When starting a new website or blog the amount of choices out there can pretty overwhelming. Here are a few links that we use, trust and love.

WordPress Blog Hosting:

  • Sitegroung– The BEST option for hosting if you’re just starting out! They are budget friendly, easy to use and set up and offer a FREE domain when you purchase a hosting plan.
  • WPEngine- This is a dedicated WordPress hosting company and their servers are optimized to run WordPress. We just switched our websites over to WPEngine and absolutely love them! Our page load time has been screaming fast and we haven’t experienced any down time. I highly recommend them.

E-commerce:

  • WooCommerce– All of our Ecommerce sites use WooCommerce. It is a great add on and can be customized to match any shop with a little .css knowledge.

Sliders:

The SoliloquyWP Slider is what we use in all of our themes. The Soliloquy Lite version is free and can be configured like all of the demo sliders. Purchasing the upgraded SoliloquyWP will give you more versatility and options, like a sliding carousel.

Forms

Hands down the best contact/form plugin out there is GravityForms.

Stock Photography and Color Inspiration

  • Haute Stock– Stock shop and membership site specifically for the female entrepreneur.
  • Twigy Posts– Gorgeous natural light photography
  • Creative Market– has a beautiful selection of images, fonts and other goodies you can use on your site.
  • Design-Seeds– Highly addictive color scheme site. Great for getting inspiration on color combos.

Newsletter Services

  • Mailchimp– A great free (for up to 2000 subscribers) newsletter service! I use them for my newsletter and most of my clients use them as well.

Editing Services

  • Picmonkey– a great online photo editing tool for resizing images, creating pretty blog photos and much more.
  • ClippingMagic – An online program that makes clipping a background from a photo or other objects super easy.

Membership Plugins

If you are looking to start add a members only section to your site or paid subscription, I recommend MemberPress. It is what we use on the site and we have been very happy with it.