Blog Tech Support’s TOP PIcks
Explore My Recommended Tools & Resources For Bloggers
Wondering which hosting, WordPress themes, plugins, email marketing programs, and other tools you need to run your blog and grow your traffic and income? You’ll find it all here!
Disclaimer: This page may contain affiliate links, meaning if you decide to make a purchase through my links I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. See my disclosure for more info.
Hosting and Domain Names:
Here are my recommended platforms to get your hosting, domain name, as well as your professional email
for starting bloggers as well as established bloggers
Siteground Hosting
For when you’re just starting your blog, Siteground is one of the best options to start with. Not just for their price, but they have fast servers, which will make your blog load fast.
As well as they have excellent customer service.
I’d recommend going with their GrowBig plan, which cost around the $5 per month and with their 1-year plan, you’ll get the best deal AND you’ll get a fast server, free SSL, a staging site, and much more.
And with their GrowBig plan you’re also allowed to set up multiple sites!
Cloudways Hosting
If you have a blog and are looking to take it to the next level, Cloudways is a great hosting company that will allow you to do that.
They’re not the cheapest, but you’ll get your own server, which is way more secure and it’s easy to set up and it will grow with you.
You can start on their 2GB host and once your traffic is outgrowing your server, you just upgrade your server and you’ll never have to switch hosting again.
And although it’s a bit more expensive, you can pay per month, so no long contracts.
Namecheap
I use Namecheap for all of my domain names and professional email addresses.
I know you sometimes get those for free with your host, but I really prefer to keep my domain and email separate from my hosting.
Mainly because it makes it super easy if I want to switch hosting companies.
And a dot com domain sells for just $12 per year and you’ll very often find super cheap deals on their site where you can get a dot com domain for just $6.
WordPress Themes:
Picking the right WordPress theme is one of the most important choices you have to make when it
comes to your blog’s design. So here are a few very good AND fast loading themes.
Kadence Theme
Eversince I found the Kadence theme, I only use this on my sites. Or better said, I only use premium Kadence themes.
Kadence has a free version, which is good already. And then there are tons of companies out there who design Kadence child themes, which you’ll find below.
Personally I have the full Kadence bundle, which comes with way more features, as well as Conversions. This you can use to design beautiful popups, slide-ins, and more.
Restored 316
Restored 316 is one of those companies I mentioned that design gorgeous Kadence child themes. And they have themes specifically for food bloggers, travel bloggers, DIY bloggers, and many more.
And they also have very detailed training videos to help you further customise your theme.
17th Avenue Designs
17th Avenue Designs is another design company that offer beautiful Kadence child themes.
Mostly feminine themes. So if you want a beautiful blog with more of a feminine feel to it, I would highly recommend checking out their Kadence child themes.
And they also have great support.
WordPress Plugins:
Your blog needs security, backups, and much more. Here are the plugins I highly recommend for running your blog.
Wordfence Security
Believe it or not, but even with a brand new website, people will try to hack your site.
Wordfence Security is a plugin that will keep malicious people out the door, by blocking failed attempts, you can block countries, or IP addresses.
And it will tell you when there are infected files on your server, and more.
This is one of those plugins that I always install on a new site as one of the first ones and it never let me down thus far.
Rankmath SEO
If you want your content to rank high on Gooogle, it’s important to optimise your content for SEO.
Rankmath is an SEO tool that will show you how to optimize your content, create 301-redirects when need to, add schema to your pages, and more.
WPCode Lite
when you sign up for 3rd party platforms like Google Analytics, Pinterest, install a Facebook pixel to retarget your visitors with ads, and more. you’ll need to add code into the header section of your site.
WPCode Lite is a very lightweight plugin that allows you to create all kinds of scripts, add codes to the header, body, and footer of your site, and more.
Shortpixel Image Optimizer
If you want to optimize your blog for speed, images are an important factor to this.
ShortPixel Image Optimizer will do all of this for you. You simply upload your images, and Shortpixel will make the files smaller and show them in WebP format on the front-end of your site.
In my opinion, this is by far the best image optimisation tool for WordPress.
Pretty Links
When you’re sharing your affiliate links, it’s hard to memorize those difficult links.
Pretty links allows you to create custom links, connected to your domain. And shows you the clicks those links are getting.
Keep in mind though, that for platforms like Amazon, you’re not allowed to use link cloackers. But I use Pretty links for all of my affiliate links for this website.
Kadence Pro
Although Kadence is a free theme, it also comes with the Pro version, which will give you lots of extra functionality.
Things like custom menu’s, design options, custom post types, and more.
Kadence Blocks (Pro)
The Kadence blocks plugin gives you additional WordPress blocks to play with. The regular version is free.
There’s also a Pro version, which comes with the Kadence Pro bundle, which gives you even more blocks for almost anything you can think of.
Kadence Conversions
If you’re trying to grow your email subscribers, sales, and more, Kadence conversions will help you with this.
You can easily create all kinds of popups, top bars, slide-ins, to promote specific deals, design signup forms, and more.
This is included in the Kadence full bundle and can be bought as a separate plugin
Akismet Anti-Spam
When your blog traffic grows, your spam comments will grow with it.
This is annoying, I know. And Akismet Anti-spam will take care of almost all of this for you and put all of your spam comments automatically in the spam folder.
ManageWP
I use ManageWP for all of my daily backups.
You can sign up and connect your site for free and manage your blog from this site. But for just $1.80 per month, per website, it will automatically create daily backups and you will have 90 days worth of backups available.
This is the tool I also use for my WordPress maintenance clients.
Social Warfare
Social sharing from your content is important to get more traffic from platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, X, and more.
Social Warfare Pro will give you specific options to improve your images for Pinterest.
You can set specific images to be pinned from your content, set custom titles and descriptions, and more, so that your visitors don’t have to do this.
WP Mail SMTP
WP Mail SMTP will help you improve your email deliverability.
When you install this plugin and connect it to your domain, it will make sure to improve your outgoing emails from your website.
If you created a professional email account and you can receive but not send emails, this will be the solutions you’ll need.
Growing Your Email List
Here are my recommended platforms to get your hosting, domain name, as well as your professional email
for starting bloggers as well as established bloggers
Mailerlite
As bloggers, building up our email list is super important.
Getting traffic can be difficult and you want to be able to reach those visitors again, on your own terms.
And Mailerlite is a very easy tool to setup and grow your email list and is free for your first 1000 subscribers.
Mailerlite is what I use myself for this website and love it so far.
Kit (Convertkit)
Besides Mailerlite, Kit is another popular one.
Kit is built to focus on text emails for the most part and has a high deliverability rate.
Also, there’s a huge Facebook community where users help each other out.
EMM from Liz Wilcox
If you’re always stuck on what to write to your email subscribers?
Email Marketing Membership from Liz Wilcox is a game changer.
I recently signed up for it and I receive an email template each Monday that is just plug and play. All I have to do is fill in my own niche and topics and I’m ready to send it out.
And this will only cost you $9 per month.