Creating a professional blog or a business website is easier if you are using the right resources. In this section, we will discuss about the resources and tools we use frequently for this blog as well as for other websites.
1) Blogging/ Website Platform: WordPress
WordPress is used by more than 30% of the web developers globally. It is not just a blogging platform, you can use it to create business websites, ecommerce sites, custom sites and much more!
For all of our online businesses we use WordPress as the CMS. It is faster, safer, reliable and has thousands of themes and plugin available.
2) WordPress and Website Themes
i) Theme Forest: With more than 40,000 premium WordPress themes and templates, Theme Forest has the largest collection of website themes. Some of their themes like Avada, have been downloaded around half a million times! We use Theme Forest themes for designing custom websites and ecommerce themes.
ii) Genesis Themes: If you want to create a simple and professional WordPress blog and page speed is most important to you, then Genesis themes is top on the list. Clean coding, minimalistic designs and user-friendly UI are some of the advantages of Genesis themes. We use them extensively in our projects and for Thats Journal, we are using their Monochrome Pro theme.
iii) Template Monster: With more than 25,000 WordPress and website themes, Template Monster features some of the most unique and stunning WordPress themes. You should definitely check out their collection.
iv) Elegant Themes: Elegant themes feature some of the most beautiful WordPress themes. If you are creating many websites and you want access to all types of themes then you can sign for their subscription package. You will get access to all of their WordPress themes and plugins.
v) Thesis WordPress Theme: If you want to easily customize your WordPress site and create a unique WordPress website without going in to codes, then, Thesis is the best choice for you. They are truly a DIY theme for WordPress!
3) WordPress Plugins and Tools
i) WordPress Plugins Library: WordPress library has a collection of more than 50,000 plugins and all of them are free. Some of them we use are:
a) Jetpack: Jetpack is not a single plugin, but a collection of many plugins built in to one. If it was not Jetpack, we would have to install tens of individual plugins. Jetpack comes with powerful plugins for editing content, social sharing, comments, cache, security and much more!
b) WP Super Cache: One of the most simplest and easy to install cache plugins for WordPress. You can install and make it working on your website in a few minutes.
ii) Code Canyon: With more than 25,000 WordPress plugins and tools, Code Canyon is one stop shop for finding the best custom resource for your website.
4) Web Hosting
i) Blue Host: We have tried many web hosting companies in the past but none of them came close to Blue Host. With affordable pricing and top quality hosting Blue Host is definitely the number one choice for hosting your blogs and websites.
ii) WP Engine: If you are looking for a custom WordPress hosting which is designed specifically to host WordPress blogs, then WP Engine is the best one out there. You don’t even have to install a third party CDN, it comes along with the web hosting package.
5) Cache Plugin: WP Rocket
WP Rocket is one of the best premium cache plugins. It comes with advanced cache features like Browser caching, GZIP compression, lazy loading of images, minification and much more!
6) Images, videos and multimedia:
Every website and blog needs custom photos, audio, videos, and multimedia content. Here is a quick list to find the unique media content for your website or blog.
1) Shutterstock: With more than 200 million+ images, vectors, illustrations, audio and videos Shuttertock is the most popular stock photos website. We recommend Shutterstock for any types of media content for your website. If you are a photographer you can also sell your media content by becoming a Shutterstock contributor and make money from your photos and videos.
2) Dreamstime: With more than 82 million+ photos, Dreamstime is one of the best places to get high quality royalty free images and illustrations. The best part is their community which makes buying and selling photos, so much fun!
3) Pond5: Pond5 has a collection of more than 22 million videos. It is one of the GOTO sites, if you are looking for videos. Their customer support is THE BEST as compared to any agencies.
4) Video Hive: Video hive has a collection of around seven hundred thousand stock videos, footage and video effects. Here you can find unique videos for your projects.
5) Audio Jungle: With over half a million audio and music tracks Audio Jungle is a great resource for finding custom audio content for your projects.
6) Graphic River: Graphic River boasts a collection of more than six hundred thousand unique logos, Infographics, web elements, icons and fonts.
We hope that this list of resources will be helpful to you as well in creating your website or blog.
To your success!
-Thats Journal Team.
Disclosure: Thats Journal is supported by our readers. This page may contain affiliate links. That means, if you click on these links to make a purchase, we may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you). These funds help us to keep this blog up and running.