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-----?VIDEO OVERVIEW?----
A lot of people get confused about WordPress plugins and what to use, so here is my list of top free plugins I use on every website I manage.

If the website has a store, I generally use Woocommerce as it’s the most featured and documented. Woo is super easy to understand and has a lot of support articles to help you should you be lost. It offers digital and physical products, and has an API to sync with other stores to help manage stocking & pricing.

To make my websites more personal and customizable I use Genesis by StudioPress. Genesis Blocks with the Genesis framework theme allows you to add all different sorts of new features to your website and help you lay it out a lot nicer and cleaner. Don’t forget to take a look at some child themes too, as they can really help you get started.

For contact forms I generally use Contact Form 7 as it’s basic but allows me to do what I need to do. Should I need to do anything that CF7 doesn’t have, I’ll usually embed a Google Form to the page.

For SEO I use Yoast like most of the world, but it seems to be hiding a lot of features behind a paywall with more and more being locked out every year. I’m looking into alternatives for this so if you recommend any I’d love to hear about them in the comments section below.

I use a plugin called Smush to help reduce my image size to cut down on bandwidth and reduce loading times.

I used to use MailChimp for newsletters but have been looking into alternatives like SendGrid for more functionality.

Akismet is one of the most popular spam protecting plugins available, but I’d also look into plugins like Sucuri and WordFence to ensure your site is secure.

If you run a blog and want to inject ads with Genesis blocks, I’d recommend Advanced Ads. You can link this to your Adsense account to ensure high quality and know that your users aren’t being targeted by harmful ads.

I also have Insert Headers and Footers installed should I need to inject any code there for verification purposes.


-----?G4NG?-----
I'm a part of the G4NG gaming community as the CEO & Head of G4Worlds, our gameserver division! If you're looking to meet new people & find a community you can call home, or anything else you can check out https://g4ng.live/discord and join the party!

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