with one months down the road that is being decommissioned. Outside of that, the matter will come down to your priorities. Do you want the one with a bunch of elements/modules and third-party plugins? Try the WPBakery Page Builder. Do you want the one that's very intuitive? Try the Divi Builder. Give Elementor a review for an up-and-comer choice.Check out more articles in the Plan Your WordPress series
Plug the Pluggin’ Hole – Plan Your WordPress Series
Keep it lean! Keep it clean! Your WordPress plugin library... Read more
Keep it lean! Keep it clean! Your WordPress plugin library shouldn't look like an actual library. Neither the WordPress site dropdown nor the "New" dropdown have an option to navigate to the plugin pages. When I was new to WordPress, that omission irked me. I saw it as an oversight because I wanted to try on every plugin, explore every feature, no matter the consequences. I didn't vet plugins. Practicality and relevancy didn't come to mind. Nor did whether or not they were well supported. All I cared about was they could do something cool in a shorter amount of time than building it myself.
Storyboard Your Needs
Know your business requirements. Then you can identify what combination of plugins you will need to support what you want. A good example is fulfilling a requirement to sell products online. You may choose WooCommerce to handle the base functionality that most people need in an ecommerce solution. But your requirements may call for functionality that is a little more niche. Perhaps you want to sell subscriptions, send emails to visitors who abandoned their cart, integrate with a certain payment gateway. [one_fourth]The plugin pages are nowhere to be found on the admin bar and for good reason[/one_fourth] [three_fourth_last] The solutions can be in the form of additional plugins, but if you don’t have well defined objectives, and research the plugins available, you can blow up your library with plugins that don't fulfill your needs or are redundant. I've seen several instances where the Divi Builder plugin is installed on a site that uses the Divi theme. The theme already comes with the builder. [/three_fourth_last]
Consider the implications of adding a plugin: Performance, Scalability, Security
Your out-of-the-box WordPress site is a well-oiled machine. Keep it that way.
Plugins can bog down page loading times. People don't have the patience to wait. Around 40 percent of visitors will leave your website if it loads longer than 3 seconds. That's not an easy proposition with base WordPress and moderate hosting. Add to that a bunch of plugins that allow for this and that and you have a recipe for a high bounce rate. If visitors bounce, who's left to see what the plugins do anyway? Compatibility can be another big issue. It's not as big of a talking point as page speeds, but WordPress and WooCommerce have made changes to depict plugin compatibility. The more plugins you have, the greater risk you run that activating one may negatively affect another or your theme.If you plan on scaling your website as your business grows, take a hard look at your plugins now
Take a free plugin that adds pricing functionality. It's free for the first product. Anything beyond one product requires a paid version. Are you able to pay for that version? Do you need all of the extra features that may come with it? Is it replacing the free plugin or adding an entirely new one?Who's vulnerable? Don't open your website up to attack
Week after week we learn about serious plugin vulnerabilities. Whether it's cross-site scripting, zero day, SQL injection or something else horrible, the popularity of WordPress plugins makes them a prime target. Divi just announced an update that patches a privilege escalation vulnerability. We often don't have the time or expertise to review someone else's code. If we did, we might be better off building what we needed ourselves. But we can at least review the changelogs to get a sense of the frequency of updates and whether the developer(s) tackle security-related issues. For many reasons, avoid plugins that haven't been updated in several major WordPress releases.Under the hood - how many plugins are too many?
We have 18 active plugins on our site. Our clients, typically small businesses, will have fewer than 5. Most small-business websites that are purely informational shouldn't have more than 5. The number is arbitrary, admittedly, but if you are working with a threshold, you might be less likely to add plugins willy-nilly. Integrating ecommerce usually increases that number by up to 5. So go forth in the knowledge that plugins may offer cool features, but they come with risks. For more planning tips, check out our Imagine Images.
Imagine Images – Plan Your WordPress Image Strategy
Go faster! Be more engaging! Our never-ending quest to enhance... Read more
Go faster! Be more engaging! Our never-ending quest to enhance our WordPress website's user experience invariably takes us to the images. This is part of our Plan Your WordPress Site series because it's best to get out in front of how images will be used by creating a guide.
Choose a "Look & Feel" for your WordPress Images
Broadly speaking, you should have a strategy for how for how images will compliment your WordPress blog posts, products, static pages, etc. A strategy will help you identify what your goals are and give you a consistent appearance.
Type: I often use vectors because I can use my website’s colors scheme and they are often smaller, but I have to be careful to break them up with photos so that my home page banner in particular isn’t awash in purples, blue and pink. I’m also cognizant that changing my WordPress website’s color scheme will mean that most of my images won’t match.
Frequency: I will deploy about 2-3 images for a post or product depending on the breadth and depth of the content. One image will be featured in landscape for blogs, square or portrait for products. One or two supporting images will be added within the paragraph text or gallery to further contextualize the content.
Naming: I try to insert the title of my WordPress website into the name of my product images. I separate name components (e.g. website title, product name, post name, post idea) with underscores and the words within each component with dashes so that there are no spaces. I then copy that name into the alt text field for improved UX and SEO.
Behavior: You may see a means of increasing internal link counts by linking your images to other relevant content. Or you may have a need for a lightbox effect where users can see a zoomed in version. Unlike us, perhaps you have a fun WordPress site that should employ animations like fade in, swipe left, etc. Here's a video tutorial that adds a simple image hover effect for the Divi Builder.