Below is an always up-to-date list of services and plugins we use on our WordPress site. Your success is our success! Unlike others, we only list things we actually use and always practice what we preach.
WordPress Hosting
We host all of our sites with Kinsta. They combine Nginx, PHP 8.3, HTTP/3, Cloudflare Enterprise, edge caching, and the fastest machines on Google Cloud Platform for speeds that can’t be beaten! If you’re tired of hassling with slow and unreliable hosting with horrible support, Kinsta is the provider you’ve been waiting for. Check out our in-depth Kinsta review.
WordPress theme and design
This site uses the GeneratePress WordPress theme. In fact, we’ve moved all of our sites over to it! Kudos to the developer, as he focuses on performance and keeping things lightweight. You won’t have any issues with Google Core Web Vitals when using GeneratePress. Check out our full in-depth GeneratePress review.
Created by the same developer as GeneratePress, GenerateBlocks lets you design anything you can imagine. It truly embodies the vision that blocks are the future of WordPress while focusing on performance and flexibility. This is one plugin that should be in everyone’s toolkit. Check out our in-depth GenerateBlocks review.
Site speed and optimization
We use Cloudflare Automatic Platform Optimization (APO) to turbocharge this site! Cloudflare APO takes this to the next level with instantaneous synced full-page caching at the edge. Deliver your HTML, JS, CSS, and images from over 270 POPs around the globe! Read more about Cloudflare APO. Also, check out our recommended Cloudflare settings.
Speed up your WordPress site and improve your Google Core Web Vitals scores using our Perfmatters plugin (developed by woorkup). Every piece of code matters these days. Reduce your HTTP requests, disable scripts on a per-post basis, lazy load your images, delay JavaScript based on user interaction, remove unused CSS, and much more.
WordPress plugins
These are the WordPress plugins we use and recommend.
Free
- Antispam Bee: Blocks spam comments without captchas and without sending personal information to third-party services.
- Code Snippets: An easy, clean, and simple way to run PHP code snippets on your site without having to touch your
functions.phpfile. - Fluent Forms: Lightweight and powerful contact form plugin.
- GenerateBlocks: Design beautiful websites with no code and performance in mind. Read our GenerateBlocks review.
- Pretty Links: Lets us keep track and create our nofollow affiliate links. Check out our tutorial on how to set up Pretty Links.
- WordPress Hide Posts: Easy way to stealth publish content on your site without it showing up on your homepage or RSS feeds.
- Yoast SEO: Still the best SEO plugin out there. Never had any problems, it just works, period.
Premium
- ShortPixel: Automatically compress all of our images and convert them to WebP to keep our total page weight down.
- Mailgun: Easy way to send transactional emails in WordPress.
- Perfmatters: Speed up your WordPress site by reducing HTTP requests, link CDN, change login URL, disabling scripts on a per-post basis, and minimize database bloat. (developed by woorkup)
- Novashare: Our social sharing plugin you see on the sidebar of our posts. (developed by woorkup)
- Widget Options: Used for the scrolling widget on our sidebar and to show select widgets on certain posts/pages.
Fathom
Fathom is the best Google Analytics alternative. It’s extremely lightweight (under 3 KB) and privacy-focused. This means you don’t have to worry about GDPR or cookie banners. Their dashboard is also pretty awesome and blazing fast. Once you start using Fathom, you won’t ever go back.
Accuranker
Accuranker is the best keyword rank tracker we have ever used. It’s simple, cheap, and fast. This is what we personally use to keep track of all of our keyword rankings across this site and niche sites. Local keyword tracking, mobile, etc. Why is it so great? Because it’s one of the only trackers to pull in your rankings instantly so you know exactly where you stand. Update them on-demand as many times as you like during the day. Unlike other tools, there are no limits!
MailerLite
If you want a simple and easy-to-use newsletter software then try MailerLite! Send unlimited emails to 1,000 subscribers for free. They also offer an automated RSS to email newsletter which can be very useful for bloggers. Woorkup’s weekly newsletter is powered by MailerLite.
Namecheap
I’ve been using Namecheap for over a decade! With .com domains starting at $8.88 a year, their prices are hard to beat. They also have great live chat support whenever issues do arise. The beauty of Namecheap though is they never do.
99Club
The 99Club, by Stock Photo Secrets, has become my favorite place to get all my photos. You can grab them for as low as $0.49 per photo! It is the best Dollar Photo Club alternative out there. Make sure to check out my review on 99Club.
Grammarly
We absolutely love Grammarly and use it every day! It is free and has browser extensions that you can use to proofread and autocorrect your spelling and grammar.
Development tools
Monokai Octagon Light Slack theme
#1E1F2C,#191E2A,#282A3A,#FFCC66,#282A3A,#E8E8E8,#A9CC49,#FF964F
Monokai Octagon Dark Slack theme
#1B1D21,#23262B,#282B30,#FFCC66,#282B30,#E8E8E8,#A9CC49,#FF964F