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Name: Visual Portfolio
Creator: nk
Support Page: https://visualportfolio.co/documentation/getting-started/
Summary: Works with page builders such as Gutenberg which comes with modern versions of WordPress. Custom layouts as well as some configurable elements are available immediately. I chose this plugin based on the active installs and available documentation.
Resources
Name: Kali Forms
Creator: Kali Forms
Support Page: https://kaliforms.com/docs/
Summary: Kali forms makes it very easy to create forms with predesigned templates and also offers a library of drag and drop fields to quickly update a form. Also has it’s own built in reCAPTCHA integration to protect against spam. I selected this plugin aster researching Gravity Forms plugin and made my decision based on ease of use as well as researching what plugins came with the Shapely theme which ended up being Kali Forms.
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William Lindsey’s Portfolio Site looks clean and professional, owing in large part to a good choice of theme.
Blue and white are classic colors that are really hard to screw up.
Interesting insights into William’s personal and professional interests lend the site a human feel.
The menu makes everything easy to find and the theme makes for easy reading.
People browsing the web who are interested in learning more about William will be satisfied when they peruse his website.
WordPress Themes
Shapely WordPress theme by Colorlib – This theme is said to be one of the most advanced free themes available. This highly customizable theme come with many homepage widgets that can be leveraged to add portfolio, testimonials, parallax sections, your product or service information, and call for action. This theme was selected for it’s active installs of over 60k as well as its high number of 5 star ratings as of this post equalling 54. One other deciding factor which is worth noting, I think it looks great!
Tips and Tricks
In researching WordPress Tips and Tricks two points were consistent themes across multiple sources which are test and monitor your WordPress site. Of course security is a consistent entry to such WordPress tips and tricks lists and is a worthy inclusion. For me, test and monitor include many entries.
The most obvious would be to test your sites performance regularly with tools such as GTMetrix and Page Speed Insights which will test page load speeds and provide grades and detailed reports. Such tools are critical in their assessment of page load speed and often miss interpreted by a website owner who might miss some key configuration options that could have a big impact on the resulting score. Also, it is important to test multiple pages. Google Analytics will give insight on high traffic pages that you can focus efforts on testing and improving those pages first.
In regards to monitoring, as mentioned above, Google Analytics is great for providing user insights as to how many users traffic your site, who your users are, and user activity. This can help in identifying what types of content are peaking the most interest. Also, monitor and interact with comments regularly. It is best to control your content by requiring comments to be approved prior to them being published. Not every human has the best intentions.
To close, test and monitor the critical elements of your site are the most consistent consistent entries on WordPress tips and tricks lists. Test site performance as well as SEO. Set up and monitor tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Also, monitor and interact with comments frequently as good contributors don’t like to feel ignored.
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In researching WordPress themes, I was surprised on the number of considerations when choosing a theme. For example, my experience and research highlighted considerations such as supported plugins, out of the box accessibility, out of the box responsiveness, weight or ease of customization, and themes purpose. Purpose represents what type of content would be best represented by a theme such as listings for sale or sports car blogs. For it’s simplicity, I selected the Shapely theme.
Resources: https://www.bluehost.com/resources/how-to-choose-a-wordpress-theme/ & https://generatepress.com/